In rummaging through the dozens of notes I’ve made on subjects worth pursuing, I came across an article posted by Pamela Geller on Jan. 24 regarding the views of college professor and former MSNBC personality Melissa Harris Perry. An “expert” in Political Science and more specifically African American Studies, Perry had recently tweeted: “We have to break through this idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families.”
As if we might not have caught her drift, she very clearly declares the “private” notion of family to be obsolete, endorsing the “collective” principle that kids are in fact the responsibility of their communities.
As I have stated elsewhere and as several books have documented, Western Academia has become infested with such views over the last 50 years. What Perry is recommending spells the end of Democracy, the right of the State as the agent of the “community” to indoctrinate children with the politically correct dogma of the day which, of course, is the dogma endorsed by Perry. Would she subscribe to the same principle if, in any given jurisdiction, “conservatives” held sway and insisted on imposing their political views on young kids? Of course not! They would be denounced as a bunch of fascist monsters which, ironically, is a perfect description of Perry and her academic confederates.
Essential to the Enlightenment philosophers’ endorsement of Democracy was their belief that each Individual, as an Intelligent Being, had the right to chart the course of his/her own life. Those on the arrogant, contemporary Left, with the support of their legions of self-pitying, self-centered “victims,” have decided they alone are so entitled. While no one is suggesting there are not social issues which need to be addressed, Leftists’ knee-jerk vilification of “populism” tells you exactly how they, from their lofty perches, see the so-called common man. That many of their own views are eminently arguable if not absurd, is beside the point. That they are motivated not by anything resembling Objective Truth but rather by Ideology, is beside the point. Democracy be damned. Your rights as an Individual be damned. Your naive belief that Men and Women are biologically different be damned. We’re telling you how to see the world and if you have a problem with that, well, too effing bad!
Those who, like Professor Perry, put the good of the Collective Whole over the rights of the Individual, see themselves as definitively anti-fascist. Yet they are Fascists to the very core, the Collective Whole being a meaningless abstraction born of their Ideological Bias while the Individuals they are willing to oppress in pursuit of their agenda are all in fact Real, Thinking, Feeling Beings! Socialists are by definition Fascists, though apparently unable to see it.
Speaking of conspicuous failures of self-awareness, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admitted in a March interview with N.Y. Magazine that her party was likely to be pummeled in this year’s mid-term elections, she insisted it was because the American public felt the Biden government had not been fully committed to its radical, Leftist agenda. It was not because Americans were appalled by the chaos at their southern border, not because Biden’s energy policies had made them more dependent on countries with no environmental conscience whatsoever, not because their kids were being submitted to gender propaganda as early as the age of five; no, it was because Biden had not been aggressive enough in enforcing these policies. A.O.C. actually suggests he use every executive privilege at his disposal to enforce their radical vision as quickly as possible. Such is her level of respect for the democratic process.
She is utterly out of touch with the average, decent American, but then again so are most on the political Left. This is, after all, an orientation whose pseudo-intellectual advocates see traditional Western esteem for moral and intellectual excellence as “elitist,” while with classic “elitist” arrogance dismissing everyone who disagrees with them as just so many ignorant populists.