Education or Indoctrination?

As the world’s demography changes and the Millennials become the majority, and the Baby Boomers become the minority, the world is about to face a new reality. Today our education institutions, instead of the family unit, have grown into the main provider of cultural values in the develop world. Is this a desired trend?

To educate: “Give intellectual, moral, and social instruction as a formal and prolonged process”. In the not too distant past, this process used to start within the family unit. Parents were involved in the moral and social developments of their children. Offspring were taught respect, and social manners among other things. The education system continued the process of development by providing the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Universities were the centres of further education where students were encouraged to have intellectual discourse, explore and research new ideas. But today, with the rise of feminism and progressivism, the philosophy of education has changed drastically.

The Feminism movement, created many opportunities. More women entered the workplace and contributed to the enormous economic growth of the post WWII era. By the same token, the family unit was also transformed. With both parents working, children’s basic education was left to kinder gardens and elementary schools. Technology also plays a major role in the education process. Children are now left on their own more often and increasingly spending more time on social media.

Progressivism, which has nothing to do with progress, is code word to describe the rise of socialism or communism in disguise. The education system at all levels is now dominated by unionized teachers, lecturers and tenured professors. Governments who want to stay in power pay lip service to the heavily unionized educators, and create policies which alter and re-create curricula. In many cases, history is being re-written; books and literature are being altered to reflect a more diverse point of view. It seems that today’s politically correct education system is being used to indoctrinate rather than educate, and the result can been seen in the behavior of today’s millennials.

Universities have become more intolerant of different views. Any disagreement with any liberal point of view, is more often than not, immediately labelled as being of a racist, xenophobic, homophobic or sexist nature. Campuses have established a culture of political correctness which has now polluted the main stream media. Of course this proliferation affects political and social discourse. Freedom of speech is seemingly the sole domain of the left. Intolerance on the other hand is now the preferred characterization of the right. The promotion of social justice and secularism, to the detriment of Christianity, but not of radical Islamists on certain campuses is increasing. Ivy League institutions are now condoning student protest against electoral results. Students are being coddled with the creation of ‘safe places’ and other politically correct policies. Professors, like Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto, who argues “against the existence of non- binary gender identities, or those that are not exclusively masculine or feminine‍”, is being vilified and ostracized. Those who are against climate change policies are branded as ‘deniers’ or flat-earth believers. The continued failure of the education system supported by a liberal media has contributed to the indoctrination of the post baby boomer generations.

The election of Obama opened the flood gates for progressivism. The main stream media seized on this opportunity to promote many policies which have destroyed the economy and the world order. Social media and late night shows, with the likes of Kimmel, Colbert, Fallon etc. have become the source of news for many people. Hollywood with shows promoting so-called diversity has entered the political arena with a vengeance. Blinded by their own rhetoric, the left around the world ignored the real effects of their failed policies.

The backlash was clearly expressed by the electorate in the last U.S presidential election as well as the Brexit referendum. Although labelled as the rise of the right-wing, the real factors are being ignored. Progressivism went too far, and the candidates promoting it were failures in their own rights. Accusing everyone who disagreed with their policies of being racist, misogynist, and xenophobic back fired. Hillary Clinton ignored the plight of the middle class and working Americans who have suffered eight years of progressive policies like Obamacare and lax immigration policies. The left has ignored that their view of globalization is not the concept that Ricardo envisaged. Trade has now become a movement for multilateralism and socialist expansion. They have used refugee and immigration policies for gerrymandering purposes. Trump’s opposition to NAFTA an TPP is not based in protectionism but rather in the lack of ‘fair trade’, in the same way that Brexit was not based on xenophobia but rather that the U.K no longer could stand the bureaucracy of Brussels dictating their sovereign right to accept whomever they choose.

Demonstrators, who have yet to be condemned by President Obama, who protest against a Trump election are not only misguided but also blind to the real facts. Millennials in their vast majority did not even vote, yet they protest the result of the elections. The left believes that compromise should exists only when they are out of power, but never when they are in power as illustrated by Obama’s eight years of imperious executive orders. America and the free world are under siege from a progressivism mentality vastly created by the indoctrination of a generation by an increasingly leftist education system.

Parents, do you know what your kids are being taught? Do you know who are teaching your kids?  Parents who really care about the future of their children should involve themselves in the debate about curricula and education programs. Political correctness must not be taken for granted but rather as the source of many divisions in today’s society. We can no longer leave our children in the hands of educators who promote a closed agenda which will lead us to socialism and greater government control.

The coming of true Hope and Change

On Wednesday November 09, 2016, the United States of America and the world woke up to a new dawn. In what was supposed to be a walk in the park for Hillary Clinton, who on the eve of the election was reportedly measuring drapes for the White House, a billionaire business man who had never held political office defeated a 30 year professional politician for the Presidency of the U.S. How did everybody get it so wrong?

For the first time since the 1920’s the Republican Party will control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.  However the country is still much divided. Donald .J. Trump was able to defeat 16 opponents to become the GOP nominee, and yet the party did not coalescence around his campaign.  He was able to connect with at least half of a nation that recognized that for the past eight years they had been sold a bill of goods. An imperious President Obama divided the country along party, racial and ideological lines. The real problem was that he received the blessing of the liberal elite and a totally biased media. He started his presidency with a hollow Nobel Peace Prize for having achieved nothing. For eight years the Democrats and the media supported his progressive socialist policies and his attempt to reduce the U.S. influence on the world arena. He continuously preached for multilateralism and the increased power of the United Nations on world matters.

President elect Trump did not win this election with huge amount of money, but rather with speeches which sometimes verge on the divisive and less politically correct. But what he did was to connect with the people who are hurting economically and seen the American dream disappear in front of their eyes. They saw an increase in regulations that hurt business and reduce the capitalism for which the U.S is known for. a citizenry that saw that foreigners, and illegal immigrants were given more privileges than themselves, that their security in the face of terrorism was being minimized at the altar of political correctness.

The bigger question is why was a Trump election so discarded and not seen coming? The biggest reason is that for the third time in a row pollsters got everything wrong. It seems that they did not learn anything from Brexit and the Columbian Peace Agreement. They also misjudged the reaction of the electorate. They underestimated Trump and his supporters. Their polling which used more democrats in their sampling fooled them.  Hillary Clinton did not realize that the electorate did not want a continuation of a failed Obama legacy. With the undivided support of the media and Hollywood stars she did not offer anything new, whereas Trump offered a completely different platform, even sometimes going against the grain of the GOP.

As a Canadian I cannot vote in the U.S elections, but what is astonishing is the Canadian media’s continued misunderstanding of the American psyche. Most Canadian Liberal pollsters showed that 78% of Canadians would have preferred a Clinton presidency. To me these numbers are not surprising given how U.S political issues are reported in this country. Most, if not all, Canadian media take their lead from the same feeds : All Broadcast for Clinton (ABC), National Broadcast for Clinton (NBC), Clinton Broadcasting Service (CBS), and of course the  Clinton News Network (CNN); each one of them   with a progressive liberal and socialist bias.  No wonder that Canadians have no idea that there are different views in the U.S. This is done to further a progressive agenda in Canada. Reality will soon strike when Trump starts reversing many of Obama’s policies especially those concerning, climate change, pipelines and health care. As a disciple of David Ricardo’s economic theories, I support trade and I believe that Trumps’ threat to renegotiate NAFTA is going to be less harmful for Canada than expected. As for TPP certain aspects need to be clarified and I trust a Trump administration to be able to do this as a business rather than a political negotiation.

Trump’s views on military and security issues may frighten some people. President Reagan came in and was portrayed as a man with a finger on the nuclear button. But history showed us that negotiation from a position of strength worked not only for the U.S but for the world. In today’s world we live under a cloud of a terrorist attack, and we need a different approach, Trump may bring a more pragmatic rather than an appeasing strategy in dealing with a resurgent Russia and a growing and decentralized terrorism threat. Trump should be prepared for a terrorist attack in the early days of his presidency and complacency must be the last thing on his agenda.

The 2016 presidential elections showed us that the electorate knows best. Trump was elected despite the media bias. America wanted true change, not a rhetorical one based on ideology. America decided that hope and change resided in less regulations, executive orders and government interference. Americans chose a new President, Canadians who are arrogant enough to think that they know what the U.S needs are, should be very careful in not misjudging our neighbours and focus more on what the homeland electorate may decide in the coming years, because the Trudeau government may be going down the same path as the Obama failed legacy.

Vulgarity is not acceptable, but corruption and fraud are criminal acts and for those who lament that a woman was not elected, we must acknowledge that it was not a rejection of the candidate’s gender but rather a rejection of the person. The U.S may be ready for a woman president, but not for ‘that woman’.

Good luck to President Donald J.Trump who promises true change and economic hope with it.