+1, credit where due.

My father had a Ford Fellowship to Harvard in 1955-56. During that time he studied with Willard Van Orman Quine, the famed philosopher.  He also worked on his book project that resulted in the publication of "Foundations of Mathematics" not too long afterwards.  I think, perhaps, you are painting with too broad a brush, PF. 

EDIT: I do have a serious problem with their recent support of Planned Parenthood and the fact that a PP executive is now on their board.  I'm personally very pro-life, and I consider our current abortion-on-demand policy as morally reprehensible -- an American Holocaust.  

Don't try to threadjack my threadjack. Oh wait, we're in a "difficult dialogue."

For social engineers such as the directors of the Ford Foundation, the abortion conundrum is like the war and peace or religion and apostasy discussions you might see in those classes.

They're all about thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Frame the debate, then advance an enhanced agenda while people attend a symposium. 

Examples of this:

1. McCloy and Bundy make immoral war decisions in high national-security positions, then help sponsor the anti-war movement through a foundation. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, people are like, "War's horrible and corrupt, but we'll always have it and there's nothing we can do and it might be a necessary evil because there are bad people."

Agenda = plenty of war, for or against whatever the state decides, but with plenty of "peace institutes."

2. Marriage and family life is portrayed as stifling and obsolete, while plentiful mind-bending drugs and pornography facilitate the free-sex concept. Birth control's everywhere, and abortion's always available as a backup plan. But wait, the traditional ways made more sense in many respects, and abortions zap a woman's fertility and kill a living entity. Oh crap, now we're quite divided by the "sexual revolution," and the shifting sands have got to be confusing for kids. 

Agenda = marriage and reproduction are separated, human roles are redefined or weakened, intact families become increasingly like quaint museum pieces, people with "alternative lifestyles" look to the state for protection.    

3. Religion is a backbone of Western civilization and American culture that helps give meaning and direction to life. No, that's offensive to atheists, and there's too much dogma and hypocrisy and incompatibility with science to think of it as a beacon. Oh well, let's just say that religion's outdated and divisive in its traditional forms, so instead we'll nurture a hybrid of New Age teachings, environmentalism and utopian state worship.

Agenda = Give lip service to religion when it fosters conformity and indifference to wrongdoing, but downplay whatever tendency the major belief systems have to encourage morality, ethics and resistance to tyranny.

Here at OU, there's this noxious profusion of weird, quasi-academic directed dialogues on campus. Like the apocalypse narrative one they have posters for at the library. 

A note about Planned Parenthood: Do you know who Margaret Sanger was? What a miserable, twisted family she came from? That's no crime, but she seemed to overcompensate for some personal shortcoming by joining the eugenics movement, whose stated goal is to decide who lives and who dies (largely along racial and ethnic lines) so as to reduce population.

OCF, the FF is such a large entity that they've undoubtedly funded some benign or beneficial things such as, apparently, your father's scholarship.

PF, Interesting examples of the use of the Hegelian dialectic in a diabolical way. 




I would agree with this, after reading your exposition.  Sounds like FF has been involved in some less than stellar enterprises, to put it nicely. 

Maybe it's because the apocalypse is a popular topic right now amongst students. I thought it was pretty cool.

Thanks, PF, for the links.  It doesn't look very academic or scholarly to me.  If the genesis for this the 2012 Mayan Calendar stuff, it's total trash as that scenario is based on a misreading of the Mayan calendar which does not predict the end of the world in 2012.  One phase of the calendar ends and another begins as has happened before with this calendar system.  I don't want to make too much of this library material, because it's probably inconsequential in the great scheme of things, but it seems to be one more example of the dumbing down of higher education.

(rubs face) This started a while ago, and I think it's over. It didn't come from the Mayans. The apocalypse is VERY big in pop culture right now and the library staff tapped into it to create a really cool experience, playing video games, reading books, and talking about them. The Hunger Games was a huge hit. That wasn't because of the Mayans. "Fallout 3" was an enormous success. It wasn't because of the Mayans.

I applaud the librarians for knowing the pulse of their audience and connecting with it.