COMMENCEMENT 2014

 

Many people ask me " Why are you so angry?"   I usually reply "Why aren't you?"  For starters I am not built to surrender.  I take my rights and responsibilities seriously.  I take my obligation seriously to try and leave my country and the world better than they were when I found it.   I cannot roll over and become a slave to those who once they have stripped me of my rights would then attempt to eradicate my humanity.  So I'm angry!

The country is in the throes of an American version of the cultural revolution.  Too many of our allegedly educated youth are all too ready, willing and eager to silence anyone who disagrees with them on whatever issue du jour  they have taken a pious and ignorant stand.

We were warned  that this day would come when the missionaries of Marx took over Academia and systematically proceeded to turn our children into witless disciples of numerous phony Messiahs.

Intolerance in the university is now the norm as witnessed by the procession of graduation speakers who have become objectionable for moronic reasons held by brainwashed bigots with caps and gowns.

If I were to be a commencement speaker (which is about as likely as playing shortstop for the Yankees after Jeter retires), I would say this to the graduates of 2014:

" The world is in terrible shape.  The country is virtually in free fall because the rule of law has been abandoned.  The Constitution ...the greatest secular document of freedom ever written is in tatters...and many of you, but not all of you are oblivious to all of the above because your education has not included an accurate history of this country, warts and all.  Instead if you got anything it was The History of the United States...warts...that's all.    

Nor were you instructed in how this country is supposed to work  so you could be the watchmen in the night when the nation veers off course.  Had you been so instructed, most of you would be on the barricades today.   

You also do not understand that you live in an "exceptional" nation unlike any other in the history of the world.  Whether it remains that way will now be up to you.  Whether it remains that way means  you will have abandoned an innocence that no longer justifies your arrogant, self righteous pathology of never offending anyone in order to justify in turn your knee jerk reflex to censor anyone who disagrees with you.

Your obsession with grievance based conformity of word and deed must be put away with your toys.  Your thirst for punishing your mythical enemies while aligning yourself with some of the most vile political movements in history has become in the minds of many the  signature achievement of your academic careers...unless of course you count the appalling fact that far too many of you know more about Ben Affleck than you do about Benghazi.

You might be surprised that many in the real world see you first and foremost as Fascists.   If you  don't know what that means than Google it.  They wonder how Liberal Arts became so illiberal.

You worship "diversity" but were not educated in an environment that practiced it and most of you said and did nothing about it and now the bill  for that avoidance will be coming due.

You will now be entering a world more dangerous and complex than any before it.  It is also a world which is more competitive on a global scale than ever before.  Those who know how to seek and acquire knowledge and truth will survive, thrive and prosper and the rest will not.  Those who have wallowed in the popular culture while ignoring the humanities, science and western civilization, now must radically change their ways or be relegated to a life of diminishing returns.

Mine is a call not just to your hearts and minds but to your souls as well.  The wisdom of the past is the only road map to the future. But it will only be as good a road map as you make it... as you chart your course in an unsettled world.

My plea to you is simple.  Do not wake up 10...20...30 years from now as a cog in a machine made by politicians selling you what passes as political manure.  Do not wake up as subjects of the state and not the ultimate rulers of that state. Do not wake up as serfs to a progressive elite.

I close with the following thoughts;

Shun the cult of celebrity and the curse of political correctness...both will devour  you...

Embrace the classics and the lessons of history...they can save you

Embrace the sermon on the mount...it can save your soul

Be faithful to the vision of the founders or risk losing your freedoms forever...

Keep learning until you die...

Learn a trade to get you through the lean times...

Practice courage,bravery and honesty...they are virtues that define you in good times and bad...

Do not let the nation, your nation, wither on the vine until it becomes a cruel parody of the last days of the Holy Roman Empire...

And if you don't know what The Holy Roman Empire was ...don't Google it...instead pick up a  book and learn!"

ERLANDSSON