Why Americans are Queasy about the White Privilege Movement

The YouTube video is labeled, “Teacher says he volunteered to help with Common Core Standards because he wants to help overcome White Privilege.

“I helped write common core to end white privilege,” he said.

As one might expect, that notion sends the over-taxed into torrents of outrage.  The WPM (White Privilege Movement)  is part of the leftist Alinsky movement to fling guilt feelings upon the gullible so that they won’t act out as  Obamacrats take from the haves and give  to the have-nots.

Guilt is the Great Immobilizer.  Great White Guilt can quiet the most ardent patriot in moments.  The cliché often is, “It’s for the children.”  Its corollary is, “You didn’t build that.”  So, “… it’s OK if we take it…for the children.”

If one listens to that YouTube all the way through, that teacher reveals his true reason for adopting the white privilege tactic.  He wants to teach poor kids to read.  That’s it.  He thinks a guilt trip is the most effective way to motivate Americans to educate the children of the poor.  After all, what other motivation could possibly exist?[amazon asin=0990463109&template=*lrc ad (right)]

For generations, until this one, Americans have been successfully teaching their kids to read.  At one time, before government education, we were even better at it than we are today.  In 1765, John Adams observed that “a native American, especially in New England, who cannot read and write is as rare Phenomenon as a Comet.”

Did they do it because they felt guilty over the success?  Not in the least.  The Puritans did it to enable their kids to know God.  Religious people wanted literacy to help spread the Gospel.  Political zealots wanted literacy to help spread the political gospel of freedom.  Jefferson said,  “A people can become so demoralized and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholesome control…” So, “if a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be…where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”  (That’s romantic rubbish, but it sounds purdy though.)

Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance:  “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

They wanted to educate the next generation rich or poor because they were overwhelmed by the guilt of “white privilege”?  Nope.  They felt duty bound to God and country out of love for both.[amazon asin=1594037256&template=*lrc ad (right)]

If one doesn’t have love of either, but retains the political vision of a messianic state,  WPG (white privilege guilt) is a wonder counterfeit substitute.  It has the advantage of needing no higher authority, especially on a dumbed-down, easily manipulated populace.  It’s magic.

As to the “You didn’t build that” argument, our Plagiarist in Chief, Obama stole it from God.  Deuteronomy 6:10  “When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—along with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig. And the vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are not satisfied, be careful you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out the land of slavery.”

Then, God tells Israel, “After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.’  No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.”   God tells them three times in that passage that they didn’t get the land because they were virtuous, but because of the extreme wickedness of the occupants.  (BTW, this wasn’t race-based genocide as some contemporary liberals charge. This temporal judgment was not race base, but perfect justice delivered upon the maliciously lawless.)  It was “ethics, not ethnics.”[amazon asin=0913966630&template=*lrc ad (right)]

What was their ethical imperative?

“In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?”  Tell him, “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand…the Lord told us these decrees and to fear the Lord our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive…if we are careful to obey all this law…that will be our righteousness.”  Deut. 6

This is the other motivation of our forebears.  They knew how fragile and ephemeral civilizations are.  The miracle is that they endure at all and there seems to be a predictable pattern to them.  The 1776 historian Alexander Fraser Tyler published The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic.

Nations move:

“From bondage to spiritual faith,

From spiritual faith to great courage,[amazon asin=B005S28ZES&template=*lrc ad (right)]

From courage to liberty,

From liberty to abundance,

From abundance to selfishness,

From selfishness to complacency,

From complacency to apathy,

From apathy to dependency and white privilege guilt,

From dependency and white privilege guilt, back to bondage.”

(I may have made up the white privilege guilt part.)

John Adams writing to Abigail Adams,   “Science of Government, it is my duty to study, more than all other Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take place, indeed to exclude in a manner of all other Arts—I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematics and Philosophy.  My sons—(must study) Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelain.”  (and yes, that’s the way Adams spelled “music”)

Healthy cultures live inter-generationally because the blessings of liberty are intergenerational.  BTW, so are the costs of indolence and ignorance.  In short, we teach the kids to read, cuz it’s the right thing to do, darn it.