THE EDUCATIONAL COMPOST HEAP

R S McCain writes about the 'liberal bubble' and how ingrained the thought matrix of this cohort has become in 'elite' society.

The common refrain one hears since the American election of; "I am amazed, I don't know of a single person who voted for Trump!" is not only because most Trump voters kept their choice secret for fear of persecution, but it is also because so many in the 'elite' professions have been thoroughly indoctrinated into believing the same paradigm through the same source; University....thus transmogrifying the old Aristotlean adage of "give me your child until he is 7 and I will show you the man" into; "give me your young adults and I will 're-educate' them until they become the men 'elite' society wants them to become."...although I feel I should qualify this to say that since Buckley's perspective of the 'liberal conquest' of the University's was written during the 1950's, the neo-Marxists/Fabian socialists have captured the early and middle schools as well, thus perhaps rendering the 21stC university years merely the propagandist equivalent of the educational coup de gras.

“They can’t fathom that somebody disagrees with them,” he said. “And I disagree with them. So I’m not going to open up that box.” . . .

You can read the whole thing. How do these bubbles develop? It’s the universities, stupid. Go back and read William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale. In 1951, Buckley described the way liberalism had become an unquestioned belief system inside elite academia. Once liberalism had attained hegemonic authority on university campuses, its intellectual prestige was assured. If it is “smart” to believe in, say, Keynesian economics, then impressionable young people who want to seem smart will parrot the Keynesian orthodoxies. Bad ideas that become fashionable in academia are thus diffused into the larger society, as all the smart young people are herded off to college and indoctrinated in these ideas, before entering careers with other college-educated people.

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.” – William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

Hans Rookmaaker the brilliant Dutch scholar, professor and musician phrased the sentence I have highlighted in his own succinct way: "manipulation only works as a hidden persuader."