I’m not always a fan of Bill Maher. As a political/social commentator, he often panders to the views of his traditionally left leaning audience and routinely joins in on the “owning” of the “cons.” But Maher is a traditional liberal, and where he and I have common ground is in the realm of free speech, and in our beliefs that progress has no end point.
Our society isn’t perfect, it will never be when interacting with humans. Human natures is a fickle thing. And our propensity to delight in the suffering of others, however mild, often overrides our desire to help and nurture others to being better people. Something changed in the Progressive movement, something that steered it away from its traditional liberal, and therefore liberty, oriented roots, and toward a totalitarian fascistic movement that wishes to consolidate all the power into a powerful centralized bureaucracy and wield it like the one ring against an ever-shifting group of individuals and groups. This naked bid for power and control has happened time and again over the course of human history, and it looks like we’re in for another stanza of that refrain.
In my work life, I can’t put a number on how often I have heard that “this thing should be illegal,” or “if only the doctors were in charge,” or “someone should do something about this thing.” The insistence upon having the federal government intervene on every issue with its unwieldy and corruptible fingers leaves me scratching my head. This is especially vexing when I hear from many on the Critical Theory left that the institutions are rife with corruption and must be torn down.
Critical Theory is antithetical to progress. Instead of working to integrate our society, to expose people to new ways of life, new cultures, new life experiences, and different ways of viewing the world, the CT folks are pushing for segregated communities like Blacks only dorms and Black only graduation. We’re actively being told that nothing has changed from the founding of this country to today with BS articles like the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory. We just commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, an event that is both instrumental and informative in its impact on race relations in this country. But even that event has been so whitewashed and scrubbed as to render it relatively blameless.
What we must do is stare the brutal history of our nation in the face. We must see all the good and the bad, the beauty and the monstrosity that is our nation’s history. To imagine that this country has done nothing but good things is to live in a delusion as equally as those who believe that this country has done nothing but evil. We must look at the context of the times, examining how those who lived in such times viewed the world, not as a matter of acceptance, but as a matter of understanding. Every generation believes that they are the morally superior one, and that all generations before lived in idyllic ignorance, we are yet another example of this, and our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will look back and wonder why we made such barbaric decisions. They will question us as to how we could not see the consequences of our own actions, and why we did nothing to stop the inevitable decline of our free society.
It starts with removing oneself from the echo chamber, journeying out into the light of day, and listening to points of view that aren’t your own. We must begin soon, or it will be too late.
A Place 4Politics 