Grendel on the Potomac

Suddenly then the God-cursed brute was creating havoc:

Hwæt we have heard about the glory of the Spear-Danes’ great kings in days gone by, how those noble men performed brave deeds.

American taxpayers direct enormous sums toward government schools. To what purpose? Do schools debase or uplift? How many promote love of country? Does government promote or discourage the foundation of republics: two-parent families which form the next generation’s first impressions? 79% of U.S. adults are literate in 2022. 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022. 54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level. Military spending goes through the roof. Jane and Johnny need no literacy. Handouts are all they ask in winter since college expenses bankrupted them. And of course vaccine salvation made them too sick to work, even if there were jobs to be had save military service.

In 2022 the $1.7 trillion dollar 4,155 page Omnibus bill is expected to be authorized in Congress by Friday. And that comes on top of the record-breaking $858 billion “defense” budget passed last week.  McConnell: "Providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now according to most Republicans. That's how we see the challenges confronting the country at the moment.” In 2022, the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have directed nearly $50 billion in assistance to Ukraine, most of the aid has been military-related. Dozens of other countries, including most members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union, are also providing large aid packages to Ukraine.

Paul Craig Roberts observes: RT reported on December 10 that “The US has quietly given Ukraine the go-ahead to launch long-range strikes against targets inside Russian territory, the Times reported on Friday, citing sources. The Pentagon has apparently changed its stance on the matter as it has become less concerned that such attacks could escalate the conflict.” In other words, by his inaction Putin has convinced Washington and its European puppet states that he doesn’t mean what he says and will endlessly accept ever worsening provocations, which have gone from sanctions to Western financial help to Ukraine, weapons supply, training and targeting information, provision of missiles capable of attacking internal Russia, attack on the Crimea bridge, destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, torture of Russian POWs, attacks on Russian parts of Ukraine reincorporated into the Russian Federation, and attacks on internal Russia.

In his speech delivered prior to his murder called Beyond Vietnam, Martin Luther King said: Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1967-martin-luther-king-jr-beyond-vietnam-time-break-silence/

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A new Reboot paper, Teaching Critical Thinking in K-12: When There’s A Will But Not Always A Way, examines the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and found that the teaching of critical thinking skills is inconsistent across states and tends to drop as students get older.

Parents and educators form our first impressions. They prepare people for civil life in republics and for servitude in despotisms. Montesquieu explained the springs, the forces which propel nations. Virtue is the propellant in republics, while the bayonet of fear prods despotisms. Education in despotic countries debases the mind. The mind of the despot and his slaves are made servile, for both fear and are enslaved to each other. Excessive obedience presupposes ignorance in the person that obeys. The tyrant is also beset by ignorance because he has little need to deliberate, to doubt or to reason. All he has is will.

Every home in despotic states is its own little government; its education is limited to filling hearts with fear and a little religion. Actual learning is dangerous, for its emulation outside the home is fatal. Montesquieu agrees with Aristotle that slaves are without virtue. Education here is practically pointless, for it cannot work toward forming a good citizen. Actual citizens refuse to share in public misery, and as patriots, they will work to relax the springs of despotic government. If they fail, they are dead. If they succeed, they expose themselves, the prince and the country to ruin.

Republican education lifts the heart as well as mind. Virtue, which Montesquieu defines as “love of country” permits men to promote public prosperity, peace of mind, and independence. Love of country translates into love of laws; such love requires a constant preference of public over private interest. Love of country is the source of all private virtues; for they are nothing more than this very preference itself. Such love is peculiar to republics. In these alone the government is entrusted to private citizens. In this sense, republican government is like any other earthly creation or possession; in order to preserve it, we must love it.

Everything therefore depends on establishing this love in a republic. To inspire it ought to be the principal business of education, and the surest way of instilling it into children is for parents to set the example. Parents have it generally in their power to communicate their ideas to their children; but they are better able to transfuse their passions. If it happens otherwise, it is because the impressions made at home are effaced by those they have received elsewhere.

Young people do not degenerate; if they are corrupted, it done by those of mature years already sunk in corruption.

"An entertained, stressed out, drugged up, medicated and drunk America

is easily manipulated and spoon fed lies from a controlled media and a 

corrupt government. Those who refuse to question their government and 

remain blindly obediant are destined to be rudely awakened" 

~ Mark J. Harper