Multiculturalism

“Indigenous Knowledge” as “Science”

Published by Papa Giorgio

The WASHINGTON FREE BEACON calls it like it is:

…Use of Indigenous Knowledge as evidence in Highly Influential Scientific Assessments poses serious risks, experts told the Free Beacon.

“This is extremely dangerous,” said Anna Krylov, a professor of science, engineering, and chemistry at the University of Southern California. “When I conduct experiments, I need to follow the rules and procedures and think about safety. I have to keep track of what I’m doing. I’m not thinking about chants or dancing.”

In addition to the Office of Science and Technology Policy memo, the White House has released more than three dozen documents that favorably cite Indigenous Knowledge. In one memo, the White House said Indigenous Knowledge is part of its “commitment to scientific integrity and knowledge and evidence-based policymaking.” In another, the White House said that science faces “limitations” given its refusal to incorporate Native religious principles.

Federal agencies have held dozens of seminars on the topic as well.

A March 2022 Environmental Protection Agency webinar entitled “Advancing Considerations of Traditional Knowledge into Federal Decision Making” featured an Indigenous Knowledge expert who explained that the “Native Worldview” does not consider time as “sequential” but rather “cyclical.” Another participant, Natalie Solares, who works for a tribal consortium, suggested paying tribal elders $100 an hour to assist in federal rulemaking.

Gretchen Goldman, a senior official in the Office for Science and Technology Policy, lamented during the seminar that federal processes can be biased against “something that’s not a peer-reviewed academic document.”

“There are places we can, you know, just remove any barriers to fully incorporate Indigenous Knowledge into the process the same way that we would for academic science,” she said.

The U.S. Geological Survey drew on Native religious traditions in an April webinar called “Incorporating Indigenous Knowledges into Federal Research and Management: What are Indigenous Knowledges?” Federal regulators and scientists were told to consider whether various food cultivation methods were considered sacred by a Native tribe. Failing to do so would “disrespect the spirits,” said Melonee Montano, a traditional ecological knowledge outreach specialist for a consortium of native tribes.

City University professor Massimo Pigliucci, a biologist and philosopher of science, told the Free Beacon: “When I start hearing things about how there’s this other dimension where, you know, the animals interact with humans at a different level of reality, that’s just not a thing. It’s not a scientific thing. You can believe that and you have the right to believe it, but it’s not empirical evidence.”

San Jose State University anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss warned that official reliance on Indigenous Knowledge could easily go from “dumb” to destructive. She pointed to reports that a Hawaii official delayed the release of water that was urgently needed to fight last month’s deadly wildfires on Maui by requiring consultation with a local farmer.

“The case is still out about the Maui fires and whether withholding the water was based on Indigenous Knowledge decisions, for example,” Weiss said.

A critical problem with Indigenous Knowledge is that its definition is borderline circular: Nearly anything can be considered Indigenous Knowledge if it was declared so by a Native person. Gregory Cajete, a University of New Mexico professor who lectured NASA on “Indigenous Perspectives on Earth and Sky” in July, said in his book Native Science that it is “a broad term that can include metaphysics and philosophy” as well as “art and architecture” and “ritual and ceremony practiced by Indigenous peoples past and present.”

“Much of the essence of Native science is beyond literal description,” Cajete wrote.

Given the lack of clarity on the definition of Indigenous Knowledge, it is difficult to discern what role it can play in federal policymaking. Some tribes are working to keep it that way…..

This story got me ranting in my head and now on my computer screen. Here is the story via THE DAILY CALLER:

President Joe Biden’s administration hosted “Indigenous Knowledge” seminars, including one where a speaker admonished scientist attendees about “disrespecting” knowledge provided by “spirits,” according to a video uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) told dozens of federal agencies to adopt “Indigenous Knowledge” for “research, policies, and decision making,” in a November 2022 memo. In April, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) hosted a webinar titled “Incorporating Indigenous Knowledges into Federal Research and Management,” in which a speaker warned scientists about “disrespecting” indigenous knowledge, including “spirits.”

“When you ask for knowledge and you take it and use it in a way that you didn’t intend or you misuse it, you’re not only disrespecting that individual that you sought that knowledge from,” Traditional Ecological Knowledge Outreach Specialist Melonee Montano said in the April webinar attended by scientists. “You’re disrespecting the teachers that they obtained the knowledge from. You’re disrespecting those spirits that may have brought that knowledge to them through a dream.”

[….]

The Biden administration promoted the OSTP to a cabinet-level agency in 2021. Moreover, the November OSTP memo also suggests collaborating with “spiritual leaders.” The White House has published over three dozen documents that positively reference “Indigenous Knowledge,” according to the Free Beacon’s investigation. A December memo states the Biden administration acknowledges that “Indigenous Knowledge … contributes to the scientific, technical, social, and economic advancements of the United States.”

[….]

Manuel prioritized incorporating “indigenous knowledge to the fields of water advocacy and management in Hawaii,” which allegedly could have contributed to the worsening of the Hawaii wildfires…..

Nice to see [/sarcasm] the official doctrine of these Leftist idealogues are so captured by cultural relativism and multiculturalism that all practices boil down to being just as beneficial as other cultures actions/understandings.

I guess all the past criticisms I have gotten as an armchair apologist serving some “sky god” that explained “lightning” is moot now. Having written and read the leading creationists and intelligent design authors throughout 3-decades…

  • as well as many leading evolutionary/atheists works – R. Dawkins, K. Nielsen, D. Dennett, Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, S. Harris, M. Martin, L. Wolpert, D. Barker, W. Provine, C. Hitchens, E. Mayr, S.J. Gould, J. Coyne, E.O. Wilson, C. Darwin, C. Zimmer, K. Miller, J. Loftus, B. Forrest and early A. Flew, etc., etc. [to name a few]

…and debating and pushing back on philosophical naturalism and it’s deleterious effects on science, I have been often accused of thinking that “god, or, gods,” cause natural phenomenon like lightning. And then it is quickly followed with, “since we have given up ‘sky gods’ and ‘superstitious’ beliefs, science explains these natural wonders better that our past primitive and religious explanations ever could.

However, with the push for DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and the years of “cultural relativistic” position in multicultural pushes through the lens of Leftism, we have come to a place that not only destroys science but is reverting us back to what evolutionary atheists accuse [wrongly I might add] theists of.

So here we are… full circle right back to paganism. Rather than the scientific revolution started and led by theists… the Left takes us back to primitive animism.

Here are just some abstracts to exemplify this thinking creeping into science:

I argue that it is rational and appropriate for atheists to give thanks to deep impersonal agents for the benefits they give to us. These agents include our evolving biosphere, the sun, and our finely-tuned universe. Atheists can give thanks to evolution by sacrificially burning works of art. They can give thanks to the sun by performing rituals in solar calendars (like stone circles). They can give thanks to our finely-tuned universe, and to existence itself, by doing science and philosophy. But these linguistic types of thanks-giving are forms of non-theistic contemplative prayer. Since these behaviors resemble ancient pagan behaviors, it is fair to call them pagan. Atheistic paganism may be part of an emerging ecosystem of naturalistic religions.

— Eric Steinhart, William Paterson University, “Atheists Giving Thanks to the Sun,” July 2021Philosophia 49(20150711): 1-14

The traditional common consent argument for the existence of God has largely been abandoned—and rightly so. In this paper, I attempt to salvage the strongest version of the argument. Surprisingly, the strongest version of the argument supports the proposition, not that a god exists, but that animism is probably true and that such things as mountain, river, and forest spirits probably exist. I consider some plausible debunking arguments, ultimately finding that it is trickier to debunk the animist’s claims than it might first appear. I conclude that there exists one significant argument in favour of animism that has hitherto gone unstated in the philosophy of religion.

— Tiddy Smith, University of Otago, “The Common Consent Argument for the Existence of Nature Spirits,” April 2020Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98(3) DOI:10.1080/00048402.2019.1621912

Animism has been defined in many ways. Tylor defines it as the “the theory which endows the phenomena of nature with personal life” (1866: 82). Bird-David lists several definitions of animism: “the attribution of life or divinity to such natural phenomena as trees, thunder, or celestial bodies”; “the belief that all life is produced by a spiritual force, or that all natural phenomena have souls”; the belief that “trees, mountains, rivers and other natural formations possess an animating power or spirit” (1999: S67). Brown and Walker say animism is “an ontology in which objects and other non-human beings possess souls, life-force, and qualities of personhood” (2008: 297). Coeckelbergh says, “For animists, objects have (individual) spirits” (2010: 965). According to Helander-Renvall, animism means that “there are no clear borders between spirit and matter…. all beings in nature are considered to have souls or spirit” (2010: 44). Smith says animism involves “belief in nature spirits, such as mountain spirits, animal spirits, and weather spirits” (2019: 2–3). Definitions like these are easily multiplied.

— Eric Steinhart, “Scientific Animism,” Part of the Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion book series (PFPR) | Animism and Philosophy of Religion

POWERLINE noted this regarding “indegenouse knowledge vs. scientific knowledge… unless our government is acknowledging the science they push is “scientism” just as “indegenouse science” is “scientism:

The Biden administration has released a “guidance” to federal agencies that calls on them to include “Indigenous Knowledge” in decision making:

Today, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) jointly released new government-wide guidance and an accompanying implementation memorandum for Federal Agencies on recognizing and including Indigenous Knowledge in Federal research, policy, and decision making.

You may wonder, what the Hell is “Indigenous Knowledge”? Obviously, there is no such thing. There is just knowledge. Just as there is only science. Not “Indigenous Science.”….

Often these are driven by not only the genuflection created by multicultural relativism, but a Marxian “anti-capitalist/anti-West drive.

For example:

INTRODUCTION

Animism is said to be the most fundamental form and starting point of religious belief (Stringer, 2013). This concept has been used in cultural anthropology since the late 1800s but, due to inconsistencies in research ontologies, fell out of favour as an ethnographic research tool (Bird-David, 1999). A return to, and modification of, this concept has been witnessed over the turn of the century as researchers seek to better understand how the tool may once again be utilized. In this essay I discuss how modern conceptualisations of animism may shape human/non-human interactions and relations. I provide a brief history of the concept and discuss how its limitations excluded it from cultural anthropology’s tool kit for the better part of a century. Following this, I outline the contemporary conceptualizations of animism, or new animism, and how they seek to address the term’s original misdirection. Modern use of animism in South India, South America and Burkina Faso highlight the variability within the concept itself as well as the consistency of relational epistemology: bridging the gap between the “self” and “other.” To conclude this essay, I explore the possibilities of Western (and global) integration of traditional peoples’ epistemologies to reduce Cartesian dualism of humans and nature, which contribute to the exploitation and degradation of natural beings. This is seen in the emerging field of ecopsychology, which seeks to address issues inherent in pro-environmental communication with the general public through a recalibration of philosophical understandings.

[….]

CONCLUSION

From its roots as a misguided and derogatory concept to contemporary contextualisation, animism continues to provide cultural anthropology with a useful tool of ethnographic enquiry. The literature shows variation in animistic conventions throughout traditional peoples in different societies. However, a constant theme of relational epistemology persists in almost all of them. This distinction is not only important in understanding differences between traditional cultures but also for recognising limitations to the Western capitalist-driven, utilitarian ontology that has resulted in continued environmental devaluation and degradation. Acknowledging these flaws presents the potential to reconnect a sensual relation with the earth that suppresses, or even destroys, the Cartesian duality of human and non-human.

This is not the place to get into the topic… but, “the Western capitalist-driven, utilitarian ontology” via the Protestant work ethic and ethos imported agricultural practices and inventions actually saved indigenous cultures.

For instance, Vishal Mangalwadi notes just how missionaries carried these works to other cultures out of the Judeo-Christian worldview. (The entire chapter is a must read for the historian/economist):

My people in India did not lack creative genius. They erected great monuments to gods and goddesses and built palaces for kings and queens. But our worldview did not inspire these same engineering skills to be directed toward labor-saving devices. My personal interest in McCormick is rooted in the fact that his widow, Nancy McCormick, financed the building of the Allahabad Agricultural Institute in my hometown, Allahabad, on the banks of the river Yamuna. My brother studied in this institute and, for a few years, I cycled there every Sunday afternoon to study the Bible.

Between 2002 and 2006, from two to twenty thousand people— mostly Hindus—gathered there every Sunday for spiritual fellowship. This is significant because one of the holiest Hindu sites in India— the confluence of the holy rivers Ganges and Yamuna—is less than three miles from the Institute. As mentioned in chapter 12, practically every important Hindu holy man has come to this confluence during the last two thousand years; so have most politicians and wealthy merchants. Not one of them, however, ever started an institution to serve poor peasants.

The Agricultural Institute, now a Deemed University, was established by Sam Higginbottom, a professor of economics in my alma mater.* He saw the plight of the peasants, returned to America to study agriculture, forged links with McCormick’s family, and returned to establish this institute. His purpose was to inject into Indian culture McCormick’s spirit of loving one’s neighbors enough to attempt to alleviate their suffering.

Love is not a common ethical principle of all religions. No Hindu sage did anything like Sam Higginbottom did, because in order to be spiritual, the learned pundits had to separate themselves from the peasants, not serve them. The hallmark of Indian spirituality was detachment from worldly pursuits like agriculture. Therefore, the spiritually “advanced” in my country treated the toiling masses as untouchables.

McCormick’s reaper reinforces the point made in an earlier chapter—that necessity is not “the mother of invention.” All agricultural societies have needed to harvest grain. But no other culture invented a reaper. Most cultures met this need by forcing into backbreaking labor those who were too weak to say no—landless laborers, servants, slaves, women, and children. McCormick struggled to find a better way. The driving force in his life becomes apparent when you notice that he gave substantial portions of his income to promote the Bible through several projects including newspapers** and the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Chicago, which was renamed the McCormick Seminary.

Cyrus was born to a Puritan couple, Robert and Mary Ann McCormick, in 1809, in a log cabin in Rockbridge County, Virginia. His Scotch-Irish ancestors came to America in 1735 with little more than a Bible and the teachings of the Protestant reformers John Calvin and John Knox.

These reformers had embraced the Hebrew ideal of the dignity of labor. In addition, reformers, such as Luther and Calvin, introduced to the European mind the radical biblical idea that the calling or vocation of a peasant or a mason was as high as that of a priest or a monk. Every believer was a saint and ought to fulfill his or her vocation for the glory of God. In the words of sociologist Max Weber:

But at least one thing [in the Protestant mind-set] was unquestionably new: the valuation of the fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume. This it was which inevitably gave every-day worldly activity a religious significance, and which first created the conception of a calling in this sense. . . . The only way of living acceptably to God was not to surpass the worldly morality in monastic asceticism, but solely through the fulfillment of the obligations imposed upon the individual by his position in the world. That was his calling”2

Cyrus McCormick didn’t like harvesting with a sickle or scythe. Had he lived before the Reformation, he might have escaped the drudgery of toil by going to a university or becoming a priest. This was normal in Orthodox and Catholic cultures. Even St. Thomas Aquinas—perhaps the greatest theologian of the last millennium— justified the tradition by advocating that while the biblical obligation to work rested upon the human race as a whole, it was not binding on every individual, especially not on religious individuals who were called to pray and meditate.***

The McCormick family rejected that medieval idea to follow the teachings of Richard Baxter (1615–91), the English Puritan theologian, scholar, and writer, who believed that God’s command to work was unconditional. No one could claim exemption from work on the grounds that he had enough wealth on which to live. Baxter wrote, “You are no more excused from service of work . . . than the poorest man. God has strictly commanded [labor] to all.”3

It is important to note that this work ethic, which made England and America different from Italy or Russia, was biblical—not Puritan per se.

Quakers, like McCormick’s rival, Obed Hussey,**** shared the same worldview. This biblical work ethic, later called the “Protestant work ethic,” was driven into Cyrus from childhood. Both his friends and critics acknowledged that he was a workaholic***** with an indomitable perseverance and a bulldog’s tenacity. McCormick’s passion for focused work made him very wealthy, but his work ethic was a product of his religious culture, not his desire for wealth.

The West’s rapid economic progress began when it adopted the materialistic spirituality of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). For it is in Genesis that God declares the material universe to be good. Many ancient worldviews, such as India’s, had looked upon the material realm as intrinsically evil—something to be delivered from. Christian philosophers who studied the Bible noted that sin resulted in a breakdown of the relationship between God, man, and nature. The most influential exponent of this insight was Francis Bacon, who had a profound impact on the American mind.4

McCormick was nurtured on the biblical idea that through godly and creative work human beings can roll back the curse of sweat and toil and reestablish their dominion over nature. To repeat, my ancestors did not lack intelligence, but our genius was expressed in a philosophy that taught us to worship nature instead of establishing dominion over it. Economic development involves not worshipping but harnessing natural resources and energy for human consumption, albeit with foresight and a sense of stewardship.

Francis Bacon’s exposition of the Bible instilled a non-fatalistic philosophy in England and America. It implied that the future could be better than the past. As explained in previous chapters, this Hebrew concept was born in Israel’s collective experience of God. When God intervened in human history to liberate them from their slavery in Egypt, the Hebrews learned that God could change their destiny for the better. And since men and women were created in God’s image, they, too, could forge a better future for themselves through creative efforts.

This belief became an integral feature of modern Western culture and proved to be a powerful economic asset that would set the West apart from the rest of the world. While other cultures sought magical powers through

ritual and sacrifice, the West began cultivating technological and scientific powers. McCormick’s grandparents, like most European Puritans who fled from religious persecution to the liberty of America, interpreted their experience as being similar to that of the Israelites being set free from the bondage of slavery.

An important aspect of Moses’ mission was to teach God’s law to the Israelites. A cornerstone of this teaching was that while wickedness makes some individuals rich, it impoverishes entire nations. According to the Bible, a nation is exalted by righteousness.5 Cyrus’s forefathers believed that the blessings of righteousness were not exclusive to the Jews. God chose Abraham to bless all the nations of the earth. All true believers, they reasoned, were God’s chosen people. Therefore, it is wrong for God’s beloved to accept poverty as their fate. Even if one’s poverty were a result of sin, either one’s own or one’s ancestors, it was possible to repent and receive God’s forgiveness and the power to live a righteous life. It is not surprising, then, that within a century after Thomas McCormick’s arrival in Philadelphia, his grandson’s family owned an estate of twelve hundred acres.

Cyrus’s family owned slaves, as did so many others of their time. They were products of their era and could have purchased more human labor to bring in their harvests. One difference the Bible made was that it demanded the McCormicks work just as hard as any of their slaves. We know that by the age of fifteen, Cyrus had despaired of seeing people slave in the fields. That’s when he resolved to build upon his father’s failed attempts to find a better method for harvesting grain.

SPIRITUALITY OR GREED?

The 2010 movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps powerfully shows how secularism confuses ambition and greed. Ambition is good, but it becomes greed when separated from moral absolutes. Greed is a destructive part of human nature. It brought to India not only Europeans, but also the Aryan and Muslim invaders. Greed explains the loot of Alexander the Great and Nadir Shah, but not the creativity of industrial capitalism. Pioneers of modern economic enterprise, such as Cyrus McCormick, did want to make money, but they were inspired by something nobler.

  • The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2011), pages are unknown due to Kindle and PDF conversation — from chapter seventeen.

FOOTNOTES

* In India colleges function under a university chartered by the Government. Deemed University is a status of autonomy granted to high performing institutes and departments of various universities in India. I did my Intermediate studies (grades 11 and 12) at Jamuna Christian College, a part of Ewing Christian College, in Higginbottom’s time. Now independent, it is still located across the river from the Agricultural Institute.

** The modern press is a product of the Puritan revolution in England, and a substitute for the biblical institution of the prophet. A century ago, most newspapers in America were Christian.

*** During the Middle Ages religious individuals were paid to sit the whole day and pray for the souls of their deceased relatives. In Hindu and Buddhist cultures, peasants provided for ascetics who did nothing besides meditate.

**** Hussey patented his reaper in 1834 but lost the marketing race to McCormick.

***** The term “workaholic” is used only in a negative sense today. However, even our leisure-driven age accepts that no one excels in a given field and becomes a distinguished scientist, athlete, inventor, or businessman without working harder than her or his peers.

2. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 80.

3. Richard Baxter, Baxter’s Practical Works, vol. 1 (Letterman Assoc., 2007), 115.

4. See for example, George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006).

5. Proverbs 14:34.

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people (Proverbs 14:34, CSB)

  • Verse 34 is well-known. History has demonstrated many times that its teaching is true. The thrust of the passage transcends Judaism; what it says is pertinent to any and all nations, but it is most fully exemplified in the history of Israel. When counselees complain about various governmental inequities, this is the verse to turn to. Then, having read it, you may wish to observe: “You may become a part of the solution to our country’s failings by becoming a part of the righteous group who exalt a nation.”

Jay E. Adams, Proverbs, The Christian Counselor’s Commentary (Cordova, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2020), 113.

Crop rotation, largely a Western improvement, combined with the inventiveness of the West helped the indigenous cultures as well. Even the Native Americans largely “practiced slash and burn agriculture. When soils became infertile, wood for fuel was exhausted, and game depleted, whole villages moved” (Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, W.W. Norton & Company; New York: NY [1999], p. 76).

More on the history of this agricultural practice of “rotation” and top-soil.

Crop Rotation

One of the most important innovations of the Agricultural Revolution was the development of the Norfolk four-course rotation, which greatly increased crop and livestock yields by improving soil fertility and reducing fallow.

Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons to help restore plant nutrients and mitigate the build-up of pathogens and pests that often occurs when one plant species is continuously cropped. Rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility by alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants. The Norfolk System, as it is now known, rotates crops so that different crops are planted with the result that different kinds and quantities of nutrients are taken from the soil as the plants grow. An important feature of the Norfolk four-field system was that it used labor at times when demand was not at peak levels. Planting cover crops such as turnips and clover was not permitted under the common field system because they interfered with access to the fields and other people’s livestock could graze the turnips.

During the Middle Ages, the open field system initially used a two-field crop rotation system where one field was left fallow or turned into pasture for a time to try to recover some of its plant nutrients. Later, a three-year three-field crop rotation routine was employed, with a different crop in each of two fields, e.g. oats, rye, wheat, and barley with the second field growing a legume like peas or beans, and the third field fallow. Usually from 10–30% of the arable land in a three-crop rotation system is fallow. Each field was rotated into a different crop nearly every year. Over the following two centuries, the regular planting of legumes such as peas and beans in the fields that were previously fallow slowly restored the fertility of some croplands. The planting of legumes helped to increase plant growth in the empty field due to the bacteria on legume roots’ ability to fix nitrogen from the air into the soil in a form that plants could use. Other crops that were occasionally grown were flax and members of the mustard family. The practice of convertible husbandry, or the alternation of a field between pasture and grain, introduced pasture into the rotation. Because nitrogen builds up slowly over time in pasture, plowing pasture and planting grains resulted in high yields for a few years. A big disadvantage of convertible husbandry, however, was the hard work that had to be put into breaking up pastures and difficulty in establishing them.

It was the farmers in Flanders (in parts of France and current-day Belgium) that discovered a still more effective four-field crop rotation system, using turnips and clover (a legume) as forage crops to replace the three-year crop rotation fallow year. The four-field rotation system allowed farmers to restore soil fertility and restore some of the plant nutrients removed with the crops. Turnips first show up in the probate records in England as early as 1638 but were not widely used until about 1750. Fallow land was about 20% of the arable area in England in 1700 before turnips and clover were extensively grown. Guano and nitrates from South America were introduced in the mid-19th century and fallow steadily declined to reach only about 4% in 1900. Ideally, wheat, barley, turnips, and clover would be planted in that order in each field in successive years. The turnips helped keep the weeds down and were an excellent forage crop—ruminant animals could eat their tops and roots through a large part of the summer and winters. There was no need to let the soil lie fallow as clover would add nitrates (nitrogen-containing salts) back to the soil. The clover made excellent pasture and hay fields as well as green manure when it was plowed under after one or two years. The addition of clover and turnips allowed more animals to be kept through the winter, which in turn produced more milk, cheese, meat, and manure, which maintained soil fertility.

Missionaries are still teaching people this today:

….The program also ensures that the innovative farming methods are accessible to the very poorest subsistence farmers. The methods taught do not require plows, expensive tools, or commercial fertilizer. Every single technique taught could be done for free. If a job needed a tool, the teachers learned how to improvise using trash—for example, using a bottle cap or jam can instead of a measuring cup. They learned how to save and store seeds to avoid repeated annual expenses, and memorized recipes for creating homemade compost.

“If you want to reach the heart of God, you have to make a plan for the poor,” the instructors said again and again. By reaching the poor with tangible, relevant skills that will help them better survive and thrive, MTW missionaries and their national partners are not only following God’s commands, they’re revealing the heart of God to their neighbors, building bridges for trust and relational evangelism.

“Jesus fed people; Jesus healed the sick; Jesus addressed physical needs as well as spiritual needs,” Sarah said. “I think that, as the Church, we’re called to do that as well. Food and growing food is something that everyone in the world has in common. That’s why I got into agriculture to begin with, and I think it’s a huge way to get into communities. … Especially for subsistence farmers in African contexts, it’s just so insanely relevant. If you can tie the gospel to planting a seed, to that seed sprouting, to the rain coming, to this thing they spend their entire day, their entire life, doing—how powerful is that?”

Democratic Cannibalism (Intersectionality)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(JUMP TO THE UPDATE) Wow. You have to hear what this painfully-woke Disney writer has to say to white women. ? Ben Shapiro lights it up. [Feminism counts… but not if you are a white female]:

The Left’s view of Intersectionality, Multiculturalism, Equality, and the like does not create unity but causes division. This is why the Left will continue to — as they embrace these ideologies more — to cannibalize themselves. Which conservatives both predict and enjoy to some extent. This, HOWEVER may (may) cause them to blame outside forces and become more violent and irrational. Take for instance the example of a famous Leftist movement of the not-so-distant past, via INTELLECTUAL TAKEOUT:

…I’ve long known of Stalin’s knack for erasing his enemies from Party photos once they had fallen out of his favor, but I recently stumbled on a wonderful visual example of it (see above).

The original photo (top left) was taken at the Fifteenth Leningrad Regional Party Conference in 1924 or 1925. It shows Nikolai Antipov (left), Joseph Stalin, Sergei Kirov (right), and Nikolai Shvernik (far right). Antiopov, who rose to become Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, was the first to fall out of Stalin’s favor. Shvernik vanished next. Readers can see he was airbrushed out of the photo, but Shvernik was lucky. He is the only person in the original photo to survive Stalin, whose enemies often had a penchant for dying unexpectedly. Which brings us to Kirov, a skilled politician and early Bolshevik leader who rose to become the First Secretary of the Communist Party’s powerful Central Committee. Kirov was shot in the neck in 1934 at the office at which he worked (the Smolny Institute). Though Stalin used Kirov’s death to clamp down on party dissidents, historians believe Kirov was killed on Stalin’s orders.

The images, which are now in the Public Domain, are instructive. They reveal at once the terror of the Soviet movement, the casual willingness of its leaders to employ deceit, and the importance the Bolsheviks placed on shaping narratives (regardless of truth).

The lesson? Beware those who employ deceit to shape a false version of history.

And in one sense when Amazon removes books from being sold, or, the Left labels people with words like these:

SEXIST, INTOLERANT, XENOPHOBIC, HOMOPHOBIC, ISLAMOPHOBIC, RACIST, BIGOTED (S.I.X.H.I.R.B.)

HILLARY’S version:

  • “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

…they are in some sense removing them from history — or — being taken seriously in conversation. Who would want to discuss the health of the body politic with a racist? You see, the Left perceives certain features of reality based on an emotional “sixth sense” of some kind.  This “perceiving” is not necessarily based in reality — for instance, creating a narrative about a President that has nothing to do with reality, making him into an anti-Semite, racist, etc. More on the unity [/sarcasm] of intersectionality:

Leftism cause division… intersectionality, multiculturalism, etc., Democrats have no choice but division.

(Editor’s Note: This is called cannibalism… the Left sets up a non-reality [lots of parameters to be an authentic black, Christian, voter, non-racist, etc] that they themselves cannot live up to — but is great as a bludgeoning tool for those they disagree with.)

  • “Every single one who’s running probably has—this is a racist country, right? Every single one of them has something in their background that doesn’t look good for race,” (WASHINGTON FREE BEACON)

Like the MSM and others saying the same: WEASEL ZIPPERS

The first part of the audio is the point made by Democrats that people of color or woman are not allowed on the debate stage… but a rich white-man can buy his way on to the stage. The second half of the audio is a montage (linked above at WEASEL ZIPPERS) of Leftist media and commentators attacking Democrats (themselves) for being sexist and racist. Hilarious. What do you do when the other side starts fighting each-other? Stay out of it.

A recent example in the Left vs. Left war comes from a Bernie Sander’s rally (CAUTION: NUDITY):

Imagine being a far-leftist and still not ‘woke’ enough for the mob. That’s pretty much the creators of ‘Hamilton’ right now.

WALL of MOMS

This UPDATE is a story from LEGAL INSURRECTION (July 30th) and discusses what Representative Nadler was just praising… the “Wall of Moms.” (Emphasis added):

Last week, a “wall of moms” made a barrier around the rioters in Portland, OR, to protect them from law enforcement.

But now the rioters turned against the Wall of Moms because of allegations of “anti-Blackness.”

Nothin can satisfy these people.

The white leaders of Wall of Moms decided to step down from their roles and hand over the reins to “women of color.”

The new leaders “include Teressa Raiford, executive director of Don’t Shoot Portland, Demetria Hester and Danialle James.”

But now Don’t Shoot Portland wants people to stop supporting Wall of Moms…..

Hat-Tip to the video above and a commentator’s post on Andy Ngo’s Tweet which brought me to a HOT AIR post on the “Wall of Mom’s” — More from Andy:

GOP-USA has a decent story as well, noting: “Portland Wall of Moms, a group formed in recent weeks and quickly recognized as a staple of nightly downtown protests, was accused publicly Wednesday of “anti-Blackness” by leaders of an existing, Black-led community group.”

Multicultural Nightmares

A girl is legally kidnapped in Santa Clarita by state authorities. The Left’s dogged emphasis on race, class, gender is destroying families, keeping them in poverty, and utterly failing our country’s motto, “out of many, one.” The Left has dumped out the melting pot and keeps us as divided as ever. This story is maddening! Here is the story from our local paper:

Keep in mind the racial science of NAZI Germany were concerned with a 1/16th racial mix… here we see the racial sciences of the Choctaw Nation and the State of California concerned over a 1/64th portion of heritage. Sick! Racist! Leftism!

Star Wars Failing | A Female Thor (and More)

Published by Papa Giorgio

So between the failure of Solo, the divisiveness of The Last Jedi and the falling interest in Galaxy’s Edge, our good friends in the news media have concluded that Disney Star Wars isn’t doing too well. And I for one am shocked!

Great news! I was so pleased to learn that we’ll finally be getting what we all wanted in Marvel Phase 4 – a female Thor.

So I was excited to hear that talks between Sony and Marvel have broken down, and as a result there will be no more Spider-Man movies in the MCU. This can only be good news, right?

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, what a truly incredible trainwreck. Rian Johnson’s complete inability to craft anything even resembling meaningful (or coherent) plotline is truly remarkable to behold. Six months out from this farce, let’s take a closer look at everything that went wrong.

RED LETTER MEDIA

FLASHBACK

(RED LETTER MEDIA) Finally it’s here! The truly epic review/critique/analysis/film making educational video of the 1999 film “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” There was so much to discuss with this film it had to be long so please don’t complain. If you think it’s too long then don’t watch it. In this opening segment I discuss the major flaw of The Phantom Menace which is the characters and the lack of connection with the audience.

Examples Of Foolish Leftist Cultural Relativist Ideals

Published by Papa Giorgio

While I like their rants (Paul Watson, Mark Dice, and others) and these commentaries hold much truth in them, I do wish to caution you… he is part of Info Wars/Prison Planet network of yahoos, a crazy conspiracy arm of Alex Jones shite. Also, I bet if I talked to him he would reveal some pretty-crazy conspiratorial beliefs that would naturally undermine and be at-odds-with some of his rants. Just to be clear, I do not endorse these people or orgs.

(Here is his other video Paul mentions in the video.)

For Goodness Sake 2

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is the 1996 short film For Goodness Sake II, directed by Trey Parker. PART ONE IS HERE: This is the 1993 short documentary film For Goodness Sake, directed by the brilliant David Zucker and produced by Dennis Prager.

Hillary’s Hero Bans the Burka!

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager discusses Merkel’s ban of the Burka and the Niqab while relating it to the cultural relativism of the left. Take note the German Chancellor is running for her office soon… “shoring up” votes in other words:

  • German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced she believes the full Islamic face veil or “burqa” has no place in her country and should be banned. Critics have pointed to her announcement, made at the Christian Democratic Party conference, as an attempt to shore up her conservative base after announcing she would seek another term as German leader…. (BREITBART)

Are “Hyphenated” Americans Doing Their Part? (E Pluribus Pluribus)

Published by Papa Giorgio

If you listen closely, Dr. Williams refuses to use the term “African American” in a simple discussion of the issues facing Americans:

In fact, in an old article, Dr. Williams spells out his thinking clearly… one post sums up Walter Williams main points well:

First it devalues the diversity within Africa – Africa is filled with nations and regions with diverse histories, peoples, ethnicities and leaders. Second, it perpetuates the whole trend that Americans and Europeans need to help them poor AFRICANS. So we devise buy a water bottle and feed a African child campaign – or consumeristic ploys that convince you to buy products to that .00000001% goes to some African AID/HIV fund where the marketing costs more than what is donated.  Third – using the term African American is retarded b.c it takes away from the concept that Blacks ARE Americans – they are more American than anyone else who claims to be  American because they built this country – they built up our profits, our surplus – they literally built Wall Street in NYC! They gave America culture – and all along dominant America stole their bodies, their labor, their minds and their rhythms – so this time around can we at least not try to steal their identities? If Blacks are telling us the term “african-American” doesn’t make sense -we should listen!  Wouldn’t it sound retarded to call white Ameircans “European Americans”? It non-sensical to add a pre-fix to their “Americaness” because doing so takes away their Americaness. Fourth – Blacks whose ancestry date back to slavery are not from all over the African continent – mostly they were captured and sold from African’s gold coast  – Western Africa fight – the label “African-American” is very inappropriate because many blacks trace their ancestory to the Carribeans – or to Brazil – or to Mexico.

While I am not a fan of Woodrow Wilson at all, he makes a great point in this WIKI article:

The term “hyphenated American” was published by 1889, and was common as a derogatory term by 1904. During World War I the issue arose of the primary political loyalty of ethnic groups with close ties to Europe, especially German Americans and also Irish Americans. Former President Theodore Roosevelt in speaking to the largely Irish Catholic Knights of Columbus at Carnegie Hall on Columbus Day 1915, asserted that,

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all … The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic … There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

President Woodrow Wilson regarded “hyphenated Americans” with suspicion, saying, “Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”

The modern Left is all about division. Separating people. And by separating [dividing], a culture is conquered:

….Most black families in the United States today have been here longer than most white families. No one except the American Indians can claim to have been on American soil longer. Why then call blacks in the United States “African-Americans” when not even their great-great-great-grandparents ever laid eyes on Africa?

It is certainly understandable that activists, politicians and others who wish to divide Americans for their own purposes would push the notion of “African-Americans.” They also push such things as the “African” holiday Kwanzaa – which originated in Los Angeles – and “black English” or “ebonics,” which originated centuries ago in particular localities in Britain, and is wholly unknown in Africa.

It is certainly understandable that activists, politicians and others who wish to divide Americans for their own purposes would push the notion of “African-Americans.” They also push such things as the “African” holiday Kwanzaa – which originated in Los Angeles – and “black English” or “ebonics,” which originated centuries ago in particular localities in Britain, and is wholly unknown in Africa.

Names are just part of the process of creating wholesale frauds about the past in order to advance special agendas in the present. Personal names are also part of that fraud.

[….]

Of all the reactions against the supposed “slave names” among blacks, the most painfully ironic has been the taking of Arab names instead. The Arabs engaged in massive enslavement of Africans before the Europeans began to and continued long after the Europeans stopped.

One of the many reasons for studying history is to prevent history from being misused for current hidden agendas. Names are just one of the things being misused in this way.

(Thomas Sowell)

What prompted this post was a fellow I know — J. Giordano — excerpting a bit from the following book by Theodore Roosevelt. I excerpt more of it here for those who love history:

  • Theodore Roosevelt, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (New York, NY: George H. Doran, 1916), 17-28; the book is online for reading HERE.

But in addition to fearing God, it is necessary that we should be able and ready to take our own part. The man who cannot take his own part is a nuisance in the community, a source of weakness, an encouragement to wrongdoers and an added burden to the men who wish to do what is right. If he cannot take his own part, then somebody else has to take it for him; and this means that his weakness and cowardice and inefficiency place an added burden on some other man and make that other man’s strength by just so much of less avail to the community as a whole. No man can take the part of any one else unless he is able to take his own part. This is just as true of nations as of men. A nation that cannot take its own part is at times almost as fertile a source of mischief in the world at large as is a nation which does wrong to others, for its very existence puts a premium on such wrongdoing. Therefore, a nation must fit itself to defend its honor and interest against outside aggression; and this necessarily means that in a free democracy every man fit for citizenship must be trained so that he can do his full duty to the nation in war no less than in peace.

Unless we are thorough-going Americans and unless our patriotism is part of the very fiber of our being, we can neither serve God nor take our own part. Whatever may be the case in an infinitely remote future, at present no people can render any service to humanity unless as a people they feel an intense sense of national cohesion and solidarity. The man who loves other nations as much as he does his own, stands on a par with the man who loves other women as much as he does his own wife. The United States can ac­complish little for mankind, save in so far as within its borders it develops an intense spirit of Americanism. A flabby cosmopolitanism, es­pecially if it expresses itself through a flabby pa­cifism, is not only silly, but degrading. It rep­resents national emasculation. The professors of every form of hyphenated Americanism are as truly the foes of this country as if they dwelled outside its borders and made active war against it. This is not a figure of speech, or a hyperbolic statement. The leaders of the hyphenated-American movement in this country (who dur­ing the last eighteen months have been the pro­fessional German-Americans and Austro-Americans) are also leaders in the movement against preparedness. I have before me a little pamphlet, circulated by a “German-American” organiza­tion, consisting of articles written by a German-American for a paper which claims to be the lead­ing German paper in Illinois. This pamphlet is a bitter attack upon the policy of preparedness for the United States, and a slanderous assault on those advocating this American policy. It is, therefore, an effort in the interest of Germany to turn the United States into a larger Belgium—an easy prey for Germany whenever Germany desires to seize it. These professional German-Americans and Pro-Germans are Anti-American to the core. They play the part of traitors, pure and simple. Once it was true that this country could not endure half free and half slave. To­day it is true that it can not endure half Ameri­can and half foreign. The hyphen is incompati­ble with patriotism.

Patriotism should be an integral part of our every feeling at all times, for it is merely another name for those qualities of soul which make a man in peace or in war, by day or by night, think of his duty to his fellows, and of his duty to the nation through which their and his loftiest aspi­rations must find their fitting expression. After the Lusitania was sunk, Mr. Wilson stated in effect that such a time was not the right time to stir up patriotism. This statement is entirely incompatible with having a feeling of deep pa­triotism at any time. It might just as appropri­ately have been made by George Washington im­mediately after his defeat at the Brandywine, or by Abraham Lincoln immediately after the surrender of Fort Sumter; and if in either of these crises our leaders had acted on any such principle we would not now have any country at all. Patriotism is as much a duty in time of war as in time of peace, and it is most of all a duty in any and every great crisis. To commit folly or do evil, to act inconsiderately and hastily or wantonly and viciously, in the name of patriot­ism, represents not patriotism at all, but a use of the name to cloak an attack upon the thing. Such baseness or folly is wrong, at every time and on every occasion. But patriotism itself is not only in place on every occasion and at every time, but is peculiarly the feeling which should be stirred to its deepest depths at every serious crisis. The duty of a leader is to lead; and it is a dreadful thing that any man chosen to lead his fellow-countrymen should himself show, not merely so profound a lack of patriotism, but such misun­derstanding of patriotism, as to be willing to say in a great crisis what President Wilson thus said at the time of the sinking of the Lusitania. This statement, coupled with his statement made about the same time as to being “too proud to fight,” furnishes the clue to the Administration’s policy both before and since. This policy made our great democratic commonwealth false to its duties and its ideals in a tremendous world crisis, at the very time when, if properly led, it could have rendered an inestimable service to all man­kind, and could have placed itself on a higher pinnacle of worthy achievement than ever before.

Patriotism, so far from being incompatible with performance of duty to other nations, is an indispensable prerequisite to doing one’s duty toward other nations. Fear God; and take your own part! If this nation had feared God it would have stood up for the Belgians and Armenians; if it had been able and willing to take its own part there would have been no murderous assault on the Lusitania, no outrages on our men and women in Mexico. True patriotism carries with it not hostility to other nations but a quickened sense of responsible good-will towards other na­tions, a good-will of acts and not merely of words. I stand for a nationalism of duty, to oneself and to others; and, therefore, for a na­tionalism which is a means to internationalism. World peace must rest on the willingness of na­tions with courage, cool foresight, and readiness for self-sacrifice to defend the fabric of interna­tional law. No nation can help in securing an organized, peaceful and justice-doing world com­munity until it is willing to run risks and make efforts in order to secure and maintain such a community.

The nation that in actual practice fears God is the nation which does not wrong its neigh­bors, which does so far as possible help its neighbors, and which never promises what it cannot or will not or ought not to perform. The professional pacifists in and out of office who at peace congresses pass silly resolutions which can­not be, and ought not to be, lived up to, and enter into silly treaties which ought not to be, and can­not be, kept, are not serving God, but Baal. They are not doing anything for anybody.[1] If in addition these people, when the concrete case arises, as in Belgium or Armenia, fear concretely to denounce and antagonize the wrongdoer, they become not merely passive, but active agents of the devil. The professional pacifists who ap­plauded universal arbitration treaties and disar­mament proposals prior to the war, since the war have held meetings and parades in this country on behalf of peace, and have gone on silly mis­sions to Europe on behalf of peace—and the peace they sought to impose on heroes who were battling against infamy was a peace conceived in the interest of the authors of the infamy. They did not dare to say that they stood only for a peace that should right the wrongs of Belgium. They did not dare to denounce the war of aggres­sion by Germany against Belgium. Their souls were too small, their timidity too great. They were even afraid to applaud the war waged by Belgium in its own defence. These pacifists have served morality, have shown that they feared God, exactly as the Pharisees did, when they made broad their philacteries and uttered long prayers in public, but did not lift a finger to lighten the load of the oppressed. When Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan made this nation shirk its duty towards Belgium, they made us false to all our high ideals; for they acted and caused this government to act in that spirit of commer­cial opportunism which refuses to do duty to oth­ers unless there is in it pecuniary profit for one‑self. This combination of mean timidity and mean commercial opportunism is peculiarly odi­ous because those practising it have sought to hide it by profuse outbursts of wordy sentimen­tality and loud professions of attachment to im­possible and undesirable ideals. One of the be­setting sins of many of our public servants (and of not a few of our professional moralists, lay and clerical) is to cloak weakness or baseness of action behind insincere oratory on behalf of im­practical ideals. The true servant of the people is the man who preaches realizable ideals; and who then practises what he has preached.

Moreover, even as regards the pacifists who genuinely desire that this nation should fear God, it is to be remembered that if the nation cannot take its own part, the fact that it fears God will be of no practical consequence to any one. No­body cares whether or not the feeling of the Chi­nese people is against international wrongdoing; for, as China is helplessly unable to take her own part, she is in practise even more helpless to take the part of any one else and to secure justice and mercy for any one else. The pacifists who are seeking to Chinafy the United States are not only seeking to bring the United States to ruin, but are also seeking to render it abso­lutely impotent to help upright and well-behaved nations which are oppressed by the military power of unscrupulous neighbors of greater strength.

The professional pacifists, the leaders in the pacifist movement in the United States, do par­ticular harm by giving well-meaning but unin­formed people who do not think deeply what seems to them a convincing excuse for failure to show courage and resolution. Those who preach sloth and cowardice under the high-sounding name of “peace” give people a word with which to cloak, even to themselves, their failure to perform unpleasant duty. For a man to stand up for his own rights, or especially for the rights of somebody else, means that he must have virile qualities: courage, foresight, willing­ness to face risk and undergo effort. It is much easier to be timid and lazy. The average man does not like to face death and endure hard­ship and labor. He can be roused to do so if a leader of the right type, a Washington or Lincoln, appeals to the higher qualities, includ­ing the stern qualities, of his soul. But a leader, or at least a man who holds a leader’s place, earns praise and profit unworthily if he uses his gift of words to lull well-meaning men to sleep, if he assures them that it is their duty to do the easy and selfish thing, and furnishes them high-sounding phrases with which to cover ignoble failure to perform hard and disagreeable duties.

Peace is not the end. Righteousness is the end. When the Saviour saw the money-changers in the Temple he broke the peace by driving them out. At that moment peace could have been obtained readily enough by the simple proc­ess of keeping quiet in the presence of wrong. But instead of preserving peace at the expense of righteousness, the Saviour armed himself with a scourge of cords and drove the money­changers from the Temple. Righteousness is the end, and peace a means to the end, and some­times it is not peace, but war which is the proper means to achieve the end. Righteousness should breed valor and strength. When it does breed them, it is triumphant; and when triumphant, it necessarily brings peace. But peace does not nec­essarily bring righteousness.

As for neutrality, it is well to remember that it is never moral, and may be a particularly mean and hideous form of immorality. It is in itself merely unmoral ; that is, neither moral nor im­moral ; and at times it may be wise and expedi­ent. But it is never anything of which to be proud; and it may be something of which to be heartily ashamed. It is a wicked thing to be neutral between right and wrong. Impartiality does not mean neutrality. Impartial justice con­sists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and uphold ing it, wherever found, against the wrong. Moreover, submission to an initial wrong means that all protests against subsequent and lesser wrongs are hypocritical and ineffective. Had we protested, in such fashion that our protest was effective, against what was done in Belgium by Germany, and against the sinking of the Lusitania by Germany, we could have (and in such case we ought to have) protested against all sub­sequent and minor infractions of international law and morals, including those which interfered with our commerce or with any other neutral rights. But failure to protest against the first and worst offences of the strongest wrongdoer made it contemptible, and an act of bad faith, to protest against subsequent and smaller mis­deeds; and failure to act (not merely speak or write notes) when our women and children were murdered made protests against interference with American business profits both offensive and ludicrous.

The pacifists have used all kinds of argu­ments in favor of peaceful submission to, or refusal to prepare against, international violence and wrongdoing, and among others the very an­cient arguments based upon the supposed teach­ing of the New Testament against war. In the first place, as I have already pointed out, this argument is quite incompatible with accepting the lesson taught by the action of the Saviour in driving the money-changers from the Temple; not to mention, incidentally, that the duty of pre­paredness has rarely been put in stronger form than by St. Luke in the direction that “He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.”

[1] See the excellent little book called “Is War Diminishing?” by Woods and Baltzly. The authors deal, as they necessarily must if truthful deal, with the mischievous activities of those professional pacifists among whom Mr. Andrew Carnegie has attained an unhappy prominence: activities which in this country for the last five years have worked nothing but evil, and very serious evil, to our nation and to humanity at large, and to all genuine movements for the promotion of the peace of righteous­ness. The writers instance Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler as presenting in typical manner the shams and perversions of fact upon which the professional pacifists rely for their propaganda, and remark that these pacifists, “who pride themselves on having the superior moral point of view, openly disregard the truth,” and ask “these professors of ethics, law and justice, these presi­dents of colleges, these moral educators, if morality is not neces­sarily bound up with truth.” The pacifist movement in this country has not only been one of extreme folly and immorality, but has been bolstered by consistent and unwearied falsification of the fads, laudation of shallow and unprincipled demagogues, and condemnation of the upright public servants who fearlessly tell the truth.

2-Quotes from An Early Salvo in the Culture War ~ Allan Bloom

Published by Papa Giorgio

I just wanted to catalog two quotes by a Jewish (non-religious), gay, anti-conservative professor, and then post some excerpts from a review of the book.

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students’ reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them. … The relativity of truth is … a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it. … The danger they have been taught to fear is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness — and the relativism that makes it plausible — is the great insight of our times. … The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.

[….]

In the United States, practically speaking, the Bible was the only common culture, one that united the simple and the sophisticated, rich and poor, young and old, and—as the very model for a vision of the order of the whole of things, as well as the key to the rest of Western art, the greatest works of which were in one way or another responsive to the Bible—provided access to the seriousness of books. With its gradual and inevitable disappearance, the very idea of such a total book is disappearing. And fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise—as priests, prophets or philosophers are wise. Specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine. Contrary to what is commonly thought, without the book even the idea of the whole is lost.

Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 25, 58 (respectively).

This review comes by way of The American Conservative. I would also recommend The Weekly Standard’s anniversary review of the book.

…While I continue to learn much from Bloom, over the years I have arrived at three main judgments about the book’s relevance, its prescience, and its failings. First, Bloom was right to be concerned about the specter of relativism—though perhaps even he didn’t realize how bad it would get, particularly when one considers the reaction to his book compared to its likely reception were it published today. Second, his alarm over the threat of “multiculturalism” was misplaced and constituted a bad misreading of the zeitgeist, in which he mistook the left’s tactical use of identity politics for the rise of a new kind of communalist and even traditionalist tribalism. And, lastly, most of his readers—even today—remain incorrect in considering him to be a representative of “conservatism,” a label that he eschewed and a worldview he rejected…

[….]

What should most astonish any reader of Bloom’s Closing after 25 years is the fact that this erudite treatise about the crisis of higher education not only sat atop the bestseller list for many weeks but was at the center of an intense, lengthy, and ferocious debate during the late 1980s over education, youth, culture, and politics. In many ways, it became the most visible and weightiest salvo in what came to be known as “the culture wars,” and people of a certain generation still hold strong opinions about Bloom and his remarkable, unlikely bestseller.

Today there are many books about the crisis of higher education—while the nature of the crisis may change, higher education never seems to be out of the woods—but none before or since Bloom’s book achieved its prominence or made its author as rich and famous as a rock star. It was a book that many people bought but few read, at least not beyond a few titillating passages condemning rock-and-roll and feminism. Yet it was a book about which almost everyone with some engagement in higher education held an opinion—indeed, it was obligatory to have considered views on Bloom’s book, whether one had read it or not.

Bloom’s book was at the center of a debate—one that had been percolating well before its publication in 1987—over the nature and content of a university education. That debate intensified with the growing numbers of “diverse” populations seeking recognition on college campuses—concomitant with the rise of departments of Women’s Studies, African-American Studies, and a host of other “Studies” studies—leading to demands that the curriculum increasingly reflect contributions by non-male, non-white, non-European and even non-dead authors.

The Closing of the American Mind spawned hundreds, perhaps even thousands of responses—most of them critiques—including an article entitled “The Philosopher Despot” in Harper’s by political theorist Benjamin Barber, and the inevitably titled The Opening of the American Mind by Lawrence Levine. Partly spurred by the firestorm initiated by Bloom’s book, perennial presidential candidate Jesse Jackson led a march through the campus of Stanford University shouting through a bullhorn, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go!” Passions for campus reform ran high, and an avalanche of words, articles, denunciations, and ad hominem attacks greeted Bloom’s defense of the Western canon.

Yet the nuances of Bloom’s qualified defense of the Western canon were rarely appreciated by critics or supporters alike. While Bloom was often lumped together with E.D. Hirsch—whose Cultural Literacy was published the same year and rose to number two on the New York Times bestseller list, just behind Closing—Bloom’s argument was fundamentally different and far more philosophically challenging than Hirsch’s more mundane, if nevertheless accurate, point that educated people increasingly did not have knowledge about their own culture. Hirsch’s book spoke to anxiety about the loss of a shared literary and cultural inheritance, which today has been largely supplanted by references to a few popular television shows and sports televised on ESPN.

Bloom made an altogether different argument: American youth were increasingly raised to believe that nothing was True, that every belief was merely the expression of an opinion or preference. Americans were raised to be “cultural relativists,” with a default attitude of non-judgmentalism. Not only all other traditions but even one’s own (whatever that might be) were simply views that happened to be held by some people and could not be judged inferior or superior to any other. He bemoaned particularly the decline of household and community religious upbringing in which the worldviews of children were shaped by a comprehensive vision of the good and the true. In one arresting passage, he waxed nostalgic for the days when people cared: “It was not necessarily the best of times in America when Catholic and Protestants were suspicious of and hated one another; but at least they were taking their beliefs seriously…”

He lamented the decline of such true belief not because he personally held any religious or cultural tradition to be true—while Bloom was raised as a Jew, he was at least a skeptic, if not a committed atheist—but because he believed that such inherited belief was the source from which a deeper and more profound philosophic longing arose. It wasn’t “cultural literacy” he wanted, but rather the possibility of that liberating excitement among college-age youth that can come from realizing that one’s own inherited tradition might not be true. From that harrowing of belief can come the ultimate philosophic quest—the effort to replace mere prejudice with the quest for knowledge of the True.

Near the beginning of Closing, Bloom relates one telling story of a debate with a psychology professor during his time teaching at Cornell. Bloom’s adversary claimed, “it was his function to get rid of prejudices in his students.” Bloom compared that function to the activity of an older sibling who informs the kids that there is no Santa Claus—disillusionment and disappointment. Rather than inspiring students to replace “prejudice” with a curiosity for Truth, the mere shattering of illusion would simply leave students “passive, disconsolate, indifferent, and subject to authorities like himself.”

Bloom relates that “I found myself responding to the professor of psychology that I personally tried to teach my students prejudices, since nowadays—with the general success of his method—they had learned to doubt beliefs even before they believed in anything … One has to have the experience of really believing before one can have the thrill of liberation.” Bloom’s preferred original title—before being overruled by Simon and Schuster—was Souls Without Longing. He was above all concerned that students, in being deprived of the experience of living in their own version of Plato’s cave, would never know or experience the opportunity of philosophic ascent.

[….]

Today we live in a different age, one that so worried Bloom—an age of indifference. Institutions of higher learning have almost completely abandoned even a residual belief that there are some books and authors that an educated person should encounter. A rousing defense of a curriculum in which female, African-American, Latino, and other authors should be represented has given way to a nearly thoroughgoing indifference to the content of our students’ curricula. Academia is committed to teaching “critical thinking” and willing to allow nearly any avenue in the training of that amorphous activity, but eschews any belief that the content of what is taught will or ought to influence how a person lives.

Thus, not only is academia indifferent to whether our students become virtuous human beings (to use a word seldom to be found on today’s campuses), but it holds itself to be unconnected to their vices—thus there remains no self-examination over higher education’s role in producing the kinds of graduates who helped turn Wall Street into a high-stakes casino and our nation’s budget into a giant credit card. Today, in the name of choice, non-judgmentalism, and toleration, institutions prefer to offer the greatest possible expanse of options, in the implicit belief that every 18- to 22-year-old can responsibly fashion his or her own character unaided.

Bloom was so correct about the predictable rise of a society defined by indifference that one is entitled to conclude that were Closing published today, it would barely cause a ripple. This is not because most of academia would be inclined to agree with his arguments any more than they did in 1987. Rather, it is simply the case that hardly anyone in academe any longer thinks that curricula are worth fighting over….

[….]

Today’s academic leaders don’t believe the content of those choices has any fundamental influence on the souls of our students, most likely because it would be unfashionable to believe that they have souls. As long as everyone is tolerant of everyone else’s choices, no one can get hurt. What is today called “tolerance,” Bloom rightly understood to be more deeply a form of indifference, the extreme absence of care, leading to a society composed not only of “souls without longing” but humans treated as utilitarian bodies that are increasingly incapable of love.

(3-Part Interview)