"Darwin, Einstein and John Dewey”
On the average, democracies usually last for up to two hundred and fifty years. That historical pattern gives the United States of America around three more decades until we're put on artificial life support, our systemic malady principally caused by moral decay, by legal and political corruption and by widespread economic inefficiency. Yes, since WW I we've created a grotesque-looking Ponzi pyramid.
In another thirty years government spending will drastically exceed GNP (Gross National Production), seventy percent of the burgeoning American population will not be paying federal income taxes, and also, more money will be going out of Social Security and out of Medicare than entering into those specific government program safety nets. At present, our U.S. total federal, state and local government expenditure is 39% of GNP, when 20% is the most desirable percentage ratio in order to fully assure national economic stability.
What obscure factors besides government waste and federal and state over-regulation will ultimately accelerate the demise of the USA? It is this writer's contention that the decline of America will be attributable to an extension of the philosophies and teachings of three currently venerated individuals: Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and John Dewey.
Back in the early 1900s, Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution was not exclusively confined to the scientific realm. Instead, Evolution's basic premise of continuous change (along with an expanding spiral progressively developing) bled over into such social disciplines as political science, psychology, the law and most dramatically, American education. Nothing in today's reality (not even God) is “absolute.” Everything constantly changes and mutates into something else! Is not “change” the watchword of our time in American history?
Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin were indeed highly influenced with the notion of Darwin's Evolution. Those two political intellectuals reasoned that in ancient times mankind had Aristocracies (warlords, city-state rulers and local despots). Eventually the existence of Aristocracy melded into Monarchy with one king controlling all activity within a certain region or country. And then in 1776, rebellion against King George III's tyranny resulted in the Revolutionary War, and with great inspiration, a fantastic rebirth combining Greek Athenian Democracy and the concept of the Roman Republic's law and order gradually integrated into what is now the United States of America.
Marx and Lenin (being affected by Darwinian Theory), believed that Democracy would surely evolve into Socialism and Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin, theorized that Bolshevik Socialism should predictably evolve into another predestined disaster, Soviet Russian Communism. Just think of the millions of innocent victims that had (and have) died under the aegis of inflexible iron-fisted Communist doctrine!
Isn't it a marvelous miracle that the USA (along with its free enterprise and free market capitalist system) has over the course of the last century proven Marx, Lenin and Stalin to be total political frauds? And yet, with the obvious fact that Soviet Socialism and militant Communism have both miserably failed as evidenced with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, ironically, the USA today is rapidly moving in the direction of Socialism to attempt solving its proliferating domestic woes?
But don't despair! There is still time for economic salvation once Americans come to their senses. If everyone in the U.S. took responsibility for their own lives and pulled their own weight in this land of abundant opportunity and free public school education, then government could wisely shrink-down to twenty percent of GNP from its current 39% level and our REPUBLIC (respect for law and order) could be effectively preserved and future financial disaster could be strategically averted. But first things first: For our time-honored traditions (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, 4th of July, etc.) and our all-important historical heritage to adequately survive, political evolution, societal flux and class warfare must be removed from American culture.
Yes, Americans are truly living in the closest thing to a Utopia that can be manifested by man on this good Earth. When Judas Iscariot challenged Jesus, “Why do you spend our money on expensive oils when the money could be spent on the poor?” Jesus simply and succinctly answered, “Judas, there will be poor always!”
But unlike almost any other culture on this planet, the United States affords all its citizens the opportunity to take risks, to succeed (or to fail), and to engage in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and finally, “individual opportunity” along with freedom of education to advance and to become upwardly mobile, all of these wonderful “liberties” based on individual initiative, individual determination, individual motivation and individual perseverance.
Let's examine history. The only real success at democracy (following a revolution) had occurred after July 4th, 1776 in Philadelphia's Independence Hall, and then over a decade of extremely difficult growing pains, regional rebellions and full-blown arguments over the tenets of the Articles of Confederation had ensued, but, finally, the U.S. Constitution had been drafted and signed in 1787, with the “democratic” Bill of Rights being completely ratified in 1795, nearly twenty years after the famous Declaration of Independence had been authored and proclaimed. All of that exhaustive and dangerous establishment of American democracy (the Republic) required nearly two decades of great sacrifice to complete.
Now look at what had happened in France after the French Revolution: Anarchy, a Reign of Terror and the tyranny of Napoleon came to be. What about the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917? Socialism eventually evolving into Communism? Remember the film Dr. Zhivago? The good humanitarian doctor returns to Moscow after the “People's Revolution” and finds his house occupied by a rabble of belligerent dissidents that threaten to evict Zhivago from his own property if he doesn't abide by their mob-rule control.
And what about the infamous Nazi Revolution in pre-WWII Germany and the accompanying Fascist Revolt in Italy? How did Hitler and Mussolini ever improve their countries without thoroughly devastating Germany, Europe and Italy in the end? And how about the recent Iranian Revolution against the Shah? How did that historical phenomenon work out for the still-dominated and exploited natives of Iran?
And how could we be naïve and gullible enough to assume that good things are now going to happen in Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Syria after their bloody “Revolutions!” More theocratic Mullahs sponsored by the radical Islamic/Muslim Brotherhoods perhaps! How about a little Middle-East separation of “Mosque and State” like we have a fundamental division of “church and state” right here in America!
And what about Albert Einstein's colossal impact on American culture? With the Theory of Relativity came the unique notion that everything in society is “relative”: nothing anywhere in America (save death and taxes) is absolute, permanent and fixed. And so now we have such things as the Bill of Rights to the Constitution coming into conflict with widely-recognized traditional American family values. The First Ten Amendments (under the guise of freedom of speech and freedom of expression) are now insidiously undermining the Ten Commandments handed-down to Moses on Mt. Sinai.
Take this rather disturbing gay rights marriage issue for example in regard to what Einstein's relativity has mutated into. Remember: today everything is evolving and must be 'Relative” and not “Absolute” (God's Ten Stone Tablet Laws). Two iconic Commandments are: “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother” and “Thou Shall not covet thy neighbor's wife!”
Think about those two Commandments for a second. The principal purpose of heterosexual (man-woman) marriage is to biologically conceive children and then to nurture them through mature parenting skills. The very vocal gay and lesbian political activists want gays to get married, to adopt children and then to have loving families.
Now someone please explain this paradoxical situation to me. How could an adopted child with gay “parents” know who the mother is if two males are his or her parents? If two lesbians are his or her parents, which one is the father according to the very explicit Commandment: “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother?” And if two gay married men are living next door, according to the Ninth Commandment, which one is “thy neighbor's wife” to be coveted?
Under recent gay rights' laws, the idea of certain “sins” against God has been totally eradicated and “sin” is now basically obsolete and “relative.” And needless to say, a woman's right to choose or to have an “Abortion” too violates the Stone Tablets' ABSOLTE Commandments because a conceived child is sinfully killed, “Thou Shall Not Kill,” and has no opportunity whatsoever to ever honor either a mother or a father. And indeed, if the very vocal in-your-face abortion rights activists had been themselves aborted before birth by a “Right to Choose” mother, we would not be having any legal wrangles with the whole lot of them at present. Was Sodom and Gomorrah a Biblical myth or could it soon again be happening right here in America? I'll let you be the judge of that!
Finally, John Dewey is the “father of modern-day American public school education.” Dewey was a sociologist, a psychologist in addition to being an educator, and his “Revolutionary” classroom theories had been drastically influenced by Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution and by Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity. John Dewey was undeniably a confirmed Socialist, and most of our contemporary public school teaching methods and practices are based on the socialistic idea of “sharing” in a “community (commune) classroom” atmosphere.
Dewey espoused the idea that “children learn by doing,” and I often wonder if this particular theory of his pertains to the literal teaching of sex education inside the classroom, for without a doubt, the rampant implementation of sex education seems to be quite pervasive among brazen and indiscriminate young teenagers in numerous environments outside the classroom.
Socialism in our public schools is stealthily taught under the guise of ever-evolving “democratic education.” American free enterprise in the form of student classroom competition is de-emphasized by modern educational psychology. Individual academic achievement is often discouraged in deference to group (class) accomplishment. Soon there will be no honored valedictorians or salutatorians at high school or college graduations because being “outstanding” or being “excellent” automatically makes the other lower-ability students in attendance look publicly bad and makes them feel inferior in comparison.
In order for it to be successful, mediocrity must be both promoted and maintained in John Dewey's anemic academic performance system, so when public school teachers put kids into classroom “groups,” the students that want to succeed wind-up doing the bulk of the “group's work” so that they could get decent grades while the less-motivated (and socially deprived) freeloaders get by with almost the same recognition given by the teacher, and if you further examine our current American economic welfare system, the productive members of society are encumbered with carrying the weight of the un-motivated adult masses on their backs.
And so, classrooms all over the American landscape are slowly-but-surely evolving into miniature European-style socialistic “nanny states,” both tolerating and promoting academic mediocrity to guarantee the continuation of John Dewey's counter-productive Socialist Education System.
Dewey's egregious educational quagmire and his associated quixotic child psychology enforcement has, over the decades, negatively led to child-centered families and to child-centered classrooms. Parents have been demoted in the home and teachers have essentially been demoted in the classroom and are now labeled in academic jargon as “educational facilitators.” Free enterprise (student class and subject competition) has been conveniently junked to accommodate John Dewey's lunacy in regard to socialistic “class democratic” education. But forget the euphemisms! Students that aspire to academic excellence are wickedly stifled from doing so by Dewey-centered classroom mandates, those ambitious kids being falsely labeled as being “arrogant,” “self-centered,” “selfish” and “uncaring” about the “group.”
Sure as oxygen, we do have plenty of students hibernating and vegetating in “group-dominated classrooms,” idealistically wanting to change the world for the better, but those sedentary, callow, well-intentioned sorry souls lack the skill and the talent to successfully attain their dreams of a better America. It is only when our students learn to pursue their own self-actualization and to introspectively explore their own individuality through dedication and through ambition that those presently victimized young people will learn to mature (not evolve) into responsible adults, contributing to society and distinguishing themselves through community service, charity, compassion and a noteworthy career.
But first American education must reject John Dewey's detrimental “socialistic group-sharing” system and in keeping with competitive free enterprise capitalistic democracy, everyone attending public school must drop this “group-sharing nonsense” and modify their behavior to confidently believe in themselves. Is there any wonder why many astute parents elect to ignore lackluster public school education and send their children to private and to parochial schools?
While growing-up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, my father had taught me several cherished principles that to this very day still govern my life. Be self-reliant and try helping others who are temporarily having bad luck, and then there was Dad's favorite bit of advice, “The world doesn't owe you a living so learn to distinguish yourself! Show some passion about achieving your personal dreams and goals!”
Americans must have both “the dream” and “the drive,” but unfortunately, many of us lack that second vital and more necessary quality: that is, a deliberate plan to achieve “the dream” through strong labor and relentless desire. Yes, twenty-three-thousand or so dollars might now be the standard “Poverty Level” for a family of four, but if a motivated person living in the U.S. makes 50 thousand dollars and pays income tax on salary, property tax for a house, state income tax, state sales tax, gas tax, federal withholding tax, etc., then money-wise, he or she is as good as being on welfare too while simultaneously having the burden of working for a living to support a family!
And for those critics out there that will insist that I am guilty of discrimination, they are ABSOLUTEly right! I do possess discriminating tastes and values! Throughout history, right has always discriminated against wrong, good has always discriminated against evil and morality has always discriminated against immorality, otherwise, in stark contrast, there would be no distinct difference between the two polarized entities, namely, good and evil, the two diametrically-opposed forces blending eventually into the same existence and also into the same definition, just as radical left-wing rights' activists want to legitimize and finalize!
So in the final analysis, thanks to Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein's theories as catastrophically interpreted by the disillusioned Socialist John Dewey, our present dysfunctional American public school educational system, our litigious-oriented legal system and our corrupt political system (along with our ever-evolving and ever-relative morality) are entirely convoluted and presently without clarity or focus,and consequently, the United States of America is soon on the verge of entering a self-destruct mode!
Jay Dubya (author of 55 books)
John Wiessner
