To teach or indoctrinate, that is today's crisis.

 The Saturday May 29th edition of my local paper the Macomb Daily contributing editorial writer Cal Thomas wrote:

"Truth has become subjective and relative in modern times and is now personal. You have your “truth” and I have my “truth.” Even when they contradict each other, it doesn’t matter as long as we both feel good about it.

This flawed notion has contributed to our cultural decline.

Try this experiment if you want to see how far we have moved from objective truth. Go to any popular definition website and type in “truth.” They assume truth exists and can be discovered.

The truth is supposed to set us free, but if we can’t recognize or define it, we will be in bondage. Secretary Mayorkas should reread Orwell’s novel and then abandon any plans to indoctrinate schoolchildren."

I agree that truth exists and can be discovered. But what is being taught in our public schools today is subjectivism as Mr Thomas points out. This in turn leads to political and social relativism. For example: "Rioting should be legal for me when I'm frustrated but not for you." Which is what many Democrat governors and mayors have been allowing.

It was Ayn Rand who pointed out that truth is that which corresponds to reality. It's called the "Correspondence Theory of Truth" which she wrote about in her essays on epistemology and which I highly recommend. References below.

The only way to correct education and return it to a focus on objective reality is to begin  the process of getting the government out of education. As she also once pointed out "Mind and force are opposites." To mix the two as in public (government run) schools will lead to mind (learning) being forced out and replaced with indoctrination. 

Why must this be do? because when we turn our children's minds over to an institution with a monopoly on the legal use of force it's only a matter of time before government indoctrinates all its students with the value of government: how government control and government money will be the solution of all their future problems.

 Unfortunately, one or more generations of Americans have been thusly indoctrinated so that now whenever there is a problem say in transportation (infrastructure), in education, in health care, in any and all sciences, we reflexively turn to government and shout "Do something!"

When we do that we are saying in essence  'Go ahead government and use your monopoly on legal force and fix this particular problem.' This is insane.

Now is the time to look for political candidates who will promise to start privatizing education. It can be to non profit or for profit entities. The parts of the National Labor Relations Act that give unions the right to force teachers into union must be repealed. Teachers need to have professional organizations to represent them to the public. Not unions.

I highly recommend Rand's essay "The Comprachicos" in her book "Capitalism:the Unknown Ideal" and "Teaching Johnny to Think" by Leonard Peikoff. Plus "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" All should be available at the Ayn Rand Institute or Amazon. But we need to start now.

Mr Thomas has identified the problem, Ayn Rand identified the answer.

Michael Neibel

Pay workers on unemployment $1000 to take jobs and get off unemployment?

 I was amazed to see this article in the Detroit News of April 29 that calls for Michigan to use some of the COVID-19 relief money to pay workers on unemployment $1K for taking a job. The article starts:

"A House panel is expected to approve a plan Thursday that would use federal COVID-19 relief funds to pay unemployed workers a $1000 incentive to leave unemployment and take available jobs in Michigan."

It continues with:

"About 800,000 people remain on unemployment in the state, even as businesses are hungry for more workers and the state unemployment trust fund continues to dwindle, said Rep Thomas Albert, the Lowell Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee."

 Amazing to me is a Republican willing to pay workers to go back to work after watching government give extra money on top of unemployment to stay home!   You'd think those politicians would know not to make staying home more profitable than working. Evidently, logical thinking is not a requirement for political leadership in Michigan.

No the workers won't be getting the money first. The article adds:

"To qualify for the incentive, people would need to be employed for at least 80 hours over a four-week period after leaving unemployment."

This is what happens when modern politicians schooled in Pragmatism start making decisions based on nothing more than the expediency of the immediate moment. And if their pragmatic solutions lead to disaster, they can always sing their standard pragmatic excuse "What was true in the past is not true today and what is true today will not be true tomorrow. So we had to take action, to do something. We can't know the future so it's not my fault."

If Republicans want to prevent this kind of economic lunacy in the future, they would hasten to repeal any and all laws giving the governor emergency powers lasting more than two weeks with no extensions.