Posted December 31, 2013, by Mary Grabar: May this land, to which my parents and many others escaped, retain its freedom, freedom to satirize and express opinions--especially about politicians. The Dissident Prof makes her debut appearance at The People's Cube, with an imitation of the inimitable Maureen Dowd, who is about as accurate in her diagnoses of causes for potetential apocalypses as is that novelist to the north who predicted that it would be Christians having women walk around in long robe-like body coverings with shielded faces. I speak of course of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, published in 1985. So much has happened in the nearly 30 years since! But it has escaped notice of the Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, who blames everything on the patriarchy and GOP. Take a read here and take a walk down memory lane with me as I revisit some of the brain-torturing French feminist criticism I had to read in graduate school.
2013 began with the Dissident Prof's due diligence in filing for non-profit status (back in February), only to get what many other groups have gotten from the IRS, the bureaucratic run-a-round worthy of Kafka. The rather substantial filing fee has been cashed long since...This immigrant wonders about freedom and equal treatment of all. Why does 1984 repeatedly come to mind?
Which reminds the Dissident Prof: We must not let such classics disappear from our cultural memory and language; that is what the Common Core State Standards threaten to do. Expect to see more dissident writings on Common Core here and at the Selous Foundation. Soon to come a review of Terrence O. Moore's The Story-Killers. If you're in Georgia, please plan to go hear him speak alongside Senator William Ligon and Jane Robbins, of the American Principles Project, in Gainesville on January 13 (more information here).
Common Core is about nothing less than thought control. When you take away a people's stories, you take away their culture, their identity. And that is the goal of Common Core, producing workers for the "21st-century global economy" as the salesmen constantly tell us.
2013 was a busy year for travel, for speaking at tea parties in Florida, Valdosta, and North Georgia, and at Lee University in Tennessee (among other places).
Sadly, it was the year of Larry Grathwohl's untimely passing, someone with whom I had hoped to tour, one of America's unsung heroes for freedom. You won't see his death mentioned in the pages of places like the New York Times. Please remember his story, one he told and wrote down. It's been republished and is available here. Tell your children and grandchildren, your students and your neighbors.
Dissident Prof's resolution for 2014 is to continue Larry's fight and not let the forces of evil "bring down America." Thank you for your support this year, and I hope you will help me share victories in 2014 for the cause of "resisting the re-education of America."
