Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don?t Understand
    Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don?t Understand
    Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don?t Understand
    Ebook203 pages3 hours

    Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don?t Understand

    By Mike S. Adams

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Presented as a series of letters between Adams and his former student, Zach, Letters to a Young Progressive reveals how the "education" of college kids across the country is producing a generation of unhappy, unimaginative, and unproductive adults. The perfect book to help parents prevent--or undo--the ubiquitous liberal brainwashing of their children before it is too late.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRegnery
    Release dateApr 22, 2013
    ISBN9781621570325
    Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don?t Understand

    Related to Letters to a Young Progressive

    Related ebooks

    Political Ideologies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Power Stats

      Jul 30, 2018

      Power Stats
      1 min read

    • Article

      Reason, Faith, And The Struggle For Western Civilization

      Jul 1, 2020

      By Samuel Gregg Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2019. Pp. xv, 192. $28 hardcover. Ongoing conflict with and within the Middle East has spawned a significant literature regarding the “clash of civilizations” between Western liberal democracies and Islamic

      6 min read

    • Article

      Becoming Jane Crow

      Dec 14, 2021

      Becoming Jane Crow
      11 min read

    • Article

      Writing Your Memoir

      Feb 15, 2021

      Writing Your Memoir
      8 min read

    • Article

      ‘We Want To Read About People Falling In Love’: Curtis Sittenfeld And Marian Keyes On The Romcom Revival

      Apr 1, 2023

      Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of seven novels, including American Wife and Rodham, reimaginings of the lives of Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. Her new novel, Romantic Comedy, revolves around a TV sketch show based on Saturday Night Live, and disse

      7 min read

    • Article

      White People, Black Authors Are Not Your Medicine | Yaa Gyasi

      Mar 20, 2021

      In 2018, two other novelists and I were being driven back from a reception in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, to our hotel in downtown Detroit, when we saw a black man getting arrested on the side of the road. The driver of our car, a white woman who had sp

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: M.C. Mah

      Dec 5, 2018

      Standing athwart the evident passage of a year, shuddering, “No.” Never have I claimed to be well-read; I exhibit reading behavior. Taking honest account of it feels akin to my book of the year 2017, Alissa Nutting’s “Grub Street Diet,” wherein she w

      7 min read

    • Article

      What the World Demands of You: The Millions Interviews Margo Jefferson

      Sep 26, 2018

      I meet Margo Jefferson for breakfast at her hotel in Boulder, Colorado, where she’s speaking at a literary conference. She’s energetic in both her speech and movement, gesturing, reaching, illustrating with her hands—artifacts, I think, of her years

      9 min read

    • Article

      Art Spiegelman

      Feb 19, 2022

      Art Spiegelman
      2 min read

    • Article

      Art Spiegelman

      Feb 18, 2022

      Art Spiegelman
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Anisse Gross

      Dec 19, 2018

      I suspect many of us slipped in and out of fugue states in order to cope this year, but survival depends on getting out of it to fight the powers that be. The post A Year in Reading: Anisse Gross appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Robin Abcarian: I Pray For RBG (and Other Confessions)

      Sep 11, 2019

      I think I've done everything at this paper except cover sports. I've been a feature writer, a culture writer, a national reporter, a section editor. I've covered mass shootings, hurricanes, political campaigns, presidential conventions, Oscars, Emmys

      4 min read

    • Article

      Dustin Lance Black.

      Jun 4, 2019

      Dustin Lance Black.
      8 min read

    • Article

      ‘Bad Stories’: The Millions Interviews Steve Almond

      Jun 21, 2018

      Those who know Steve Almond as an incredible short story writer might be surprised by the deep rigor and political analysis of this recent nonfiction book, Bad Stories. But those of us who read his Week in Greed column won’t, particularly those of us

      12 min read

    • Article

      Naomi Klein

      Oct 30, 2023

      Naomi Klein
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ismail Muhammad

      Dec 10, 2017

      For me, 2017 was the year that journalism nearly supplanted fiction as my reading life’s dominant genre. I started the year in a state of alarm at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Shortly after he took office, I resolved to be a good, engaged citizen aft

      5 min read

    • Article

      Some Other I Before Me

      May 21, 2018

      On books as mentors for those of us who grew up in the wake of HIV/AIDS. The post Some Other I Before Me appeared first on Guernica.

      14 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Letters to a Young Progressive

    4/5

    5 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Letters to a Young Progressive - Mike S. Adams

      PART ONE

      SIGNPOSTS ALONG THE WAY

      Rhetoric is no substitue for reality.

      —Thomas Sowell

      LETTER 1

      No, Zachary, Glenn Beck Isn’t Charles Manson

      Dear Zach,

      I hope your semester is going well. I’ve been pleased to have you in my class on famous American trials (CRM 425 or Trials of the Century), and I’m taking the time to write in response to a remark you made during our recent discussion of the Manson case.

      As you undoubtedly recall, we were discussing Charles Manson, who directed members of his Family to commit a series of grisly murders in 1969, and when I noted that Manson had exploited his followers through fear, you interrupted, Sort of like Glenn Beck?

      I probably have too many pet peeves for a man of my age, and students’ blurting out questions or comments without raising a hand—particularly when I am in the middle of a sentence and the comment leads the discussion astray—is one of them.

      But I haven’t written to scold you. I can’t do that because I don’t have the moral authority to do so. You see, I used to be like you. Let me explain.

      A fundamentalist Baptist mother and an atheist father raised me, and when I went off to college in 1983, I declared myself an agnostic. Had I remained an agnostic, things might not have been so bad. But instead, while I was a graduate student, I declared myself an atheist. There was nothing intellectual about my decision to become an atheist; it was behavior-driven.

      In 1989, I began a short career as a professional musician to help pay for school, and started experimenting with amphetamines and methamphetamines. The drugs nearly killed me. In late 1990, I had a fight with my girlfriend and suddenly found myself taking a trip to the emergency room after my heart stopped beating. That was a direct result of the pills. I later realized I also had a serious problem with alcohol.

      I was passionate about being an atheist. I once told a fellow graduate student, the wife of a pastor, to Go [rhymes with truck] yourself when she tried to witness to me.

      I adopted leftist politics to go with my atheism. The connection to the progressive worldview was clear and simple. In rejecting Christianity, I had rejected the Judeo-Christian view of man as a fallen being. Instead, I believed that we could create a utopia through politics. I felt contempt for conservative Christians who stood in the way of progress, who did not realize that man was fundamentally good and perfectible. We didn’t need God; we only needed the right laws, the right people in office, and the right social conditions, and then everything would be perfect—all the world’s problems would be solved.

      I pretended to be an intellectual atheist, but really I had adopted this worldview because it allowed me to live a life unencumbered by morality, to sleep with a different woman every night, and not to feel bad about it—or so I thought. What really happened was that treading the path of militant liberal atheism made me an angrier and angrier person—the sort of person, in fact, who would compare a talk show host to a serial killer.

      That is why I am writing to you today. I know that you have been spending a lot of time on left-wing websites like the Daily Kos and Media Matters, the latter of which is run by billionaire communist George Soros. I have also noticed that you have been increasingly virulent in your attacks on Republican politicians such as George W Bush and Sarah Palin. Your demeanor is increasingly hostile and arrogant. It reminds me of a time in my own life when I thought I was being clever and cynical and wise.

      In a nutshell, you are acting a lot like I acted when I carried the banner of progressivism, and that is why I say I lack the moral authority to look down on you. But I hope I can warn you.

      Zach, you are so bright and have so much potential that I think it’s a shame you are so angry at such a young age. I also think it’s a shame because I know that so much of your anger stems from misinformation. That is why I plan to (at least try to) do something about it.

      After the end of this semester, I will be driving out to Colorado to teach at Summit Ministries. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to write to you periodically over the summer to share some of what I learned on my journey from being a progressive atheist to becoming a conservative Christian.

      Meanwhile, I’ll see you in class. Before I forget, congratulations on getting the highest score on our last test. Finals will be here before you know it—good luck on your exams!

      LETTER 2

      How Being for Equality Makes You Better than Other People

      Greetings from Manitou Springs, Colorado, Zach.

      The weather outside does not bode well for the global warming apologist. It is 37 degrees here in Colorado in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of May. The light rain is expected to turn into snow this afternoon. So it’s a good time to sit down at the computer and do some writing.

      Congratulations on finishing CRM 425 with flying colors. I really appreciated you stopping by my office to discuss the letter I sent you at the end of the semester. This will be the first installment in the correspondence that I promised you this summer.

      I’d like to use this letter to discuss a topic I have already broached with you. The comment you made—suggesting some similarities between Glenn Beck and Charles Manson—has been weighing on my mind.

      I want you to know that your comment, which trivialized Manson’s moral culpability, was actually not the worst comment I’ve ever heard about Charles Manson. That honor goes to a remark by a professor I once heard characterize Manson as a poor little guy who got railroaded by the system.

      Of course, Zach, you’ve heard the basic facts of the Manson case; and you know him to be guiltier than—for lack of a better term—sin. The suggestion that Manson is innocent is one of the most careless I’ve ever heard. Let me be blunt. It takes a Ph.D. to be brash enough to say something like that.

      Make no mistake about it—your idea about Charles Manson and Glenn Beck was bad. But not all ideas are equally bad. There is a serious movement in the academy—ironically, a movement obsessed with equality in all areas of life, economically, culturally, and morally—that is much worse than the cheap shot you took in class. It’s that ideology that the professor was expressing when he called Manson a poor little guy. You’ve heard of Marxist economics, but you may not have heard about the approach to morality that tends to go along with it.

      In economics, Marxism is a proven disaster. According to Marx, we should take from each person according to his ability and give to each person according to his need. I once illustrated the disastrous consequences of that economic policy in a column I wrote, entitled My New Spread the Wealth Grading Policy.

      I suggested that people who made an A on the first test really did not need the four grade points associated with a grade of A, since it only takes a 2.0 average to graduate. So my column suggested that those with an A should give a grade point away to students making an F in order to facilitate a more equal grade distribution—one with just three levels: B, C, and D.

      My column also suggested that additional modifications could be made after the second exam. I specifically proposed taking a grade point away from those with a B test average and giving that point to those with a D average. That would mean everyone would have a grade of C, which is worth the two grade points everyone needs to average in order to graduate.

      Any undergraduate is capable of figuring out the point of my satire. If every student were guaranteed the exact same outcome, no student would put forth any kind of effort on class assignments or tests. Put simply, My New Spread the Wealth Grading Policy would destroy academic productivity and create a shoddy and embarrassing academic work product. Academic standards would plummet under such a system.

      Socialism, of course, would do exactly the same thing to our economy. If every worker is guaranteed the exact same outcome—via the redistribution of wealth—then no worker will put forth a strong effort on the job. The average standard of living for the nation as a whole will plummet—or, rather, actually has plummeted wherever Marxist economics has been tried.

      As a conservative, I take a far different approach to the subject of equality. I believe that our only obligation is to provide people with equal opportunity. We are not obliged to guarantee everyone an equal outcome. We cannot do so. Nor should we even try.

      This is good news for you, Zach. You are much brighter than the average student. You are also much more motivated. You will soar to far greater heights if you are merely given the opportunity.

      It sounds harsh to say that Marxism is for the lazy and untalented. But that is what I believe. Who else would consider mediocrity to be a satisfactory outcome?

      Ironically, equality-loving socialists obviously think they’re morally superior to capitalists. Which is odd, because isn’t equality the whole point? Even odder, the people who call themselves Marxists are usually the same people who subscribe to cultural and moral relativism. In theory, they don’t think there are any universal moral standards to judge other people by.

      Just as they want economic equality, they want everyone to be on an equal moral plane. They want to believe that all people are morally equal—for example, that a brutal murderer such as Charles Manson is not particularly guilty. They dub anyone who fails to adopt their relativist views as ethnocentric.

      I once espoused this all people and all cultures are equal mentality. But my moral relativism came to an abrupt end one afternoon when I spent a few hours in an Ecuadorian prison. One day, in another letter, I’ll tell you the whole story of how that visit changed my whole outlook on life. But right now I want to tell you the story of how an editor with an enlightened, progressive attitude didn’t want me to tell that original story.

      I wrote an article about that prison visit. But when I submitted the article to a human rights journal, it was nearly rejected by the editor. Two parts of the article offended her. The first was where I acknowledged that the work of Chuck Colson had piqued my own interest in prison conditions in Third World countries. The second was where I complained that the food in the prison had a very bad smell.

      Her first issue with the article is of little interest. It would appear that the editor harbored some anti-Christian bigotry, which is not uncommon. But her second complaint is of greater interest, and more thought is required to dissect it.

      When the editor told me that it wasn’t nice to judge the foods of other cultures—including the rotten meat I saw being boiled in order to be fed to the prisoners at that Ecuadoran prison—she was, of course, implicitly accusing me of ethnocentrism, which is defined as judging other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture.

      Notice that the accusation of ethnocentrism is self-defeating because it, too, is a form of ethnocentrism. You cannot accuse someone of ethnocentrism without forcing your own standards upon them—standards they do not share. Let me explain.

      Ethnocentrism is a concept really only taught within the culture of sociology and anthropology departments at secular universities. The idea that you should not judge other cultures is itself a judgment, and the number of people who subscribe to it make up a very small percentage of the people on this planet. But they demand that we all live by their non-judgmental worldview, which flourishes only in certain departments of elite Western universities, even though that worldview really imposes harsh judgments on others outside their own culture.

      Logic aside, there is also a serious practical reason to avoid falling into the trap of cultural relativism—it renders one completely incapable of addressing the problem of evil. It may seem chic to refrain from judging other cultures when it comes to something trivial like tastes in food or fashion. But what about something like genocide?

      Are we really prepared to say that our culture today is not superior to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s? Does anyone consider such a view to be chic?

      And is it really morally sophisticated to pretend that you don’t notice that the rotten meat being fed to prisoners in a hellhole of a prison smells badly? Or, coming closer to home, that you don’t see any difference between a talk show host whose politics you don’t agree with, and a man responsible for several gruesome murders?

      We know from history that any society foolish enough to experiment with Marxism will find that the quest for equality results in a lower standard of living for all. Similarly, any society foolish enough to embrace cultural relativism will find that the quest for equality results in a lower overall standard of morality.

      We all lose something when we try to

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1