James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, can be ordered directly from Winepress Publishers — 1-877-421-READ (7323); $12.95, plus S&H. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at jkfitz42@aol.com.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
The phrase comes, you will remember, from Hamlet’s description of how he intends to amend the orders given to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to have him executed, so that the two messengers will be killed instead:
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard; and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon.
In modern times, it has become a figure of speech used to indicate that someone will have the tables turned against him through his own actions, a version of “turn-about is fair play.”
I suspect that many members of the NEA, the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, are wondering if they have become a textbook example of the process at work; that perhaps the rhetoric of “multiculturalism,” “diversity” and “non-judgmentalism” that they have championed for the past decade is blowing up in their face. I don’t think they wanted to be seen as apologists for the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But what else could they do? The thrust of the multicultural view of the world, the “global perspective” that liberal educators champion, calls for us to be “tolerant” and avoid “ethnocentric value judgments” when looking at the religious, cultural and political beliefs of other societies and to never forget that all cultures are equal (except, one is tempted to say, the Christian West, which is less than equal). The claim is that this perspective will promote international understanding and world peace in the global village.
So when the time came to instruct their members on how to approach the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the NEA braintrust stayed true to form. You can check their recommendations on their website, wherein teachers are encouraged to stress, “Appreciating and getting along with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures, the importance of anger management and global awareness,” rather than emphasize any evil done to the United States by the Islamic terrorists. This can be accomplished, for example, by giving “students the opportunity to discuss and have validated their feelings about the events of Sept. 11 in a non-judgmental discussion circle.”
The lesson plans encourage teachers not to paint the Islamic terrorists as villains: “Be aware that you will not be effective if you purposely or inadvertently take one side over another in controversies of a political, religious or other nature.” Instead, teachers are asked to focus on examples of America’s wrongdoings, specifically “historical instances of American intolerance,” such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The NEA reminds us, “Some of this country’s darkest moments resulted from prejudice and intolerance for our own people.”
The website recommends as lead-ins for classroom discussion questions such as “Why do so many people around the world hate America?” and “How serious is the unemployment situation in the U.S.?”
The reaction has been emphatic. George Will accuses the NEA of becoming a “sensitivity tutor for parents and teachers.” Will continues: “Let’s see. Some seriously angry people murder almost 3,000 people in America and Americans need to work on managing their anger?”
Linda Chavez confronts the moral indifferentism implicit in the multicultural view promoted by the NEA: “Tolerance is a distinctly Western attribute, a value not shared in most of the Islamic world, much less by those individuals who attacked the United States last year. As important as religious and political tolerance are to American values, tolerance, too, has its limits.” Chavez reminds us, “It’s important to take sides sometimes.” “Should we teach children that there is no difference between societies that guarantee equal rights to men and women and those that deny women education, force them to undergo painful and dangerous genital mutilation, and sell little girls as child brides to men who can mistreat them and abandon them with impunity?”
In an editorial on August 25, the New York Post was even more emphatic. “Not all cultures are equal; that’s a fact. Some are open and generous of spirit. Others are cruel and primitive — and seek to inspire bands of fanatics to hijack planes and crash them into buildings filled with innocent civilians. It’s a shame that some of the people who shape the minds of America’s children cannot tell the difference. And it’s no surprise.”
One can only hope that many of the teachers in the NEA will get the point of the anger. Perhaps it will lead them to see the internal contradictions in the multicultural curricula. If they begin to squirm a bit over what it means to be non-judgmental about the terrorist attacks of last year, perhaps they will be open to seeing the hypocrisy that permeates multiculturalism. Maybe they will begin to see that multiculturalism is anything but non-judgmental and tolerant when promoting the secular liberal agenda.
An overstatement? Ask your favorite liberal teacher if he or she would encourage respect for the “diversity of opinion” about issues such as racial equality and slavery in the American south, equal rights for woman and anti-Semitism? Do they encourage their students to consider the “equally valid” opinions about slavery held by apologists for slavery such as such as George Fitzhugh? Do they encourage their students to read the “Uncle Remus” stories of Joel Chandler Harris to get a more favorable view of plantation life in the ante-bellum South?
Do they include on their reading lists the writings of the European philosophical anti-Semites who laid the foundation for Nazism? And remember, the question is whether they would present the writings of Fitzhugh, Chandler Harris and Nazi sympathizers as an expression of an “equally valid” culture, not as straw men to be ripped apart. Or are they more likely to support protests to prevent speakers such as George Gilder and Charles Murray, who challenge the views of the current civil rights’ leadership, from appearing on the university lecture circuit?
Would the NEA make The Turner Chronicles, the book said to inspire the hatred of Timothy McVeigh and various white supremacist groups, the topic of discussion in one of their “non-judgmental discussion circles”? Would they include in that discussion the writings of religious leaders who consider homosexuality an unnatural act and a grave sin if acted upon with full consent of the will?
The questions answer themselves. On these issues, liberal educators do not call for tolerance. Quite the contrary: They encourage their students to “take a stand” and “make a difference” in these matters. Multiculturalism is a movement to advance political correctness. There is nothing non-judgmental about it. And, often enough to matter, it is another manifestation of the frame of mind that Jeane Kirkpatrick once described as “blaming America first.”
