The years between 1944 and 1949–Marshall Plan, GI Bill, the Cold War, fiscal and monetary planning, cultural and economic regimentation–set the stage for the next half century… In the same way that a socialized economy cannot put new technology into effect, and thus yields no civilizational advance, the world of ideas was frozen into a pattern that was fixed and unchanging. There were official texts, official journals, official schools from which all lower schools took their marching orders, and public schools became extensions of this overarching, top-down system of idea enforcement. Christian churches put US flags in their sanctuaries, baseball fans sang the national anthem, American families had the president’s picture on the wall, as did children’s TV shows, and everyone watched the same news anchors and read the same news feeds. There was a national culture that the neocons say we should recapture – and it was awful. [More]
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The New Intellectuals
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“…American families had the president’s picture on the wall…”
This reminded me of my recent perusal of an otherwise pretty good well-known book, _What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know_. My wife and I are homeschooling our 5-year-old, and so it is instructive to read a book like this, which aims to outline a core curriculum.
In the section on History and Geography, there are short essays whose titles say it all:
Honest Abe Lincoln
Theodore Roosevelt: The Teddy Bear President
Since my child is 5, there is no way I can explain to her the complexities of US Presidents as historical figures in institutional context, nor why we might regard some Presidents as better than others.
I am torn between teaching her the traditional syrupy stuff (Washington, father of our country, the chery tree tale, etc.) and what I really think. What does a libertarian tell his kids? I’ve tended to tell her what I think, and answer her many questions truthfully, but it can make for some difficult social situations, like the time we talked on the way to our Indian Guides (father-daughter program) meeting and she asked me, once we got there, in front of everyone, “what happens if we don’t want to pay taxes?”
I deflected the question, but then my daughter proceeded to tell all the other little girls what taxes are, and the little girls were all in agreement that taxes were a bad thing.
When my son (now 6) was four, he asked me “What is a ‘President’?”.
I told him, “Well, every four years, Americans try to figure out who the absolute worst person in the country is. It takes a lot of time, discussion, and debate. But finally, they figure out who is the worst, and call him ‘President’”.
He has also asked me the same question on taxes. “They would probably put me in jail”, I said. I made it very clear that taxation is theft. Being a boy, he naturally wants to fight against those who would tax us, which I of course tell him we cannot do. At this point, it would not work, and it goes against our beliefs as Christians. We must instead labor to convince others of the truth.
On a similar note, Philip Fisher, author of Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, once said of politicians:
“The higher they get, the liar they get.”
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