For the last 72 years I've watched America's greatness decline. Born at the end of World War II, I arrived on the planet at the epoch when America was great. Not just merely great, but the greatest nation on the planet. Without the men and women of America, fascists powers of Germany, Italy and Japan would have subjugated the entire population of the globe. Tom Brokaw's testimonial book, THE GREATEST GENERATION, tells us why that generation witnessed the slow decline of America after WW II;

“A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility ”
They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.”
"It is a generation that, by and large, made no demands of homage from those who followed and prospered economically, politically, and culturally because of its sacrifices. It is a generation of towering achievement and modest demeanor, a legacy of their formative years when they were participants in and witness to sacrifices of the highest order. They know how many of the best of their generation didn't make it to their early twenties, how many brilliant scientists, teachers, spiritual and business leaders, politicians and artists were lost in the ravages of the greatest war the world has seen."

What happened? How did we get where we are today? Why are the present generations mostly self-absorbed brats without enduring principles, values, or even any objective metric for what's 'good' or 'bad'? When did 'evil' become simply 'inappropriate'? How did our children acquire a rabid disrespect for the very traditions, principles and values that crushed fascism in 1945 ? Why do our kids, and many adults, think loving thy neighbor means clicking 'like' on Face Book? Why are they zombies staring at screens while tripping over evil? Why do they instinctively turn on their cameras to record beatings, rapes, murder, and mayhem instead of intervening to stop it? Why are the so detached from blood and dirt? Is social equity determined by marginal assertions of gender and piss pots? Why have they turned the science of material things into a secular religion? How did we get here?

We got here one little step at a time. Two things are responsible, bad parenting and bad teaching. We are to blame. Here, we only look at the bad teaching.

Usually, beginning of the term college faculty meetings are rather hum-drum clinics in boredom with everyone congratulating everyone else for being congratulated. No more. Not since the Fall of 2016.

How does one survive a mandatory indoctrination into ABOLISH WHITENESS two hour 'white shaming' waterboarding at the hands of rabid social justice warriors? Thorazine, in large dosage. Thorazine is the calming psychiatric drug-of-choice for sane, rational and traditional faculty to take before attending these meeting days run by ‘white is bad’ therapists. If you are an educator who believes, as Dr. Martin Luther King did, that all people should be “…judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character”, then you should ask your doctor for a Thorazine prescription. You won’t be able to sit through faculty meetings without it.

Increasingly, whole college faculties are being harangued with presentations on ‘whiteness’ is bad and ‘whiteness’ is the root of all our social, political, and educational problems in America. We are in an educational culture war on ‘whiteness.’ Two events are offered in evidence.

Normally, the faculty meeting I attend at the beginning of each college semester is civil, rational, and professional in both content and method. Not this semester. After a few gracious remarks by our college president the remaining two hours of the meeting was run by an outside non-profit organization whose mission it is to unquestioningly accept the notion that if only we stroke the hurt, offended feeling of our Latino and black students, then more of them would be academically successful. They claim that if students don’t ‘affiliate’ then they will not ‘accomplish’ success. And of course, it is up to the faculty to concentrate on student ‘affiliation’ rather than academic accomplishment. What do they mean by overcoming the minority student affiliation gap? Three minority students then took over the meeting sharing their anecdotal experiences self-described as psychologically, socially and academically challenged. Each repeated the same mantras;

“I’ve never believed I can succeed as an individual.”

“I’ve never been able to be self-motivated.”
“I never see myself in my text books. It’s always some white people never people of color.”
“They never teach us about Africa or Mexico. They only teach about white Americans.”
“White teachers just don’t care about us. You can feel it. They spend more time helping the white students.”
“When the white teaches do notice us they only patronize with stereotypes.”
“We’re invisible to white people.”

During this meeting, attended by Trustees, administrators, faculty, staff and the three students, there was no examination of the underlying assumptions being made. Racism was assumed to be a white only social sin. No opposing views were allowed. Not even questions were permitted. This ‘white is bad’ dog-and-pony show was presented as revealed truth and beyond all debate. Since over 70% of faculty are part-time ‘adjuncts’ who only keep their job at the whim of their department chair the presenters had good reason to expect sheepish compliance.

Just this morning, while celebrating the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. my stomach was turned by an article online that at first I refused to believe, even after that ‘white is bad’ faculty meeting just described. The headline screamed:

Portland Community College to devote an entire month to 'whiteness'-shaming

(source: http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7174 )

Peter Fricke Investigative Reporter@FrickePete

Portland Community College has designated April "Whiteness History Month" (WHM), an "educational project" exploring how the "construct of whiteness" creates racial inequality.

"'Whiteness History Month: Context, Consequences, and Change' is a multidisciplinary, district-wide, educational project examining race and racism through an exploration of the construction of whiteness, its origins, and heritage," PCC states on its website. "Scheduled for the month of April 2016, the project seeks to inspire innovative and practical solutions to community issues and social problems that stem from racism."

Burned several times by social media ‘trolling’, in disbelieve I went to the official Portland Community College website to vet Mr. Fricke’s article. Every word of it was true as the college itself unabashedly proclaimed an academic war on ‘whiteness’ for the month of April 2016. No kidding. Here’s the official site with all the details:

https://www.pcc.edu/about/diversity/cascade/whiteness-history-month/

Why is it fitting to call this an ‘academic war’? Examine the Whiteness History program for yourself. Again, like my water-boarding faculty meeting, no assumptions are ever questioned. No room for opposing views are offered or scheduled. No tolerance for open debate is planned or even acknowledged. Yet, this is supposed to be a college, a place of ‘higher’ education.

What are those unexamined assumptions on which this war on whiteness rests? Consider the following;

1. Racism is a white only social phenomenon

2. Minorities do not succeed academically solely because of white racism.

3. Stroking feelings of minority alienation and lack of acceptance is a duty of professors.

4. Minority students can only succeed if they feel accepted

5. Existing college curricula is based on, and imposed by white racists and white privilege

6. Minority students are have no culpability in their own failure to academically, psychologically or socially succeed in the larger society

7. Tax dollars from citizens of all political views should be used by public higher education to dismantle ‘whiteness’ in our society.

8. Tax supported higher education should concentrate on Latino and African culture in order to help minority students have a feeling of ‘affiliation’.

9. Publicly funded professors should be made to do psychological counseling for which they are neither trained nor capable of performing even if it violates their conscience.

10. Tax based colleges should become social welfare dispensaries rather than centers for academic achievement.

And, if that’s not enough, the newest ‘meta’ presumption is this:

Whiteness "does not simply refer to skin color[,] but [to] an ideology based on beliefs, values, behaviors, habits, and attitudes, which result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin color."

"The Problem of Whiteness" is now a class you can take at The University of Arizona at Tempe. Watch how 'whiteness' is merely assumed to exist and the source of evil in our society.

You might ask, “How did these assumptions and presumptions become the default predicates in publicly funded higher education?" Part of the answer is that the ground has been made fertile for these assumptions since liberal-progressives have repopulated the ranks of college trustees, administrators, faculty and staff mainly through what is euphemistically called the ‘social sciences’ through another chimera called 'diversity'. But a moments reflection reveals this term as an oxymoron, If it’s science, then it can’t be social, and if it’s social, then it can’t be science. There are no ‘racist’ or ‘whiteness’ molecules, atoms or quarks. ‘Feelings’ are not empirically observable in a controlled laboratory setting. Predictions about people, groups, tribes, nations, and other societies do not conform to the rigors of scientific probability. Any school child from the former planet Pluto knows this. Yet, these ‘social justice’ warriors, groomed in social science seminaries are the new secular priests dispensing inconclusive ‘social data’ like some new age holy water. Blessed and saved are those who are washed by it. Sinful and condemned are those who question its holiness. Legislation where mentally confused marginal people can piss is now a national crisis.