The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

A movie that everyone should see, and contemplate. (This post is written by The Radical Individualist, but previously posted at Liberty Magazine)

photo by fimledinburgh.org

In 1969 a movie came out named, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”.  I just re-watched it on Amazon Prime.   I first watched it when it was released in 1969.  I was twenty-one, what I call a baby adult.

When I watched it the first time, I knew that it was telling me things I should know, but I didn’t entirely get it. Now, watching it again, I get it. It’s odd in a way; the movie is set in 1930s Scotland, but was made in 1969, and it finally all makes sense to me just now, in 2024.

Let that be a lesson to you.  There’s always more to learn; you never fully comprehend.

OK, so what have I learned?  Miss Jean Bordie is a progressive schoolteacher, although I don’t recall that term being used in the movie. Though fictional, she is a metaphor for what the progressive movement is/was.  And what is that?  It’s a long story.  It’s a long story that I’ve been studying my entire adult life. Simply put, progressivism is an ideology put forth by socialists.  They work from the presumption that they, and only they, know best.  The idea of government of, by and for the people is foreign to them.  They will repeat the words, for effect, but they believe none of that.  They believe that The People should be directed by oligarchs who know best.  What oligarchs would that be?  Progressive oligarchs, of course.

And this is why progressives can’t comprehend the US constitution. They can’t understand the significance of the separation of powers.  They can’t understand that the constitution was carefully designed to prevent concentration of power. 

More to the point, progressives want concentration of power, in their hands.

Some great names in early progressivism are Woodrow Wilson, Margarett Sanger, and Adolf Hitler.  They all were for segregation, and all believed that blacks were an inferior race that needed to be controlled, for their own good.  The US military was at least somewhat unsegregated before Wilson.  Wilson RE-segregated it. In my early years, I was taught that Wilson was a great president.  Now that the truth is out, progressives keep mum about him.

Many abortion clinics in the USA were named for Margaret Sanger.  I live within a mile of one of them. Sanger was not focused on women’s rights, she was dedicated to lessening the number of ‘inferior’ people, essentially blacks. Thus, she promoted abortion, but also instigated sterilizing woman without their consent. Once the truth got out about Sanger, they changed the names on the clinics.  But they didn’t get rid of the clinics, or what they do there. 

Additionally, we all know about Hitler’s level of intolerance for ‘inferior races’.

I didn’t know all this when I watched The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie the first time, back in 1969.  Certainly, my progressive teachers didn’t add much to my depth of knowledge. But I know now.

In the movie, Jean Brodie teaches at an all-girl’s school. She is actively indoctrinating her students into progressivism, all the while clueless about how ignorant she is of the realities going on around her.  She supports Italian fascist dictator Mussolini.  She supports Franisco Franco in the Spanish civil war.  Franco would eventually win that war and become a brutal dictator.   The fascist Mussolini lost, hung by a mob toward the close of WWII. (Can fascism and progressivism fit within one ideology?  They can, and they do.)

So, how much less clueless are progressives today, compared to Jean Brodie? Should we trust their pronouncements on gender identity? Should we trust their attitudes about blacks, considering that they still think that blacks are an inferior race that must constantly be seen to. Should we trust their knowledge of science, given how they were horribly wrong in nearly every aspect of the COVID debacle?

If you are a progressive, I will describe you.  Feel free to tell me the extent that I am right or wrong:  If you are a progressive, you have no opinion that you can claim as your own.  Your opinions are identical to all other progressives’ opinions. You hate who you are told to hate, and revere who you’re told to revere, all identically to every other progressive. Given that the constitution interferes with progressive totalitarian dogma, you repeat the lie that the constitution is a ‘living breathing document’.  That specious claim is supposed to justify ignoring the First Amendment and to allow censorship of anything that your handlers tell you is hate speech.  Yet your hate speech against your opponents is not hate speech; it is ‘preserving democracy’. You are blissfully unaware of our two-tiered judicial system, “For my friends, everything.  For my enemies, the law.” You are binary in nearly everything. Either you are 100% for or 100% against. You are not capable of contemplating that there can be multiple points of view, each with its own merits.  You do not want to have to think; you want to memorize.  You don’t want to contemplate; you want to be told what your opinion is. 

I could go on, but I’ll stop there.  How’d I do, progressives?  Did I nail it?  Did I get it completely wrong?  I’ll have to assume I’m right, until somebody shows me where a lifetime of evaluating progressivism has gone way off course.  I’m willing to consider that possibility, because I never insist that I don’t get anything wrong.  How about you?

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