Courtesy of hppts://thechive.com
The Heritage Foundation believes it knows what’s good for America. That’s why I paused to read Kevin D. Robert’s Forward to its latest manifesto, Project 2025. Should Donald Trump be elected our President in November, Robert’s introduction to the document summarizes the changes to expect to the political system.
The plan focuses on two aspects of government: 1) the Washington Establishment— administrative bureaucracy that promulgates rules to implement legislative action; and 2) the relationship between bureaucrats and cultural elites.
For some, the Washington Establishment, otherwise known as the Administration, may evoke unhappy memories of encounters with the IRS, Social Security, or a parochial school board. As a former legislator for a local government, I can attest to the horrors of bureaucratic overreach.
One incident occurred years ago when I drafted an ordinance proposing to support our struggling school district with a grant to provide nursing staff in the middle schools. About to leave for a conference, I left the measure for fine-tuning in the hands of an administrator before boarding my train.
In theory, the ordinance was non-controversial. A school nurse would take student temperatures if necessary, call a parent when one of their offspring suffered a tummy ache, or slap bandages on bloodied knees. Benign objectives like these left me unprepared upon my return to find my staff looking frazzled as if they’d spent the week scrubbing dirty shirt collars at a cheap laundry.
They clustered around me to complain that some bureaucrat had added birth control counseling to the list of nursing duties. When voters got wind of it, there were public calls for my hanging.
True, teen pregnancy was on the rise, so the idea had merit. But, I hadn’t proposed it. Therein lies the difference between a pensioned bureaucrat and a politician. The latter knows to anticipate uprisings. Sadder but wiser, I never left an unfinished legislative proposal in the hands of an administrator again.
Given my experience, when I read that Project 2025’s intention was to boil D. C. bureaucrats in hot sauce, I felt a shiver of fellow feeling. I also agreed that government belonged to the people and so each of us must have the freedom to pursue the good for ourselves and those entrusted to our care. ( Forward, pg. 3)
Of course, everyone knows the devil lies in the details. The manifesto went on to define freedom as our God-given right to restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” Reading the words, I grew cautious, particularly as I was also exhorted to defend our nation’s border and to agree that the building blocks of a healthy society were Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. (Forward, pgs. 3-4.)
My patience broke when I reached the part about educators and public librarians being classified as registered sex offenders if they displayed books concerning sexual identity. (Forward, pg. 5)
On the matter of the cultural elite, I haven’t the space here to address the issue. I pause only to observe that despite his Ph.d, Robert strikes me as an ignorant man. Johannes Guttenberg was a member of the cultural elite when he invented the printing press. That device brought knowledge to the rich and poor alike. What Guttenberg hadn’t anticipated was that his press would also crank out a lot of Ph.d drivel.
Of course, one man’s drivel can pass for wisdom to like minds. The Heritage Foundation is an ultra-conservative think tank, so Robert’s opinions didn’t surprise me. Rather, I read the document in full not for enlightenment but to unearth my biases.
Failing to know ourselves can become a source of laughter. The other day, for example, I joined a table of fellow retirees who’d gathered for morning coffee. As I pulled out a chair, I overheard one woman’s remark about another who was absent. “She thinks everyone is stupid but herself.” I pretended not to hear but inwardly smiled. Several studies have shown that most of us think we are superior to others.
In 1999, Justice Kruger and David Dunning published one of these reports, known, unsurprisingly, as the Kruger-Dunning effect. The psychologists affirmed that we all think well of our intelligence. What amazed them was that those who held themselves in the highest esteem were often the least capable. Donald Trump’s boast that “Only I can do this” comes to mind.
illusory superiority, which is how social scientists reference the condition, has shadings. Not all of us imagine we are geniuses, but like the children of Lake Wobegon, we do consider ourselves to be above average. Admittedly, the opinion plays havoc with the Bell Curve, but it also plays havoc with the planet.
Paleontologist Donald Johanson also noted our smugness when he wrote that as a species, we are overly focused on ourselves. (“Q&A,” by Nancy Perry Graham, AARP Bulletin, May 2024, pg. 33.) History makes it difficult to disagree. Self-absorption is why we have given little thought to the changes we’ve imposed on our habitat, changes like deforestation and urbanization, that threaten biodiversity and ourselves.
A honey bee understands the hives’s dependence upon the environment. We humans, though all above average, don’t seem to make the connection. Like Robert, many of us scoff at the idea of interconnection. Words like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion appear to them to be no more than far-left political propaganda. The bee knows better. DEI is natural law.
I think it odd that a species whose members claim to be smarter than all others should be unable to foresee its extinction. Certainly, Nature isn’t to blame. She gave us the gift of language. What remains to be seen is if we are smart enough to read what we have written. If not, then one day DEI will be seen as a misspelling of DIE.
