As an atheist, wokism looks exactly like a religion to me, in fact I'm 100% convinced of it, and I believe it can be proved in court and labeled as such to get it out of the public schools. I wish someone would take up this tactic. One thing missing in the discussion is that Philosophy (and Psychology) used to be taught in public schools, and it appears to have been eradicated sometime around the 60's. Not learning universally applicable philosophical principals, not knowing how to think in a logical manner (and valuing not being a hypocrite), and not knowing how our own brains work and how are brains work can be used against us via well known propaganda techniques is what I have observed to have resulted in the dumbification of America in general, which is a prerequisite for the current state of this total nonsense in our schools. I honestly don't care about what adults do or believe, but brainwashing other people's kids like this is really despicable and has to stop asap.
The collapse of civil society and education have coincided with the dramatic growth of central government. I would argue that government has crowded out civil society and must ultimately shrink if civil society is to flourish.
We need to both USE existing gov't and shrink it, and both can be done at the same time. Both are conservative ventures. The Department of Education, for example, offers nothing for conservatives. Eliminating it would badly damage the left while granting conservatives in red states more leeway to use state gov't to fight wokism (or even to delegate that task to localities).
Liberals have the courage to defund crucial services -- even the police. Why don't conservatives have the courage to defund useless, counterproductive entities like DoE?
"Red Rudi" coined the phrase "the long march through the institutions" but it was the basis for Antonio Gramsci's writings. Antonio Gramsci was the founder of the Italian Communist Party and was an associate of Vladimir Lenin. For the curious, the American professor who was a Marxist who spoke fondly of the Communist Manifesto, translated Gramsci's works into English, formed a Gramsci foundation and dedicated a significant portion of his academic career to the work of Gramsci was named Joseph Buttigieg. And, yes, he's the father of "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg. What a coinkydink.
If you have traditional values, you have to seriously think about where to live and educate your family . The Orthodox Jewish community realized decades ago that the best means of dealing with the secularizing trends in America was by living in strong communities with K-post graduate level Jewish and secular education, summer camps , encouragement of young marriages ,careful use of technology and avoidance of the worst excesses of contemporary pop culture. That kind of model may be of assistance together with educational models being developed by Hillsdale College and Mr. Rufo or in the lack of an alternative, homeschooling which may be the only available option but which has been shown to be a good educational model
These days I am loathe to let a convo involving "Separation of Church and State" pass by without also noting some historical context that people divorce it from so they can employ it as a slogan:
1. Most colonies which became the first US states had established churches and/or religious tests for office when the Constitution was ratified, and these continued for decades after in some cases. So whatever you think "separation of church and state" means, it cannot mean "total, absolute mutual isolation of civil government and religion."
2. Following the point above, the 1st Amendment (which is the closest thing to the phrase "separation of church and state" in the actual language of the Constitution) was meant to keep the peace and avoid denominational warring between the newly christened states, which already had their own respective religious traditions and establishments. It was an expression of federalism, not an imposition of secularism.
3. You touch on this one a bit, but there was such an overwhelmingly Christian consensus underlying the design of the government that the intention and thrust of religious separation was never meant to adjudicate between, say, Marxism and Christianity. There was a baseline assumption of more overlap than not between the religious traditions present in America at the time. Such overlap is a distant memory in the postmodern era.
It is always interesting to read your work, Christopher.
Re: the theological/political problem: Christianity among the populace provided a de-facto theology to the state, which has always been essentially atheist (deist). The state must have a theology, however - in fact, it always does. Atheism cannot serve that function - it is always essentially private (whether Epicurean or Machiavellian).
"Science" has been that (pseudo) theology, but cannot truly serve that function (being sub-lunary and merely addressing physical reality). The default has been private Christianity, which has now vaporized.
There is, as I know you understand, a void. Given our atheist/scientistic regime, which refuses religion, we are alone with that scientism, which cannot substitute for religion or fill the gap left by atheism. It is gnosticism which is arising in the void - in the public square - which traces back to the souls of the citizens. Gnosticism has - always has - a religious structure, and purports to provide wisdom or knowledge - gnosis - that true philosophy denies is possible.
We have lost the balance between religion, which addresses the mysteries at the endpoint of philosophy's enquiry into nature, and philosophy, which demands that its clear understandings of nature be respected by Faith.
Science is not a fundamental enquiry - it cannot and does not even propose to answer such questions. In fact, it does not even ask them - which is why true scientists refuse to discuss philosophical or religious questions as parts of science. Our lack of belief even in "nature" means that even the basis of science is evaporating in our understanding. We are left with magic, witchcraft, and pagan cosplay generally on one hand, and gnosticism-as-ideology on the other.
That is, we are left alone and afraid in the world, understanding nothing. Ideology begets fideism, not belief. The 20th C. shows this outcome, emphatically, and repeatedly. What we are witnessing is what we fear that we are witnessing - its happening, now.
Within the American system, state-level power and alternate institutions make sense. Ultimately, this leads to the problem of what to do about the Federal Government - the risk of totalitarian state violence - i.e. the imposition of ideological control via admin., tech., judiciary - and perhaps outright physical violence.
Dreaming of a true reunification means a restoration of belief. Such dreams are honorable, and worthy of respect. This has its short, medium and long-term aspects. One must know what such things should look like to bring them about.
The institutional hegemony achieved by the Neo - Marxists has only borne the fruit of complete and total failure. Basically, they suck. Pretty obvious. The only question is how much damage will they do.
From the perspective of a Vietnamese, I am baffled by the American controversy surrounding school choice. In my country, we take it for granted that as long as you can afford it, you can send your kids to whatever school you find fitting for them. Unfortunately, due to the socialist nature of our polity, religious schools are banned there. But the idea of the state actively paying parents to send kids to schools of their choice is too good to be ignored, and I wish our country institutes that.
So true! Gone is the ability to pray in school or use the Bible as reference. I have another question regarding your talk. You mentioned that we are a democracy. Is that what you believe or is calling us a Republic too foreign to your audience ?
There are many threads that need to be teased apart here. I'll try. While I support school choice I'm tempted to give James Lindsay's POV some oxygen. If I can steelman him: the secondary bureaucracies that control credentialling or produce a credentialled class are so strong that most of the new schools will be de facto government/Neomarxist in structure. The best way to truncate statist wokism is to homeschool.
The Rufo/Desantis model of legally challenging intitutional wokism through courts has, if I'm reading the tweets correctly, failed to produce any institutional change in government run K-12 education (and will continue to fail?)
https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1648500533316173831 'Lawsuits not viable. ' This seems to be an admission that David French and Libertarians at Fifth Column were correct: Opposing CRT in education could not be achieved within the instutions through forced legal reform but must be done relentlessly by parents themselves being overwhelmingly invested in education. Homeschooling being the antipod to public education.
So on one hand we have a bifurcation model and ideological reform is ground up parents rights activism, and on the other we have a top down court ordered legal reform, the later, if I'm understanding correctly, is proving to be legally diffuse/ineffective.
Are we going to continue putting our eggs in both baskets hoping to establish a legal/ideological detente in public institutions or are we going to invest more heavily in the Deanglis/Educational Savings Accounts (ESA) model?
I think I understand the synpsis in the OP. But we seem to be conceding that secularists won and can't be legally defeated even if we prove in courts that CRT is racism, judges don't mind anti-white or anti-asian racism.
Looking for clarification and this isn't my full time wheelhouse so please use kid gloves.
The solution is not to infuse Christianity into government. This would be akin to the very sin we accuse the radical left of – attempting to dismantle America’s long standing foundational principles. Instead, conservatives should work on: (1) a parallel system of lower and higher educational institutions (especially on the college level) that aren’t infused with radical agendas (school choice programs are excellent for that, as you point out); (2) continue fighting the welfare state which is largely responsible for deterioration of traditional family values; and (3) limit the growth of administrative agencies which consist of unelected officials implementing laws according to their personal agenda.
One important fact about the “separation of church and state” is that the phrase is not in the Constitution. The First Amendment includes the requirement that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. That was a prohibition against the federal government making any laws about an establishment of religion. The federal government could not make a law about an establishment of a national religion. Also, the federal government could not make any laws that might affect a religious establishment that existed in any state. The federal government could not make a law that would disestablish a state-established religion. Likewise, the federal government could not make a law that would establish a religion in any state. When the Bill of Rights was ratified, there were many states with established religions. Those established religions were never challenged by the federal government. Each state, over time, individually chose to disestablish its state religion.
On the other hand, the “free exercise” provision prohibited the federal government from interfering with anyone’s free exercise of religion. The Constitutional prohibitions were directed at Congress, because few people recognized the danger of the Court system usurping legislative powers.
Ironically, one of the Founders who appreciated the dangers of judicial usurpation was Thomas Jefferson, whose private opinion was used later by the Supreme Court to begin the destruction of religious liberty with unconstitutional dictates. That was another “long march”
This strikes me as similar to the larger approach/view espoused by Giorigia Miloni, no? Regardless, I think this is the correct way forward. It's a matter of finding the right balance between governmental oversight & individual liberty.
As an atheist, wokism looks exactly like a religion to me, in fact I'm 100% convinced of it, and I believe it can be proved in court and labeled as such to get it out of the public schools. I wish someone would take up this tactic. One thing missing in the discussion is that Philosophy (and Psychology) used to be taught in public schools, and it appears to have been eradicated sometime around the 60's. Not learning universally applicable philosophical principals, not knowing how to think in a logical manner (and valuing not being a hypocrite), and not knowing how our own brains work and how are brains work can be used against us via well known propaganda techniques is what I have observed to have resulted in the dumbification of America in general, which is a prerequisite for the current state of this total nonsense in our schools. I honestly don't care about what adults do or believe, but brainwashing other people's kids like this is really despicable and has to stop asap.
Every family that opts out of the public schools is sending a statement that they reject the mantras of the woke world.
This essay should be required reading for all high school students. Thank you Christopher.
The collapse of civil society and education have coincided with the dramatic growth of central government. I would argue that government has crowded out civil society and must ultimately shrink if civil society is to flourish.
We need to both USE existing gov't and shrink it, and both can be done at the same time. Both are conservative ventures. The Department of Education, for example, offers nothing for conservatives. Eliminating it would badly damage the left while granting conservatives in red states more leeway to use state gov't to fight wokism (or even to delegate that task to localities).
Liberals have the courage to defund crucial services -- even the police. Why don't conservatives have the courage to defund useless, counterproductive entities like DoE?
"Red Rudi" coined the phrase "the long march through the institutions" but it was the basis for Antonio Gramsci's writings. Antonio Gramsci was the founder of the Italian Communist Party and was an associate of Vladimir Lenin. For the curious, the American professor who was a Marxist who spoke fondly of the Communist Manifesto, translated Gramsci's works into English, formed a Gramsci foundation and dedicated a significant portion of his academic career to the work of Gramsci was named Joseph Buttigieg. And, yes, he's the father of "Mayor Pete" Buttigieg. What a coinkydink.
If you have traditional values, you have to seriously think about where to live and educate your family . The Orthodox Jewish community realized decades ago that the best means of dealing with the secularizing trends in America was by living in strong communities with K-post graduate level Jewish and secular education, summer camps , encouragement of young marriages ,careful use of technology and avoidance of the worst excesses of contemporary pop culture. That kind of model may be of assistance together with educational models being developed by Hillsdale College and Mr. Rufo or in the lack of an alternative, homeschooling which may be the only available option but which has been shown to be a good educational model
These days I am loathe to let a convo involving "Separation of Church and State" pass by without also noting some historical context that people divorce it from so they can employ it as a slogan:
1. Most colonies which became the first US states had established churches and/or religious tests for office when the Constitution was ratified, and these continued for decades after in some cases. So whatever you think "separation of church and state" means, it cannot mean "total, absolute mutual isolation of civil government and religion."
2. Following the point above, the 1st Amendment (which is the closest thing to the phrase "separation of church and state" in the actual language of the Constitution) was meant to keep the peace and avoid denominational warring between the newly christened states, which already had their own respective religious traditions and establishments. It was an expression of federalism, not an imposition of secularism.
3. You touch on this one a bit, but there was such an overwhelmingly Christian consensus underlying the design of the government that the intention and thrust of religious separation was never meant to adjudicate between, say, Marxism and Christianity. There was a baseline assumption of more overlap than not between the religious traditions present in America at the time. Such overlap is a distant memory in the postmodern era.
It is always interesting to read your work, Christopher.
Re: the theological/political problem: Christianity among the populace provided a de-facto theology to the state, which has always been essentially atheist (deist). The state must have a theology, however - in fact, it always does. Atheism cannot serve that function - it is always essentially private (whether Epicurean or Machiavellian).
"Science" has been that (pseudo) theology, but cannot truly serve that function (being sub-lunary and merely addressing physical reality). The default has been private Christianity, which has now vaporized.
There is, as I know you understand, a void. Given our atheist/scientistic regime, which refuses religion, we are alone with that scientism, which cannot substitute for religion or fill the gap left by atheism. It is gnosticism which is arising in the void - in the public square - which traces back to the souls of the citizens. Gnosticism has - always has - a religious structure, and purports to provide wisdom or knowledge - gnosis - that true philosophy denies is possible.
We have lost the balance between religion, which addresses the mysteries at the endpoint of philosophy's enquiry into nature, and philosophy, which demands that its clear understandings of nature be respected by Faith.
Science is not a fundamental enquiry - it cannot and does not even propose to answer such questions. In fact, it does not even ask them - which is why true scientists refuse to discuss philosophical or religious questions as parts of science. Our lack of belief even in "nature" means that even the basis of science is evaporating in our understanding. We are left with magic, witchcraft, and pagan cosplay generally on one hand, and gnosticism-as-ideology on the other.
That is, we are left alone and afraid in the world, understanding nothing. Ideology begets fideism, not belief. The 20th C. shows this outcome, emphatically, and repeatedly. What we are witnessing is what we fear that we are witnessing - its happening, now.
Within the American system, state-level power and alternate institutions make sense. Ultimately, this leads to the problem of what to do about the Federal Government - the risk of totalitarian state violence - i.e. the imposition of ideological control via admin., tech., judiciary - and perhaps outright physical violence.
Dreaming of a true reunification means a restoration of belief. Such dreams are honorable, and worthy of respect. This has its short, medium and long-term aspects. One must know what such things should look like to bring them about.
The institutional hegemony achieved by the Neo - Marxists has only borne the fruit of complete and total failure. Basically, they suck. Pretty obvious. The only question is how much damage will they do.
Have you ever heard the Danbury Church decision? Explains how separation came about & how it was misinterpreted.
From the perspective of a Vietnamese, I am baffled by the American controversy surrounding school choice. In my country, we take it for granted that as long as you can afford it, you can send your kids to whatever school you find fitting for them. Unfortunately, due to the socialist nature of our polity, religious schools are banned there. But the idea of the state actively paying parents to send kids to schools of their choice is too good to be ignored, and I wish our country institutes that.
So true! Gone is the ability to pray in school or use the Bible as reference. I have another question regarding your talk. You mentioned that we are a democracy. Is that what you believe or is calling us a Republic too foreign to your audience ?
There are many threads that need to be teased apart here. I'll try. While I support school choice I'm tempted to give James Lindsay's POV some oxygen. If I can steelman him: the secondary bureaucracies that control credentialling or produce a credentialled class are so strong that most of the new schools will be de facto government/Neomarxist in structure. The best way to truncate statist wokism is to homeschool.
The Rufo/Desantis model of legally challenging intitutional wokism through courts has, if I'm reading the tweets correctly, failed to produce any institutional change in government run K-12 education (and will continue to fail?)
https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1648500533316173831 'Lawsuits not viable. ' This seems to be an admission that David French and Libertarians at Fifth Column were correct: Opposing CRT in education could not be achieved within the instutions through forced legal reform but must be done relentlessly by parents themselves being overwhelmingly invested in education. Homeschooling being the antipod to public education.
So on one hand we have a bifurcation model and ideological reform is ground up parents rights activism, and on the other we have a top down court ordered legal reform, the later, if I'm understanding correctly, is proving to be legally diffuse/ineffective.
Are we going to continue putting our eggs in both baskets hoping to establish a legal/ideological detente in public institutions or are we going to invest more heavily in the Deanglis/Educational Savings Accounts (ESA) model?
I think I understand the synpsis in the OP. But we seem to be conceding that secularists won and can't be legally defeated even if we prove in courts that CRT is racism, judges don't mind anti-white or anti-asian racism.
Looking for clarification and this isn't my full time wheelhouse so please use kid gloves.
Respectfully,
The solution is not to infuse Christianity into government. This would be akin to the very sin we accuse the radical left of – attempting to dismantle America’s long standing foundational principles. Instead, conservatives should work on: (1) a parallel system of lower and higher educational institutions (especially on the college level) that aren’t infused with radical agendas (school choice programs are excellent for that, as you point out); (2) continue fighting the welfare state which is largely responsible for deterioration of traditional family values; and (3) limit the growth of administrative agencies which consist of unelected officials implementing laws according to their personal agenda.
One important fact about the “separation of church and state” is that the phrase is not in the Constitution. The First Amendment includes the requirement that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. That was a prohibition against the federal government making any laws about an establishment of religion. The federal government could not make a law about an establishment of a national religion. Also, the federal government could not make any laws that might affect a religious establishment that existed in any state. The federal government could not make a law that would disestablish a state-established religion. Likewise, the federal government could not make a law that would establish a religion in any state. When the Bill of Rights was ratified, there were many states with established religions. Those established religions were never challenged by the federal government. Each state, over time, individually chose to disestablish its state religion.
On the other hand, the “free exercise” provision prohibited the federal government from interfering with anyone’s free exercise of religion. The Constitutional prohibitions were directed at Congress, because few people recognized the danger of the Court system usurping legislative powers.
Ironically, one of the Founders who appreciated the dangers of judicial usurpation was Thomas Jefferson, whose private opinion was used later by the Supreme Court to begin the destruction of religious liberty with unconstitutional dictates. That was another “long march”
This strikes me as similar to the larger approach/view espoused by Giorigia Miloni, no? Regardless, I think this is the correct way forward. It's a matter of finding the right balance between governmental oversight & individual liberty.