What I was trying to find last week!
Bonus:
The idea of freedom -- the freedom that we in the United States know and love so well -- is derived from the Bible, with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual. Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity.
I'm going to try to do the whole Bible next year. I am not sure this is going to hold up.
Through universal education, they can now read and write and form opinions of their own.
Look, it's Liberal Education in one sentence!
If we were to measure freedom by standards of nutrition, education, and self-government, we might rank the United States and certain nations of Western Europe very high. But this would not be fair to other nations where education has become widespread only in the last 20 years. In many nations, a generation ago, 9 out of 10 of the people could not read or write.
Like in the US twenty years from now!
When the freedom-loving people march; when the farmers have an opportunity to buy land at reasonable prices and sell the produce of their land through their own organizations; when workers have the opportunity to form unions and bargain through them collectively; and when the children of all the people have an opportunity to attend schools which teach them that truth of the real world -- when these opportunities are open to everyone, then the world moves straight ahead.
But in countries where the ability to read and write has been recently acquired -- mind you, 62% of the world today do not yet know how to read and write. But in those countries where the ability has been recently acquired or where the people have had no long experience in governing themselves on the basis of their own thinking, it is easy for demagogues to arise and prostitute the mind of the common man to their own base ends. Such a demagogue may get financial help from some person of wealth who is unaware of what the end result will be. With this backing, the demagogue may dominate the minds of the people, and, from whatever degree of freedom they have, lead them back into a most degraded slavery. Herr Thyssen, the wealthy German steel man, little realized what he was doing when he gave Hitler enough money to enable him to play on the minds of the German people.
I think one of the questions of our age is, now that education (in some form) is basically a given, how do you convince people that it has value? When everyone has (by force) something, it loses its value. In reality, people need to value a quality education more today, rather than just accepting mediocre the baseline.
The demagogue is the curse of the modern world, and of all the demagogues, the worst are those financed by well-meaning wealthy men who sincerely believe that their wealth is likely to be safer if they can hire men with political "it" to change the -- the sign posts and lure the people back into slavery. Unfortunately for the wealthy men who finance movements of this sort, as well as for the people themselves, the successful demagogue is a powerful genie who, when once let out of his bottle, refuses to obey anyone's command. As long as his spell holds, he defies God Himself, and Satan is turned loose on the world.
Alright, I try not to whine about Trump on this blog, but this one speaks for itself.
The truth is that when the rights of the American people are transgressed, as these rights have been transgressed, the American people will fight with a relentless fury which will drive the ancient Teutonic gods back cowering into their caves.
Unless it comes from Americans. Democrats, I'm looking at you too on this one.
We must be especially prepared to stifle the fifth columnists in the United States who will try to sabotage not merely our war material plants but, even more important -- infinitely more important -- our minds.
How do we do this while maintaining freedom?
I don't agree with all of Wallace's speech, but it's well written, and I think it touched on a lot of the themes of this blog.
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