34:18 – Eric Metaxas – 26 Oct 2020
I copied here part of the transcript, starting around 21:15, that I think is particularly meaningful in today’s socio-political climate. For the sake of context, note that besides being British, Murray is both gay and an atheist.
“I don’t wish to be rude to the country I’m in, but this country has had a failure of education for at least two generations which is coming to roost now. I mean, people throw around this one historical analogy, basically because they don’t even have reference to anything else. You can see from the young people and others who are pulling down the statues of everybody in the American past, they don’t know anything about the American past. They know nothing.
I stood the other day by the statue of Teddy Roosevelt, where it had been in Portland, where like every other statue here has been pulled down. Portland is nothing but a whole array of empty plinths at this point and I don’t see the tourists coming back for the plinth tour. I stood by the statue to Teddy Roosevelt, where it had been, and I asked these young people who were just standing around by it, “What do you think of this statue not being here anymore?” and they kind of didn’t really know anything much about it. “Well we’re not really with that.” And I said, “Do you know who who he was?” and one of them said, “Isn’t it something to do with the second World War?” I said, “No that was Franklin. That was Franklin D. Roosevelt.” But why should a British guy have to come to America and explain your Presidents to the ignoramuses on the street when they’ve been put through public education at considerable cost to this country and with so little effect?
It’s the same with the slavery question. You hear people saying things like, “We’ve never addressed the question of slavery.” What are you talking about?! Have you heard of this thing called the Civil War that happened?! They don’t, and the thing is, here it is: They don’t know. It’s ignorance with presumption layered on top, and this is now the consequence of it. They think they know all about history, they’ve got so many theories about it, and they’re all wrong and they’re all rooted in ignorance. And too few adults in America have been willing to turn around to them and point this out. We do not need to hear from people this ignorant. We do not need to give in to people this ignorant. We shouldn’t be listening to people this ignorant.”
Amen
- The Crowd – A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon
- The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by Charlotte Iserbyt
- The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations by John Coleman
- Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert Jay Lifton