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Jewish World Review Nov. 14, 2010/ 8 Kislev, 5771 Taking Back Our Country, One School At a Time By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Despite the ridiculous levels of cover the mainstream media have given the Obama administration and the Democrat party's assortment of progressivist hacks, more and more Americans are coming to realize the level of contempt so many of these people have for our country. Yet far fewer Americans make the ultimate connection: such contempt is an acquired skill. One must be taught to believe America is a fundamentally broken nation requiring a top-to-bottom make-over. And where are they taught such things? In thousands of public schools around the nation. Latest case in point: Denair Middle School in California.
No doubt many people are feeling good that public pressure and the media spotlight caused a reversal of that school's decision to prevent 13-year-old Cody Alicea from flying an American flag on the back of his bicycle. Yet what is there to feel good about? The idea that a kid can now display an American flag at an American school instead of being forbidden to do so? The idea that now the focus will be turned towards Hispanic kids who apparently dislike this country enough that the quintessential symbol of the country begets potential unrest?
Not good enough. Everyone involved in this decision needs to be fired. And the Hispanic kids School Superintendent Edward Parraz cited as possible perpetrators of "racial tension" need to be suspended first--and when they return to school, they need to be immersed in exactly the kind of "sensitivity training" progressives love.
The focus of that training? American exceptionalism. Of course that assumes there are any teachers in that school who actually believe in American exceptionalism--a dubious assumption at best.
And therein, my fellow Americans, lies the number one problem facing the nation.
Americans have long understood that college campuses are hotbeds of progressive radicalism. What they might not realize is that those same campuses are nothing more than finishing schools for a process which, as Denair Middle School makes evident, begins far earlier. Day in day out, year after year, millions of children are being taught that America is a seething cauldron of racial unrest, an imperialist country with a "heartless" capitalist economic system, and an environmental "hog" consuming far too many resources. They are being given the message, both overtly and subliminally, that America is one big mess of a country.
A mess which can only be cleaned up by embracing progressive values.
Those who read me on a regular basis know I am a firm supporter of the Tea Party movement because it represents the first genuine attempt to undo the damage that rampant progressivism--demonstrated by both political parties--has inflicted on a nation at the brink of fiscal disaster. Yet if one is being honest, the Tea Party represents little more than a tourniquet wrapped around a bleeding artery. A public school system dominated by the kind of leftist group-think in which banning an American flag at an American elementary school is a reflexive reaction represents the open wound.
Unfortunately, such group-think has become a self-sustaining monopoly. It is comprised of the unholiest of unholy alliances between the education unions and the Democrat party, which gets over ninety percent of union campaign donations. Think about that for a second. In a country where survey after survey shows that leftists comprise only twenty percent of the population, those who educate America's children skew over ninety percent in their direction.
If that's not a national scandal, then what is?
Former Colorado House Rep. Tom Tancredo, in a 2003 speech before that body illuminated the task we have before us: "I would challenge people today to go out and ask a child, ask a student, almost any school in America what it means to be an American. Define that term: American. And I think many people would have, many students would have a very difficult time in doing that today. They have been told, frankly, that it is not a very good term, that it really does not, and it should not be used to signify something select and different and unique, distinct."
Americans shouldn't wonder how we ended up with the most radical administration and Congress in the history of the country. The only real surprise is that it didn't happen sooner. And despite the "shellacking" the radicals just received on election day, an ominous trend emerged: national exit polls conducted by Edison Research in association with AP and CNN, showed adults age 18-29 favored Democrats by 16 points (56-40), and adults age 18-24 by 19 points (58-39).
Denair Middle School is the tip of a progressive iceberg. Our public schools no longer teach children how to think. They teach them what to think or, more accurately, what to feel. Such a distinction is critical. It is far easier to subdue reason with emotion than the other way around. For example, defending the merits of the progressive agenda on an issue-by-issue basis is problematic if children are exposed to all points of view. It is far easier to convince them that anyone who doesn't believe in that agenda is "uncaring," "irresponsible," or "unenlightened"--especially when such a message is being conveyed by an adult authority figure to an impressionable child.
It's long past time this nonsense was stopped dead in its tracks. It is not effective enough to jump from outbreak to outbreak. As I reported earlier this year, a Cape Cod School Board decided to make condoms available to elementary school children without parental knowledge, and the town of Arlington school committee rejected a request to allow students to voluntarily recite the Pledge of Allegiance. One can only wonder how many hundreds of other incidents of progressive indoctrination stay below the media radar.
Thus a national movement to take back our schools becomes imperative. Perhaps the Tea Party movement should make genuine educational reform part of their basic platform. They should do so for the same reason they took on Washington, D.C.: the survival of our nation as a beacon of freedom and free-market capitalism is at stake. If Americans refuse to engage the progressive movement where it is doing the most harm, the radical politics of Barack Obama and company may look benign twenty years from now. It is worth remembering that the success of their marxist/socialist agenda would have been unthinkable as little as ten years ago. One giant health care bill and several "nationalizations" of cars, banks and insurance companies later, it is a reality.
The socialist-in-training mills that far too many public schools have become is a national disgrace. And as Denair Elementary school once again demonstrates, the progressive agenda is a non-starter when it is exposed for what it truly is: a contemptuous view of American customs, culture and traditions. A view so jaundiced that pledging allegiance to the flag, or flying that flag on the back of a bicycle is deemed "unacceptable."
What's even more unacceptable? Having people like these in charge of "educating" American schoolchildren.
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© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
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