or will be if the "Gated Intellectuals" in the GOP and extreme right neoliberal crowd get their way. Whatever one calls this negative, narrow-minded, control-freakers, anti-humane group, this article explains the Horrific Future the Right-Wing Theocrats and Politicians want for America. In my humble opinion it is STUPID, EVIL and needs to be stopped at all costs!
Gated Intellectuals and Ignorance in Political Life: Toward a Borderless Pedagogy in the Occupy Movement
For some clarity the definition of Pedagogy:
ped·a·go·gy
[ped-uh-goh-jee, -goj-ee]
noun, plural -gies.
1.
the function or work of a teacher; teaching.
2.
the art or science of teaching; education; instructional methods.
This helps to understand why Santorum and his ILK doesn't want anymore SNOBS.
A group of right-wing extremists in the United States would have the American public believe it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of a market society. Comprising this group are the Republican Party extremists, religious fundamentalists such as Rick Santorum and a host of conservative anti-public foundations funded by billionaires such as the Koch brothers(1), whose pernicious influence fosters the political and cultural conditions for creating vast inequalities and massive human hardships throughout the globe. Their various messages converge in support of neoliberal capitalism and fortress mentality that increasingly drive the meaning of citizenship and social life. One consequence is that the principles of self-preservation and self-interest undermine, if not completely sabotage, political agency and democratic public life.
---
The United States has become Fortress America, and its gated banks, communities, hedge funds and financial institutions have become oppressive silos of the rich and privileged designed to keep out disadvantaged and vulnerable populations. At the same time, millions of gated communities have been created against the will of their inhabitants who have no passports to travel and are locked into abandoned neighborhoods, prisons, and other sites equivalent to human waste dumps. The walls of privilege need to be destroyed and the fortresses of containment eliminated, but this will not be done without the emergence of a new political discourse; a borderless pedagogy; and a host of public spheres and institutions that provide the formative culture, skills and capacities that enable young and old alike to counter the ignorance discharged like a poison from the mouths of those corporate interests and anti-public intellectuals who prop up the authority of Fortress America and hyper-capitalism. It is time for the Occupy movement to embrace their pedagogical role as a force for critical reason, social responsibility and civic education.
---
If gated intellectuals defend the privileged, isolated, removed and individualized interests of those who decry the social and view communal responsibility as a pathology, then public intellectuals must ensure their work and actions embody a democratic ideal through reclaiming all those sites of possibility in which dialogue is guaranteed, power is democratized and public values trump sordid private interests. Democracy must be embraced not merely as a mode of governance, but more importantly, as Bill Moyers points out, as a means of dignifying people so they can become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.
We have a major battle facing us in so many ways we never even imagined. While most of us were busy just living our pseudo-American Dream, many greedy, selfish, sick-minded groups have been undermining every facet of peaceful co-habitation between all people.
Time to shake, rattle and roll...