It’s past time to ponder the quote from Thomas Jefferson: ‘If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.’

There will be more street theater in the days to come. Every week after President Trump’s inauguration, the headlines have been full of protests: at local townhalls for GOP members of Congress, campus events, counter-protesting pro-life demonstrations. If you are of sound mind and watched the anti-Trump demonstrations unfold on Inauguration Day, then during the recent anti-speech riots at the Cal Berkeley and New York University campuses, two developments probably stood out to you.

First, you could see how violent rioters systematically infiltrated and punctuated those purportedly “largely peaceful” protests. I dare say, the Black Bloc presence and body language looks eerily similar that of ISIS terrorists, right down to the black hoods and masks.

Second, there is a particularly cult-like feel to the behavior of these mobs: the incoherence, blind rage, encouragement of lawlessness, and utter hostility to anyone who doesn’t conform to their mindset. It’s an anger sustained by vilification tactics reminiscent of the “two minutes hate” in Orwell’s novel “1984.”

Rather than acting as individuals who exercise rational thought, participants in these mobs act more like atomized parts of manufactured hives. They have been deployed at the drop of a hat—at airports, town halls, campuses—no doubt to create the illusion of mass resistance to a duly elected president and his administration. Such mobs are also aggressively pre-packing and swarming town halls of GOP members of Congress in solidly GOP districts.

To what purpose? The professed hope, as stated by founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA Carl Dix as well as Princeton University professor Cornel West, who are founders of the Soros-funded group refusefascism.org, is to mobilize “tens of millions” of resisters into the streets to bring down the Trump administration. Sen. Tim Kaine recently lent them his relatively moderate voice by calling for people to resist the Trump administration “in the streets.” Former President Obama gave them a shout-out as well.

If aggressive mobs can deploy enough warm bodies through their organized pyramid scheme of recruitment, the reasoning goes, then law enforcement will be overwhelmed and have to throw in the towel. Or maybe what’s left of civil society will devolve to civil war.

We’re In an Ideological Cold War

Those who are pushing for sustained street resistance seem to be banking on two things. First they are betting that mainstream Americans won’t realize until it’s too late that we are in the midst of a virtual civil war that could turn violent. Dennis Prager recently wrote of this Second Civil War, warning Americans to wake up to it. Second, agitators are also wagering that Americans will not have the stomach for the prolonged fight they intend to bring to the streets, a point noted by psychologist Tim Daughtry in his book “Waking the Sleeping Giant.”

So is this some kind of a joke? Revolution in the streets of America that overturns the election results? So far it all sounds so goofy, at least where it doesn’t get violent. We can watch in wonder as a shrieking NYU professor verbally assaults numerous police officers with the sort of impunity only afforded to the far-left. We can assure ourselves that there aren’t that many irrational people. Even if true, however, that’s beside the point. Too many citizens are at sea in understanding what freedom even means.

We need to ask ourselves: What brought us to this place where the losing side has so utterly and violently rejected the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another, and previously agreed-upon electoral process and rules? It’s past time to ponder the quote from Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Destroying Our Education System Got Us Here

Let’s face it. Today’s street theater is the culmination of decades of radical education revision. The radical Left’s systematic attack on the study of Western Civilization has essentially been an attack against the study of any and all civil societies. It is an attack on the features that make a society civil and free. Those features include freedom of expression, civil discourse, the Socratic method of figuring out truth, value of the individual, and a common knowledge of the classics of history and literature that help us understand what’s universal in the human experience. All of that had to go.

Now, as we see students marching to demonize as “fascists” proponents of free speech, their ignorance is in full view. This is really a full frontal attack on the rule of law, the Constitution, and a system of checks and balances that guards against the consolidation of centralized power.

That’s the whole point of the education these students have been fed. In fact, a lot of 1960s agitators, including domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, decided to place their bets on radical education revision. For at least 40 years, Ayers has been devoted to transforming schools from places of actual education to places of coercive thought reform. As Andrew McCarthy recently pointed out in National Review: “It was a comfy fit for him and many of his confederates, once it dawned on them that indoctrination inside the schoolhouse was more effective than blowing up the schoolhouse.”

If you review the history of radical education reform, it’s clear these agitators have been committing mind arson on the children, undermining their ability to think independently and clearly. (For more on this, read Robin Eubanks’ book “Credentialed to Destroy.”)

How to Short-Circuit a Child’s Thinking

Radical education reformers have made a point of removing context from children’s education, and to squash their natural curiosity, undermining their capacity to think. They have done this in five ways: 1) by withholding the basic tools and codes of learning, such as suppressing phonics for reading, as well as clarity in standard arithmetic; 2) by withholding the content knowledge necessary to connect dots in understanding history and civics; 3) by withholding and demeaning literature that reveals universal human experiences and shared understanding, such as the classics and Shakespeare; 4) by de-stabilizing a child’s sense of self and identity. This is a natural byproduct of de-sexing every child, which happens through mandates to teach kids about transgenderism; and 5) by promoting relational aggression against any child or parent who might resist this totalitarian program. Radical education reform encourages schools and communities to single out those who disagree with this coercive program as misfits, bigots, or religious nuts.

All of the above would subvert anybody’s ability to think clearly. It leaves children unmoored from reality and in a constant state of anxiety about being socially rejected by peers or teachers for thinking thoughts deemed wrong. Their personal relationships are dictated and controlled according to their adherence to the party line of the radical ed reformers. Who wouldn’t be in a state of confusion after churning his way for 13 years through such a system of merciless indoctrination?

Without a grasp of history, students end up with a gaping memory hole, left adrift whenever trying to fill in the blank, trying to understand cause-and-effect of human events not as they actually happened, but according to the politicized scripts they’ve been assigned to memorize. So instead of really learning the context of what happened during the American Civil War—for example, a full account of history’s chain of events and the interactions of the real human figures—they are primarily fed a political gruel that triggers in them hyper-emotional reflexes to words like “confederate flag” or “Jefferson Davis Highway.”

The ability to think clearly and independently relies entirely on a foundation of context and a shared reality with others, as well as an openness to free inquiry. All are now sadly lacking.

Stoking Relational Aggression

Sex education in the schools has become a platform for Planned Parenthood to push its abortion agenda and encourage kids to have sex, which really just adds up to another assault on their privacy. The program to de-sex children by feeding them the lie of gender ideology and insisting their biological sex isn’t real only adds to a lack of context, causing confusion and loss of moorings as they try to adapt to being forced to think of themselves as the other sex, or having fluid identities, or no identity at all.

On top of all of this, America’s politicized public schools dictate a culture that inculcates resentments, labelling, and guilt-mongering in Maoist fashion. It’s bound to have a destabilizing effect on a child’s development. By high school too many are become dependent upon their overlords in the education establishment telling them what to say, what to believe, what to do: Go into the streets to protest Trump’s inauguration! Vote Dem! Here’s some condoms, go have sex! Viva abortion! If you ever get married, expect to get divorced. Get a degree in pseudo-studies. Don’t read classics (Eeewwww, dead white guys.)

America’s politicized public schools dictate a culture that inculcates resentments, labelling, and guilt-mongering in Maoist fashion.

Now picture these kids at college, away from home for the first time. What do they get? Relational aggression in hyperdrive. Relational aggression can be defined as a type of aggression that is “intended to harm others through deliberate manipulation of their social standing and relationships.” Ironically, so much of the socialization kids seem to experience in schools cultivates that feeling of separation and isolation from others, or the constant threat of it.

Increasingly colleges are requiring “diversity” training for freshmen, which basically puts them on notice that they will become non-persons if they say one wrong word or think one wrong thought. (For more on this dark side of campus culture, see the book just published by humanities professor Robert Oscar Lopez.)

The thought policing goes into high gear in programs that indoctrinate young people with privilege theory, basically telling them that growing up in a happy family is a sign of unearned “white” privilege that hurts kids who didn’t get the experience of a family vacation, or what have you. Basically, radical education reforms have been training students to hate their parents, their heritage, or anyone who doesn’t get with the program. It all adds up to an elaborate game of cooties. So you can graduate from college only to face a rehash of the schoolyard. And it gets worse.

Priming Cannon Fodder for an Ideological War

The last 50 years have produced a huge wave of kids who are functionally uneducated, even if they’re at the top in their class at elite schools. So many are unable to think independently, lack context, and try mightily to adapt to various PC lines. All of the above must be like living in a fog, or floating in the cold depths of outer space with nothing to hold on to. It’s bound to weaken relationships, and create the loneliness epidemic we are seeing in today’s society.

The last 50 years have produced a huge wave of kids who are functionally uneducated, even if they’re at the top in their class at elite schools.

They have learned through their environmental studies, non-stop identity politics, and a steady diet of hostility towards Christianity that if they want to be accepted, they must bow to the politically correct formula. After so much indoctrination and propaganda, a human being becomes highly malleable and vulnerable to a cult mindset.

Indeed, cults operate by disrupting recruits’ capacity to think independently and clearly. So it is always key to isolate their victims and to induce self-censorship of different viewpoints. Because political correctness stands in the way of free speech, it stands in the way of real conversation — and friendship.

What do we have at the end of this half-century process? Voila! Cannon fodder for violent demonstrations, untrained athletes in a foot race to societal suicide.

The Differences Between Real and Cultish Education

Margaret Thaler Singer was perhaps the twentieth century’s most eminent expert on cults. If you want to understand just how vulnerable humans are to coercive thought reform, read her book “Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives.” If you don’t have time, you should at least look at these two pages that include her table showing how real education differs from four other methods of persuasion and influence.

The five methods on the “Continuum of Influence and Persuasion” are: education, advertising, propaganda, indoctrination, and thought reform (i.e., brainwashing). Look at the table, please. Singer describes how each method of persuasion operates in terms of openness, ethics, deceptiveness, structure, methods, and so on.

Real education does not have a propaganda component. It is not in any way deceptive. It takes raw information from a variety of bodies of knowledge and lays them out for learning and discussion. The exchanges are open, and do not depend on spouting forth a politically correct answer.

You’ll see how advertising, propaganda, and indoctrination vary in a number of ways. But on the far end of the scale is thought reform. This is another term for brainwashing, or the process of coercive persuasion. It is a closed method of persuasion. It is one-sided and takes place without the subject’s knowledge of the intent to reshape his or her mind. This exactly how cults operate on their recruits.

This calculated deception to prevent someone’s awareness that there’s an agenda to program his thoughts is the number one hallmark of cultish thought reform.

The purpose of the recruit is to be deployed to recruit others, all to promote the cult leaders’ agenda. Cults operate like the Borg of Star Trek. Their goal is simply to keep growing with no end in sight, looking to absorb everyone into their mindset. The big problem today is that cults aren’t just your little scattered UFO clans. Rather, they seem to have taken on global proportions.

The tragic truth of radical education reform is that it has served only to get youth to adopt political views in accordance with the radical reformers’ goals. They obediently go out to these demonstrations or do door-to-door work for whatever power-consolidating agenda item serves the elites, because they have been conditioned to know that doing otherwise will get them socially rejected.

It’s all very Pavlovian and psychologically manipulative. They know the script, but can’t tell you what it all means because they lack the context, the capacity to think independently of the threats of political correctness. And it all happened without them knowing what hit them or their families really knowing either. This calculated deception to prevent someone’s awareness that there’s an agenda to program his thoughts is the number one hallmark of cultish thought reform. (Not incidentally, Singer was defamed for advocating that the public become aware of how coercive persuasion works so people could develop countermeasures.)

We Live in the Age of the Cult Mindset

I don’t think it’s fair to call these recruits “snowflakes,” because the triggering mechanisms were implanted into them largely through education reforms that stifle the natural curiosity of children and manipulate the universal human fear of social rejection. They are more like prisoners, victims of mind-hacking. It’s like they’ve been intellectually knee-capped.

Even if you don’t agree that college campuses have a rape culture, there can be no denying that many have developed a mind rape culture. In the end, many of these students are ripe to serve as recruits for the “resistance,” promoting an agenda to bring about a system that rejects, in perpetuity, the right to think for oneself and speak freely.

If Americans ever fully regain an appreciation of the rule of law and their Bill of Rights, future historians might just peg this era as the Age of the Cult Mindset. Perhaps you know a lot of folks who are not stuck in the delusional thinking. Yet all it takes to induce a scary Twilight Zone scenario on whole populations is a few obsessive-compulsive control freaks who have reins of power, an organizing infrastructure, and the iron will to make puppets of us all.