Did you ever hear about the "Ishihara Test"? I did not think so. It is the standard test for color blindness. Isn't it Obama who wants us all to be colored blind? Joke aside, the test is the one with the circle with all the different colored dots that have numbers in the middle. If you are colored blind, you see one number and if you are not, you see another number. When you take the test, you may not think much of it because it seems "natural" to you. The only problem comes in when you talk to someone who sees a different number than you do. Neither can understand why they both don't see the same number. Talking and explaining how colored blindness works does not resolve the problem and each goes away think that there is something wrong with the other. That is the way it is. You don't have to take my word for it, go do the test. The name is "Ishihara". Now for my blog.
The reason that I use the example of colored blindness and the Ishihara test is that it is the same with politics and religion. In a person's youth when we are forming our opinions about things and coming up with ways to deal with the world we acquire "blind spots" just like colored blindness. Did you ever notice that people of one religion or another can't understand people who do not believe in their religion or no religion. The problem is that they have been "blinded" and can no longer deal with religion logically. They have a case of "blind faith". You know it is true because you have seen it time after time. It is the same with politics too.
When we send our young children off to public schools, many become "blinded" by their liberal teachers. They don't see it happening and most parents don't either. It is a slow gradual process. The parents demand that their kids get good grades and it turns out that the only way that a student can get a good grade is to "agree" with their teacher. As they do this over and over as do the other kids in the class, the degree of "blindness" gets worse. It is even worse in our colleges. It occurs mostly in the "fluff" type classes vs the more difficult math and science classes. Did you notice that the number of our students who take the math and science majors has gone down over the past 30 years while the number who take the "fluff" majors has increased. This means that more and more of our kids have been "blinded". Don't think so? Talk to your kids about politics and you will see. Ask them if they think Global Warming is going to bring the end of the world if we don't act "now"? I know the answer. Ask them if they feel our economic system is "fair". I know the answer to that one too.
The problem with our kids is that they have been "blinded" and there is little that you can do about it. It is just like "colored blindness" and the Ishihara test. Who were the kids who were marching on Wall Street? They were these same kids who took "fluff" majors in college and ran up big bills for their families and the tax payers and who have been so "blinded" in the process that now they are trying to blame someone else. I have looked at this problem from many angles and I do not know how we can "unblind" our kids. They just may have to go into the "desert" for a couple of generations just as Moses had to do in the Bible. I don't see any other way. Sad, but true.
