ARE AMERICANS TODAY “INTELLECTUALLY LACKING?”
by OPOVV, ©2014
(Feb. 26, 2014) — Welcome. Please be seated. There is no roll call for this class. I figure for unarguably the most important class of your life, there is no need for pettiness; after all, it’s your future we’ll be discussing, that and your children’s.
I once took a course in college titled “Analytical Geometry,” and there was no textbook. The instructor described it all as an exercise in how to reason, and it turned out to be one of my most fascinating classes. Another was “The Art of Motion Pictures.” But I digress: excuse me. There is no textbook in this class, either. There are unlimited opportunities to read our Constitution, which is perhaps the most easily accessible document ever recorded. At least it has been and, I hope, will continue to be.
Notice I said “I hope we’ll have easy access to the Constitution,” which is what this class is all about: the meaning of the document.
Today we’ll explain the “why” and the “what” of the reasons for “The Document.” The “why” is easy: the document was designed to limit the power of the government over the governed. The “what” is a little bit more complicated.
The weak link in the whole meaning and implementation of the Constitution is people. The Founding Fathers (NOTE: if any of you think that the wives of these “Founding Husbands” didn’t have a say in what went into the Constitution, then you’ve never been married. It really should be “The Founding Married Couples”) never envisioned the level of education to have sunk so low. A vast number of today’s voters lack the understanding of current events.
If you asked a voter 100 years ago, which is better, Freedom or Slavery, you’d get 100% choosing Freedom. Not so today. Let’s rephrase the question: which is better, small government or a big government? It’s the same question, yet the answer you’d get today would shock you. Forty-one percent would answer that Slavery/big government is preferable over Freedom/small government.
Now why is that? Why would seemingly rational people choose to limit their Freedoms? Why would people choose a direction once traveled (Revolutionary War, for instance) over a new and exciting direction, one that has a chance of improving the human condition for all? Is it because they fear life? Are they envious of risk-takers?
Why have communities lowered standards for public service? (NOTE: the underlying fallacy of Affirmative Action is, rather than train the applicants for a particular job able to pass existing requirements, the existing requirements are lowered to the lowest common denominator. The end result? We all suffer by making the United States less able to compete in the global marketplace by having unqualified people in the workforce.) Why have the entrance exams of our schools, police, firemen, and the military been lowered? Is it due to a failed public education system, or is it more than that? Maybe future government employees will ONLY be from the ranks of the undesirables, the failures, those who lack the ability to think, to reason, for themselves. Just maybe the ranks are being filled with people who will not hesitate to follow illegal orders, who will willingly trample our, yours and mine, Constitutional rights because they lack the intellectual ability to perceive their own Constitutional rights and what they mean.
That’s it for today, class. Meanwhile, I want you to think about why the Constitution affords rights to all citizens, to men and women equally; why there can be only one “Law of the Land;” why assimilation is a requirement and not a choice; and why there can be only one language.
Class dismissed and I thank you.