“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think,” said Margaret Mead.
This used to be considered “liberal” wisdom. Yet look what happened to liberalism, now leftism. Children are not just taught what to think; they are indoctrinated; and then deliberately confused, and even physically altered and experimented on. If you challenge what leftists are doing, not just in schools, but anywhere, you are shamed, scolded, labeled things you aren’t and, finally, censored and threatened with loss of income, or loss of freedom. In Charlie Kirk’s case, he lost his life. President Trump nearly did.
Nothing can excuse nor fully explain the despair and hatred giving rise to what today some call “progressivism.” Yes, old fashioned liberalism must have contained horrible flaws to degenerate into what we see today. Liberals, like the socialists, always had a love affair with brute force. In earlier eras, they could lie to themselves that socialism was so benevolent, so cool and so hopeful that eventually everyone would embrace it voluntarily. Of course, precisely the opposite happened. We got the Reagan era, the end of the Cold War, and the defeat of Communism–everywhere except on college campuses and in government-run schools. Leftists abandoned any pretense of persuasion and genuine education (as Mead defined it) and resorted to indoctrination. Just like the Nazis and other totalitarians “liberals” once claimed to loathe — they became those very things.
Witness the results.