IN CASE YOU MISSED IT (first published in 2009):

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward." —

William Henry Seward (1801-1872)

"A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone." — Samuel Johnson

YOU MAY BE A MARXIST IF YOU THINK YOU'RE ALWAYS THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE ROOM (even Albert Einstein's teachers thought they were too, you know).

"Soap and education are less deadly than a massacre, but more deadly in the long run . . . I never let schooling interfere with my education." — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"College Orientation Week II http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/dahlgren/090902

"If our government is not going to hold our taxpayer-supported academic institutions accountable, then we must." — Chuck Norris ("Black Belt Patriotism")

"Send me men to match my mountains." — inscription, State Capitol complex in Sacramento, CA

THOSE KINDS OF MEN SEEM TO BE FLEEING CALIFORNIA THESE DAYS. As a "laboratory experiment," the state of California is the end-result of a system of Higher Education that has been out of control ever since S.I. Hayakawa left it. The protesters who used to sit in the gutters of the street now seem to be sitting on the benches of Federal courts of appeal.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist . . . What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think."

Years ago, a college professor in Chicago used to tell his students on the first day of class that their goal should be to become really educated — and that they could not consider themselves really educated unless they could answer "yes" to the following questions:

• "Can you look an honest man or a pure woman straight in the eye?"

• "Will a lonely dog follow you down the street?"

• "Do you think washing dishes or hoeing corn is as compatible with high thinking as piano playing or golf?"

• "Could you be happy alone?"

• "Can you look into the sky at night and see beyond the stars?"

[excerpted from "Leaves of Gold," 11th edition (subtitled "An Anthology of Prayers, Memorable Phrases, Inspirational Verse and Prose from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern")]

MAYBE if we had more good "Prose" in our lives, we wouldn't need so much Prozac or so many sleeping pills. Many tears have been shed since we stopped looking "beyond the stars." If tears were "telescopes," September 11, 2001 should have brought God into very sharp focus, but instead, our "popular culture" and the media have moved us totally in the opposite direction, ironically.

"Kings will be tyrants [through] policy, when subjects are rebels from principle . . . Learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden under the hoofs of a swinish multitude." — Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Higher education considers itself the very avant-garde, or vanguard, of "societal evolution," but radio host Michael Savage says that society has "sunk to a point lower than Rome or the Wiemar Republic in Germany." I agree, and so would the writers in "Leaves of Gold":

"Educate men without religion and you make them but clever devils." — Duke of Wellington (1769-1852)

"True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt the whole fabric cannot be stable or lasting." — Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"Learning is not wisdom: knowledge is not necessarily vital energy. The student who has to cram through a school or college course, who has made himself merely a receptacle for the teacher's thoughts and ideas, is not educated; he has not gained much. He is a reservoir, not a fountain. One retains, the other gives forth." — J.E. Dinger

An anonymous author in "Leaves of Gold" gets down to the "nitty-gritty":

"Few things could be culturally more deplorable than that today the average college graduate, who fancies himself educated, should never have read the book of Job, should be unfamiliar with Isaiah, and should be hardly able to identify those mighty men of valor, Joshua, Gideon, [etc.] . . .

"For this is nothing less than a loss of racial memory, a forgetfulness of our cultural heritage that is as serious in the life of nations as is for the individual the loss of personality attendant upon neurotic disease."

Higher Education is simply a modern twist on the so-called Inquisition and "Crusades." The agenda of Academia is a jihad against anyone who refuses to sing PC doxologies such as "there are no differences between the sexes." A sheepskin from Harvard these days is no longer worth the paper it's printed on, given ex-president Larry Summers' capitulation to political correctness, with apologies, plus his firing for contemplating both sides of an issue. The word-for-the-day, boys and girls, is "heresy":

"Etymologically, a heresy is a 'choice' one makes . . Greek hairesis 'choice' [is] a derivative of hairein 'take or choose.' This was applied metaphorically to a 'course of action or thought which one chooses to take,' hence a school of thought,' and, ultimately, to a 'faction' or 'sect.' . . .

"Another derivative of hairein, incidentally, was diairein [meaning] 'divide' . . ." — John Ayto (Dictionary of Word Origins)

In the earlier history of the "university," there had almost always been "two schools of thought" — except under totalitarian governments. Today, although "choice" is a popular catch-word, real freedom of choice, the right to one's own thoughts, to conscience, is now deemed "divisive" by the powers-that-be.

MY "CONTROVERSIAL" CONCLUSION?

The word "division" does not equate with "evil." Normally it equated with "academic freedom."

P.S. "No man who worships education has got the best out of education . . . Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete."

Enough said yet?

PPS: "Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what one does not believe oneself." — Abba Eban