Don’t Go to College: A Case for Revolution – Book Review

Type: Non-fiction

Category: Cultural Policy, Education

Author: Michael J. Robillard, Timothy J. Gordon

Pages: 234

Publisher: Regnery Publishing

List Price (Softcover): $26.99

The book “Don’t Go to College: A Case for Revolution” should come with a trigger warning for those in higher education.

College students and their professors in ivory towers will find safe spaces and support animals useless when reading this book. A better safe space would be a nuclear fallout shelter because authors Michael J. Robillard and Timothy J. Gordon go nuclear on today’s mass indoctrination courses in higher education.

Robillard is an Iraq War veteran, independent scholar and philosopher, and Gordon is the author of numerous books and hosts the Rules for Retrogrades podcast.

The authors don’t mince words because they have experienced the rapid disintegration of higher education from inside the college bubble as both students and professors. Between them they hold six post-graduate degrees, and Gordon gained national notoriety in 2020 when he was canceled as theology chairman from a California Catholic high school for his opposition to Black Lives Matter.

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The premise of their book is simple: colleges and universities have become an inversion of their original purpose: rather than a whetstone to sharpen a student’s intellectual skills and hone critical thinking abilities, instead they are mass producing young adults who are infantilized, arrogant and bereft of marketable skills that enable success.

Or as the authors quote British journalist and Oxford graduate James Delingpole: “Universities are madrassas of woke stupidity.”

The second chapter on Wokeism centers around the intersectionality spiderweb: Critical Race Theory, Anti-Colonialism, Feminism, LGBTQ+.

“The “+” sign is a conceptual placeholder for literally any and all future ‘marginalized’ groups imaginable, no matter how niche, bizarre, vicious, contradictory, illogical, incoherent or detrimental to individuals and civilizations as a whole. Indeed, the weirder and more niche, and therefore more marginalized, the better,” the authors write.

Whether describing the history-illiterate 1619 fallacy or legitimizing cross-dressing men who insist they can get pregnant, the authors summarize much of the woke thinking simply: “In other words, we’re supposed to deny reality and affirm someone else’s desire to live in a fantasy world.”

http://www.deanriffs.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Robillard.jpeg

Michael Robillard M.A., M.A., Ph.D

Aside from higher education’s emphasis on wokeism and the routine trashing of America, the authors also cite the ruinous debt students accumulate when pursuing a four-year degree, noting that in the last 20 years average college costs have more than doubled.

“Like drug dealers, college administrators want to get you hooked on the opiate of higher education so they can profit further,” the authors write in Chapter 3. “Given how many kids now go to college – and given how academically subpar college has become – an undergraduate degree is effectively the equivalent of your grandfather’s high school diploma.”

The book makes it clear that the scourge of liberal/progressive neo-Marxism infecting America’s campuses is not relegated to just liberal arts colleges and the social sciences, but even schools and curriculums focused on science and mathematics.

“The same neo-Marxists who corrupted the humanities are just as eager to corrupt the sciences. If they succeed in doing so, the results could be catastrophic,” the authors warn. “We’ve seen politicized science many times before – most notoriously in the great tyrannies of the twentieth century.”

Timoth J. Gordon M.A.,Ph.L., J.D.

In Chapter 5 the authors expound on how universities are little more than adult day care centers and how they retard the maturation process in young adults.

“Moms and dads alike want their kids to ‘grow up’ and ‘gain experience,’ not realizing that the experience their kids will gain will not be morally formative and that they are actually discouraging their kids from growing up,” they bluntly state.

Aside from the cultural indoctrination and crippling debt a college degree entails, the authors also warn parents of a third red flag on the majority of college campuses: sexual degeneracy. Commenting on the frequent cases of students getting blackout drunk and engaging in transactional sex, the authors write:

“Our society as a whole seems unconcerned about how this might alter the moral outlook of generation after generation, not just in terms (at a minimum) of legitimized fornication, promiscuity, and sterility, but also in terms of normative sexual boundaries and definitions of deviancy (as with the LGBTQ+ movement, which is stronger on campus than anywhere else).”

In lieu of college, what the authors prescribe is learning a trade or pursuing a career that pays while you get on-the-job experience. So rather than racking up thousands of dollars in debt and being indoctrinated by professors who have never held a real job, you can educate yourself like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin did while earning a respectable living.

The book quotes renowned blue collar advocate Mike Rowe to support their thesis: “We’re lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.”

The authors note that some careers like lawyers and doctors do require college, so in Chapter 6 they provide a list of “safer” schools for undergraduate studies.

For most students though, Robillard and Gordon suggest pursuing a self-education by narrowing down a subject specialty by reading “A Student’s Guide to” books in the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI Books) series or Regnery’s Politically Incorrect Guide courses. Both of those series cover curriculum studies universities used to teach minus the leftist mumbo jumbo taught today.

Forty-nine pages of this profound book reproduce 19th century theologian John Henry Newman’s discourse on what a university should be and a sobering epilogue by Robillard on why he now disavows academia.

Informative, provocative and refreshingly candid, this perceptive book provides a cogent argument why society needs to rethink the necessity of a college education and pursue more practical alternatives that will help citizens and our country be the best we can be.

Thanks for reading Dean Riffs. Welcome to all those who love personal liberty, capitalism, and who believe God has blessed America.

Copyright 2022, Dean A. George© 

Book Review – Mary’s Voice in the Gospel according to John

Type: Non-fiction

Category: Christianity

Author: Michael Pakaluk

Pages: 328

Publisher: Regnery Gateway

List Price (Softcover): $16.99

The Gospel according to John has long been considered different than the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The latter tell the story of Jesus Christ from the disciples’ perspective, while the former describes Jesus’s life and ministry from Christ’s viewpoint.

Catholic University Professor Michael Pakaluk’s book is a new translation of the Gospel of John complete with insightful commentary and a verse-by-verse overview. Many passages were translated from original Greek texts. His work is premised on the idea that Mary was a significant influence on John’s approach to his Gospel.

John the Evangelist is historically known as Christ’s beloved disciple and the longest living of the apostles, but Pakaluk offers another significant reason in Mary’s Voice in the Gospel according to John why that Gospel is unique: Jesus in his dying words on the cross committed his mother to the care of John for the remainder of her days.

John 19:26-27 (KJV): “When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.”

It is believed that Mary died in 60 or 65 AD and the disciple and Mary lived together for 30-35 years. Both Mary and John were believed to be contemplative people and the author suggests that no one could have lived with the Lord’s mother that length of time without being moved by her understanding of the life and mission of her Son.

“Together they shared a single love, and, like others who deeply miss the presence of their beloved, they would have yearned to be closer to him by remembering together what they had noticed about Jesus, what he had done, and in what setting,” Pakaluk writes in his Introduction.

In his fascinating translation the author identifies those parts of John’s writing which may have been influenced by conversations and recollections with the mother of Christ.

For example, who knew Jesus and his special calling better than his mother? And in John’s Gospel women play a much more significant role than in the other three gospels, from the wedding at Cana where Mary informs Jesus the hosts are out of wine (Jesus performs his first miracle), to the Samaritan woman at the well and the different women witnessing Christ’s crucifixion up close and personal.

“A Gospel dominated by the themes of sorrow and separation at death and the joy of reunion and birth is exactly what one would expect the mother of the Christ to tell,” Pakaluk writes.

Pakaluk believes Mary may have helped shape John’s thinking explicitly and implicitly. Explicitly Mary may have pointed out details to John personally. Implicitly John surely noticed Mary’s lifelong attitude to serve; her contemplative insights about her son, and John’s choice to emulate the Lord’s example of love and devotion for the woman who birthed Jesus.

A professor of ethics and social philosophy in the Busch School of Business at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., Pakaluk counts 19th century English theologian John Henry Newman as one of his major influencers and quotes from his sermons and published works frequently in this book.

“Newman has a special insight into the Gospel of John,” the author told an audience at the Catholic Information Center last year. “Newman’s insights into the characters in the Scriptures is extraordinary. I’ve learned how to read the Bible, especially the New Testament, from Newman.”

As he did with his earlier work The Memoirs of St. Peter: A New Translation of the Gospel According to Mark, Pakaluk enjoys utilizing a different approach to his research and writing. He conducts his literary archeology by exploring the formation of texts influenced through other persons rather than previous texts.

His translation of Mark’s Gospel was written through the perspective of the Apostle Peter, and John’s Gospel is viewed largely through the prism of Mary’s insights and recollections. Regarding his approach to translation, Pakaluk admits to wanting to write works that are crisp and striking.

“If someone reads this and says it’s like reading the Gospel of John for the first time, it’s a success, “the author says.

That approach has won over readers in two of the four gospels he has translated, and one can only hope Pakaluk is planning similar efforts with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Thanks for reading Dean Riffs. Welcome to all those who love personal liberty, capitalism, and who believe God has blessed America.

Copyright 2022, Dean A. George© 

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