Teaching Them To Be Good Little Party Members

My daughter's high school is a regular cesspit of progressive indoctrination. Two more data points popped up this week. Her government teacher gave them a 50-question political survey to take. Based on their answers, they were told if they identified more with Democrats or Republicans. 100% of the class identified as Democrats. In a school that servers a large population of military families from the South, the entire class identified as Democrats.

Right. No angle to the questions there.

In English, instead of reading, they watch videos. This week was a video about Christopher McCandless.

The hippy dip himself, in front of the abandoned bus where he starved to death.

Short version: Chris was a progressive dingbat who traveled to Alaska to be one with nature. Untrained and without basic equipment, he lived in an abandoned bus in the wilds until he starved to death. My daughter's teacher lionized the fellow, recommending his lifestyle to the class. A ranger living in Alaska was not so sanguine.

When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament using one of several routes that could have been successful. Consider where he died. An abandoned bus. How did it get there? On a trail. If the bus could get into the place where it died, why couldn’t McCandless get out of the place where he died? The fact that he had to live in an old bus in the first place tells you a lot. Why didn’t he have an adequate shelter from the beginning? What would he have done if he hadn’t found the bus? A bag of rice and a sleeping bag do not constitute adequate gear and provisions for a long stay in the wilderness.

Ranger  Pete goes on at considerable length leaving little doubt that McCandless was akin to the trust fund progressives who are the core of the Occupy movement.

Fortunately, the teachers have contributed to the formation of a generation so centered on pleasure and rife with cynicism that all this indoctrination isn't creating passionate revolutionaries, but instead, a rather indifferent mob. At least that's the way it seems from my daughter's anecdotes about how her classmates are reacting to the teachers.