The greatest threat to Western civilisation comes not from China, Russia or Islamists, but from the very people who rank among its greatest beneficiaries. In virtually every field, the midwives of our demise are not working-class radicals or far-right agitators, but, as the late Fred Siegel called it, the ‘new aristocratic class’, made up of the well-credentialed and the technologically and scientifically adept.
The passing this last week of Joe Lieberman, a long-time Connecticut Senator and former vice-presidential candidate, stands as reminder of how far the Democrats have moved from the kind of centrist politics that he so epitomised.
For years, American urbanists and city planners have looked at Canadian cities with envy, as they had managed to avoid the searing decline of their American counterparts. And Toronto was where the late Jane Jacobs chose to make her home, largely due to her enthusiasm for urban neighbourhoods.
The technological revolution once promised a new era of expanded democracy and enhanced opportunity. Instead, we face today a reality that blends the worst aspects of George Orwell’s Big Brother and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World controllers.
Three decades ago, author Steve Toulmin published a book in which he argued that the cosmopolis constitutes the true “agenda of modernity.” Driven by increased trade and movement of peoples, it would create a universal order that “binds all things together” on the basis of Enlightenment ideals.
You have to be utterly delusional – or a member of a teacher’s union – to think that the US education system isn’t a total disaster. The most recent National Assessments of Educational Progress (NAEP, or “The Nation’s Report Card”) found barely a quarter of students are proficient in reading, geography and American history. Read more
“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind,” said Winston Churchill. And judging by the state of education in America, it seems both of those empires could soon crumble. The dysfunction is evident from top to bottom: from Ivy League outposts down to the secondary schools. Both are producing a generation that is ill-informed, illiterate and innumerate. In other words, a generation increasingly ill-suited to function as productive citizens in a democracy.
The recent announcement that Ian Jacobs, a scion of the famous Toronto-based Reichmann real estate clan, was coming to buy upwards of $900 million of San Francisco real estate, has offered the beleaguered California city a rare moment of hope. Some suggest that we could see a repeat of New York’s recovery from its nadir in the 1970s, during which the Reichmanns made a fortune gobbling up depressed buildings shortly before the city’s resurgence. Read more
For generations, education has been a primary means to make countries like Canada and the United States stronger, more productive, and self-confident. Now the education system is not only failing to perform its primary mission for young people, but increasingly works to undermine and divide nations.
At a time when the western world desperately needs some backbone, Canada seems to be swaying. It appears to have moved away from its long-term commitment to protect our now wobbling western civilization. Read more
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