For many generations, human culture has evolved slowly. In the last four or five generations, a quickening has become hard to ignore. It is manifest in some ways more obvious than others. In my view, this quickening tears at the fabric of family and tradition. As this plays out, a toxic blend of factors threatens to splinter family values and connections, and (not coincidentally) centralize more power to the governing elite and intelligentsia. It is fed by safe spaces, political correctness, complacency, the corruption of elected and bureaucratic government, aberrant concentration of wealth, the censorship of conservative thought, and the immediacy, anonymity and ubiquity of technology managed by those with an agenda.

For many years, the progressives have been unable to gain traction with their agenda in the marketplace of ideas, so it became time to try a different tack. Consequently, there is a relatively new, earnest effort to create a new narrative, and it is important to understand that the inherent nature of this narrative is cleverly to bump the traditional western dialogue off it’s tracks and to compel a reframing of the conversation in favor of progressive ideology. The progressives have staked out a much more liberal territory and by villainizing objective, dissenting opinion ‘RACIST!’ or ‘SEXIST!’, they have dragged the conversation way to the left. Traditional values have been sacrificed at the alter of progressive ideals as ignorant bigotry.

A generation has grown up with artificial avatars and ‘likes’, and intellectually and morally corrupted by an educational system that has largely failed us in the name of the new gods of progressivism and globalization. They have been radicalized by universities that increasingly foster a compliant echo chamber ‘reaction’ at the sacrifice of rational thought, objective analysis and civil discourse. Traditional values and the rule of law are increasingly observed by coastal elites, Main Stream Media and the new university ‘High Priest’ class as an inconvenient obstacle to the birth of New Progressivism, and therefore necessary collateral damage.

Most advocates of the new progressivism do not realize the degree of influence that the Chinese Communist Party and other oligarch-totalitarians have had in the development of their ‘liberal’ ideologies, or that ‘liberalism’ has been almost completely co-opted by those cynically shaping the narrative and the stagecraft in the global theatre struggle for control. Some, on the other hand are astonishingly arrogant in their condemnation of what has made the American experiment (imperfect though it may be) a remarkably successful vehicle for organizing and maintaining people, industry and capital that has brought much of the world out of poverty and into times of prosperity and education.

Centralization of control is increasing, and examples of it are common. In a recent issue of Harvard Magazine, Elizabeth Bartholet, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, argues that there are risks for children—and society—in homeschooling. She recommends a presumptive ban on the practice. Homeschooling, she says, violates children’s right to a “meaningful education”, and anecdotally stated that parents do not have a natural ‘right’ to making decisions regarding their children’s education. She continues, “The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18? I think that’s dangerous. I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”

I don’t know about you, but her and her friends are not the ones I want deciding how my tax dollars are spent, how my children are educated, and more importantly, what they are taught.