More Liberal Hypocrisy on Education

Just last week NPR ran a news story covering one of the “dark secrets of Franco’s dictatorship” that scholars and activists has recently uncovered in Spain’s history:

It involved the stealing of thousands of children from leftist parents so they could be indoctrinated in fascism and archconservative Catholicism[1]

I had hardly listened to the story until I heard the phrase “archconservative Catholic,” and then I knew something fishy was up. Granted, the tragedy had taken place (like many under Franco), but why would a normally plain-speaking news outfit come up with such a loaded fancy word like “archconservative.” I googled the phrase and got nothing but hits for blogs and syndicates that cut and pasted this very NPR story. In other words, the phrase appears nowhere else in public discourse; the NPR reporter concocted it to associate both conservatives and Catholics (perhaps religious folk in general) with the ruthless Franco.

Of course, it should not surprise us that a leftist nest like NPR would run a story like this, using such language. The shock comes in the fact that they tell only the tiny fraction of the story that suits their purposes—that makes leftists look like heroic survivors once again. While you cannot exactly accuse them of lying because of what they didn’t say, their omissions declare loudly a dishonesty at the heart of their strategy. “Radical leftist propaganda” is a phrase that comes to mind.

Propaganda lies at the heart of the story. About 12,000 or so children of leftist families (those that opposed Franco) suffered abduction under Franco, who sent them to orphanages or families that supported the regime. Right-wing indoctrination! This is an “atrocity”! (One of the almost laughable idiocities of this story is the fact that the writer focuses on the central “atrocity” as the indoctrination of children by right-wingers, and not the fact that the regime was torturing and killing political dissidents. These real terrors only serve as the backdrop for the “atrocity” of forced fascist education.)

Well, I am no expert on this period of history, much of this is new to me, and I certainly have no interest in defending Franco, but I find it necessary to relate a few of the details the leftists at NPR left out. To begin with, the leftists somewhat started the forced indoctrinations, or at least happily engaged in them themselves. Spain had been officially Catholic for centuries, but wavered between many groups (some Marxist-inspired leftist insurgents) and Catholic monarchy through much of the nineteenth century. Military dictatorship ruled from 1923 to 1930, when socialists and secularists gained control of the government. Things went downhill quickly, but in the name of democracy.

The 1931 Constitution, the work mainly of leftists, called for free speech and “separation of church and state.” This separation, however, meant (as it does for almost all leftists) that the church should stay out of politics and society, but the state could still interfere with the church. As a result, the new constitution forbad religious orders from teaching children, even in private schools. It also banned the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) from the country period. Jesuits primarily engaged in founding schools and teaching, so their dissolution essentially effected a leftist takeover of education. These two measures alone effectively did the very same thing that NPR complains about Franco doing—using State force to indoctrinate children to the exclusion of other views. In addition to this, the leftist regime imposed regulations on property ownership by the church, and confiscated church property (Stalin style).

This leftist tyranny lasted several years. In 1936 Franco began a counterrevolution that led the right back to power by 1939. He reinstated the Catholic Church’s rights and established it as the only legal church, although others could operate without publicity. The atrocities already spoken of followed. But this point should stand out: leftist revolutionaries set the standard of tyranny. Spain just happens to be one place where the counterrevolutionaries prevailed and the leftists eventually lost. This, perhaps, is what still angers leftists most of all: the populace rejected them.

What bothers me is that liberals pass over their own tyrannies and decry right-wing tyranny. They apparently don’t want a level playing field. I say, put them both on the table, criticize them both harshly, and let’s get to work establishing freedom for everyone to teach their children according to their own beliefs. You will never hear a leftist say this, no matter how much they tout freedom and democracy. You will certainly never hear this position avowed on NPR.

Leftists of the World Unite Against Conservativism
In fact, some recent leftists have come out openly in favor of controlling even homeschooling. I spoke at American Vision’s Worldview Superconference in 2007 on the topic “There’s an Atheist After Your Child!” I quoted from recent outspoken atheist Daniel C. Dennett:

We should have a national curriculum on world religions that is compulsory for all school children, from grade school through high school, for the public schools, for the private schools, for the home-schooling.… 

“National curriculum”? “Compulsory”? Well, of course, we already have that in regard to some things: math, science, reading, etc. But Dennett wants in your house, and wants to control the content of the religious education of your children as well. He continues, “because if we taught the young people of a country this, then you could teach them whatever else you wanted and I wouldn’t worry about religions.”

The atheist wants to insulate your children against whatever you may add in catechizing them. Of course, this assumes that you catechize your children. These atheists hate the idea of religious catechism. Atheist Richard Dawkins, in a tirade against baptism, refers to the participation of “a superstitious and catechistically brainwashed babysitter.[2] In these guys’ minds, religious catechism is “brainwashing,” but of course, it’s OK for them to call for a compulsory national curriculum of religion as they see it.

Dennett goes on: “I think any religion that can flourish under those conditions would be a benign, a valuable, a wonderful religion.”

I guess, for him maybe. Of course, he just assumes that he by default knows truly what is valuable. Truth is, he’s got no real standard by which to judge that which is benign, or valuable, or wonderful. “Valuable”? Valuable for whom? Who decides what is valuable and what is not valuable in education or in general? If you believe like Dennett that there is no transcendent Creator God, then aren’t words like “valuable” and “wonderful” left up to each individual to determine? In that case, “valuable” and “wonderful” will be determined politically and culturally by either a dictator (like Franco or Stalin), or a group of dictators (think Roe-v-Wade, 5–4 decision). You might just as well hear Franco say, “Any leftist who can flourish under my conditions would be ‘a benign, a valuable, a wonderful leftist.’”

So, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let the atheists or leftists define for me what kind of religious instruction is benign, or valuable, or even acceptable. But Dennett wants this, and he continues to say,

I think … if you look at the “toxic” religions, they are all of the religions that survive by the enforced ignorance of their young; and all we have to do, I think, is, we can tell people, “You can home-school your kids, you can give them 30 hours a week of religious instruction, but you’ve also got to teach them what the people that are not of your faith believe, and you have to teach them about the history of all faiths in question, including your own.”[3]

Now, like I said, I have no problem teaching my child about other religions, and I (we) certainly have no problem teaching them the History of our faith (we can do it better than they can). But I sure am not going to sit by while this atheist assumes he has the right to tell me whether I can or cannot home-school, or how to do it, or what I “have to” include.

So who does he think he is? Where does he think he gets the right to assume that kind of authority? (Well, it’s because he’s an atheist and an intellectual, and he thinks there’s no One higher than him, and he’s smarter than most people.) But how does this work out? Dennett says,

Children below the age of consent are a special case . . . parents are stewards of their children. They don’t own them—you can’t own your children—You have a responsibility to the world, to the state, to them, to take care of them right. You may, if you like, teach them whatever creed you think is most important, but I say you have a responsibility to let them be informed about all the other creeds in the world, too.[4]

Children are a special case? Why are they being singled out? Because the atheists have realized the power of capturing the next generation. They’ve chosen the path of least resistance, which is the indoctrination of children. But they have to get around the influence of home-schools and private schools.

Other atheists such as Richard Dawkins argue “in favor of censorship” of family education for this so-called “special case of children” (that’s a direct quote from his book: notice the use of the same rhetoric by both guys). Dawkins quotes fellow atheist Nicholas Humphrey:

[M]oral and religious education, and especially the education a child receives at home, where parents are allowed – even expected – to determine for their children what counts as truth and falsehood, right and wrong. Children, I’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas – no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no God-given license to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insists they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.

In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.[5]

So, this group of atheists is unanimous in pushing that children are a special case, require special attention by the state, they should not be left to parents for their education without state supervision, even to the extent of State control of religious education in the home. The child has a “right” to be protected from these “toxic” beliefs such as belief in the literal truth of the Bible, which is equivalent, for the atheist, to physical abuse and masochism. Again, unduly associating conservativism with violence, all the while really just wanting more power over other people’s children than any genuine conservative ever has. I hear the faint echo of this leftist lust behind the spin-job NPR recently put out on Franco’s tyranny.

So why this story now? Why not a series of stories on leftist dictators who did the same thing many times over, and worse? How about how conservatives and their children suffered indoctrination under Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and more—Spain’s own Socialist party before Franco, and even today? How about the atheists and radicals who still wish they could only have that power over other people’s children? Well, these are leftist indoctrinators. Their indoctrination is good for us, and so requires no public scrutiny, apparently. They get passed over in silence.

The NPR article ends lamenting the fact that many Spaniards don’t want to talk about the Franco era. They don’t care to indulge in digging up old graves and opening old wounds—they just wish to forget it. Nevertheless, a few radical leftists, and a leftist judge have succeeded in overturning the long-held agreement not to go there. Most still want to forget. Apparently, NPR agrees with the leftists who think that they know better than most people, and therefore wished to bring old wounds to light, at least the part of the story that serves them. They say that for the masses of Spain “the tyranny of silence endures.” But those masses have chosen to forget; it’s the liberal idiots who wish to drag it back up again.

In doing so they have to ignore ten times as many leftist atrocities of the same sort. They publically parade the madness of one fascist in order to exalt themselves as the champions of human rights. They suppress the facts of their own tyranny over children and education in history and today. This they will never admit while they enjoy it. Indeed, “the tyranny of silence endures.”