Far-Left, anti-American, Trump Deranged author Emmanuel Todd has written a new preface to his book “The Defeat of the West”. Much of it is exactly what one would expect, although he does excoriate Europe’s failed leaders and recognize that the proxy war in the Ukraine is lost. However, the interesting part is his comment on the negative impact of higher education on the West. As they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
The dislocation of the West: what threatens us
“More profoundly, the negative dynamic of fragmentation is cultural: mass higher education creates stratified societies in which the highly educated – 20%, 30%, 40% of the population – begin to live among themselves, to think of themselves as superior, to despise the working classes, and to reject manual labour and industry. Primary education for all (universal literacy) had nurtured democracy, creating a homogeneous society with an egalitarian subconscious. Higher education has given rise to oligarchies, and sometimes plutocracies, stratified societies invaded by an unequal subconscious. The ultimate paradox: the development of higher education ended up producing a decline in intellectual standards in these oligarchies or plutocracies!”