Ordinary people have a straightforward view of institutions and objects. Professor Jonathon Haidt has the Greek term for it: Telos, or purpose. He explains that we have an expectation for devices and institutions. If a knife doesn’t cut, it is a bad knife.
The public has assumptions about the purpose of publicly supported institutions. The support is based on the fulfillment of the functions needed. Police, courts, fire, border enforcement, and national defense are tasks generally assumed to be funded by society in general. Various levels of education may also be funded through taxation.
Antonio Gramsci had a different use for institutions. He saw them as a tool for social change. If change agents gained control of institutions, society could be changed for what he considered “the better.” Paul Schwennesen wrote an excellent article on Gramsci’s strategy and its consequences.
Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist activist, is sometimes credited with the phrase “a long march through the institutions” — a strategy for class-cultural hegemony achieved by progressively expanding socialist ideology from the top down. This “war of position,” which aimed at transforming society by infiltrating and influencing key institutions, has had a profound impact on the contemporary state of affairs in the United States and the broader West.
The foot soldiers of the long march have tripped over their beards in the face of the stubborn good sense of a non-elite American bourgeoisie. From higher education to the mainstream media, to Hollywood, to “Woke Inc.,” to the federal state itself, Main Street America has more or less thrown up its hands in disgust. It knows when it’s being played.
Haidt has repeatedly described the problem in the development of the leadership class. Our universities no longer serve to train them in the contest of ideas. Instead, only one side is heard. Haidt quotes John Stuart Mill about the danger of people who hear only one side of the debate:
He who knows only his own side of the case (argument) knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion
But there is something worse than that. These people go through life in such a tight bubble that they’ve never heard anyone respond to one of their ideas with a massive belly laugh and the exclamation, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
The New York Times and its writers produced a series of articles claiming that America was founded in 1619 as a haven for slavery. Then the history faculty of the University of North Carolina wanted to give the lead author a tenured faculty position. I covered this before. Anybody who has the foggiest idea of the role of the English and the American Civil War in ending slavery must give the 1619 effort an F-minus and wonder if the Times knows or cares about the difference between a fact and a fax.
An even sillier idea is the belief that human beings are more powerful than Mother Nature or God. Whatever mammal has the smallest brain in creation is apparently smarter than highly educated graduates of our best medical schools. The little mammal is knows the sex of the newborn as soon as the genital area is visible.
I’ve watched C-SPAN and seen physicians unable to answer the simple question, “How do you define a woman?” I have been asked to describe my “gender assigned at birth.” In 1946, the form was much simpler. There were two choices, and the doctor marked “Male.”
The arrogant leaders don’t realize they could continue their foolishness if they didn’t insist on annoying a lot of people by making our lives difficult. For some reason, the British Commonwealth countries are masters at this. Britain, Canada, and Australia are leading in the gender related legal harassment issues.
The Alliance For Responsible Citizenship just finished presenting an outstanding set of speakers in London on a variety of issues. Australian Sall Grover started her talk this way:
I have flown halfway around the world to tell you that men are not women.
Something so obvious that in a normal world would not need to be said, but as we all know, we’re not currently living in a normal world. For those of you who don’t know me, I am the woman who had to go to court to establish what a woman is and lost to a man twice.
Grover then deals with the real problem when political leaders say up is down and fine you for not saying what they tell you to say.
I’m here to say that if the state can force you to accept men as women, they can force you to accept anything. Freedom of speech, belief, and association are the bedrock of a free society. But they are in direct conflict with transgender ideology.
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It isn’t easier to submit to an ideology you know isn’t true, to give up your rights and watch society crumble under the weight of nonsense.
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after years of inaction, we do have political pushback emerging. And I know that I will eventually win one way or another because the truth always does. …. And I will be able to sleep soundly knowing that mine and every daughter has rights, and he will never be a woman. Thank you.
This is the issue with all their follies. In 1984, George Orwell talks about party members being totally committed to the party line. Orwell described something called Newspeak. Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World also describe dystopias where ideas are limited and controlled to limit the range of ideas the population can encounter, deal with, or use against their rulers.
The fight for common sense and, more importantly, freedom of speech won’t be easy, but it is critical.