OPINION:
Your editorial, “California dreaming” (Web, Dec. 29), should be a wake-up call for all Americans that the descent of California from symbol of American greatness to symbol of cultural decline was yoked to the political ascent of the state’s “progressive” left.
California is a cultural laboratory and its experiments demonstrate how “progressivism” degrades everything it touches, be it economic freedom, free speech, public education, civil society or the sanctity of human life. Its experiments demonstrate the great irony of progressivism: Their outcomes almost invariably demonstrate the opposite of their intended effects. Under its progressive leadership, once-beautiful California cities have become the nation’s epicenter of filth, homelessness and income inequality.
But the left engenders cultural decline or stagnation wherever it roots, be it France or Greece, Cuba or the Soviet Union, Venezuela or even California. Any society which clings to its utopian visions inevitably sinks into dystopian reality.
Lest the entire republic sink into Californian dystopia, we must disavow the left’s destructive ideology whenever and wherever we can. There is no better place to begin than public education, the objective of which is to socialize the next generation, and higher education, the objective of which is to produce the next generation of leaders. We have witnessed the decline of educational institutions from excellence to mediocrity as they degenerated into progressive laboratories for “social justice” experiments. We must return these institutions to our nation’s founding cultural vision before the left uses them to mold the nation’s first generation of authoritarian socialists.
KEN BECKERT
Abingdon, Md.
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