Great news! Thanks to Bjorn Handeen of the Idaho Virtual Academy, the Idaho Republican Party has approved affirming the importance of Western Civilization. The whole Convention voted to pass this proposal and it is now a part of Idaho’s Republican Party Platform. The wording is:
“We believe we are inheritors of a distinct Western Civilization, and that our traditional culture safeguards our identity as a free people.”
Next, we hope to specify increasing High School Graduation Requirement for Idaho’s High Schools to include Western Civilization.
Idaho’s Republican Party has become the very first organization to associate themselves with this initiative. Thusfar, Idaho’s Democrats at all levels have shown no interest in even hearing about this proposal at any level.
This fine article was written between the time when the Committee passed the proposal and the whole Convention’s approval.
Please forgive the opening minute or so. I was clarifying to the audience that I was not a Professor, but merely a Mister; a High School History Teacher. This address was to the North Idaho Pachyderms, a local association of Conservative Republicans. We met in a restaurant’s event room.
As such, I am speaking not only as an Educator lamenting the betrayal of genuine education on today’s College Campuses, but also as one Conservative to others about how we can help restore health both to our schools and to our body politic.
Here, below, is a brief introduction to this speech’s central thesis:
What is allowed at College becomes normalized in mainstream society. This axiom is being demonstrated in Seattle as Antifa is allowed to steal the Constitutional Rule of Law from their fellow Americans. This is a symptom of a far more dangerous Pandemic than COVID-19.
Formerly bastions of free speech and thought, today’s Universities are often intellectual Gulags where one Orthodoxy is taught. Students are encouraged to suppress the dictates of their individual conscience to conform to an ideological groupthink.
No longer is the world complex. All controversy is reduced to color, sex, and class; victims and exploiters. This is Bigotry. Students are encouraged to take shortcuts to conclusions, without going through the messy process of personal evaluation. Alternative interpretations are largely ignored. Instead of leaving College with a broader mind, many Graduate knowing that only the Orthodox opinion is right and good.
When there is no curiosity about alternative viewpoints, it becomes easy to hate those who dissent. Further, it becomes both conceivable and even desirable to purge all Heterodoxy, past and present. No statue to a past whose meaning transcends today’s slogans must stand untoppled. No words of Heretics and Apostates should be abided.
Inevitably, the group will demand that actions follow words. Utopia must be built on the corpses of unbelievers. I had never worried about an American Kristallnacht where neighbors become a mob to harrow neighbors. Now, Americans have been taught that feeling is preferable to thinking. History repeatedly proves that such people are quite capable of Genocide.
This letter was presented, in person, to the Idaho State Board of Education as part of a 3 Minute Public Comment section of their October 17th Public Meeting in Lewiston, Idaho. They patiently listened, but this initiative seemed to be worlds away from the focus of their efforts.
It seems likely that genuine reforms to Graduation Requirements to include Western Civilization will have to come as a result of public pressure from citizens coupled with political action by Elected Officeholders.
Thursday,
October 17, 2019
Esteemed
Members of Idaho’s State Board of Education,
All
American students have a basic need to understand their own shared culture and
civilization. All American teenagers
will soon be adult citizens, who will shape, preserve, or reform our society
going forward. No person should make
such fundamental decisions in ignorance of how and why our civic institutions
and values developed in the struggles of the past few millennia.
Both Idahoan
and American schools have been distracted from this primary mission of
acculturation for generations. This
initiative aims to correct this error, and restore the coherent teaching of
Western Civilization and American History to every student without
exception.
Idaho’s
High School Social Studies Graduation Requirements shall be altered from their
current Social Studies form to become the following Four Year History
Requirement.
9th Grade: Ancient & Medieval Western Civilization (from Creation Myths through Columbus’ Discovery of America, A. D. 1492)
Paleolithic Nomadic Hunter-Gatherers, Neolithic Farmers, Pre-Classical River Valley Civilizations, the Hebrews, Ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, Christianity, the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, Islam, the High Middle Ages, the Late Middle Ages
10th Grade: Modern Western Civilization (From the Renaissance through the Present, ~A. D. 1450 – Now)
Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Discovery, Scientific Revolution, Age of Absolutism, the Enlightenment, American & French Revolutions, Napoleonic Wars, Concert of Europe, the Industrial Revolution, Socialism & Communism, Romanticism, Nationalism, European Imperialism, World War I, the Inter-War Years,the Rise of Totalitarianism, National Socialism, Appeasement, World War II, the Cold War, Counter-Culture & Post-Modernism, the War on Terror, the Cybernetic Revolution, the Contemporary World
11th Grade: American & United States History I (From First Settlement through the Gilded Age, ~10,000 B. C. – ~1898)
12th Grade: United States History II (From the Spanish-American War through the Present, A. D. 1898 – Now)
Because
they are new course proposals, a basic list of topics and epochs are included
with each Western Civilization course.
The
material currently taught in separate Social Studies courses, such as Civics,
Economics, and United States Government & Politics, should be taught within
the context of their historical significance.
For example, the Civics and U. S. Government curriculum which both focus
on the study of the U. S. Constitution and the governmental structure of the
American Republic should be taught systematically as relevant developments
occurred in both the 11th and 12th Grade U. S. History course curricula. Also, Economic theories should be taught as
part of the eras in which they were developed and applied in all four courses,
Grades 9-12. More distinct courses, such
as Psychology, can remain as Elective course options, as can a more
thoroughgoing attempt to teach distinctive Non-Western Culture &
Civilization within their own historical contexts.
The
focus of both Western Civilization courses should be on the development of the
distinct Judeo-Christian culture and civilization that developed from the early
Greeks through contemporary Europe, the United States, and other Westernized
regions of the world. This is the
mainstream culture and civilization within our American Republic, and children
of all ethnic and religious heritages who live here are inheritors and
custodians of this rich legacy.
Only in
the West was a coherent concept of inalienable Human Rights developed, and then
used as a basis for effective institutions of free conscience and popular
government. Only the West developed the
technologies that define contemporary post-Industrial lifestyles, cured Polio,
put humans on the Moon, and built the worldwide web.
Other
cultures and civilizations, for example the four thousand year history of
China, the histories of Japan and India, the Islamic societies of Central and
Western Asia, as well as the diverse cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa, Central
and South America, Oceania, Australasia, and Southeast Asia should all be
covered at analogous moments in history or at the first contacts between these
societies and the West. As their ongoing
stories unfolds alongside that of the West, they will be covered as a part of
Modern & contemporary Western Civilization as well as United States
History. However, the primary focus
should be fixed on the Western narrative.
October 1, 2019 marks the 70th Anniversary of the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War.
Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plan a day of
celebration where they can bask in their successes and rededicate
themselves to a glorious future.
As they do so, millions of Hong Kong citizens await a new and greater Tiananmen Square Massacre.
They fear another murderous repression because Hong Kong citizens
had the temerity to demand that the CCP keep its Treaty promise to
maintain democracy within the former British colony for at least fifty
years.
A city of millions raised free is seeing its liberties stolen to
serve Beijing’s insatiable hunger for control over the lives of others.
Moslem
Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province are being “re-educated” by the
millions in camps employing the tried and true methods of torture and
brainwashing.
The stated goal is nothing less than the elimination of a
distinct cultural and religious nation through unrelenting
thought-control, backed up by a slow-going but meticulous physical
genocide.
Outside
of these camps, a surveillance state that makes Orwell’s “1984” seem
loose and amateurish has been built in partnership with US Tech
companies.
Ubiquitous cameras and microphones employ artificial
intelligence and facial recognition technologies to monitor and track
almost everything that individuals do and say.
This data is converted into a “Social Credit Score”, wherein loyalty is rewarded and conscience is punished.
Imagine a city without doors and window coverings, or a language without the word, “NO!”
That is what the CCP has built in Xinjiang, and is spreading everywhere that they rule.
Everyday
Chinese within the People’s Republic have been encouraged to tolerate
CCP control because a variant of Free Market Enterprise has radically
improved the physical standard of living
within certain Chinese cities. The deal has been simple, give up all political expression in return for an ever-increasing prosperity.
However, as the nature of the global economy shifts against
Chinese competitiveness for the first time since the 1970s, the CCP can
no longer ensure an ever-more-plush lifestyle in these regions.
In fact, economic reality may prevent even the maintenance of current living standards.
Because of this, no matter how mighty the CCP seems in its propaganda, the reality is that they are both weak and afraid.
Since 1989, they have known that everyday Chinese have been
patiently waiting for the death of the old generation of leaders who
ordered the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Xi Jinping has so far managed to perpetuate their Totalitarian style of rule into the next generation.
However, no thinking CCP leader actually believes that they have the loyalty of most Chinese citizens.
They have been allowed to rule on sufferance, tolerated because
they did preside over a marked improvement in material well-being while
simultaneously crushing all real or imagined dissent with conspicuous
brutality.
Consider the persecution of the Falun-Gong meditation technique.
Mass arrests of practitioners of this peaceful variant of Tai-Chi
have been followed by the mass-harvesting of their organs to be sold on
the Black Market.
The victims of this horror either die or live on in a half-life,
depending upon the momentary needs of the international market in fresh
replacement organs.
II.
Foreign Policy
In
their fear and weakness, the CCP is becoming desperate to rally their
people in a national cause and gather everyday Chinese around the CCP
banner.
All schools, media, and popular culture have taught a brittle
form of Pan-Sinoist Nationalism, pitting ethnically Han Chinese against
non-Han minorities within the People’s Republic and the People’s
Republic of China against all foreigners.
The anti-Japanese jingoism ubiquitous on Chinese television is breathtaking in its crudity and blatancy.
The CCP is beating the war drums, with constant and lurid
reminders of genuine Japanese atrocities from before Japan’s defeat in
World War II.
However, the raw emotionalism of this propaganda is designed to
provoke nothing short of violent rage on a massive scale, which will
need to be expressed at some future moment.
Everything that North Korea does is a direct result of ongoing CCP support.
The CCP has publicly stated their intention to reunite Taiwan with mainland China before 2020, by reason or by force.
Dubious claims by China over the islands and waters of both the
East China Sea and the South China Sea threaten the free flow of
maritime trade, as well as the territorial integrity of all nations
bordering these seas.
The possibility of sudden war along China’s Vietnamese border is a constant threat.
Skirmishes have been occurring for generations along China’s Himalayan border regions with Pakistan, India, and Nepal.
These skirmishes have recently intensified.
China was instrumental in North Korea’s nuclear program, which sparked both Pakistan’s and Iran’s nuclear programs.
CCP support for Putin is key to his ongoing dictatorship in
Russia, and is contingent on his continuing destabilization of Eastern
Europe.
Without Chinese support, the tyrannical regimes in Cuba and Venezuela would likely have already fallen.
The
CCP’s “Confucius Institute” is but one organ for agitation and
propaganda designed to infiltrate and destabilize free societies
throughout the West.
Chinese money and social media workers busily strive to
undermine political parties and stymie civility between ideological
opponents within Western nations.
Those who work on the internet are already experiencing the
effects of an undeclared war against Western governments, companies, and
even individuals.
China’s
“Belt and Road Initiative” is systematically putting
strategically-placed nations around the world in debt-traps, whose only
ready solution is to grant a series of 99-year leases
for China to build a global network of Military Bases. This
technique is as blatant and repressive as anything done in the heyday
of the expansion of Britain and the other European Empires in the late
19th Century.
In fact, much propaganda exists that celebrates these policies as
righteous retribution for China’s “Century of Shame” from their defeat
in the Opium Wars through the CCP victory in 1949.
III.
Political Legacies
China’s
aggressiveness is destabilizing what passes for today’s world order,
but CCP leaders fear their own overthrow more than they do foreign
conflicts.
In fact, since a virulent pro-CCP xenophobia would be fed by foreign conflicts, they might even be seen as desirable.
In such skewed political calculations, World Wars can emerge.
The CCP leadership has no first-hand experience with the many
hard-won lessons that the US and the USSR learned during the Cold War.
Both Americans and Soviets developed the wisdom to play out the
conflict of personal freedom vs. central control without sparking an
Atomic Armageddon.
Instead of this legacy of careful Cold War balance, the CCP hearkens back to the late-19th Century Great Power aggressiveness that ultimately provoked the First World War.
Like these industrial Empires, today’s CCP sees the world
as an arena of cutthroat competition, where for China to rise others
must fall.
This Social Darwinism suffuses their popular culture as well as their national policy.
In the struggle for survival, conflict is inevitable and no
policy can be seen as too violent or extreme so long as it is effective.
What
is alive and well in CCP leadership is the traditions of Mao Zedong,
which Xi Jinping is self-consciously emulating; even to the extent of
having himself named “Chairman”.
Mao’s rule involved the intentional murder of from 80 to 120 million Chinese in peacetime.
His “Great Leap Forward” caused purposeful starvation, and his
“Cultural Revolution” destroyed almost every human relationship and
tradition that pre-dated his rule.
To put this into perspective, Hitler’s rule murdered from 15 to
20 million victims and Stalin’s rule murdered from 20 to 60 million
victims.
Absolutely nothing was allowed to stand in the way of
Mao’s ambitions, which made him by far the worst mass-murderer in human
history.
As
we contemplate the legacy of 70 years of CCP rule, Americans and others
from around the world should consider this newest threat to human
dignity and freedom.
The ambition of the CCP has no boundaries, and their desperation about being overthrown has no limits.
Mao’s legacy is of total control, and today’s technology makes this vision of a Human Hive more possible than ever before.
The market reforms that have made China wealthy are limited by
Party policy, much as Cartel Capitalism in Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany.
The prospects of the global market producing continuing improvement in living standards is dim, fueling CCP fears.
Finally, generations of “one couple-one child” has destroyed the traditional heart of Chinese culture, the family.
Simultaneously, this policy has resulted in a massive surplus of military-aged men.
Such circumstances may entice the CCP to risk war to achieve both domestic and foreign objectives.
Late-19th Century Imperialism in the Nuclear age makes what should be unthinkable possible.
Taken
together, this 70 year legacy means that the CCP should be subject to
the closest scrutiny, and their adventurism overseas should be opposed
with the utmost seriousness.
Commercial and technological ties should be carefully reevaluated.
And, all of us should hope that one day the people of China will
throw off the shackles of Communist rule and claim their rightful place
alongside the free peoples of the world.
In this plan for reform, I emphasize a coherent teaching of the distinct History of the West to replace the current survey of the Social Studies.
I propose the following course scope & sequence for Idaho::
9th Grade: Ancient & Medieval History (the West before AD 1492) 10th Grade: Modern European History (the West after Columbus) 11th Grade: U. S. History I (Pre-Columbian era to AD 1898) 12th Grade: U. S. History II (Spanish-American War through Now)
Any Current Civics, Geography, U. S. Government & Politics, and Economics requirements would be taught within the four History Courses.
Roughly fifty years ago, Collegiate Pedagogues successfully advocated shifting away from the systematic teaching of our culture’s history in detail. Instead, they replaced this with instruction in a survey of theoretical “Social Sciences”; most of which were based upon certain Left-wing assumptions (utopianism, materialism, communitarianism, statism,…).
Unless the goal of this 1970-era reform was to shatter a shared sense of American identity, these changes have had disastrous consequences. It is optional in adult life for a Citizen to have a working understanding of theoretical Social Sciences. It is essential for an adult Citizen to have a living memory of and working understanding of our shared American experiences which shape our very identity.
If we wish to genuinely acculturate the coming generation in those understandings necessary for functional active citizenship, we must reverse that destructive reform. The Social Studies must be replaced in our High School curricula with in-depth and comprehensive History courses teaching two years of Western Civilization and two years of United States History.
This YouTube Page goes well beyond the initiative to add Western Civilization to the High School Graduation Requirements of Idaho schools. It shows the development of some of my ideas from the summer of A. D. 2012 through the present, warts and all (and there are plenty of warts).
There are three types of videos posted at my YouTube page. The first ate listed as INS in the title, and represent the developing insights of my Conservative self. In other words, my fallible notions on the politics of the day. These ideas are snapshots of a specific moment and circumstance; my ideas change. For example, I opposed the Trump candidacy in the 2016 election, and then I recanted my opposition once I saw how President Trump governed.
The second type of videos are listed as HIS in the title, and reflect video versions of classroom lessons I have taught my students. Thusfar, the centerpiece of these are a thirty video set of lessons on the historical background to the Islamist Terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001. Ranging from the Prophet Abraham through the date of recording in 2013, these serve as an overture to the history of civilization which I teach in so many of my courses.
The third type of videos are listed as EDU, and express some of my thoughts on restoring sanity to Education. Some of these videos deal with the initiative regarding adding Western Civilization as a requirement to graduate from Idaho High Schools. However, they are by no means limited to this initiative, and range into related topics such as the decline and fall of College and University education in the United States and beyond.
If you are looking for reasons to reject my pleas to personally consider your own thoughts on this initiative to Restore the West, no doubt you will find something that I say over the years on YouTube to be objectionable. However, I do not claim to be a paragon of rectitude. I am not asking for anything more than for each person to consider whether a deeper understanding of the Western tradition would help Americans and America. I hope that, even as we may agree or disagree with one another on other issues, you will seriously consider the issue of adding the History of Western Civilization to High School Graduation Requirements on its own merits. Come to your own conclusions, and then act on the basis of your unique convictions. That is, after all, what our Constitutional freedoms are all about.
Speech to the North Idaho Pachyderms Club, a Conservative group interested in preserving the Western tradition in American society.
In this
address, I explain the distinct heritage of the West and its precious legacy
which is our freedom. I advocate a
transformation of Idaho’s High School Graduation requirements. Specifically, I recommend the following program
of required study:
9th Grade: Ancient & Medieval History (the West
before AD 1492)
10th
Grade: Modern European History (the West
after AD 1492)
11th Grade: U. S. History I (Pre-Columbian era to AD 1898)
12th
Grade: U. S. History II
(Spanish-American War through Now)
Current
Civics, U. S. Government & politics, and Economics requirements would be
taught within the four History Courses.
Restore the West 