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POLITICAL JUDGEMENT AGAINST MISEDUCATED LIBERIANS

By Chorphie Charlie - January 26th 2005

"...In Liberia’s case, being educated qualifies one to engage in a government of theft, social rape, and political murder. ... This is what I refer to as a crime of socialization, the socialization of degree holders in organizing criminal political leadership. Such leadership has limited “education” (institutionalize learning) to a problem status, rather than helping the Liberian society. Leadership should not be this way...."

Am I a fully educated person? I cannot accent to that claim because, as a scholar, I am undergoing the rigor, growth, and development of the academy. However, this piece is not about me but the destiny of a people, the conditions that confronts our people in Liberia.

The current political realities in Liberia shadow our search for a viable means of socialization that will harmonize the moral qualities of an individual with the legitimate authority of the state, to decide the next president for Liberia. Consequently, the one quality, which continues to burden this search, our quest for an authentic leader, is “education”-terminal degree.

ROLE OF EDUCATION

In any organized society, the role of education (institutionalize learning) mobilizes civil interactions, as a means for social progress but that has not been the case, in the Liberian situation. In Liberia, education is so caged in its applications that it has offered Liberians no serious hope, as a vehicle, for actualizing the promised of a democratic state. Liberia’s political experience mocks education-by our so-called politically educated class-as a crime of socialization.

Rather than the innovation of knowledge, which education is designed to engender. In Liberia’s case, being educated qualifies one to engage in a government of theft, social rape, and political murder. By theft, social rape, and political murder, I am speaking of the rampant corruption in government, the culture of exploitation of citizens’ labor, and the violent struggle for power leading to disastrous consequences for our people. This is what I refer to as a crime of socialization, the socialization of degree holders in organizing criminal political leadership. Such leadership has limited “education” (institutionalize learning) to a problem status, rather than helping the Liberian society. Leadership should not be this way.

Leadership is a legitimate contract founded upon the leader’s promised to obey the commands of citizens. Hence, for political legitimacy of the state, citizens will their autonomy to a leader, this being a fundamental principle of political philosophy. However, such legitimacy also claims a deeper justification in the leader’s exercise of authority, then merely an original social contract. It presents itself as the only viable form for political community in which the citizens maintain self-rule by preserving their natural autonomy, while collective individual authority merge into the authority of the state. In Liberia, it is the reversed.

Unfortunately, examination of various arguments in support of a meteoric person [degree holder in political governance] for Liberia’s presidency reveals that the fundamental demand for citizens’ self-rule does not support such a call. Whatever else may be said, favoring the current politically educated class, as the torch bearer for our political enlightenment? The facts remain that this current political class has deny our people self rule, and abused their humanity. Anecdotal experienced of any objective Liberian cannot excuse the disrespect and dishonor with which this so-called educated class has displays toward our suffering people. Examples abound how our people valued education, such that poor villagers sacrificed their time, labored, and honored, to make farms and sell the produce, to support their children in school. Reciprocal services rendered by these very children exhaled condemnation of our people as backward, uncivilized, and country, as soon as these sons and daughters earned their degrees.

In most cases, degree holders vowed to never again return to the interior and visit with their people, castigating our people as witchcraft and obstacle to their social progress, the very progress, which our people made possible through their “education.” Thereby, these degree holders reduced our people efforts into waste human resources. No wonder some of our people rejected sending their children to school because, it made no difference, due to the failure of these sons and daughters to contribute to the socionomic development of their homeland. Instead they lived and worked in foreign lands expecting some miraculous transformation of Liberia into a political heaven. What then is the use of their degrees? This is what I called the problem of mis-education, failing to understand and appreciate one own culture and history.

Liberia’s mis-educated class-political leadership-failure to actualize a form of political association, which could combine moral leadership with the legitimate authority of the state, is not a result of the un-educated and illiterate people’s behavior. Neither does Liberia current dilemma grew out of the limitations of academic intellect and knowledge, which suffered a majority of our people. The depth and magnitude of our problem manifest in the “millions of political parties” in Liberia, in which every mis-educated Liberian only means to success lies in the hope of being president.

By and large, our mis-educated politicians have supposed that such utopia is logically possible. And so, by positing a requirement for an “educated leader,” our mis-educated political elites deflects the actual purpose of government, the pursuits of justice and the general good of the people, into a mystical kingdom of falsehood, which is border on their presidential interests and private passions.

REVOLUTIONARY EDUCATION AND EDUCATION ANARCHISM

This political logjam of mis-education leaves us with a begging investigation. How do, we the people, solve this kind of utopian positivism that has bedeviled our nation, the incompatibility of education and leadership? Two courses are open to us, one compensating the other. The premier course embraced ‘revolutionary education’ and treat all degree holders in Liberia as mis-educated persons, whose qualification must undergo a rigorous tension of evaluation and good judgment in keeping with progressive phenomenon-to attain the status quo-educated person. Otherwise, we surrender as quixotic the pursuit of degree holders for president, and submit ourselves to ‘education anarchism’ through whatever form of political arrangement appears most just and beneficial for our people. I cannot resist emphasizing, that while appealing to a rational mind, taking the first course guarantee no universal or apriori reason for binding ourselves to a democratic state, considering the Liberian complexities and the limited time for elections. The second course, although radical, seems obvious. Because, in some situation like Liberia, it may be wiser to swear allegiance to a benevolent and efficient leader than to a mis-educated tyrant, which imposes a regime of pains and suffering on our people, as have been demonstrated by Liberia’s failed political class.

The second course does not eliminate our commitment to citizen’s self-rule but adopt a utilitarian calculation that outweighs the rule of mis-educated Liberians, which have been through the sheer force of necessity. For having experience what Kant called, transgression of “willful heteronomy”-the insidious governance of mis-educated Liberians. This second course permits citizens to determine the principles, which shall guide their destiny. An alternative will repudiate the freedom and reason, which give dignity to the human condition, humanity’s self determination.

Moreover, despite their many degrees, mis-educated Liberians single quest for presidential power, as their only means for social mobility, shows their inability to balance the dilemma between leadership and education. For degrees do not equal leadership! Moreover, only one person can serve as president at any given time, leaving other Liberians to engage in other community projects for national social development. But our mis-educated Liberians lusts for the presidency sidestep this premise. Thus, the struggle for real democracy in Liberia is a struggle, which is irreducibly mis-education. Mis-education stands against our natural human constitution of freewill. Hence, there appeared no other political therapy but to marry revolutionary education with the doctrine of education anarchism and categorically deny any claim to legitimate state authority by Liberia’s mis-educated political class.

POLITICAL JUDGEMENT

It is now! For history presents to each Liberian an opportunity for positive national change. School is over and mis-educated Liberians have failed in President Tolbert’s class, they failed in President Samuel Doe’s class, they also failed in their own class- the Amos Sawyer’s Interim Government of No Use (INGU) and subsequent Interim governments. They also failed in President Charles Ghankay Taylor’s class, and they are now failing in one of their own, Interim president Gyude Bryant’s class. It was Albert Einstein, who said that insanity is doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting a different result. Every time you put your hand in fire, you will definitely get burned. The only thing Liberia can ever get from this failed mis-educated class is more of the same. Mis-educated Liberians must pack their political bags and get off the leadership wagon of Liberia. Its time, reject those mis-educated and failed politicians!!!

-On the altar of God, I pledge undying resistance to [mis-educated Liberians].-

Articles by Chorpie Charlie>>>>


About the author:

Chorphie Charlie is a social and political commentator who resides in Philadelphia. He can be reached at gbanapekin@hotmail.com.

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