Thanks, oldmaninthedesert and RumorMail. :)

After much of the article, all of it interesting, comes this:

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Our Civil War changed everything for the worse. Forget the propaganda you heard in school, it had nothing to do with slavery. By 1860 Europe had already abandoned the slave institution, and the United States was very close to doing the same - it wouldn't have lasted twenty more years, for many reasons, most interesting of which, for me, is the simple fact that wage~slaves, free in name only, are much cheaper to exploit, and work harder than slaves.

As soon as you put the red herring of slavery out of mind, the contest between family and nature as centers of meaning (versus profit achieved by converting human beings into human resources) becomes clear. Northern industrialists were already privy to the power and fortune being earned converting large populations in Britain, Germany, and elsewhere from a yeomanry into a proletariat. They lusted after similar advantages, but were sophisticated enough to realize that the American traditions of independence, self-reliance, ingenuity, family, and religious worship would have to be marginalized first before this transformation could successfully be worked. Compulsory school laws to break up family closeness were a big part of the package in Germany, and that German magic was coveted in the drawing rooms of New York and Boston.

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Wait -- what?! The Civil War was not about freeing slaves, it was about creating wage-slaves?! Holy cow! And the author goes on from the two paragraphs above to develop the idea fully.

"Compulsory school laws to break up family closeness ..." Yikes.

It's easy to recognize the direct connection from all that to the circumstances we find ourselves in today. For example, why are folks who self-identify as Christians finding themselves under attack these days? From the article:

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The opposite of mass-mindedness is dialectical-mindedness. A tremendous example of this is buried in the foundational religious documents of western culture, in the story of young Jesus closely questioning elders in the temple after slipping away from his parents, itself a contrarian action. Indeed, the New Testament is so replete with contrarianism it's little wonder it plays no part in institutional schooling, although it plays a stupendous part in western history from the beginning of the modern era until today.

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Yes, there are some participants of Christian churches who are (Catholicism pun not intended but unavoidable) mass-minded. At the same time, however, a majority of those who self-identify as Christians are dialectical-minded, perhaps by having a strong moral compass that follows from belief in a strong and loving higher power, a power higher than earthly rulers, school boards included.

I don't know if there are statistics that would prove this out, but my observation has been that those self-identifying as Christians are the ones most likely to home-school their children. After reading the article, I can see why The Powers That Were would be interested to throw a monkey wrench into the Christian works.

Blessings, all.

--hobie

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