Jefferson Review

"Your Liberty is Our Interest"

Home /  Archives / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar

An old college professor ~

(from a readere)

An old college professor was teaching Philosophy in a modern college and posed the following question to his class.  "Is it right for the Government to take from 'those who have', and give to 'those who have not'?" 

Not to his surprise, the vast majority of his students believed in the 'redistribution of wealth' ideology, which is the 'American way' (since President Lyndon Johnson).  His was not a class on Government, so he went back to the text book topics on which he was being paid to educate his students.

A few weeks later, he gave his students a standard test on the text book topics they had been studying.  A week later, the old professor handed out the graded papers, returned to his desk, and asked them to open their text books to the next chapter.

After seeing their grades, the students were astonished and confused.  Some were seething with anger, others delightfully surprised.  At the top of their graded papers were the grade they earned, which was crossed out and replaced with another grade.  The air in that class room was thick enough to cut with a knife, and the students with the highest grades began to angrily demand an answer from the old professor.  It seemed that their "A's" and "B's" had been crossed out and replaced with a lower grade.  During the whole time, the old professor sat quietly at his desk, watching and listening to his class for the better part of an hour, and as the time went by the emotions and frustrations increased.

Finally the old professor slowly rose from his seat, went to the black board, and wrote: "In the modern tradition of Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society', I have given you what you believed to be just.  Those who earned failing grades were given passing grades, and those who worked the hardest to achieve the highest grades had their labors confiscated and given to the 'have not's".

There was a silence in the room, and finally the old professor turned to his class and spoke: "You recall a few weeks back when I asked you how just it was to embrace Socialism?  Your unanimous [indoctrinated] response was very clear in what you believed and wanted.  I simply gave you what you wanted". 

He continued: "Now let me ask you this: Those who worked very hard for the highest grades; do you think that knowing their efforts will result in a grade drop will encourage them to work as hard to excel?  And those who didn't care enough to do the work and study; do you think they will work harder to achieve better grades when they receive what they need for no contribution on their part?" 

"The whole American/Socialist ideology you clearly embrace falls flat and shows itself to be in extreme error when the most basic and practical application is enjoyed.  Did you enjoy it?  Which of the students, do you think, enjoyed it, and which do you think didn't?  Which of the students wanted Socialism, and which didn't.  The big question is 'WHY' certain students wanted it, and 'HOW' such a system innately fosters defeatist behavior, innately encourages underachievement, innately diminishes quality of labor and life."

He went on to show that this modern doctrine/dogma, exercised liberally throughout the major Governments of the world, originated from Karl Marx, and was one of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto drawn up by the [Socialist] revolutionaries who overthrew the Government of Russia in 1917.

The old professor paused, looked around his classroom at some confused, some enlightened, some angered, some saddened faces of his students, and continued:  "When you are told by the media and your Government that the graduated income tax, which is by the way, one of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto, is 'Voluntary', but you will be jailed or severely punished if you don't 'volunteer', perhaps you should ask more questions." 

"When you are told this country was founded as a 'Democracy', perhaps you  should ask what a 'Republic' is.  When you are repeatedly told that it is good for America that American jobs are being shipped to third world countries and lowering your standard of living, perhaps you should use your minds a little.  When you are force fed the idea that America is the 'World's Police Department', perhaps you should ask 'Why'.  When you are convinced that it is the Government's job to regulate some of the most fundamental aspects of your life, perhaps you should use your minds to reason outside the 'box'.  And when you are compelled by those around you who do not think, do not reason, do not labor their minds to objectively critique the established but ever changing 'norms' of our society, who call good bad and bad good, and you are told to 'Just accept', perhaps you will think back upon this lesson of grading your papers and ask yourself the most fundamental question of all..."

The old professor stopped, looked deeply into each of his students attentive eyes, and finished:

"Do you choose Barrabas or Christ; do you embrace truth or error."

Weeks later, that old college professor was terminated from his job.  A student (who incidentally had a failing grade on the test), complained to the school 'authorities' that the professor was abusing his teaching position by promoting his own 'opinions', and was violating the separation of Church and State by speaking of religion in a principally Government funded college (of higher learning).  The old professor's response was predictable, and in a brief statement offered the following:

"To the over-educated and undernourished minds among us, as well as my esteemed colleagues, I ask the following questions:"

1).  Where do 'rights', strictly speaking, come from, God or Government?"

2).  If we give error 'rights', where does that relegate objective 'Truth' to?

3).  Is the intent of the Founding Fathers’ words, 'The government shall pass no law respecting  religion, or prohibiting the Free exercise thereof' empower the government to pass laws which interfere in any way with 'Free exercise'?

4).  Please define the word 'Free'.  We use this word so freely, yet constrain it more freely.

5).  Perhaps the majority of college professors who freely indoctrinate students with Socialistic ideology, which is essentially a morally based idealism and should be classed within the definition of 'religion', could explain to my students that my grading of their 'test-test', was truly just and ideologically sound.

6).  Explain to my students why we do not say in the 'Pledge of Allegiance', ..."And to the Democracy for which it stands"...

7).  And finally, thank you for counting me among those who are 'Reviled and Persecuted for Truth's sake'.  I can now go to my judgment by God with a badge of honor.

Another Story?

Here's a good link and excerpt (especially as tax day draws nigh!)

 http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050310.shtml

On a beautiful June day in 1965, when I was 19, I was sitting in my ancient Ford at a gas station in Michigan, across the street from my old high school. While my tank was filling, I was reading The Law, by the nineteenth-century economist Frédéric Bastiat.

I came upon a simple point that stunned me. Bastiat wrote, "Look at the law, and see whether it does for one citizen at the expense of another what it would be a crime for the first to do to the other himself."   If so, the law itself is criminal.

At that very time, Lyndon Johnson was enacting Great Society programs that did just that. All his redistribution schemes, many of which are still with us, amounted to what Bastiat's little book - a long pamphlet, really - called "organized plunder." In Bastiat's view, government was (or was fast becoming) a morbid system whereby "everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." 

"Social-ism" is defined as a system whereby the Government takes what rightfully belongs to he who created and labored for it, and gives it to he who has no moral right to it.  The Gov't 'creates' a 'right' which is essentially, (in it's essence), not a 'right', strictly speaking...

Pay your taxes so others can live off you, or be jailed...

Weather (Louisville) / Mapquest /  White Pages / Business Search / CNN / Dictionary / E-card / MSN