Senator Ben Sasse: On Inculcating Virtue in Children

U.S. Senator Ben Sasse understands that the goal of achieving a just society is ultimately dependent upon the rectitude of our theological convictions.  The Christian conviction that individual human beings are persons created in the image of God, an image defaced by original sin, means that individuals have an inalienable integrity but also a responsibility to God that it is for parents, the church, and a just society to encourage.

The destructive effects of progressivism, on the other hand, ultimately lie in its mistaken views of human nature.  Embracing the idea of human nature as a collective entity and the Pelagian doctrine of its inherent goodness, a goodness only thwarted by social injustice, progressives have used public education as a vehicle to make their collective view of man good again by imposing a more just society.  To do so, it has had to attack the legitimacy of both the church and the family in education.

Rather than empowering the individual, the aim of public education is to weaken the individual to make him or her docile to the social agenda of the educators.

The great irony is that these collectivist ideals that have everywhere crushed individuals are precisely what defined the greatest tyrannies of the past century.

Read the full article