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Donald Trump exposed his profound condescension and blatant manipulation with the notorious 2016 declaration, I love the poorly educated.Election results and polling dataconsistently show that the most poorly-educated Americans at least, those who are white love him back with almost religious reverence, treating him as guru, despot and pop-culture idol all in one. While it is easy to chortle at the hillbilly-Deadhead vibe surrounding Trump rallies, it is more important to consider how the better-educated are weakening their country by rejecting the tools necessary to maintain the structure of liberal democracy.

Decades ago, universities across the country began making cuts to the liberal arts. The humanities, fine arts and social sciences are endangered everywhere, as evident by the staggering variety of state colleges and private universities no longer invested in their survival. In 2023,West Virginia Universityeliminated its world languages department, reduced its education department by a third and slashed its programs in art history, music, architecture and natural resource management. In the same year,Lasell University, a small private school in Massachusetts, killed five majors, including English and history. InOhio, numerous of the state's best-known institutions of learning have announced cuts to the liberal arts, including Kent State, the University of Toledo, Miami University, Youngstown State, Baldwin Wallace University and Marietta College.

But the academic carnage in the Buckeye State is hardly an outlier. A quick Google search reveals intellectual wreckage piling up across the nation. The University of New Hampshire permanently closed its art museum, the University of Tulsa eliminated degrees in history, and the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin system has instructed all 25 of its campuses which enroll more than 160,000 students every year to prepare for reductions in liberal arts programs.

My alma mater,Valparaiso University, is now preparing to join in the self-destruction. A Lutheran liberal arts college on the shores of Lake Michigan, 50 miles or so southeast of Chicago, Valparaiso recently announced that it is considering the discontinuation of 28 programs, including philosophy, public health, theology and the graduate program in English Studies and Communication, where I earned a master's degree. When I graduated in 2010, Valparaiso had a regional reputation as a small, private institution with excellent educational standards, bolstered by an emphasis on the arts and humanities.

The English Studies and Communication program was a hybrid, requiring study of creative writing, journalism, English literature and mass communication theory. Professors collaborated with the directors of the campus art museum and instructors in the social sciences and business departments, to demonstrate that knowledge is impossible to segregate or compartmentalize. A truly educated person should be adept at making connections across disciplines, cultures and different sectors of society.

Time and again, college and university leaders across the country have cited a business-model imperative for transforming their institutions into glorified vocational schools.

Gore Vidal defined an intellectual as someone who can deal with abstractions. Valparaiso, at its best, did exactly that equipping its graduates with an ability to handle abstractions, while showing that abstractions arent all that abstract. What might seem abstract in the academic context, as recent American history ought to have taught us, may soon transform into the concrete, creating situations of urgent social consequence. Arguments about democracy, disinformation, the public good and moral philosophy are inseparable from such issues as climate change, gun violence, the effects of new communication technology and the struggle to defeat autocracy.

In the 14 years since my graduation, Valparaiso has suffered from poor leadership that has caused consistent damage to its reputation. In 2020, it shut down its law school after years of lowering its standards to attract enough more students. Last year, the university's current president, Jos Padilla, launched a bizarre crusade to fund the renovation of a first-year dormitory by selling off a Georgia OKeeffe painting, along with other signature works of art from the campus museum. Despite widespread opposition from students and faculty, and condemnation from the American Alliance of Museums, Padilla seems determined to proceed with this philistine maneuver (I wrote about the proposed sale for theNew Republic.)

The potential gutting of Valparaiso's liberal arts programs is one small part of a much larger social and cultural trend of viewing education as nothing more than a business proposition. AsMatthew Becker, a theology professor at Valparaiso, wrote, this decision, "if implemented, will completely dismantle the stated mission of the university":

Valpo will no longer be "grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith," nor will it really be preparing students "to serve in both church and society." With the elimination of foreign languages, music, the theology programs, and other programs in the humanities, Valpo will no longer be a liberal arts university.

My nephew, Justin McClain, a recent graduate of the endangered public health program, stated the obvious: On the heels of a pandemic that resulted in millions of lives lost and trillions in economic losses educational institutions should be embracing students interested in joining a field that has proved far too valuable to the functioning of society at large yet remains chronically understaffed.

Becker identified Valpo's plan of self-destruction as completely market-driven, and that's a critical point. Padilla and other university leaders have offered exclusively economic reasons to explain their agenda.

Time and again, college and university leaders across the country have cited financial justification and a business-model imperative for transforming their institutions into glorified vocational schools. And this wrecking-ball campaign runs in parallel with an ideologically motivated war on learning.

Right-wing governors and legislatures in many states, including Florida, Texas and Tennessee, have attempted to strip-mine universities, often by eliminating diversity, equity and Inclusion programs, prohibiting instruction in topics related to race and gender, and eventhreatening to deny loansto students who want to major in an impractical discipline.

This anti-intellectual campaign of destruction against higher education takes place alongsidebook-ban campaigns in many of the same states, where astroturf organizations funded by right-wing groups have worked to remove books from school curricula and libraries that focus on issues of racial justice or LGBTQ equality.

It may be worth noting that many of those who claim to hate education are blatant hypocrites. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holds a bachelors degree in history from Yale and a law degree from Harvard. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a defender of book bans who routinely bashes institutions of learning, also has a Harvard Law degree, as well as a B.A. in public policy from Princeton. Even Donald Trump despite his incoherent rambling and his impressive lack of knowledge on almost every conceivable topic doesn't technically qualify as poorly educated. Although exactly how and why Trump was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania in the first place remains unclear, he holds a B.S. in real estate from Penn's Wharton School.

Many of those who claim to hate education are blatant hypocrites. Ron DeSantis holds a history degree from Yale and a law degree from Harvard. Ted Cruz also has a Harvard Law degree, as well as a B.A. from Princeton.

For all their phony anti-educational posturing, Republican officials and pundits have succeeded in selling ignorance as virtuous to their voters and viewers. A2022 Pew Researchsurvey found that 76 percent of Republicans now believe that colleges affect the country negatively, while 76 percent of Democrats said they believe colleges affect the country positively.

A good rule to follow is never to trust highly educated people who tell you that education is a waste of time. A good question to ask, after that, is why they want so many people to remain ignorant.

If democracy is to function as intended, it demands a well-informed and reasonably sophisticated citizenry. Without an intelligent electorate, democratic governance is under threat from despots and demagogues who can acquire power by appealing to base emotions and instincts. Thomas Jefferson called information the currency of democracy. America is now at risk of bankruptcy.

Jefferson was also one of the founders of the University of Virginia, where organized a committee to develop aholistic program of learningthat, in todays ruthless, profit-obsessed climate, would not survive at Valparaiso, at West Virginia University or at countless other schools. Its program was to include ancient and modern languages, mathematics, physio-mathematics, physics, botany and zoology, anatomy and medicine, government and political economy and history, municipal law, and Ideology (rhetoric, ethics, belles lettres, fine arts).

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George Washington advocated for a national university that would teach the arts and natural sciences, along with literature, rhetoric and criticism. But the father of our country might now have pariah status on most campuses perhaps as an adjunct instructor with no health benefits, begging for a summer course.

In an age of extreme partisan rancor, there is dispiriting bipartisan unity on one point: Most Americans are increasingly hostile to the liberal arts. While only Republicans are overtly hateful of higher education as a whole, many students and administrators no longer claim to see the value in programs that, according to their standards, lack immediate and practical application to the job market. Recent data indicate that only10.2 percent of college studentsmajor in any humanities discipline, and barely over 1 percentmajor in history or political science.

High schools across the country, meanwhile, have been cutting courses incivics, the social sciences, humanities andfine artsfor decades.

Divorcing education from philosophical, political and social ambitions creates a culture in which people view public-health measures during a pandemic as stepping stones to the gulag.

Richard Hofstadter, one of the premier historians and public intellectuals of the 20th century, explained in his 1963 classic, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, that most Americans view intelligence as merely functional. Brainpower, in this view, should serve some practical and tangible purpose, typically one that can be measured in dollars and cents. Abstractions, to return to Gore Vidals remark, are seen as irrelevant distractions from learning the skills that can earn a bigger paycheck.

One of the numerous things people seem to have forgotten amid this rat-race competition is the question of how to maintain a democratic system of governance. Representative government is complicated, and often moves slowly. It requires sustained wrestling with the complex and thorny questions of ethics, personal freedom versus social responsibility, and balancing the progress driven by new knowledge and new ideas with the benefits of existing norms and traditions.

That kind of intellectual labor is taxing enough for those with a decent formal education, but with no training in the study of government, culture or mass communication, Americans are increasingly likely to fall for bad arguments and stupid ideas. Divorcing education from philosophical, political and social ambitions creates a culture in which people view public-health measures during a pandemic as stepping stones to the gulag, convince themselves that a racist con man most famous for hosting a game show could not possibly have lost a free and fair election, or believe that information about transgender people is more dangerous than assault rifles.

Democratic voters hope as should everyone else with a conscience that Joe Biden can overcome his poor approval ratings and doubts about his age by appealing to Americans' belief in democracy. He will have to consistently remind the electorate that his opponent presents an unprecedented threat to the system that millions of voters take for granted. For many Americans, however, democracy is a hazy concept at best. Survey results consistently show that large proportions of the American public don't understand theBill of Rights, cannot name thethree branches of governmentand are unfamiliar with the most important and basic facts of U.S. history.

Tech journalist Kara Swisher, author of the new history and memoir Burn Book, recently observed that leading figures in Silicon Valley, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, have "no sense of history."If so, they are little different from the average citizen in that regard, yet they are routinely heralded as geniuses. It is hardly surprising that theyve allowed hate speech, deceitful propaganda and other harmful material to proliferate on their platforms.

A society actually grounded in the liberal arts might see Zuckerberg and Musk as allegorical characters, perhaps as archetypal warnings against the reckless pursuit of wealth and the refusal to balance technical wizardry with more mature forms of insight and wisdom. But that is not our society. The outsized influence of Zuckerberg and Musk not to mention Donald Trump makes clear that we are at risk of handing our country over to cynical, power-mad morons who are, at best, indifferent to hate, poverty and violence. A little education might help.

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from David Masciotra on America

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Ignorance and democracy: Capitalism's long war against higher education - Salon

For Germany a country that knows something about how extremists can hijack a government the surging popularity of the far right has forced an awkward question.

How far should a democracy go in restricting a party that many believe is bent on undermining it?

It is a quandary that politicians and legal experts are grappling with across the country as support surges for Alternative for Germany, a far-right party whose backing now outstrips each of the three parties in the governing coalition.

Not only is the AfD the most popular party in three states holding elections this year, it is polling nationwide as high as 20 percent. German politicians have become increasingly alarmed that someday the party could wield influence in the federal government. Its popularity has grown despite the fact that the domestic intelligence services announced they are investigating the party as a suspected threat to democracy.

Germans have already had a front-row seat to the rise of so-called illiberal democrats in Poland and Hungary who used their power to stack courts with pliant judges and silence independent media. History hangs heavy over Germany as well the Nazis used elections to seize the levers of the state and shape an authoritarian system.

Today, German lawmakers are rewriting bylaws and pushing for constitutional amendments to ensure courts and state parliaments can provide checks against a future, more powerful AfD. Some have even launched a campaign to ban the AfD altogether.

But every remedy holds its own dangers, leaving German politicians threading a course between safeguarding their democracy and the possibility of unwittingly providing the AfD with tools it could someday use to hobble it.

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Germany Looks to Stop the Far Right From Assuming Power - The New York Times

Donald Trump entertained Hungarian prime minister (possibly for life) Viktor Orbn at Mar-a-Lago on Friday and lavished him with the praise he reserves for the worlds great dictators. He says, This is the way its going to be, and thats the end of it. Right? Hes the boss. No, hes a great leader, gushed Trump.

Orbn is a slightly tricky kind of leader to categorize. Hes not a dictator, exactly. Whats hes done is rig the rules of the game to a point where its almost impossible for his party to lose. His methods include stacking the judiciary and important government agencies with loyal cronies and aggressive gerrymandering, but his most important maneuvers have entailed gaining almost complete control over the Hungarian media ecosystem.

Orban leaned on the owners of Hungarys main media organs to fall in line or sell to his allies, so that all of them now follow his party line in the same way Fox News advocates for Republican Party interests. Andrew Kramer, the New York Times Budapest bureau chief, calls Orbns regime a propaganda state.

One of the most underappreciated developments in Trumps first term was an effort to employ the exact same model in the U.S. In an effort to pressure Jeff Bezos to make the Washington Post more friendly, Trump directed the Pentagon to deny a lucrative contract to Amazon, which it did. He also threatened AT&T both publicly and by using the Justice Department to block a proposed merger to pressure CNN.

Neither gambit succeeded at producing pliant coverage. But his pressure campaign failed in part because his targets expected Trump to be a fleeting phenomenon who would depart the scene after one term, after which the Republican Party would return to normal. (It is difficult to remember now, but Trumps miserable approval ratings were widely seen as proof he would lose decisively.) The safest move for media barons targeted by Trump was to wait him out. That calculation might look very different in a second Trump term.

This is especially so because the Republican Party has been transformed in Trumps image. His crude efforts to put the media under his thumb got little pushback and none whatsoever from within the party. If you listen to Trumps Republican critics enumerate his flaws, they will cite January 6, perhaps scold him for his trade policies or lack of message discipline, but never reprimand him for using state power to lean on the media.

Thats not because they approve of the tactic in the abstract. If President Biden did the same thing to Fox News that Trump did to CNN and the Washington Post, impeachment would be the mildest GOP response. There would be mobs in the streets. But Republicans were willing to look the other way when Trump used state power as a crude bludgeon against the media.

The discourse around democracy suffers from a tendency to frame the question in binary terms. Will Trump end American democracy? Possibly and the risk of him doing so alone justifies supporting his opponent. But the more likely scenario is not that Trump will destroy democracy completely but that he will further weaken it. The full descent to Putins Russia begins with a stop at Orbns Hungary. And Trump could not be more clear that this is where he intends to lead us.

Irregular musings from the center left.

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Trump Tried Orbn's Most Effective Weapon Against Democracy - New York Magazine

So remarkable is the fine print in Canadas new law that Stalin and Mao would have been proud sponsors of such a law.

The annual Ides of March lamentation about the death of democracy in India has resumed in earnest. The reason: Sweden-based think-tank V-Dem has released its latest annual report n freedom and democracy around the world. The cover title is quite fancy: Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Losing & Winning At The Ballot. The authors were not surprised in the least when V-Dem reiterated its stance that India has descended almost irretrievably to become an electoral autocracy. In late 2021, the people who wrote the then annual report had already passed judgement that the Election Commission of India is no longer an independent body and has been subverted by the Narendra Modi regime. The authors wouldnt waste anybodys time by quoting chapter and verse the blithering nonsense written in the latest report. Some gems are enough. For instance, analysing South Asia, the experts at V-Dem write: The level of democracy enjoyed by the average human being in the region is now down to levels last seen in 1975almost half a century ago. That was when the Vietnam War ended and when Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency in India. India, with 1.4 billion citizens, it seems, is primarily responsible for the decline in democracy witnessed in South and Central Asia.

Quite predictably, the legions of critics whose life in India is dedicated to demonising Narendra Modi, have found yet another weapon to lash out at him and his government. According to them, Modi has subverted every democratic institution including the Election Commission and even the Supreme Court ever since he became Prime Minister in 2014. In fact, they insist he has been displaying authoritarian and fascist traits ever since he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Once again, the authors wont waste time analysing this irrational hatred towards a political leader. We are more interested in the astonishing claim made by V-Dem, and vociferously supported by its fans in India that democracy in Canada is genuinely liberal and far superior to democracy in India. Going back to actual facts, that is such a brazen lie that only liberals think they can hoodwink people by parroting it ad nauseam.

For those not following the state of democracy in Canada, its Parliament is enacting a new law that is called the Online Harms Bill or Bill B-63. Ostensibly, the new law is meant to protect children and other vulnerable groups from online predators. But so remarkable is the fine print in the new law that Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong would have been proud sponsors of such a law in the contemporary world. Under this law, hate speech has become a criminal offence and can even lead to a life sentence. How is hate speech defined? It is content that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or a group of individuals based on their race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics and disability. Judges in Canada will have the discretion to determine if an individual has committed a criminal offence by indulging in this kind of online hate. Anyone can file a complaint against any fellow Canadian citizen under this law and apart from jail, judges will have the discretion to impose a penalty ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 that will be handed over to the complainant. There is no provision to punish the complainant even if she has levelled blatantly false accusations of online hate. A new Canada Human Rights Tribunal is being set up to receive such complaints and process them, even in secret and without knowledge of the accused if the complainant wishes to remain anonymous.

What would happen if such a law were passed by Indian Parliament under a fascist Narendra Modi? Some examples will suffice. DMK leaders Udhayanidhi Stalin and A. Raja could potentially face life in prison for hate against Sanatana Dharma. Lalu Prasad Yadav too could be convicted under this law for mocking and insulting the marital status of Narendra Modi. Rahul Gandhi too would be in serious trouble for asking why most people with the Modi surname are thieves. On can go on and on. The new Canadian law has a provision which is even more frighteningly Orwellian and dystopian. A person can be punished in advance by a judge if there is an apprehension that the accused might commit the crime of online hate at a future date. A potential victim can approach the court under this law and the potential criminal can be sentenced to house arrest and wearing electronic monitoring devices at all times. Failure to comply will result in a one-year jail term.

Now, if you happen to have even a modicum of common sense, how is this new Canadian law not a direct and murderous assault on free speech, civil liberty and democracy? The mainstream media in Canada is so beholden to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his gang of liberals that they are hailing it as a momentous victory for human rights and democracy. The critics who are slamming this law as an affront to democracy have been banished from mainstream media platforms. They use social media platforms to highlight their concerns. But then, under the new law, some liberal Canadian judge can send the dissenters to jail for online hate. Can you call any country that has a draconian law like this a democracy by any yardstick? Yet, you have experts at think-tanks like V-Dem gushing about the success of liberal democracy in Canada, while they moan about the descent of a once liberal India into an electoral autocracy. Of course, there are thousands of secular liberals in India who unhesitatingly share the worldview of V-Dem. What can one say about these gymnastics over free speech and democracy?

The authors would conclude by highlighting another stupendous act of double standards. When Indian farmers protested against the three farm reform laws and effectively blockaded the national capital region for almost a year, causing untold misery to hundreds of thousands of commuters, Justin Trudeau publicly supported them and warned India against curbing the rights of farmers to protest. What happened at the end? The farm reform laws were withdrawn and even those arrested for wanton acts of violence had their cases withdrawn. Trudeau became a completely different animal when truckers in Canada launched protests against strict and rigid restrictions imposed on movements because of the Covid pandemic. They started a Freedom Convoy. Not only were the protestors arrested under national security laws but they were de facto branded as terrorists. Even their bank accounts were frozen and confiscated.

But who is the fascist who suppresses free speech and protests? Modi, of course. And who is the living epitome of liberal free speech? Why, Trudeau of course.

Yashwant Deshmukh is Founder & Editor in Chief of CVoter Foundation and Sutanu Guru is Executive Director.

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You really think democracy is safer in Canada than in India? - The Sunday Guardian

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

Haiti and Honduras have made headlines in the last few weeks. Honduras former president, Juan Orlando Hernndez, was just convicted in a US court of drug trafficking. He faces life in prison. Haiti is a nation without a government, as armed groups have united against the US-backed, unelected Prime Minister installed after the assassination of their president in 2021. In both cases, what is missing from mainstream news coverage is the role of US intervention that brought them to this point.

The crisis in Haiti is a crisis of imperialism, University of British Columbia Professor Jemima Pierre, a Haitian American scholar, explained on the Democracy Now! news hour. In her NACLA Report article headlined, Haiti as Empires Laboratory, she describes her home country as the site of the longest and most brutal neocolonial experiment in the modern world.

Haiti was the worlds first Black republic, founded in 1804 following a slave revolt. France demanded Haiti pay reparations, for the loss of slave labor when Haitis enslaved people freed themselves. For more than a century, Haitis debt payments to France, then later to the US, hobbled its economy. The United States refused to recognize Haiti for decades, until 1862, fearful that the example of a slave uprising would inspire the same in the US.

In 1915, the US invaded Haiti, occupying it until 1934. The U.S. also backed the brutal Duvalier dictatorships from 1957 to 1986. Jean-Bertand Aristide became Haitis first democratically-elected president in 1991, only to be ousted in a violent coup eight months later. The coup was supported by President George H.W. Bush and later by President Bill Clinton. Public pressure forced Clinton to allow Aristides return in 1994, to finish his presidential term in 1996. Aristide was reelected in 2001.

Democracy Now! traveled to C.A.R. in 2004 covering a delegation led by Transafrica founder Randall Robinson and U.S. Congressmember Maxine Waters who defied US policy and escorted the Aristides back to the Western Hemisphere. Aristide confirmed to Democracy Now! then that he had been ousted in a coup dtat backed by the United States. Aristide then went to live in exile in South Africa for the next seven years.

In response to allegations that gangs are currently controlling Haiti, Professor Pierre said, The so-called gang violence is actually not the main problem in Haiti. The main problem in Haiti is the constant interference of the international community, and the international community here is, very explicitly, the U.S., France and Canada.

The Biden administration is reportedly now considering the transfer of Haitian asylum seekers to the controversial U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba a repeat of some of the worst U.S. policies in its long history of exploitation of Haitians.

Honduras, meanwhile, currently has a democratically-elected president, Xiomara Castro. Her husband, Manuel Mel Zelaya, was elected president in 2006, then ousted in a US-backed coup in 2009. In the following years, Honduras descended into a narco-state, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee violence, seeking asylum in the United States and elsewhere.

In 2013, Juan Orlando Hernndez was elected president amidst allegations of campaign finance violations, then again in 2017 in an election widely considered fraudulent. Shortly thereafter, his brother Juan Antonio Hernndez was arrested in Miami for drug trafficking. Then, following Xiomara Castros election, Juan Orlando Hernndez himself was arrested and extradited to the US for cocaine trafficking. On March 8th, he was convicted in US federal court, and is currently awaiting sentencing.

The evidence was chilling, history professor Dana Frank, who was in the courtroom, said on Democracy Now! This litany of assassinations of prosecutors, assassinations of journalists, corruption of the police, the military, politicians, the president, his brother, you name it. And it was like the curtain was drawn back, and you could see the day-to-day workings of this tremendous violent, corrupt mechanism that was the Juan Orlando Hernndez administrationthis was what happened after the 2009 coup that opened the door for the destruction of the rule of law in Honduras.

US intervention in Haiti, Honduras and other countries is one of the principal drivers of people seeking asylum in the United States, as they flee violence, poverty and persecution at home. This point is almost never mentioned in the US press. To understand and ultimately solve the immigration crisis, Americans need to understand what their government has long done in their name, with their tax dollarsarming and propping up brutal regimes abroad.

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Haiti, Honduras, and US Hegemony - Democracy Now!