Against Ignorance is an antidote to continued claims to “being right” in the context of the people recommending policies for the U.S. “Being right” is the standard for thinking in American intellectual life. “Being right” guides the voice of the people. Participating in American intellectual life is the right of citizens. It is the exercise of democracy. We are the people. We are not corporations, the voice of fascism, nor the local, state, and federal governments, the voices of socialism and communism. In our recent era, since 1972, we have experienced a co-optation of what was described as the American dream. The American dream was the voice of liberals from the late 1950’s into the 1990’s in order to include diverse peoples who had become citizens during these eras. The problem was that these peoples, however deserving of citizenship, represented a privileged voice that did not include the American experience; that is; the experience of the colonial period of this country, the period of industrialization, and the periods of the great wars of WWI, WII, and Vietnam. This citizenry speaks with a socialist intonation. What problems does this cause? A reference to America without the American experience leads to a claim that immigrants can speak as Americans while meaning a non-American reality. What America becomes for them is a reference or a footnote to the story they write. This reference, or footnote, guides the rhetoric that fuels the liberal call to change. The conduct and policy that citizens then believe and act upon based only upon this footnote or reference. The result is a plagiarized American experience that claims to be real, but is really an enactment of hopes, dreams, and policies of foreign principalities. Contemporary politics points out that the new country, America, is no longer great. This, an effort to guide the country by yet another group of immigrants who further degrade what citizenship means to the majority of citizens. Against Ignorance is a dialogue to correct this problem. It is an attempt to put into American intellectual life the heritage that can help people pursue happiness, and not the American dream. How does Against Ignorance do this? The main antidote is to point out that ignorance of sin guides the plagiarism that replaces democracy with socialism, fascism, and communism. The premise of this theory is that “rightness” based in the correction of sinfulness leads in the direction that fulfills the promise of American democracy. At that point, whether America decides to be socialist, communist, fascist, or capitalist the best interests of the American people are met. People can achieve success, or greatness, or fulfillment. People can correct the wrongs in their lives and the lives of their family members and friends. Otherwise, we are only in service to the interests of foreign principalities whose financial interests will come first no matter what.
More on what Plagiarized America means in another post. Of special interest is the theory that limits to expressions of freedom need to be made in order to halt unbridled freedom which is in service to other ideals.