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To: vannrox
Very interesting, indeed. But I suggest another culprit: Madison Avenue. I think commercials destroy attention spans and the content of commercials destroys considered and logical thought. IMHO, impure thoughts are the biggest danger we face. By impure, I mean copnclusions that we arrive at by some other means than thinking. parsy the pure.
3 posted on 08/12/2002 3:44:02 PM PDT by parsifal
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To: parsifal
Both you and the writer make excellent points. However, there is more involved here than just a wacko approach to child rearing, the corruption of psychology, and the distraction of the public by modern communications.

The Twentieth Century was truly the age of the demagogue. And while they used all of the above with a vengeance, they also employed a lot of other concepts all pushing in the same direction--to break down traditional analytic thought processes, and sweep a bemused public along with such ideas as these:

1. Everyone is basically equal. Where they do not achieve equally, it is in some way or another Society's--or the dominant elements in Society's--fault. And the remedy is not to analyze the roots of the failure but to demand collective action.

2. Just as failure to learn or achieve is never the fault of the individual, neither is most anti-social behavior (from childhood on). Thus there is a sort of moral equivalence, which totally ignores traditional understanding of virtue, and undermines its pursuit in every way imaginable.

3. In a similar vein to 1 and 2, any apparent difference in the sexes--or even the acceptance of the concept of clearly defined sex roles (the chief motivation for much of what other generations considered virtuous)--are social evils which must be corrected.

This type of thinking is never sold by rational arguments. Rather the susceptible are intimidated from even questioning it, much less seriously analyzing it, by hysterical attacks. "Racist," "sexist," etc., are the ready answers of the proponents; and as incredible as it seems to anyone who will quietly analyze the evidence for the Left's proclamed truths, this technique of hysterical intimidation has worked just as well in America and Britain, as an earlier variety of the same technique worked for Hitler in Nazi Germany. (Different hurled insults, but hysteria instead of argument, none-the-less.)

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

4 posted on 08/12/2002 5:03:54 PM PDT by Ohioan
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