The young are the future, and the propaganda of
today can become the government policies of tomorrow
This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, many
parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on
campus. Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the
brainwashing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions
of higher learning.
The strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the
Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different kind of
battle. General MacArthur won his victories while minimizing his casualties —
something that is also desirable in clashes of ideas within the family.
Instead of fighting the Japanese for every island stronghold as the
Americans advanced toward Japan, MacArthur sent his troops into battle for only
those islands that were strategically crucial. In the same spirit, parents who
want to bring their brainwashed offspring back to reality need not try to
combat every crazy idea they picked up from their politically correct
professors. Just demolishing a few crucial beliefs, and exposing what nonsense
they are, can deal a blow to the general credibility of the professorial pied
pipers.
For example, if the student has been led to join the crusade for more gun
control, and thinks that the reason the British have lower murder rates than
Americans have is because the Brits have tighter gun control laws, just give
him or her a copy of the book Guns and Violence by Joyce Lee
Malcolm.
As the facts in that book demolish the gun control propaganda fed to
students by their professors, that can create a healthy skepticism about other
professorial propaganda.
There are other books that can likewise demolish other politically correct
beliefs that prevail on campuses. My own recent book, Intellectuals and
Race, has innumerable documented facts that expose the fallacies in most of
what is said about racial issues in most college classrooms.
For those students who have bought the campus party line on Third World
nations, the classic study of that subject is Equality, the Third
World, and Economic Delusion by the late P.T. Bauer of the London
School of Economics. He made a veritable demolition derby of most of what has
been said in politically correct circles about the relationship between rich
and poor countries.
For those students who have been conditioned to regard the welfare state as
the solution to social problems, there is no book that exposes the actual human
consequences of the welfare state more poignantly than Life at the
Bottom by British physician Theodore Dalrymple. He has worked in both
low-income neighborhoods and in prisons, so he has seen it all.
Although Britain is the setting for Life at the Bottom,
Americans will recognize very similar patterns here. Problems found in
low-income black ghettoes in the United States are found in low-income white
neighborhoods in Britain, where none of the usual excuses about racism,
slavery, etc., apply. The only thing that is the same in both countries is the
welfare state and its poisonous ideology.
If your student has been led to believe that “comprehensive immigration
reform” — amnesty, in plain English — is the only way to go, a devastating book
titled Mexifornia, by Victor Davis Hanson, introduces some cold,
factual reality into a subject usually discussed in sweeping and lofty rhetoric.
A book that offers a choice between the island-hopping strategy that
General MacArthur used in the Pacific and the all-out assault across a broad
front that was used by the Allied armies in Europe is titled The New
Leviathan.
It has thirteen penetrating articles by leading authorities on such
subjects as national security, ObamaCare, environmentalism, election frauds and
more.
Those parents who want to follow the MacArthur strategy can recommend
reading one, or a few, of these articles, while those who want to follow the
strategy of attacking all across a broad front can recommend that their student
read the whole book.
However the battle is fought, what is most important is that the battle be
fought, since the young are the future, and the propaganda of today can become
the government policies of tomorrow.
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