I thought I'd address an issue today brought up by one of our readers on Facebook:

I have been reading your blog (corrupt.org) for quite some time now, and I am wondering what your opinion on the current situation in the public school system is...here are two recent articles that have been brought to my attention today:
http://www.ed.gov/news/events/advisory.html
and
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13249171?_requestid=5883011

I personally find your views interesting and am interested in what you think of the current situation in American (concerning the progressive agenda).

I am not asking you to write an editorial about either of the articles that I have pointed out, but if you ever have a chance to tell me what you think, I am more than interested in a view point that does not hold progressive modern culture as an idealization.

Thanks

Hej,

Thanks for bringing this up. One can summarize the situation in the following way: the Cold War was won by Conservatives, but the Culture War was won by Marxists. This is why most of the universities, culture centers and social policies in the West follow a leftist-progressive tradition. In Europe this is almost always the case.

I think Marxism is destructive to any society in the long-run. One of its biggest mistakes is the assumption that all people have the same motivation. This is not the same as equality, which is the idea that even if we're different, we should strive to live as equals as best as we can. At the universities, Marxism has mostly been responsible for:

- Dialectic-materialistic view of history, culture and economics (yep, this is from where we get the progressive idea that constant struggle between classes will lead to utopia, whatever that is)

- Ethno-cultural masochism (the white, middle class, male-dominated West is responsible for basically all Evil in the world)

- Confusing equality with conformity (not only should men and women help each other outside their traditional gender roles, they should also become exactly the same)

And a bunch of other things. I think you know the rest. I would hope we can change this Marxist tradition and embrace more diverse opinions that aren't on the left scale of politics. Part of why we're in a decline is because we assumed as long as the West won militarily, it also won culturally. It did not. This has backfired ever since WWII and I believe it's a major component contributing to our civilization exhaustion.

I hope this helped!

Bucharest, Romania - The day after Madonna controversially went on stage to defend Romania's minority population of Roma gypsies, the famous pop star has staged a press conference in order to apologise for her outspoken remarks, which she says have "deeply humiliated" her.

During her two-hour set, Madonna stopped the music for several minutes in order to patronise the 60,000 strong crowd. Continuing in her violent tirade, she also went on to heavily criticise Romania's traditional opinion of homosexuals, whilst wearing a 'sexed up' First World War-era German military uniform. She has now expressed "profound regret" for her comments.

The singer said: "At the time I didn't know how the crowd could be booing me for what I was saying, because helping minorities is really in fashion at the moment. Several Romanians have since come up to me to explain the situation here. Needless to say the gypsies sound really terrible, a lot like our problem with the Mexicans in the USA, but even worse if that's possible. I guess you really can't picture the impact of different minorities until you see the effects up close and personal."

She continued: "Many Romanians have suffered first-hand at the actions of the gypsies, including at the concert yesterday. I have now learnt to respect people's opinions, and will try hard not make such ignorant comments in the future."

Commenting on the Roma trouble at the concert, Bucharest's local police chief said today: "During the concert, a small wave of cheers could be heard from the rear section of the audience. It is now fully acknowledged that this was actually from the local gypsy minority, who had managed to sneak inside the concert to steal phones and wallets from the distracted spectators."

In response to the controversy, Madonna's troupe of Roma gypsy performers will now be dropped, to be replaced instead by disabled Nigerian Folk Midgets.

Alex recently reviewed a batch of Hollywood movies for their liberalist qualities. He made a passing mention to American History X, of which I would like to speak further.

The movie has some good points and some bad points. The good points are that it shows racists to mainly be a bunch of low-brow numb nuts, and that the extent of their political activism is to hilariously segregate themselves and their ideas; in reality this is quite accurate. The main bad point is that its honourable attempt at critiquing racist mindsets is terribly done.

The protagonist, who impliedly inherited his racistness from his father, seems to have a little more smarts about him and uses these to organise a skinhead movement around him. They go around shouting "took our jobs!," smashing up grocery stores and then managing to beat black people at basketball, at which point the whole illusion becomes dangerously fragile.

The main white guy gets sent to jail for something or other. Then he gets raped in the showers by some white racists and afterwards makes a non-threatening black mate. He stops being racist after this. So does his younger brother, but he gets shot by a black boy at school, which must have been a little annoying after all of his progress. Maybe he should have worn a SHARP badge or something.

So the moral of the film (I think) is that we need to parachute drop non-threatening blacks into white neighbourhoods to teach the nervous locals that ethnic people are cool too! Then we get some white guys to go around raping to show people that white people can be complete shits sometimes.

Yes, It wouldn't help to note that interaction with different people aids understanding, but when the basic premise of this film, and every other anti-racist film from Hollywood, is to try and tackle the huge and multi-faceted problem of racial tension with the lesson "make an ethnic mate" or "blame white bigotry" without even skimming the surface of ideas or different contexts, the message becomes predictably banal.

Liberalism is one of the slipperiest ideologies you can think of, because its appearance fools us about its consequences. You always hear liberal people talk about equality and individual rights, but when you ask them how they're going to achieve that, their response is a government-sanctioned program. They assure us we should trust the authorities to make us all one and the same. Something's not right here.

Liberals want the government to force us to conform to their nutty equal rights ideals, which not only have proven to increase race and class conflicts, but also bring us bureaucratic tyranny, a robbed middle class, relativist indoctrination at schools, civilization exhaustion, and chaotic multicultural suburbs. To understand the psychology behind liberalism, tune into any random Blockbuster. Here's a handful of their propaganda arsenal:

Strange Days (1995)

James Cameron's sci-fi-millenium drama, involving a rough black police woman, her pathetic white male friend selling human experiences in digital form on the underground market, and his white male friend who turns out to be a psychopath raping and killing women to, in the end, steal his friend's whory rockstar ex-girlfriend. Is that even an actual plot? I don't know, but the movie's pretty entertaining and may at face value seem to carry some depth.

That is, until you realize it's the same liberal fodder suggesting society is in chaos because of an oppressive, white police force set out to execute a famous black rapper who wants to start an equal rights riot. But hey, if you feel discriminated against and belong to a minority, rioting is always the liberal way to go. If you happen to kill someone, blame it on childhood abuse or oppressive power structures in society. Strange Days is liberalism marketed in a slick, appealing form, touching our emotional radar like ice cream stimulates our taste buds.

Crash (2004)

If you thought American History X smelled liberal, wait until your sensitive new girlfriend or closet liberal friend forces you to watch this one. Crash intertwines the fate of several racially charged situations where people of different colors are forced to confront each other. I know this sounds emotional right there, but what's hilarious about this movie is that it eventually becomes something of a comedy. Black people run over Asians, stop the car, notice the "accident;" pull rap jokes, and continue driving. That's the "black crime" in this movie.

The white people, of course, are the real racists here, distrusting their Hispanic locksmith simply because he's foreign. Oh my god! To avoid hitting too much on the whitie, they include a pretty funny confrontation between an Arab and a Hispanic. The problem is that we're having a hard time taking this stupid garbage seriously. In the end, the black woman in the burning car gets rescued by the oh-so-previously-racist white cop. Tear, tear. My old high school still uses this movie as education material about racism. I am not kidding.

Titanic (1997)

Yes, I just had to include it, but why? Isn't it pretty lovely to see Leonardo DiCaprio pick up beautiful Kate Winslet on a steam boat? Don't the soft nude scene and the awesome effects at least deserve some credit? I agree, but if we take a closer look, we see that this movie is nothing but another liberal love story. Let's see: bored out rich girl meets artsy and playful but poor guy, girl and guy fall in love with each other despite class differences, and uptight rich parents are upset.

What next? The boat sinks and of course all the rich people act like selfish monsters, while the poor have to sacrifice themselves, since they are embodied with the glowing spiritual light of Goodness. I can't say all of this crap makes up for the two mentioned positive things about the movie. It's another liberal con job that subtly suggests you're heartless and boring if you've got a lot of money, while you're eternally innocent and full of artistic passion if you're constantly broke. Yawn.

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

I know, I've praised this movie before, and will continue to do so, because it's simply a masterpiece. So what's wrong with it? Anything reducing complex reality to a simple format, which satires by nature do, runs the risk of being used for different purposes than intended. Dr. Strangelove is a hilarious portrayal of how nutty top executives within administrations can cause more conflicts than solve them, and we better heed that wisdom knowing how the Bush Administration became so pragmatic that it circumvented the Western belief in the rule of law.

But we all know that's not how this movie will be interpreted. It'll be seen as yet another liberal shot at right-wing Reaganism. Look at what happens when Conservatives try to establish diplomacy with foreign governments! If we just cuddled and hugged with Gorbachev, Soviet Russia would eventually admire our freedom and join a happy ending. Not. But at least, Hollywood liberals argue, we can dream of it and pretend it's real, and if someone says that's insane, we point to movies like these and claim you're intolerant and bigoted.

Enemy of the State (1998)

Government surveillance paranoia, political murder, underground technology complexes and a black family rescued from all of this thanks to a retired white expert in...government surveillance and underground technology? Pinch me, or am I watching a liberal movie? What's funny about this Will Smith-Gene Hackman Blockbuster is that it not only nails the classic Black/Hispanic/Mexican-White team meme, but also conveys a rather confused view of the government.

Liberals love government intervention for anything and everything unjust, we know that for sure, so why are they making a movie like this? Because the liberals only approve government strength when it's babysitting our kids or collecting taxes, never when it defends itself against terrorism or cleans up violent suburbs. This paranoid worldview suggests we're all victims of an oppressive power structure not to be trusted, unless it's committed to liberal purposes. So as long as we have impotent bureaucracies, government is good, but when it flexes its muscles, it's tyranny. No wonder we're losing the wars in the Middle East.

David Eberhard

Working as a psychiatrist in Stockholm, David Eberhard began observing how people seeking psychiatric care after the 1980s were experiencing mental problems caused by petty everyday experiences like being dumped by a girl/boyfriend. When he finally presented his theory about the phenomenon in one of Sweden's largest newspapers, it became a popular but controversial cultural meme: the "national panic syndrome."

Sweden, Eberhard argues, has made its citizens neurotically dependent upon a welfare system where everything deemed possibly dangerous is banned. In his now classic book In the land of the safety narcomaniacs, Eberhard startlingly provides example after example of absurd laws and policies in Sweden made to prevent people from eating "dangerous" food, carrying babies in "dangerous" ways, smoking "life threatening" cigarettes, and playing football with "dangerous" soccer goals. The list eventually becomes a humorous depiction of a welfare society gone too far.

Eberhard's most important contribution to contemporary public debate about welfare-ism is the issue of what social consequences you get from living in an environment so safe you stop evaluating risks. How is a public affected by having a welfare State nannying them about every aspect of their lives? The result, he argues, is a culture of social impotence, so neurotically afraid of risks that it stops thinking rationally, actually increasing the de facto risk of danger. In his latest book, No one takes shit in the land of the easily offended, Eberhard additionally claims Sweden is suffering from a culture of victimization where people project their fears over everyday injustices unto other people through bureaucratic institutions.

Fredrik Lindström

Originally a linguist, popular historian, comedian and film director, Fredrik Lindström began entering mainstream media with a series of television shows humorously describing the nature of Swedish language, mentality and culture. Combining his academic knowledge of language together with stand-up comedy, Lindström quickly became a national icon, self-ironically symbolizing the classic figure of the inventive, socially incompetent, rationally thinking, absurdly considerate Swede.

Lindström, by analyzing the subtle linguistic diversity in Sweden, picks out centuries of historical and cultural evolution. Then studying the impact the welfare society has had upon Swedish sociocultural development, Lindström argues modern civilization combined with the "Swedish model" of society are slowly eroding important traditions and undermining the value of spoken language.

Perhaps most insightfully, Lindström's civilization-critical analysis exposes the actual reasons behind why Swedes are so famously afraid of being racist, barely celebrate their own national day, have problems communicating with their neighbouring Danes, and believe bureaucratic institutions should control everything. Everything presented in a form made to create public awareness by mocking the absurd.

Tanja Bergkvist

With a Ph.D. in mathematics, Tanja Bergkvist suddenly appeared in public media as a strong opponent of the politically correct agenda promoted by the current feminist establishment in Sweden. Accusing kindergartens and schools of adopting neo-Stalinist methods to brainwash children into accepting a utopian socialist view of society, Bergkvist touched one of the holy cows in Swedish political debate.

Together with like-minded intellectuals such as establishment-critical Pär Ström, Bergkvist attempts to diversify the discussion around what role the various institutions in Sweden should have to actively discriminate and promote individuals to positions in society based upon gender. Lately Bergkvist has begun blogging, combining a sort of mathematical-satirical language with her own views about feminism, gender theory, and the European Union, colored by her cultural background in Eastern Europe.