To the Class of 2021
Ed. Note: This editorial ran at this time last year, but is still applicable to the new class of 2021.
Congratulations Class of 2021! For those of you who are ending your collegiate careers, we hope you find a life’s work that will be fulfilling, and become contributing members of your community and family.
For those ending their high school careers, we hope you find that niche that will make your life have meaning, whether it be in a college setting leading to a professional life, or entering the working world and using the skills you have acquired through your scholastic careers.
You are living in a time where conformity is more the order of the day than in any time in the recent past. Forces controlled by groups of elites, particularly in the political and academic spheres are asking for submission, rather than agreement. Are you adult enough to handle these pressures and fight off the temptation to subsume your will to the mob? In other words, are you an adult ready for real life?
If you believe your “unalienable” rights are derived from the government, and not Nature or “Nature’s God,” you are not ready for the real world.
If you believe your civilization, the one that has given you the right to speak and protest, is fundamentally evil and must be collapsed, you are not ready for real life. You have a gap in your education that needs to be addressed.
If you see the history of this nation as intrinsically evil and must be destroyed, you are not ready for real life. You have not the maturity to understand that all nations have pasts that are less than stellar, no matter the location or the culture.
If you think ideas are violence and must be stamped out, you are not ready for real life.
If you see words as violence to be destroyed by violence, you are not ready for real life.
If you need trigger warning and are unable to listen to opposing ideas, shouting people down, you are immature and unequipped for dealing with real life.
If you need safe spaces to shield you from people or arguments with which you disagree, and are unable to articulate those objections, you have been robbed of an education and are unprepared for the real world.
If your major was or is in topics that end in “Studies” (Women Studies, Gay Studies, etc.), these are not disciplines, they are political statements. You will not be prepared to enter the real world after graduation.
If you see slavery as the overriding event that negates everything the United States aspires to, you are immature and need to read and learn more before entering the real world.
If you see the world as Us v. Them proposition, you have been poorly taught and poorly mentored and must understand differences that exist between people.
If you think policy disagreements, or people who have opposing views to yours deserve to be “cancelled” by losing their job, their property and their reputations, you are not ready for the real world and are an emotional child.
If you think tearing down statutes and defacing property and harming people are the way to fight fascism, you yourself are the fascist and are no better than the Brown Shirts or the Black Shirts, or Stalinists of former times – and as propagandized as they were.
If you can’t separate political thought from any aspect of life, including entertainment, you are unprepared to live in the real world.
If you believe that biology must take a back seat to displaced and disordered thinking that will hurt individuals in the long run, you are unable to understand the consequences of those thoughts, and unable to function in reality.
Education is the learning of objective facts and truths, and being able to discern those things that are neither objective nor true. If you see the world from a totally subjective point of view, or are willing to blind yourself thinking you are morally right and everyone who disagrees is evil, you are incapable of dealing with the world, and have been poorly trained.
If you can find your way to rational thought with dispassionate results, you are truly educated and deserve a place in the real world. Good luck!