I think I know why liberals don't mind radical Islam

This past weekend, my wife and I attended the conference run by the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education. The Institute was founded - and they organized the conference - to encourage and assist schools dedicated to providing a liberal education.

The word "liberal" here in this context must be understood properly. It does not mean what it means in contemporary politics. It means a broad (and in that sense free) and therefore liberating education. An education in how to live well as a free and complete human being. It contrasts with the prevalent utilitarian education ordered to making people nice, complacent workers in a worker state who obey the government and vote Democratic.

The foundation of a liberal education is Western Civilization. You know, going back to the ancient Greeks, studying Thucydides and Plato and Homer and Aristotle, and then working through the Romans Virgil and Cicero, and then going through history to the present, and learning from some of the greatest minds of human history. Learning about virtue, learning logic, grammar, rhetoric, math, geometry, music, and astronomy.

Now, this isn't to say that Eastern or other civilizations have nothing to offer. It is to say that there is an amazing richness in the great works of Western Civilization that actually civilizes a person. Lessons about virtue, clear thinking, being able to express oneself, the pursuit of Wisdom and the recognition and love of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Back in 1988, the Rev. Jesse Jackson - at the time a hopeful Democrat contender for the presidency - and no one complained about the separation of church and state with him - led a demonstration at Stamford University in which he and the demonstrators chanted, "Hey hey ho ho Western Civ has got to go!"

Here's one link on that wonderful point in history. Just google their rallying cry and see what turns up.

And now the so-called educational platform called the Common Core, which is ordered to creating a well-trained workforce, is depriving our students from access to great minds, great works of literature, and the capacity to think freely as mature and free and complete human beings.

Now compare that to what Boko Harum is doing in Nigeria.

Hmmm. Liberals and radical Isalm - both hate educations in Western Civilization!

Go figure.

But if there is anything, ANYTHING on the planet that suggests that an education in Western Civilization is THE THING TO GIVE OUR KIDS, it's that BOTH the liberals and radical Islam hates it.

I suppose if we really think about it, liberalism and radical Islam are both fundamentalist religions that thrive on keeping their adherents ignorant and dependent.

Knowledge and freedom are now subversive.