Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny
In a commencement address given to graduates from U. Cal. Berkeley’s School of Education earlier this week, Robert Reich said: Throughout history, tyrants have understood that their major enemy is an educated citizenry. Slaveholders prohibited the enslaved from learning to read. Nazis burned books. Putin and Xi censor the media. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny. America’s founders knew this. They saw how easily emperors and kings could mislead uneducated publics. The survival of the new nation required a public…