A Defense of Education

I’ve read quite a bit about the events that led up to WWII and then the pathway through and in the few immediate decades following the war.  Most of it is cautionary, warning us of the dangerous paths we can easily fall into, how simply the masses can be trapped in a nightmare of their own making and see no clear way out, even if they wanted one and were not caught up in the fervor.  There is much to learn about us as a species, about the ways we slip loudly and easily into madness, how we respond to crises, and how we aren’t very good at taking criticism, accepting responsibility, and cleaning up the messes we obviously created through hideous decision-making or other behaviors/statements.  .

Here’s a sampling of the reading:

The Diary of Anne Frank [millions of people have read it, but I truly wonder how many people actually learned the moral and ethical lessons from its content]

An Interrupted Life, Etty Hillesum

The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt

Eichmann in Jerusalem: the banality of evil, Hannah Arendt

Men in Dark Times, Hannah Arendt

Responsibility and Judgment, Hannah Arendt 

Auschwitz, Bernd Naumann

Sawdust Caesar, George Seldes

Facts and Fascism, George Seldes 

Alfred Hugenberg: The radical nationalist campaign against the Weimar Republic, John Leopold

I Paid Hitler, Fritz Thyssen

Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler

The Politics of Memory, Raul Hilberg

Four Perfect Pebbles, Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal

Propaganda, Jacques Ellul

Propaganda, Edward Bernays

Nazism, 1919-1945, Volume 1, Jeremy Noakes 

Pilgrim of the Absolute, Leon Bloy

From Weimar to Hitler, E. Feuchtwanger 

The Weimar Republic 1919-1933, Ruth Henig

The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945, Lucy Dawidowicz 

The Political Diary of Alfred Rosenberg and the Onset of the Holocaust, Jurgen Matthäus and Frank Bahjor

The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, J. L. Talmon

Perpetrators, Victims, and Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, Raul Hilberg

Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

I Will Bear Witness 1933-1941: A diary of the Nazi years, Victor Klemperer

There are a few missing from the list, but you get the picture… 

When merging these together, looking at multiple perspectives and seeing, as best as possible in the brief shared opportunity provided by these memoirs, analyses, biographies, and explorations, some common threads thrust themselves forward and some deep and dark insights into the time period and the psyches of various folks from the top of Nazi leadership to the person grabbed off the streets rise up out of the ashes and dust. 

For anyone with a relatively impartial brain, all of these present a tremendous cautionary tale.  From the obvious signs of where things were going to the odd belief from many people that this would pass, it would be a rough patch, but it would dissipate and reason and common sense would prevail, from the racist and nationalistic approach of the Nazis from day 1 to the inevitable destruction, genocide, and degradation, and all points in between, we have much to learn from this terrible and terrifying time.  

How can anyone support ICE and claim they only want immigrants to enter legally when we have …

Randomly profiled and detained over 175 legal US citizens and almost all were incarcerated without any form of due process [legally guaranteed by the US Constitution and at least formerly by SCOTUS]?

Detained and deported [without due process of law or with a strong-arm form of expedited legal gamesmanship where immigration judges were ordered to reject claims or documents] former military and US personnel translators, embassy workers/employees, and allied soldiers and people of various sorts from warzones we created in Afghanistan and Iraq who were here legally and sent them to their obvious execution in their country of origin?

Detained and deported [again without due process of law as per above] people here with legal documentation and who followed all proper protocols and processes, many of whom came from dangerous situations in their country of origin [policemen from drug infested locations who worked with the US in the so-called war on drugs, sex trafficked children and women, and various people abused by drug lords and political strongmen]?

Detained and deported people who have lived legally in the US for decades but were found to have committed a minor crime [one bad check, an unpaid speeding ticket…] that they had long since taken care of and cleared and whose entire known and immediate family resides in the US and they have not lived in their country of origin since they were children, if at all?  One argument that comes up is the morals clause or idea that they need to be good citizens/people, but doesn’t this argument weaken when the transgression was very minor/slight, they have paid the fine or dealt properly with the offense, it was a one-off, and the person is/was contrite?  Is it a potential issue/legal argument that our president is an unrepentant convicted felon which runs counter to the morals and citizenship idea?

Deported people [yet again without due process] not to their country of origin but to a third party country that we pay to hold these folks as prisoners?  Since they do not even speak the language of this third country, how are they to survive and ensure proper treatment? 

Explain how these and similar wrongs make a right.  How does harm to even one of these people and therefore also to our reputation in the world [because we send people back to their deaths in their country of origin] serve the nation in any way?  How can we, in any way, shape, or form, justify harm to even one person in the pursuit of what some deem justice or some other concept?

How can we not equate ICE, in its present form and with its present processes/actions [random street stops, pepper spraying people who merely stand in their way, physically abusing and assaulting US citizens, lying about detention processes…], with the SS from Germany in the 1930s and 40s?  Many of the SS serving in similar capacities as camp guards and rounding up folks in various locations were initially labeled or judged as not fit for military service, so they gravitated to these roles. Because of their background, they would later, almost to a man, claim they were just following orders or they were merely doing the job as best as they saw fit, even if it was against the actual written orders from the commanding personnel, so how do we not draw similarities?  

Explain to me how we can say we have a moral high ground in any of this?

How can we claim to support police, to back the blue, when we release January 6th insurrectionists after they were legally convicted of, in some cases, rather heinous crimes against those same men and women in blue and many of these people later committed often violent crimes resulting in reincarceration and in a few cases death in a shoot out with police?  How can we claim this when ICE [that same force mentioned above] personnel pepper spray police officers in the line of duty and service and when we usurp their local power by sending in the national guard without the consent of the state or its elected officials and leaders?  

How can we say things like “Thank you for your service” to members of the military, and then cry out about no new taxes, cut my taxes… all of which cut services for veterans?  Mind you, we as a nation have never treated our veterans properly dating back to the Revolutionary War and all the way to today.  Once it’s over, once we’re done with them, we say thank you and generally forget them, so it’s not a new thing, but the showiness of the “Thank you for your service” is new, so how can we justify saying it when we really don’t mean it?  How can we say this when we don’t want to pay for mental health services, drug treatments, long term [or in many cases even short term] proper and above average care, homeless relocation and assistance for these same veterans?  If we actually cared and meant it, why in God’s name would we need anything like Wounded Warriors?  

How can we claim, again in any way, shape, or form, to be a moral nation, a Christian nation, or a nation which exists on moral high ground [better than our neighbors and other nations/peoples] when we have a convicted felon as president, a man who has over 25 women who have justifiably claimed sexual harassment or assault, or worse, from the man who now sits in the White House, and a man who closely associated pedophiles, child abusers, and people who peddled them to the rich and famous and who himself, according to the sworn testimony of several of these young girls, partook of the sexual abuse/rape/assault?  Other than deny, attack, and threaten his accusers and obfuscate and delay any relevant information related to the pedophilia, where has he been contrite or remorseful?  Where has he demonstrated a desire for forgiveness and redemption?  Quite arguably, you can hate the sin but love the sinner, but does that mean electing/lifting the sinner to the highest office in the land and turning a blind eye to the sin or covering it up?  Are there no consequences for the sinner’s actions and statements?  If not, then on what possible ground can we claim to be a moral, Christian, or even slightly ethical nation?  Who or what would be our moral or Christian role model?  

First and foremost, the words Christian and Nation should never be used is such close proximity. Where in the New Testament does Christ support one nation over another, accept a governmental system or leader, or say to make or force [through legislation or other forms of power or coercion] a nation into a system of believers? Where does He say to create laws to force people to obey His teachings? Again, I mentioned this before in other posts, but what do these idiotic and self-serving laws have to do with fulfilling the mission and walking in His steps?

Secondly, how can anyone see Christ through someone who falls at the feet of an earthly leader, particularly one who has said and done so many sinful and heinous things? No Christian should bow down before, worship, or idolize any leader or any human being... Period. No wiggle room in the Scriptures here. None. As much as I may respect and love a pastor, religious leader, or person, I do not make excuses for them and I would never idolize them or put them on a pedestal. No self-proclaimed Christian should ever even slightly put an earthly leader anywhere near Christ [although we may pray for them to have His wisdom, to see through His eyes and Words]. Who in the NT stands as a leader beside Christ? The closest is John the Baptist. That's it. Anything else is truly a golden calf. Truly, I say unto you that by following an earthly leader, you demonstrate your need for a visible/tangible heroic or God-like figure to worship because your faith in the unseen Christ is weaker than you can see or understand. You show, in every step and word, the lack of faith in Christ and the utter faith and devotion to an earthly power, dominion, or principality. If you look at yourself through the eyes of one seeking Christ, wanting to believe and have true faith, how have you shown that person the way through your actions and words in harmony with Christ and His actual words?

Several years ago, in the early stages of this whimsical idea of teacher accountability and how to score/grade/gauge it, I received an interesting phone call from the Advanced Placement folks asking if I was free for a few days to attend an educational scoring opportunity at Stanford. Sure, why not?

Flight paid for, so I was picked up by a limo at the airport, driven to a hotel right beside Stanford's beautiful campus, and given an itinerary...

The next morning, I, along with about 20 other educators, showed up in a small conference room in the Education Building. We were met by a team of researchers and Carol Dweck, the author of Mindsets, then a new book just recently on the shelves but with years of background and prep. They told us we were there to help them fine tune and gauge the potential of a teacher observation program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was called: PLATO [and there were others around the nation working with different observational tools and criteria for each subject in school] - the Protocol for Language Arts Teacher Observation.

All of us were dumbfounded and resistant. Suspicions about APs involvement, how the tool might be used, why this tool... and more popped poured out from various of my fellow educators. Then one of the researches said something like this: "This is the train we're on, and we want to build the best tool we can to make the ride work." Then most of us shut up. We realized that this new buzz phrase of accountability was here to stay, even though it appeared that nobody who created it [politicians and special interest groups] and promoted the mythos behind it [all media on all sides of the political and opinion spectra] were ever held accountable for their failures.

I won't go into the details of the scoring mechanisms other that to tell you that we watched videos of classroom Language Arts teachers in grades 3-6 from around the nation. They were paid a small stipend to allow a 360 and a front-facing camera in their classroom to record their teaching for a specified number of days/weeks. It was not all classes, and these were volunteers who believed they were doing a good job and whom the administrators in their schools believed were above average educators.

While watching these videos we scored the teachers on various things like feedback, direct instruction... and so on. Anyway, I got a chance to see educators from around the US giving it their supposed best, and I was appalled. We were instructed not to judge but to score, and for the purposes of the scoring mechanism, I did that, but as a professional educator who takes the process and importance of education very seriously, it was disturbing. Of the 50+ educators I witnessed and scored, only two showed any signs of actually doing anything productive and meaningful/useful... Some were utterly horrifying in the failures. Besides all this, later I was drowned out of the program. Ha, and here was the reason: my scoring was off. Ha, I asked for feedback, one of the criteria in effective teaching and instruction, and NEVER got any from Stanford. Ha, ha, ha... We were scoring other educators on their ability to provide it, but we never received it to help us with scoring. Lord love the system that created that.

For any US citizen who even slightly calls himself patriotic, if you care even the slightest for veterans of foreign wars, and if you dare to know history kept out of textbooks, out of classrooms, but that is 100% accurate and true, then read the story of Maj. General Smedley Butler, USMC.

The most decorated US Marine in history, and deservedly so, he foiled a plot by the powerful and monied interests to launch a coup to remove FDR from the White House and replace him with a person more in line with Mussolini. The industrialists and bankers, the oil men and their wealth, also controlled major media back then, so Butler was ridiculed and erased from history by the mainstream, even though the congressional hearings into the coup attempt said he was truthful and these events happened, but it was 1933, and money talks, like it does today.

After this fail, the monied interests played the long game to eliminate the New Deal and to impoverish the people of the US and make them more and more dependent upon them. The proceeded to purchase politicians and political parties, all so they could remove protections for the common folks [things like unemployment insurance, universal education, social security, medicare and health care... and to privatize everything and leave almost the entire government in the hands of their greedy tentacles]. Over the last 90 or so years, they have managed much success [look at Project 2025, the GOP platform, look at how we treat education and how the word "entitlement" is used for social security and medicare when working people have paid into it their entire lives, look at how they have managed to divide us into the most idiotic camps, how they've propped up a character who will do exactly what they want and do it for cash and judicial leniency...].

If it weren't for another journalist, mostly lost to history because he spoke the truth and called them out, George Seldes, I would never have known the amazing man Major General Smedley Butler. I would not have known his story, as initially told to me through Seldes, then through Butler's own writings... I would never have read "War is a Racket" and understood how vile Douglas McArthur and George Patton were, and how they smashed veterans.

Several things have bothered me for years, festering if you will in the face of cries of self-proclaimed exclusivity to patriotism, a US-centered view of the world and history, denials/removals/avoidance of facts in our actual history, this apparent need by some factors of US citizens and residents to promote a very particular view of the nation without recognizing the long and complex history of our relationships with other nations and cherry-picking or completely rejecting the existence of such things – this idea that we did it ourselves and it’s all about us, and finally the cries and screeches that we are either perfect the way we are or should revert back to some woebegone era in the past that is either fantasy or a perversion of actual facts and evidence. 

Please permit a few questions, some facts, and perhaps a comment or two related to these various important aspects of our nation. 

First a statement of opinion: No person, group, organization, media, political party, state, or entity has a monopoly on or exclusive and singular ownership of this very idealistic and sometimes very dangerous concept of patriotism.  Is patriotism support for your country no matter what?  If it commits atrocities and crimes against its own citizens or against neighbors, do we owe a debt of “patriotism” [by whatever definition you decide and like] to it?  Is patriotism unwavering support for a person or group within the nation that claims to be the most patriotic?  Related to the prior questions, is patriotism the pure and simple obedience to any and all aspects of, statements by, and decrees from the nation’s leadership?   Is patriotism questioning the institutions and systems, the citizens, the groups, the parties, corporations, and finding ways to do what we do and serve all the people well?  Is it continuing the ideas and messages of our founding fathers or is it using their general concepts to build a greater future?  Is patriotism somehow related to religion?  Why and on what basis?  Is patriotism of any value at all?  Is it just getting all bubbly and warm inside, perhaps even shedding a tear during the national anthem at a sporting event or simply supporting our troops?  Is patriotism necessary?

Looking at these questions and exploring them is vital to our future, if indeed we are to actually have one.  Is there only one definition of patriotism, and is it found in Webster’s Dictionary?  Is the definition more fluid and dynamic or it it solid and static?  The answers to these questions speak volumes about your thought processes, morality, ethics, and belief systems, how you view the nation and its people.  By whatever definition and system you come up with for yourself, I would hope you would at least ask these questions and then take your answer to the extremes of how it might affect the nation and its people, the future. 

Personally, I believe that people who have to throw up flags on their cars or trucks, have so many on their property [to make it like a shrine of sorts], border on idolatry in the Christian sense and lean to followership and blind obedience, but not the government per se but to a leader or entity they believe fulfills their definition of patriotism.  If you have explored these questions or similar ones and have decided upon a necessity for the term and its related ideas to which you ascribe, and you have taken the exploration seriously and not relied on some group, person, or entity to drive the definition into your head and heart, then I respect your decision [although I may not accept your definition].  We are not clones and copies, so variation will exist and is absolutely healthy for our future and development. 

Let’s debunk this idea that we formed our own country without any help from or allegiances to other nations or people, and that we have won all these wars or fought against terrorism all by ourselves, and while doing this dispel the incorrect ideas that we don’t have or don’t need allies and that we don’t need other countries for anything. 

Let’s begin with the Revolutionary War, our first president, and the founding fathers, who, while they stated outwardly the importance of not forming permanent allegiances formed many crucial ties and agreements with nations in order to survive and divide the nation from British rule.  Chief among our agreements, even before the first shots were fired, was with the French.  They supplied money, troops, weapons, and supplies to the Revolutionary Army but only after negotiations and agreements reached after some of our founding fathers spent time there.  We relied on the French and Spanish navies for support and defense against the British.  Spain also provided supplies and munitions to the cause of our rebellion against the British and by intervening in the West Indies, which was also in its own interests, and making New Orleans as a base for privateers and seizing the British posts in West Florida, thus seriously impacting all British shipping and supply lines.  The Dutch also provided much needed aid and went to war against Britain [opening another front], and the Czarina of Russia helped by obstructing British naval power… So how much of this do we study in our schools?  How much of this is accepted and considered in our present foreign policy and relations with the peoples of those nations?  How much should be?  Did we win the Revolutionary War all by ourselves?  The answer is NO. 

Oh, and that foreigner go home crap, well, please don’t forget that the Treaty [or Peace] of Paris signed after the Revolutionary War or War of Independence, allotted everything west of the Mississippi and everything south of a line which now creates Florida to Spain, so the Spanish owned it…  Just saying that when some folks in the US go off on or critique people of Spanish origin, well, they were quite literally here first.  In various ways, some of them very bloody, we took their homes. 

Okay, well certainly the Civil War was just all about us…  Nope.  What other countries helped the Union win the war?  Well, let’s start with the fact that no other nations recognized the Confederate States when they broke away, thus diplomatically and financially stranding and isolating the southern insurrectionist states.  So what?  Well, if these other nations, particularly the world powers of the day, decided to work against the Union, there was high probability that the war continues for years and years, hundreds of thousands more dead, and an uncertain outcome.  We also relied upon, yes, you guessed it, Britain for naval support to ensure the economic blockade of the southern states [as much as they were able due to their ships sailing all over the seven seas].  Oh, and here’s one for you.  Russia.  Yup, that place, pre-Lenin, sent naval vessels to help secure the northern states and support our small navy.  So did we do this ourselves?  Again the answer is no. 

The Spanish-American War, which engulfed the US in global conquests and issues because it involved not only Cuba and Puerto Rico, but also the Philippines and Guam, stretched our small military and navy to its maximum at home, near home, and far away.  Without agreements with France and Great Britain, and naval support primarily from Britain, we would have lost.  Period. 

Dammit…  Did we do anything without the help of other nations?  Well, honestly, no. 

Didn’t we save Europe during WWI and WWII?  Well, we certainly helped a great deal, but we often forget that the armed forces arrayed against our declared allies were often using US steel and manufactured goods in their military equipment, so when we fought in both wars not only were allied troops killed by US built machines, but later so young American lives were taken by materials formed in the US.  If we take the sinking of the Lusitania as the spark for our final decision to engage in WWI, then the submarine and the torpedo used to sink the ship contained hundreds of components either constructed by materials from or actually built in the US.  Given our history with Britain and France, complex though they were to this point, we kind of owed them something. 

In WWII, even with factions of people in the US supporting Hitler and Nazi Germany, chief among them the famous aviator Charles Lindburgh and the “America First” movement, when the Japanese [arguably not without some provocation] attacked Pearl Harbor, all our efforts went into defeating the Axis powers and so good ol’ Chuck and America First took a backseat to our revenge and re-establishment of deeper alliances with our European allies, France and Britain. 

Hey, how about more modern wars like Vietnam and Korea?  Gulf War I?  Afghanistan?  Iraq?  Present day war against terrorism?

Apparently we need a history lesson. 

Korea?  Yes, I know many countries were involved, but we did it ourselves, right?  We defended the Koreans from the nasty Chinese?  Well, besides the Koreans, you also had troops and support from Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Greece, The Philippines, Ethiopia, France, Belgium, and Colombia.  Some nations sent expeditionary forces: South Africa, Netherlands, Turkey, and Luxemburg.  Still other nations like India, Norway, Sweden, and Iran contributed support and medical personnel.  Hmmm, so not alone then.  We did not do it ourselves. 

Okay, screw you…  Vietnam was America’s War.  Ha, not so fast.  First it was the French-Indochina War, and we left the French out to dry after the end of the Korean War [they were plastered by US made artillery captured by the Chinese and shipped to Ho Chi Minh’s forces and then pounded by the best artillery the Chinese and Russians could provide].  Thank you Korean War…  However, when we got involved, we did it alone, right?  Nope.  Not even.  The South Koreans sent hundreds of thousands of troops and support personnel.  Other countries that provided troops?  Well, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand with Spain, The Philippines, and Taiwan sending personnel.  This does not include UN troops used to man the DMZ…

Hopefully recent history does not forget the support from our NATO and other allies in the wake of 9/11, both militarily and otherwise in the War in Afghanistan against the Taliban.  If it does, well, all I can say is how sad that you have forgotten or neglected to consider all those who fought in support of our cause in that war.  At a peak, over 130,000 non-US troops served in the war, with countries like Denmark, Germany, Canada, Great Britain, Turkey, Italy…  the list is over 30 nations engaged in helping us on land and sea as well as in the air. 

Not as many helped in Iraq, but that was because the evidence was flimsy and in some cases deeply flawed, but we were on a mission [for what?  Since Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and spent much of his reign imprisoning or executing extremists and remember he fought a bloody war with Iran, our apparent sworn enemy], but still Denmark, Australia, Great Britain, Poland… and more helped out there. 

Heck almost everyone was involved in the Gulf War to kick Saddam out of Kuwait…  so that was a communal effort, even if it fired up Osama bin Laden and his band of idol-worshipping followers. 

Recently, to express and enforce our foreign policy and keep our assets and corporate interests safe and sound, we have maneuvered the African Union nations and troops to do the fighting in our stead, so we use proxy troops to keep our global business profits alive and well.

Double and triple dammit… 

So the story of American Exceptionalism, the Monroe Doctrine, our growth into a world power, our might and size, our borders and our ownership of the land, now and always [even before we struck for Independence], our doing it all alone, not needing anyone, and all that related garbage…  It’s got a lot of holes and a lot of questions. 

Why? Even our forefathers in the first United States realized and understood the dangers and detriments of party politics and fictitious, convenient, and deliberately divisive nature of and forces behind them. Nothing has changed for the better over the decades.

Do we follow them out of habit, a form of simple-minded followership or idolatry? Because mom, dad, my friend... followed this artificial entity, and so I owe [and swear] my allegiance to it?

Do we fall in line and mouth the same words and mindsets because it gives us all manner of pre-packaged "ideas" and "opinions" about things we could never really know anything about [as in the present economy, the various global conflicts... oil pricing... unless we had multiple degrees and ongoing studies with fingers directly on the pulse of one thing, we cannot know all, but just a vague notion of it, like if we have never been to Paris, France but have ideas and opinions about the city]? Is it because we don't have to think? It's already done for us by the media, the talking heads, attached like a barnacle to some parties and then the actual party itself?

Do we simply want to feed our narrowed cultural and societal biases by gravitating to a group that feeds our need for acceptance, our need to feel and be right [and righteous], and our intellectual laziness combined with our need for instantaneous all-at-once answers and black and white thinking?

This issue of making any issue or aspect of governing and life ridiculously simpleminded by bifurcating everything into black/white, yes/no... types of and pre-packaged responses, pseudo-thoughts, and vagaries eliminates all exploration and probing into the gray areas, where actual helpful and deeply thought out answers and solutions exist and common ground and reduced idiocy can be found. This oversimplification into party-prepped and exported black/white, right/wrong, yes/no, good/bad... presses people and systems into a narrow window and forces confrontation and foments anger and division.

Or do we follow out of a sad and personally unrecognized need for fulfillment and simple acceptance by others - the need to belong?

People make up all sorts of feeble and truly vacant reasons for sucking up to and into a political party, anything other than deep reflection on choices, morality, ethics, and helping each other. What if we abolished parties and affiliations and simple voted for the best person for the job - the most qualified, the most moral, most ethical... most experienced? The person who had genuine ideas and possible answers, who could represent our interests, not merely follow the dictates and whims of the crowd?