Our British correspondent Paul Weston has some choice words about Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and related topics.
Thank God for the Uneducated!
by Paul Weston
The main similarity between the Brexit and Trump election results is the attitude of the liberal/left toward those who voted for these spectacular triumphs. They speak and write vociferously about the “uneducated” knuckle dragging simpletons who dared go against the grain of progressive liberal thought and voted for Trump or for leaving the totalitarian EU.
Boris Johnson, the outwardly amiable buffoon with an inwardly icy ambition has a brother apparently, by name of Jo Johnson, who turns out to be the Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation. From this lofty perch, Jo Johnson told the British public that those who voted for Brexit did so because they were terminally stupid, and had they been educated to university level and therefore voted correctly, we could be blissfully lodged in the matronly bosom of the glorious EU for eternity. Or at least until the whole shebang inevitably implodes somewhere between now and 2025….
Trump voters are similarly cretinous according to the liberal-left, who feel those ghastly, semi-educated blue-collar workers simply failed to understand the intellectual complexities of the one-world socialist utopia the sainted Left is trying to build for humanity everywhere. All for their own good, of course, even if they don’t understand it, the ungrateful, thicko proletarian wretches!
But what does it mean to be “uneducated” in the 21st century? Brexit voters are deemed uneducated because they wish to regain their national sovereignty and unshackle themselves from the myriad petty and not-so-petty laws dreamed up by unelected control freak Eurocrats in Brussels. Trump voters are deemed uneducated because they don’t like watching the wholesome, traditional America they grew up in being incrementally dismantled by a new people and a new culture which is every bit as revolutionary as the Communist takeover of 1917 Russia.
I have just watched a number of YouTube videos exposing the horrifying ignorance of millennial university students. This one is particularly good and shows robotic youngsters completely unable to think logically as they offer sound bites uttered without reasoned thought but completely in line with indoctrination, interspersed with the oft repeated terms of “like’” and “you know” as they try to buy time whilst their little brains slowly chug up to a less-than-moderate speed. The impression one gets of these “educated” young people is that they are not terribly clever, that they are bereft of independent analytical thought and are, tragically, the unwitting victims of intense propaganda relentlessly aimed at them their entire lives.
To be educated (in the West at least) no longer means having an ability to think, to know much about world history, national history or Western society/culture and how it was formed; to understand why some foreign cultures are oil to the West’s water; to know how to construct a grammatically correct sentence or to recognise the glaring difference in ability between Evelyn Waugh and E L James. In fact, to be educated today has nothing to do with education at all. In Britain, the liberal social engineers have built a system where close to 50% of school leavers now get into university, compared to a mere 5% only forty years ago. In order for this happen, universities have dumbed down massively, with many now offering remedial classes in literacy and numeracy for every year’s fresh intake of gormless social justice warriors.
When these victims of liberalism’s revolution finally throw their mortar boards into the air and receive their degrees in media studies they will only be “educated” in the sense of exhibiting the prescribed thinking with regard to oppressors and the oppressed, Israel and Palestine, hate crimes pertaining to race and religion — providing the religion is Islam and only Islam — homophobia, transphobia, abortion, feminism, microaggression, capitalism/socialism, equal rights, empire, positive discrimination, repressive tolerance, limits to free speech, Christianity, social justice, national identity, European guilt, revisionist history, etc.
Only when their heads are filled to the brim with all the Correct Thoughts about those topics listed above will they find work as teachers, social workers, army officers, politicians, civil servants, lawyers, doctors, policemen, journalists or TV producers. And when the Leftist ideology expands to encompass new rafts of oppressors and the oppressed, they will add them PDQ to their PC CV. The vast majority of them will be pro-Hillary and pro-EU. Those who disagree with them won’t be fellow human beings holding an alternative opinion; they will be haters, fascists, racists, xenophobes and worthy only of the Gulag.
Meanwhile, those unencumbered by a full liberal education will continue to utilise common sense and moral decency in their electoral decisions — even as they are smeared as dullard dinosaurs by the Anointed Liberals who left any vestige of common sense, decency and morality in university lecture hall 101.
So let us thank God for the uneducated, because the “educated” are now so monumentally and robotically stupid, so pumped full of subversive, suicidal socialist indoctrination, that they have become downright bloody dangerous to themselves, us, and the entire Western world.
If an educated Leftist wishes to make an intelligent rebuttal to this, leave your email in a comment and I will get in touch. I would love to see it!
Paul Weston is a British-based writer who focuses on the damage done to Western Civilisation by the hard left’s ongoing cultural revolution, which seeks to destroy the Christian, capitalist and racial base of the West. He is the leader of Liberty GB. His website may be found here, and his political Facebook page here. For links to his previous essays, see the Paul Weston Archives.
Excellent article, Paul. One of your best in fact and I have read most of them. I have one problem, though. Your article cuts across something I have been preparing for GoV for some weeks. I guess this is one of the disadvantages of being a slow worker. Never mind, back to the writing desk.
Peter- Maybe slow thinking is the new fad, just like slow food is the new cuisine.
Yes, excellent curmudgeonly rant. I stayed up to read it…
OK I’m old and slow, and would have voted for Brexit and the Trumpster, so I guess the Oh-so-learned lefties would brand me uneducated, stupid and useless.
However, it appears to me that the big difference in American citizenry at present is that the “uneducated, knuckle-dragging simpletons” are capable of serious unbiased thought, unlike the pathetic, brainwashed lefty snowflakes presently clogging American streets.
The rulers of tomorrow’s America! (Charlie Brown would say: “good grief!”)
“There’s nothing to worry about Donnie, these men are nihilists.”
From Bruce Charlton, a somewhat long, but excellent expose on today’s culture.
http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/thought-prison-excerpts.html
Well Paul, those who have run out of cogent arguments throw insults. I just smile now at the “Little Englander”-actually I am a Great Britainer. Islamophobic, yes, I am also arsenicphobic, ebolaphobic and heamorrhagicfeverphobic. Its actually smart to be wary of something that would kill you. I voted out, and I have 2 degrees, mind, being middle aged they were achieved when it actually meant something. I know that many of our friends also voted Brexit, and we are not knuckle dragging, throwbacks, speaking in monosylabic grunts. Keep up the good work Paul.
“the totalitarian EU”
To be fair, the EU isn’t inherently totalitarian, but it has some bad leaders at the moment. There will be national elections in member states and the EU will reform. Leaving or staying in the EU will not solve the biggest problems UK has (like for example its accelerated islamization). Smaller states like Hungary and Poland have passed laws that made Brussels throw a tantrum over, UK could have done the same if they wanted to. Plus, UK had more diplomatic power in the EU than most other states, however it did not make good use of it and it did not build diplomatic ties with other smaller states, which in turn allowed to Germany and France to make the decisions. I don’t see the current problems arising from the uneducated (in fact the Western World has never been more educated than it is now), but from the welfare state. The welfare state drives both the migration and the demographic change. (PS. I’m neither a leftist nor uneducated. I did not mean this as a rebuttal of the article, just as an alternative point of view. My best wishes to Mr. Weston)
Interesting points, but I see the EU as inherently totalitarian. If it has the power to dictate what citizens can say (and thus, think) then it will use it. All the laws in the vein of ‘hate speech’ enforce this aspect of totalitarianism.
Remember, the EU only gains power and wealth by extracting them from states and citizens. When this was consensual this was fine – but now the EU is actively working to crush dissent and prevent people from escaping its net.
The EU cannot be reformed. It must be abolished and a voluntary federation of sovereign states established, where no unelected EU bureaucrat can override any local elected representative.
As a Bavarian President said about the EU, “Those who are elected don’t make the laws, those to make the laws are not elected”. The EU citizens don’t elect the Council nor the Presidents. That makes it a dictatorship on the Soviet Politburo style. A benign one for now, but still a dictatorship that is moving through authoritarian and on to totalitarian as they crush dissent (sending police to threaten jail over Facebook posts and tweets) against the immigration/hijra/invasion policies which the EU citizens reject, but the EU control freaks do not give the citizens a vote in.
Destruction of the EU and the UN are the best things that could happen to free the World. Creation of organizations that recognize their restrictive and advisory-only mandates to take their place would be vastly better.
But the control freaks around the globe see this as bad, because it removes their power to control Free People.
USA was created by Europeans, I see no reason why there couldn’t be a democratic United States of Europe, created by Europeans, a strong, peaceful, prosperous element of the Free World, together with USA, Canada, Australia and others.
Here’s why I think the EU needs to be reformed and not broken up. 1) There will be a strong current of voices saying “the EU failed, let’s not create another one”, i.e. a strong nationalist, protectionist, perhaps even isolationist current across Europe (look at Le Pen’s message). 2) Geo-political factors, mainly Russia and Turkey/islamic influence. The Eastern states made significant efforts to join the EU and the disappointment of the EU breaking up will lead them to look towards Russia rather than Western Europe. In Western Europe there are large and fast growing communities of turks (more than 3 millions only in Germany) and muslims, which will push for sharia and will drain and terrorize those countries, leaving them less time for building international and diplomatic ties. Also, Turkey dreams of becoming an empire again and it’s looking into expanding its borders.
If the EU breaks apart, there will be strong internal and external currents which will pull the states away from creating another union. The EU must and can be reformed through national elections and people capable of doing this are starting to emerge. UK can leave and the EU will still exist. France can leave and the EU will still exist. But if the the EU breaks apart, Europe as we know it today (as in some of its culture and values) might be gone forever.
I urge folks to consider the message of an EU failure would send to people across the continent, as well as the external forces at play, which will be ready to take advantage of the situation.
It might sound good to have a united Europe,
But,
Surely the E.U. was a bad idea from the beginning, and I agree with Claire Berlinski (Menace in Europe) who says the following:
“According to the Laeken Declaration issued in 2001 by the E.U., Europe is on its way to becoming to becoming one big family. Cheerful news, and very touching considering that it replaces century upon century of unmitigated slaughter and butchery among the European peoples, a tradition of virtually uninterrupted warfare since the sack of Rome”.
Ms Berlinski then lists a page and a half of those wars in Europe, which do not include civil wars or the Crusades.
I have to agree with Moa, above, that destruction of the U.N. and the E.U. would indeed be the best thing that could happen to the free world–although formed in good faith, those organizations are both now thoroughly corrupt and are becoming increasingly overbearing and dangerous.
I realize something else would form in the vacuum, as the UN did after the League of Nations, but I’d be happy to take the chance it might be something better–that wouldn’t be difficult!
Claire Berlinski’s book was written in 2007, but Menace in Europe: Why The Continent’s Crisis is America’s Too doesn’t appear dated.
http://amzn.to/2g14155
The editorial blurb has a list of bullet points from her book:
As usual, the comments add to the conversation.
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Her more recent book, from 2011, will not be welcomed by some of our UK readers:
There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters
fhttp://amzn.to/2glGiPN
I will admit I’m drawn more to books about individuals, so getting this one for a penny plus postage is tempting.
Here’s an encomium from one of America’s premier talking heads on the Right:
Newt Gingrich, Washington Times
[my emphasis above – D]
Unfortunately, in 2010 and 2012, we just went further down the horrendous hole of socialism during Obama’s watch. I hope Trump can make some headway in walking us back out toward the sunshine.
Someone send this to Mr. Trump…he has some of the same views, though expressed less fluently. Trump is a work in progress. I hope he can stand still long enough to listen and learn.
“The EU must and can be reformed through national elections…”
Cxt may I remind you of the “Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe” in 2005?
This treaty was rejected by referendum by the peoples of France and The Netherlands.
In 2009 the same treaty was railroaded thru national parliaments but under a different name “Treaty of Lisbon”
May I remind you of a referendum held in The Netherlands on April 6th 2016 regarding the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement?
The majority of the Dutch voted against it. According to Dutch law the Dutch government had three weeks to formulate and publize a final ratification decision.
That was 219 days ago! We are still waiting!
Another example of the Dutch government flaunting its own laws in favor of the EU.
The EU cannot and will not be reformed. The EU and its nation states minions simply have to go.
There is no alternative.
All legislative powers have to be returned to their respective national parliaments before Europe can start to look for new ways to cooperate.
The EU has to go.
I could not agree more, the Eu is inherently totalitarian, pushing the globalist, fascist agenda that constitutes the Fourth Reich. I don’t think this movement is communist, because it is a movement against common people not for them. The USA has always had a strong fascist tendency. Every so often it takes control as it has under the current formulation of the democratic party. What those of us who voted for Trump think is that these people despise us, put us down as ‘uneducated’ unworthy of free thought, decision making, that is reserved for the ‘educated’ elite who seem to me to be as dumb as a box of rocks. They reviled us for eight years and are amazed to see that we’ve had enough. It’s not just a Trump victory, the Republican Party is in control of the entire government. This is a loud message to democrats, as in we reject you entirely. We reject globalism, totalitarianism, elitism, destroying us as a people.
But don’t forget, those of us who align with Trump are the “real” fascists.
The Democrat party is a sad relic of its former glory of genuine, classic Liberalism. Joe Lieberman was probably the last vestige of that. Ironic that an iconic figure of real Liberalism, Patrick Moynihan, one of two senators from New York, was replaced by his antithesis, Hillary Clinton. She was the final nail in the coffin. It’s not a coincidence that she and Obama, both Saul Alinsky-ite Communists in-all-but-name, came to power at roughly the same time.
Bill Clinton (setting aside his mental disorder of a compulsive satyriasis) could have been a genuine Liberal. He made several moves in that direction but was finally too contaminated by his wife’s ambition and greed.
It is not safe for the rest of the world to have a large EU entity of 500 million people taken over by Islam. It is too wealthy. It’s too powerful. The rest of us must pay attention.
The educated/uneducated epithet shows that Democrats don’t understand why they lost…pity.
Women’s Studies, Queer Studies, Latino Studies, African American Studies, Sociology, Educational Psychology, and on and on make people dumber than if they’d waited tables or swung a hammer.
I guess Bill Gates is uneducated since he dropped out of college.
Yes exactly. No the Democrats are incapable of thinking outside their ideology. They have experienced a profound rejection by us ‘uneducated’ people. Only 30% of us have college degrees, and many of those are in the subjects you mention. So how smart was it to revile 70% of us? The wonder is that the popular vote was so high for Clinton. As high as it is for Obama. In fact many people in this nation are living on welfare. Close to half. That is the explanation, many people rely on government handouts. I dropped out of college, I was an honor student but could not afford to stay. Instead I made a successful career in technology. But according to democrats I am ignorant, unable to decide anything for myself. They will be out of power for a long time. Unless they smarten up!
Unfortunately for them,one of the following must be true:
1) Their news sources are low information containing highly flawed political analysis. After all,they called Brexit and Trump wrongly.
2)Their news sources and political analysis are blatant lies and propaganda.
Either way it begs the question:
In what way do they consider themselves to be actually educated?
Hands up those who have had to join me in looking up E L James.
Guilty as charged- and I work in a charity shop where we had endless copies of her books donated a couple of years back!
Love it. Always look forward to reading anything by Paul Weston.
I had no idea British universities now admit 50% of applicants, compared to 5% 40 years ago. Imagine the scale of standards revision needed to accomplish that. I suspect about 80 – 90% in universities now simply would not be admitted under the standards that prevailed in 1976. Leftism is the one overwhelming ‘magnificent’ lie that enabled this. Ideology is when one false idea gets broadly accepted, through propaganda and repetition, and with it a fleet of smaller lies also get taken on board. Such pernicious smaller lies include environmentalism (which begat a new astrological discourse on climate), multiculturalism (and the terrorism it brought along), historicism (causing ‘history’ to vanish from school curricula everywhere). The sheer volume of damage the Left has done is incalculable.
Stephen, The figures are percentages of the school leaver population. When I went to University 40++ years ago, we were the top 5% of school leavers. These days, those who succeed in getting a place at University are the top 50% of school leavers. Schools have not improved that much!
Dozens of the new ‘universities’ were converted from technical colleges which offered vocational training, akin to apprenticeships, which led to national certificates of competency. In fact, the new ‘universities’ still do pretty much the same thing, only now they call the qualifications degrees.
No-one ever mentions the uneducated Democrat voters, that came out in numbers for Obama.
I suppose leftists considered them ‘good’ uneducated voters.
I had to stop watching that video you link to Paul, the projection, presumption and sheer indoctrination of students on view, was unbearable.
The intellectual right needs its own long march through the institutions, not to control the narrative as the left attempts but reintroduce critical thinking, free speech and truth-seeking.
Quite right. Until we can change the education curriculum in favor of teaching rational thinking and Socratic values, nothing will change.
Thank you, sir for your timely and well-expressed thoughts on the current societal crisis. I have been involved with American education all my life, both as student and then teacher for some 40+ years. There is no comparison that can be credibly made between the education I received in the late 40s, 50s, and early 60s and what is occurring today. After my public school teaching years ended in the early part of century 21 I secured a position as a college instructor. It was an eye-opening and shocking experience. Those I call our “controllers” have done their work well. We the people are fast becoming we the sheeple, ready to be programmed and herded in the direction “they” wish us to go.
Several months ago I responded in the comments on a site hosted by a university employee. Naive me, I didn’t understand what I was getting into.
The gist of my comment was… what the hell is going on? It was during the U Missouri protests last spring.
I went through some of my college day events, like standing in line for Carter’s free cheese giveaways and selling my blood to buy my husband a Birthday present (hmmm, gift of the magi anyone…)
I also said that we ate PB&J and an apple every day unless I cooked meatloaf the prior Sunday, heavy on the oatmeal.
There were no climbing walls, sushi bars, Vietnamese sandwiches made with ciabatta instead of baguette*, segregated clubs, african studies, women’s studies, etc. The students at Univ New Mexico were there to learn valuable skills that would get them a JOB when they graduated.
Well, wasn’t I put in my place. The moderator of the site told me publicly on the site that he didn’t want to hear my war stories or my “feelz”
Just the other day I saw a clip from the Greg Gutfield show with an actor on the panel about my age. I have no clue who this actor is but he said something important when the conversation turned to the nonsense going on today on college campuses. He said that when he went to college in the 80’s everyone he knew was there to further themselves and no one engaged in this type of activity because they were too busy trying to study and earn a part time living.
He pretty much nailed it! Certainly my husband and I had no time to go out and scream and shout, smash windows and instigate mayhem. Our instructors never advocated this and we had no desire to spend our time this way. After all, my husband had a thermodynamics exam coming up and I had an architectural review in a few days…
But my war stories and feelz mean nothing except one thing… We are both well educated and successful.
I really have snickered in the past few weeks over the “uneducated” that put Trump in office or, Brexit for that matter. We, the educated that voted for Trump, are hiding in plain site!
*A terribly put upon student at an ivy league was complaining about the Vietnamese sammies made by the campus food service. He said that they should be made on a baguette, not another type of roll. My first thought was are you so uninformed that you do not know that baguettes came to your country under French colonialism? You want to celebrate that???
What a dope.
There was a meeting and a huge uproar. They, the food service, promised to do better.
If it were up to me I would have decided to serve only PB&J and grilled cheese sammies. You want ethnic food, go off campus.
Baguettes are common and popular in the UK, and despite Napoleon, we haven’t been colonised by the French!
Indeed, the sheer blindness and smugness of the supposed elite is the main reason Brexit and Trump won. The ‘intelligentzia’ is just plain out of touch with reality. One thing I have noticed about my leftist/liberal friends is their incredible lack of basic facts about history and politics, ‘is it?’ ‘did he?’ ‘that can’t be’ are their continual refrain.
The Leftists have Utopia Disorder – not all that different from the Nazi and Communist iterations of the same disease.
It inevitably leads to a totalitarian rolling out of the Utopian agenda, the loss of individual freedom and the intervention of government into every nook and cranny of life.
An older example is the Sharia Law of Islam!
The liberal/left may deride the “uneducated” voters who voted for Brexit and for Trump, but I would rather be uneducated than blind. The liberal/left is blind. They have been blinded by their perverse zeal.
My dear Mr. Weston, in ‘1984’ George Orwell stated your thesis succinctly: “‘If there is hope,’ wrote Winston, ‘it lies in the proles.'”
But Trump/Brexit voters are more likely to be older – hence, by virtue of the era in which they grew up, are far less likely to have gone to university…
So are they dumber? Or are universities nowadays admitting dumber people?
On that subject, it would be interesting if various university faculties were polled on their students’ political preferences… how do engineers and doctors compare to sociology and gender studies students? Sorry if I sound like a snob – but the former are, on balance, likely to be far more intelligent and capable…
“are far less likely to have gone to university…”
But if they did go to University they were educated by staff who were much less infected by the Frankfurt School. References to “Critical Theory” were made when I was at University, but only as an extremist stance. It was certainly not mainstream as it is today.
That is an interesting question and one I have thought of during the past year of unrest. How could an Engineering student, Physics student, Medical student or even an Architectural student like I was take the time out to engage in these activities?
I would love to see a poll as you propose.
If the majority of Australian educated doctors are any indication, I’d suggest they are uniformly ‘progressive’. Even engineering students cannot escape being bathed in the liberal sludge. It gets into their heads.
Funny, I have two university degrees, a 3yr polytech qualification, and quite liberal/feminist ideals. And yet the more I educate myself about islam and Brexit the more I know I would have voted for Trump and Brexit, had I lived there.
It’s not the quantity of degrees but their quality… I’ll bet you didn’t get your education in Feminist Studies, or the History of Oppression by White Men. I knew ‘higher’ education in this country was on the path to perdition when I read a college catalogue which had an offering on “Victimology”.
I believe my high school education was better than most college education today. Victimology, oh please…no wonder we have all these snowflakes who believe they are victims. Many of whom live in large homes, with very affluent parents and a very privileged position in our society. Victims? How? Yet they truly believe this.
Well, it started with studying victim “groups”, e.g., blacks and those trapped in sexual deviance (deviating from the cultural norm of heterosexuality). They raised victims to a special status; it was only a matter of time before being a victim seemed preferable to being plain ol’ vanilla Joe and Jane).
And the underlying cultural Marxism of their professors encouraged this twisted thinking. On an individual level, not having any transcendent foundation is no cause for alarm. But when it occurs in a whole society The Void is filled with all manner of risk-taking behavior. As another example, the current crisis of drug dependence among the underclass is slowly making its way up the food chain.
Interesting article. I agree that there’s a distinction between the ‘educated’ who by definition voted ‘correctly’, and the ‘uneducated’ who didn’t.
Actually, given the vagaries of first-past-the-post voting, the Brexit plebiscite was probably one of the rare occasions when the vote acurately reflected the attitudes of a majority of the British public.
Funny you should mention that. I tried to explain “first past the post” to one of my sons who advocated for your governmental system. Under your law it is possible that with 5 parties running that someone that garners 22% of the vote to be made an MP. In other words only 1 in 5 vote for you but you represent the entire district… The upside is that you must make a coalition.
I am not sure which is worse, your system or ours.
*Please correct me if I am wrong.
I’m not sure which country you’re referring to.
The fptp system is worse as it produces MPs who might be rejected by a majority of the electorate. Preferential voting at least sends MPs to Parliament who are the first or second choice of the electorate. The theoretical 22% of the vote you referred to is 22% of the first preference votes, not 22% of the vote, you’re still thinking in fptp terms.
That said, I prefer the proportional voting system, which usually acurately reflects voters’ intentions. It’s used for the Senate and some state parliaments here in Australia.
Fifty percent of school leavers get into uni these days because the purpose of unis is not to educate but to make money. It’s an industry. Unfortunately, it produces faulty product.
Quite right, I have noticed that. Revenue generation, especially from the higher fee paying overseas students, seems to be the core motive of universities all the way down to the bottom feeding “English language Academies” that pop up on every back street. Quality it is not.
Good Grief! Civilised disagreement based around cogent argument backed up by facts, coupled with respect for the other’s differing point of view? Surely this can’t be the internet!
Dear Paul,
I agree with you. Could you please email me at [chiara.milan45 AT gmail.com]? I need to ask you a question.
Chiara
[Note: edited to keep email safe]
Done
For a number of years, I lived in the lower Ohio Valley, in a region that in the 1920’s had been a happy hunting ground of the KKK. It was Trump country this election cycle.
I wish to observe that people there were decent and kindly enough to my not-all-white family. while working in a local university, a French student of North African heritage told me he thought American race relations extremely “relaxed” compared to back home, and would gladly immigrate if he had a way (those were back in the benighted Dubya Bush years). I still think well of the area, and it both angers and pains me that so many East coast liberals dismiss those people as mere “racists” and “ignorant”.