Monday, September 3, 2012

Progressive Education and the Perversion of American Democracy

As opposed to the 2008 election, which had many frustrated and emotionally charged voters dreaming up a new America with a historic presidential candidate leading the charge, the 2010 midterms had people doing the exact opposite.  In 2010, a majority of Americans stopped dreaming and started to face reality.  America was accelerating toward an irreversible and all-encompassing decline.  The path envisioned by the president and his supporters for a radically changed United States was starting to look like a dead end.  America was breaking down.
The year 2010 was also when essayist Walter Russell Mead began to ascribe many aspects of this breakdown to the failures within what he called the Blue Social Model.  His prognostications were based on what he saw as the disintegration of core American institutions and ideas, which developed and flourished under the post-Second World War industrial system.  According to Mr. Mead, the model had reached its expiration date; and among other things, what has followed is a stagnant and deeply indebted economy, crumbling social institutions, and controlled yet massive citizen dissent.  Our bona fides as an advanced industrial democracy were therefore being challenged both domestically and internationally.  He might have been right.

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