Protest and politics failed. Time to revive the culture.
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/11/16 ... epage=true
The article goes on to describe methods for rebuilding the culture which made a constitutional government possible by A) ignoring current social structures, and B) creating voluntary parallel structures to replace them. For instance, the article explains that the original motivations for creating a public education system was to create a virtuous society, because limited constitutional government requires a virtuous society to function as intended. Our public education system today has been so thoroughly coopted by the socialist left that it no longer serves the purpose of creating a virtuous people. As Bill Whittle says in the accompanying video, you don't need a big government to control a virtuous people. "Virtuous people" doesn't necessarily mean prudish or religious people, but it does mean "people who can be counted on to do the right thing, are self-policing, and don't require a big government to force them to do the right thing.........."right thing" being defined by that big government. What has been amply demonstrated by these election results is that 51% of the people in this country are no longer virtuous. The reason that is so is because virtue has to be taught. Human beings are NOT innately virtuous, and unless they are taught virtue in their homes and in their schools, they will not learn it on their own. And today's parents are old enough that they are themselves products of an educational system that not only does not teach virtue, but which in some cases actively and intentionally destroys virtue. How then can these parents be expected to teach virtue in their children in their own homes?On the night of the election, once it became clear which course the nation chose, I received an email from a fellow activist with the subject line “1776-2012,” a pronouncement of death for the idea that was America. While many may dismiss such proclamations as sour grapes, reflection confirms more truth than hyperbole.
Consider: If the quintessential American idea is the one articulated in our Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” then the developments of the past four years culminating in the re-election of the most radical executive in the nation’s history is its eulogy.
The passage of Obamacare demonstrated that the Democratic Party was willing to abandon all pretense of representative government in order to secure power over individual lives. The upholding of that law by the Supreme Court demonstrated that the Constitution is effectively meaningless. Tragic as those developments were, this — the electoral affirmation of President Barack Obama — is a crowning catastrophe. It signals more than political or legal corruption. It indicates a cultural sea change whereby the People have rejected the Declaration. To survive and one day thrive, it is critical that the Tea Party accept this reality.
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In the aftermath of the election, we wonder what we could have done better. However, seeking to improve upon failed means will only perpetuate defeat. The Tea Party needs to fundamentally reevaluate its cultural posture and its methods of activism. The popular comforting belief that there exists a silent, center-right majority eager to be led to political victory must be abandoned. We must somberly accept that a century of patient, persistent, planned cultural corruption by self-styled progressives has rotted out from within what no external enemy could breach.
That does not mean that we give up the fight. It does mean we must change our rules of engagement to fit the facts on the ground. In war, you would not enter battle assuming that conditions in the field were somehow better than your intelligence suggests. Yet that is what many of us did throughout the 2012 election season. Never mind the polls, we’re winning! Perhaps no group was more emblematic of this mindset than the diehard supporters of Ron Paul, who proceeded so convinced of their inevitable victory that successive defeats were regarded as sure evidence of fraud.
We have to get real, and the reality is bleak.
The article proposes an online private subscriber based educational system as an example of one of these "alternate" societal structures. Subscription rates could be set at $9.95/month/child, which is affordable to the VAAAAAST majority of people even of modest means. Classes would be online, and the subject matter taught would be what could be called a "classic education." A system like this could teach virtue along with the "three 'Rs'." The author points out that there are over 4,000,000 children currently enrolled in private schools in the U.S. If you could put that within the financial reach of most Americans, and multiply that by $9.95/month, that would be a potential operating budget in the billions of dollars. Mind you, I have nothing against home schooling at all, but the problem with it is that it is often not within the financial or practical grasp of people who depend on two incomes to make ends meet; or, it may not be possible for a parent to afford the cost of materials; or, they may not have access to an organized curriculum. Whatever. An online affordable subscriber based education is a viable alternative.
Anyway, I agree with Bill Whittle that the government is currently like the Titanic. The ship's captain and crew observed the iceberg for some period of time before hitting it. They reversed engines and threw the rudder hard over to port, but a ship that size has so much mass that it continues on its path for quite a distance before it imperceptibly at first begins to veer off that path. In the case of the Titanic, those inputs came too late, and it hit the iceberg anyway, and everyone knows what happened. This is an accurate illustration of what is currently happening with our government. Whittle maintains that EVEN IF every employee of the government, including all elected officials and unelected bureaucrats, was replaced by a conservative, the momentum of a government as large as ours is so huge that it would still take a very long time for the change in political philosophy to result in a measurable change in how government does business.
Therefore, "fighting city hall" is a losing game for the foreseeable future. Instead, you ignore city hall. You don't do anything illegal. You pay your taxes, etc., etc., but you ignore government for everything else, including education. You write off your tax money and assume that every penny of it is going to be lost to crap you don't approve it. Just write it off, and join the parallel economy.
It's an intriguing idea, particularly to me, because I believe that the federal government is irreversibly corrupted. It will NEVER change. It will only grow worse because its momentum is too large to redirect. It's a lost cause. It is time to ignore it.
Here is the video of Bill Whittle's proposed education system. It's about an hour and a half long, but it is well worth listening to. I for one am grateful because it has shown me a way out of our current mess that is viable.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=s02SypCcYIc[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... SypCcYIc#!
