Creating Sheeple...

Some wag a while back coined the term "sheeple", meaning people who meekly and unprotestingly obey "authority". Many since then have observed that Americans (and citizens of many other countries) seem to be turning into sheeple, markedly different from the outspoken, forthright citizen behavior that was the norm in revolutionary times through at least the late 1800s. Remnants of it still exist, mind you -- but vast herds of sheeple tramp through our political landscape. How else could you explain the repeated re-election of Kennedy, Byrd, Reid, Pelosi, etc. ad nauseum?

Breeding sheeple is an objective of the modern liberal movement. Of course they wouldn't couch it in those terms, but that's really what they mean. Consider the notion of "politically correct speech", wherein some "authority" asserts that we should avoid saying things that might offend someone else -- without regard to whether what's being said is true, or is a interesting question. That notion is closely associated with modern liberalism -- and it's really just code for speech control and thought control. There are an infinite number of examples that could be used to illustrate this; I'll use this one: remember last year when the president of Harvard was harassed into resigning -- because he dared to wonder out loud whether there were gender-related differences in ability or aptitude, and asserted that there was good evidence for such? His speech contained a provably true statement and an interesting question -- something you'd hope academics would be in favor of -- and yet he was excoriated for his politically incorrect words.

The Zero Tolerance movement is yet another technique for breeding sheeple, by suppressing speech and action related to some "outlawed" subject -- without regard to whether the speech or action actually harmed anyone. These sheeple-breeding techniques are powerful, and some in the liberal movement talk about them quite openly -- but they use euphemisms like "shaping minds", "ideological introduction", etc. to avoid riling the sheeple herd.

With that context, I read an interesting article about an attempt in Canada to breed more sheeple. A 15 year old high school student named Kieran King was shown a film on drugs. He was curious about the "facts" presented in the movie, and decided to research the subject on his own. He's never used any illicit drugs, he says; the research was conducted entirely with publicly available materials -- much of it provided by the government. He discovered (and this should surprise nobody!) that drug film was basically propaganda -- playing games with the facts, and trying to scare the viewers. This is the behavior of someone with an active mind and a curiosity about the world; good things in my view.

But then Kieran discussed some of his findings with his fellow students, and one of them reported Kieran to the authorities for violating the school's zero tolerance policy on drugs. Uh oh -- a sheeple is wandering off the pasture! Flog him immediately! Kieran was suspended and reprimanded. How stupid is that? Well, if your objective is to breed sheeple, it's not stupid at all...

Colby Cosh, writing at Canada.com, has an interesting take on this. The lead:

What fascinates me about the case of Kieran King, the Saskatchewan high school student who was threatened, punished and slandered by various officials over the past three weeks for talking with some pals about the health effects of marijuana, is that it explodes almost every single utopian cliche about public schools that has been ever propounded by their employees and admirers. It's almost glorious, in a way. Ever heard an educator say "We're not here to teach students what to think -- we're here to teach them how to think"? BLAMMO! "We encourage children to make learning a lifelong process." KAPOW! Poor Kieran didn't even make it to age 16 before someone called the cops.

"Diversity is one of our most cherished values." But express a factually true opinion that diverges from what you've been taught and -- WHOOMP! "Public schools aren't crude instruments of social control, they're places where we lay the foundation for an informed citizenry." BOOM!

I could go on, but I'm running out of sound effects and I really don't have time to fire up an old Batman episode on You-Tube to gather more.

Mr. Cosh is not so much offended by the sheeple-breeding (as I am), but rather by the hypocrisy of the educational establishment. Well, that's true too -- it is hypocritical to prattle about freedom of speech only to shut it down when it offends your sheeple-breeding dogma. And maybe the hypocrisy is an easier thing to attack than the sheeple-breeding...