B. U. G. S.

Shari and Joe have different loyalties from mine. In our day, it is generally accepted that my job is to make them think like I do.

Shari (ladies first) and Joe and I cling to a distinction here that is alien to accepted ideas today. I think I have some intellectual exercises that Shari and Joe can use. They agree.

But what I have to offer them is not to turn them into tape recoding of what I believe. They use me as an unfortunately unique opportunity to hone their OWN thought.

This, as Shari and Joe would be the first to tell you, is called education. They consider me a qualified teacher. They can learn something from me, I can learn something from them. That’s why they like the blog. That’s why they consider it worth their while to trade thoughts with Bob and his commenters.

LibAnon considers Bob’s Blog, written by a Reagan appointee, to be a godsend. I have a very useful WAY OF THINKING. Joe and LibAnon and Shari want to make use of that way of thinking. In an age that seems alien today, that is what education MEANT.

Education is NOT indoctrination.

On the one hand, to a rational person this is obvious. But in today’s society, it involves a kind of thinking on the part of LibAnon and Joe and Shari that is as alien as visitors from Mars. They are not here to become Bob clones. If you read the comments nobody here comes close to being a Bob clone, though I feel that would be the height of brilliance.

Naturally I consider that you are wrong and I am right. But just as naturally it never occurs to me that YOU need to take it for granted that you are wrong and I am right. This is so obvious that I feel a little crazy just SAYING it. But underlying this ishte siple fact that we live in a society that is nuts.

In the present world it is the mark of an “educated” person that he BELIEVES all the things an “educated person” is supposed to believe. Today you judge whether a person is educated by whether he can recite the beliefs that “educated people” are supposed to have.

To me, a person who recites Political Correctness is a RE-educated person.

A human robot.

During the Korean War, the group that calls itself the Greatest Generation was still a unch of youngsters and ost Americans had a pre-WWII mentality. At that time, we kept hearing about our POWs being sent to “reeducation camps.” Back then the average American’s hackles went up the moement RE education was mentioned.

Today, no one ever hears the term “re-education.” The Greatest Genration simply cannot see any difference between education and reeducation. So when any aocial problem comes up, everybody agrees that the solution to it is “education.” So when it was discovered recently that babies discriminate racially, everybody, especially respectable conservatives, instantly agreed that “education” was the “solution” to this “problem.”

Note the words in quotes. Is this a problem or a natural phenomenon?

Commmunists agree that what they call Greed and what others call self-interest is a PROBLEM. In te eraly 1950s every Intellectual had to agree that greed was unique to human beings. It was absolutely agreed that no animal desired more food than it could eat, more females than any other male. No animal held territory and kept others off of it. No animal tried to lord it over any other member of his own species.

In fact, it was taken for granted that a peson who believed that races or men and women were different was a product ofhis training, of his education. It was taken for granted that he needed RE-education.

Then there were the Americans who had not yet become a product of The Greatst Generation. The objected to the concept of REeducation because they felt that THEIR training was NOT warped.

As “The Greatest Generation” took over, this idea was denounced as prejudiced. By the 1960s “everybody who counted” accepted the idea that our prejudcies were warped. Those who did not admitted they were “just old fashioned.”

So today we accept the idea that when an animal sees some things as natural and other things as innatural, that is a statement that somes from the soul of said animal — or aborigine — that we must listen to. But when a white baby prefers its own kind, that is something that needs correction.

The American population that passed the GI Bill of Rights which gave money to vetereans to go to college was the same group of people who reacted violently to the very word REeducation in Korea. They were happy to pay for education but the very concept of REeducation turned their stomachs.

I defy you today to find one American who understands the difference between education and reeducation.