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Lenin was an economic Marxist. American progressives are cultural Marxists.
Equality is the pursuit of equal opportunity; equity is the false promise of equal outcome.
Paideia, simply defined, represents the deeply seated affections, thinking, viewpoints, and virtues embedded in children at a young age, or, more simply, the rearing, molding, and education of a child.
The WCP, then, is a particular type of paideia that was intentionally created for a self-governing people.
They were meant to orient our nation toward an idol of individual identity within the bounds of progressive social solidarity, not the enjoyment of God and His eternal world.
Without realizing it, today’s American students absorb a deep affection for scientism (science is the only way to find truth), equity/equality (there is nothing better or worse, just different), individualism (identity politics), neo-Marxism (the government can and should solve all inequalities), along with a host of other modern and postmodern affections that lead to servitude (it’s all about your job).
(You may note the contrast with the Christian catechism “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”)
Critical theory is what you get when you try to actually live out avowed atheism.
You see at once that education is essentially for freemen and vocational training for slaves. . . . If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.
“For avoiding the extremes of despotism or anarchy . . . the only ground of hope must be on the morals of the people.
I believe that religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments. Therefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man towards God.”
Since both knowledge and virtue require the concept of transcendence, they are really obnoxious to those committed to [materialism].
Reason, Virtue, Wonder, and Beauty.
Virtues come from God; values come from within you.
That is why, after purging their schools of traditional Judeo-Christian—and traditional Greco-Roman—virtues, they replaced them with a set of five pseudo-virtues to fill up the virtue-shaped vacuum in our hearts: tolerance, inclusivism, egalitarianism, multiculturalism, and environmentalism.”
Progressive pseudo-virtues are based on expected contributions to society (to each according to his need, from each according to his ability), a materialistic worldview (no God and no purpose), individualistic affections (do what’s right in your own eyes), a separated concept of God who makes us feel fulfilled (therapeutic religion), and an enforced social contract to guide us (no right and wrong, just agreed-upon progressive standards).
To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on virtue.
An uneducated person . . . is like a man who cuts down the pillar that is holding up his own house and burns it for warmth, thinking he has done a good deed.”
Myth is the story that makes you, rather than the other way around.
Myths require that we submit to something old or outside of us. Myths can help calibrate our culture to divine ideals.
