Follow-ups based on third-party texts (political violence, gender-studies, homeschooling)

A few follow-ups to earlier texts:

1. I recently noted that, among other things, “political violence tends to come from the Left” ([1]).

   To this, I want to point to an excellent overview of the U.S. situation by Pat Buchanan.

   As an aside, I also wrote “the [Left–‘Right’] difference has historically been far smaller in the U.S. than in e.g. Sweden and Germany”. Buchanan’s list makes me wonder whether this is actually true. It might well be that I based my judgment too much on the Democrats as opposed to the U.S. Left as a whole, the change over time possibly being that the “extra-Democrat” portions have now become “intra-Democrat”; or it might be that the historical* reporting on various U.S. events, developments, and attitudes has been too lacking in objectivity and completeness** in Sweden and Germany. I note e.g. a much harsher take on the-U.S.-in-Vietnam than on the-USSR-in-Afghanistan in Swedish news.

   *I was born in 1975, and significant portions took place before I was born or was old enough to follow the “live” reporting. (Not that I necessarily expect this “live” reporting to have been stronger in objectivity and whatnot.)

   **Foreign news and history are, usually and naturally, given less space than domestic news and history.

2. A while back, I wrote about a recanting Homeopath, her journey and problems, and how this was similar to the quackery of large parts of the modern Left ([2]). I recently encountered a similar text by a recanting gender-studies Ph.D.. While her journey is somewhat different, there are similarities, and some additional insight can be gained into how educated people can believe idiotic things. Further, the text shows quite a few of the problems with e.g. gender-studies that I have discussed in the past.
3. The aforementioned text mentions that homeschooling might be under attack—something which would remove a refuge from Leftist indoctrination and the inefficient school system, and which I have long feared (cf. portions of [3]). My fears have been increasing greatly recently, as even many Conservative debaters are yelling that children must be brought back to the classroom in the wake of COVID-enforced remote education.* She points to a specific attack in Harvard Magazine, which makes a number of poor arguments.

   *This is not strictly comparable to homeschooling, e.g. because the home-schooling parents of today (or pre-COVID) show a greater dedication than generic teachers, because remote education has many issues to be sorted out, because not all children are necessarily suited for the greater responsibilities, and similar. Nevertheless, this increases the threat against homeschooling proper.

   These include:

   That abusive parents might go undetected, never mind that these form a small minority and that the purpose of school is not to serve as a means of spying on parents. In fact, doing so is ethically dubious and might be a greater evil than the small proportion of abusive parents, as this type of spying can easily be extended to other areas, e.g. parents with the “wrong” political opinions. By rumor, it is indeed often extended. This argument also fails to consider the (much?) larger risk of abuse in school.

   That some might homeschool who are bad at it, never mind that this could be easily solved by requiring (unless this is already the case) that students pass recurring tests—if in doubt, high-school diplomas are not just handed out willy-nilly to anyone who applies. Moreover, the reason for the wish to homeschool is often the abysmal quality of a local regular school … I note that this implicitly repeats one of the most common Leftist and/or educator myths, namely that the teacher and/or school matters far more than the student.* In reality, of course, it is the other way around, and the failure to realize this is one of the greatest reasons why school is an inefficient, and often ineffective, way of gaining an education.

   *This is largely a special case of the long disproved “tabula rasa” / “nurture only” view of the human mind.

   That children should “grow up exposed to…democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints”. While partially laudable on paper, the exact opposite is what happens in today’s schools, where they are to be turned into obedient little drones with the right anti-democratic values and an intolerance to those with the “wrong” opinions. As to “nondiscrimination”, this is an abuse of language and we really, really would benefit if students learned to discriminate more and better (cf. [4]). However, even if the distorted Leftist meaning of the word is applied, this is not what schools teach—anti-White, anti-man, and anti-“Right” discrimination is par for the course. Moreover, homeschooling is a valuable aid to ensure that there are differing viewpoints in society, while school often seems set on exterminating them.

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