Posted on 05/30/2016 4:46:47 AM PDT by originalist_1776
Sowell on Commencement: “Shameless Self-Advertising” for Public Service:
http://www.certainright.com/2016/05/24/sowell-on-commencement-shameless-self-advertising-for-public-service/1050/
Thomas Sowell, in his column at Townhall writes that commencement speeches have recently served either as “shameless self-advertising by people in government” or to “flatter the graduates that they are now equipped to go out into the world as “leaders” who can prescribe how other people should live.”
Sowell regretfully acknowledges also that the pipeline of college graduates to influential public positions can “mean a lifetime of people with ignorance presuming to prescribe to people with personal knowledge”.
He extolls instead the value of work outside academia and of being absent for his own commencement speeches:
“Having to start work at the bottom was a blessing in disguise — and extremely well disguised at the time….It was painfully obvious that adults around me understood much more about their work — and about life. This taught me inescapable lessons and respect for people who had no academic pretensions but a lot of common sense.".....
(Excerpt) Read more at certainright.com ...
Hearing President Obama's commencement address and comparing it to Justice Clarence Thomas's address doesn't bring the word hilarious to my mind.
The word sadness or perhaps even embarrassment better describes my thoughts.
No. It’s typical Sowell ... quietly and brilliantly spot on.
My commencement speech was done by a famous liberal that everyone over 30 years old would recognize. Reagan was president at the time and maybe that influenced his speech.
It went something like this: “America sucks and there’s not a damn thing you graduates can do about it.”
I was just able to hold myself back and not get kicked out of the ceremony, but now I regret not taking a stand.
“Thomas Sowell, in his column at Townhall writes that commencement speeches have recently served either as “shameless self-advertising by people in government” or to “flatter the graduates that they are now equipped to go out into the world as “leaders” who can prescribe how other people should live.”
Exactly!
And one source of this is the public schools, and with how education in our society is imagined.
I was a student whose God-given abilities put me in the more advanced classes in school.
I’ve never forgotten a particular assignment that the students in my advanced English class were given - to devise every aspect of a Utopian society.
THAT is the assignment that the secular humanist education model has been giving the students it calls “brights.”
It encourages these children to think of themselves as the guardians of the rest of humanity, as even people deemed to have normal intelligence are regarded as ignorant, dim-witted and mentally and morally disabled next to the self-declared “brights” (who tend to believe they’re “more highly evolved” than other human beings).
And as a rule of thumb, the smarter “bright” is ALWAYS right in any disagreement with anyone who disagrees with whatever a consensus of “brights” believe. Such a conclusion isn’t considered to be a possible logical fallacy, but a mere logical conclusion: the majority opinion of the “best and brightest,” “most intelligent and educated,” secular humanist “free thinkers” HAS to be correct.
The secular humanist education system not only encourages such arrogance in these children, but teaches them that they are entitled to wield power over others, who are effectively regarded as children, and/or sub-human. Neither children nor dogs, cats and squirrels are fit to rule over adult humans, and that is how the “brights” see themselves - as the only truly “mature” adults in the world.
The arrogance of today’s secular humanists might very well be unprecedented in the history of mankind. On top of all this, they perceive evil to be in their opponents exclusively. They don’t see themselves as sinners, or capable of doing true evil, as long as they embrace secular humanism, and they can’t be made to feel truly guilty, remorseful, or shamed.
Good column, and for some reason, it made me think of the separate paths of Trump, and of Cruz, whom he endorsed for president.
Just out of curiosity, who?
I sent links of Clarence thomas’s speech and Obamas around to a few of my friends. Nobody got all the way through Obamas speech. I made it 35 minutes and wanted to hang myself.
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