Words from a Maverick

I live in a milieu, as an educator, where I am exclusively surrounded by individuals who hold views to the left of me. This is hardly surprising as modern liberalism has shifted in a direction that makes it more akin to social-democracy than anything else and most teachers are modern liberals by self-imposed definition.I have maintained my course even as the centrist paradigm has gravitated leftward. Detractors would say that I sam a slave to inertia but I choose to reject this categorization.I identify as a Classic liberal as it balances, with the required skepticism, both the excesses of each wing of the political spectrum. It is a philosophy rooted in reason, true to the enlightenment but scornful of the anarchism of the Romantics. It champions measured change and flies roughshod over unproven radicalism. Classic liberalism is not a flavor of the day philosophy, it has a proud history that originates from English liberalism and at its very core is the cherished concepts of freedom of speech, thought and action. Modern liberalism, in contrast, dances with dialectic materialism and is therefore corrupted by the veil of socialist groupthink. It has lost the essence of what it is to be liberal by exchanging the primacy of the individual for that of the collective. It is not a philosophy of tolerance, as is evidenced by the hysteria that is all too often directed against those who deviate from its dogma. Maybe one can see Modern Liberalism as a cacophony of nanny state voices, but what cannot be denied is the success of this idealism in broad swiping opposition, to establish its almost universal acceptance in education. This is a tragedy as it has blighted the diversity of opinion that should be a source of our intellectual strength. Sadly there are a few who see it this way. Perhaps it's the suffocation of the medium that has done it to them, or maybe it's the comfort of accepting the 'IS'.......I am not sure. Whatever the cause I am grateful the light has not been snuffed out so myself, like a few others, can with our hearts and deeds still resist the predominant orthodoxy.