There is no longer any strength or desire for the training of mind and body that Locke called for-- only fatigue, emptiness and doom, hidden by cheap shows and fleeting pleasures;
Alexander Maistrovoy , Bio and Archives--February 16, 2026
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And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
--The Pied Piper of Hamelin: A Child's Story
What determines the future of states and entire civilizations? The most profound, and at the same time simplest, answer was given by Samuel Smiles, a mid-19th-century British philosopher.
He wrote: “The Government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflex of the individuals composing it. Indeed all experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a State depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men”.
What makes an average individual a law-abiding, sensible, responsible citizen—loyal to their country and ready for civilized dialogue? The answer is simple: education.
The Founding Fathers of liberal democracy believed in an educational system capable of fully unfolding human potential. In the vision of Locke, John Stuart Mill, Madison, and Franklin, Western values were based, first, on the foundation of national culture; second, on humanistic ideals; third, on the principles of morality laid down by the Jewish prophets and Christian thinkers; and finally, on the concepts of rationalism.
In contemporary postmodern society, all four of these pillars have been totally destroyed. National traditions are erased from collective memory and remain only as historical relics in museums, empty churches, and monuments of medieval Gothic architecture. The humanistic ideal of a person striving for self-improvement, praised by Socrates and Epictetus and the Italian humanists, has been castrated and crucified (“Dead White European Males”, isn’t that so?).
The religious-ethical code begun by Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah was denigrated and rejected. Finally, the rationalism of the 18th–19th centuries was declared dead after the disasters of the 20th century and replaced by irrationalism as an independent approach free from any restrictions
What do we see today?
“Only 47% of the students who embrace the slogan were able to name the river and the sea. Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic”. 75% could not locate the Palestinian territories in question on a map. 25% “of these students placed the Palestinian Territories west of Lebanon, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea”.
“Another DailyMail.com poll in October found one in 10 voters under the age of 30 had a positive view of Hamas, despite the group's murderous attack on Israel that killed more than 1,300 men, women and children”.
Ugly quasi-Marxist theories have crippled the education system. Education ministries, departments of education, schools and teachers preach madness.
According to the Oregon Department of Education, maths is racist …”because it requires a correct answer”: “white supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions”. UK textbook offered children “to ask questions to terrorists” to understand them better. Buffalo schools and even kindergartners taught that “all white people” perpetuate systemic racism. Canada burned books allegedly containing content offensive to the indigenous peoples (ashes from the burned books were used as fertilizer for a tree). Oxford University offered to use the gender-neutral pronoun 'ze' instead of 'he and she'. Toronto District School Board drop terms 'men,' 'women,' 'boys,' and 'girls' in reproductive health learning material, used instead of them the terms ‘people with a uterus,’ ‘people with a penis,’ ‘people who have more testosterone,’ and ‘people who have more estrogen’.
Children's books are ruthlessly censored or destroyed altogether. The movie Gone with the Wind removed from HBO Max because of its “racist depictions”. In 2017 Sweden’s libraries rewrote again Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren in 1948, because of “racist” expressions. For the same reason, works such as Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom and Jerry cartoons, classic Disney films, such as Dumbo, Peter Pan, The Aristocats, Lady and the Tramp, and Jungle Book, were censored or removed from teaching.
Schools in the UK and US routinely allow students to change genders without telling their parents, and create 'secret gender transition closets'. Students at woke schools have been identifying as neogender “furries”--like horses, dinosaurs and even curse-casting moons. Teachers are afraid to speak out against this phenomenon.
The New York Board of Regents banned all uses of images and names for school mascots related to indigenous people as part of the fight against “systemic racism”. In Germany, they teach anti-white Critical Race Theory. In the US, books like “Not My Idea” are promoted in classrooms, explaining to readers that “whiteness" is what drives white people to make ‘deals with the devil’ for ‘stolen land, stolen riches and special favors.
In Cupertino, California, third grade students were required to rank themselves on a scale of “power and privilege” based on their race. According to education state department in Arizona and Islington Council's (London) early years department, infants begin to show signs of racism …as early as three months old. A leading London private school overhauled its English curriculum to challenge “white-centric, patriarchal and cis-gender ideologies”. The students here discuss “Macbeth’s toxic masculinity” and read Shakespeare’s The Tempest “through the lens of colonialism”.
At a Catholic (!) Elementary School in Brampton, Ontario, within the framework of ‘cancel culture’ Mother’s and Father's Day were replaced by Family Appreciation Day. Irish textbooks say Jesus was from ‘Palestine’ (Jesus lived in Judea), and Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz was a “prisoner of war camp” only. LA Unified School District called for cancellation of “Diet culture based on oppression”; Manhattan Middle School asked children to surveil friends and family for ‘microaggressions’; on Good Friday, Ottawa school board’s gender consultant called Jesus a “radical activist, ...a drag queen, and also not white”; Elementary school in British Columbia host an ‘Indigenous children-only pizza’. British teachers are encouraged to teach that Vikings were “not all white” and some were Muslim.
Is it even worth continuing?
Failed education is only one side of the coin. No less serious is whether secular educational programs should cover the entire population or whether every community has the right to its own special system of education—even if it is hostile to secular principles and values. Liberal democracy prefers the second solution. As a result, we see a new generation in democratic countries educated on postulates not only alien but implacably hostile to democratic tradition.
Schools offered ‘spirit hijabs’ for female students as a step towards promoting ‘inclusivity’ and ‘diversity’ (In Islamic tradition hijab is a symbol of submission and obedience of a Muslim woman); prescribed not to emphasise the ideology of the 9/11 attackers; called upon children to be ‘holy warriors’ of “jihad’, and more.
What is this—education or religious incitement in its most disgusting, barefaced manner?
The aggressive ignorance prevailing in the humanities not only deprives people of truthful information but destroys the moral and spiritual equilibrium of the average person. Their consciousness is filled with speculations, myths, and rumors. They feel like strangers in an information jungle full of surreal, spellbinding, and frightening ghosts. They are alone in the world, with no foothold, no anchor, no lodestar, no safety belt of religious and moral values. They drift, becoming easy prey for totalitarian ideologies, sects, and frauds.
People don’t believe in God. But it’s necessary to believe in something, so they believe in flying saucers, ghosts, stars, magic, and witchcraft. Exactly according to G.K. Chesterton's idea: “When a man stops believing in God, he doesn't believe in nothing, he believes in anything”.
One could expect that at least the Academy would remain a bastion of Reason and enforce knowledge but, alas, the opposite occurs. We see modern inquisitors on pulpits who are ready to burn “heretics” at the stake – whether they are opponents of gender madness or those who are skeptical about global warming. What values do teachers and professors communicate to young people if their worldview, values and analytical skills are quite fit for Tertullian's famous formula, “It is certain because it is impossible”?
Not rationality, logic, and knowledge, but their crippled conscience and intellectual anomalies determine their thoughts and actions.
9/11 gave us the best examples of such irrational hatred. Famous professors proudly declared that *“Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon gets my vote”;
Let me stop there.
We observe the triumph of quasi-religious madness, surpassing in its perversion the fanaticism of the Middle Ages and the obsession with class struggle among the Communists. Psychosis has affected all areas of scientific activity.
Paranoid professors are obsessed with the cult of Critical Race Theory that permeates the entire Academy and all areas of knowledge.
The scientific community is plagued by “cancel culture”. Museums are being transformed from repositories of knowledge into a burial ground of knowledge.
Paranoia surrounding ‘dying Mother Earth’ turns scientists into crazed monsters.
Hatred of Israel, a tiny country surrounded by Islamist regimes and brutal tyrannies, subjugated Academia.
The Academy has lost its intellect, as well as conscience and humanity, not to mention scientific and critical thinking.
Modern political theories have created surreal constellations worthy of Kafka's pen.
I could go on and on…
The situation at the Academy is aggravated by the enormous influence of countries whose totalitarian ideology is incompatible with democratic values. Qatar, a tiny Middle Eastern emirate that sponsors all Islamist movements including the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, between 2007 and 2024, gave more than $5.6 billion to 61 American schools, including Ivy Leagues. Or is that $20 billion? Or perhaps even $100 billion? Who knows?
The Qatari government is funding teacher salaries, curriculums in American schools via Qatar Foundation International (QFI) to advance Qatari influence.
Ignorance, moral corruption, pathological universalist concepts, and dubious external influences have poisoned the well of Western thought. The cultural totalitarianism turned people into sterile zombies, brainwashed them, perverted the minds of men and women, and subdued intellectuals responsible for the future of their people.
There is no longer any strength or desire for the training of mind and body that Locke called for-- only fatigue, emptiness and doom, hidden by cheap shows and fleeting pleasures.
***
What ultimately happened to the abducted Children of Hamelin? We know the end of this story. They became the Ashab al-Kahf (the Companions of the Cave), believed in Allah, and a mosque was built over their cave.
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Alexander Maistrovoy is a graduate of Moscow Univ. in Journalism, worked there in his field and made aliyah in 1988. He works at the Russian language newspaper Novosty Nedely, has had articles posted on many internet sites and authored “Ways of God” about different religious and ethnic groups in the Holy Land, and with Mark Kotliarsky the Russian book Jewish Atlántida.