We’ve allowed ourselves to get into such a mess it’s hard to
see a way out any time soon.
It’s mostly because our education system is a joke. For too
many years kids have been fed a constant stream of misleading and ever-changing
propaganda. They haven’t been taught anything that might make them a productive
member of our society.
Like the actual history of United States, and not the 1619
Project or critical race theory versions.
Learning more about world history would also help them understand why
the American story was (and remains) so unique in the world.
Instead of being taught how morally and ethically flawed we
are, and how we’ve historically always perpetuated systemic racism against
people of color, they’d probably be surprised to learn that hundreds of
thousands of Americans lost their lives – the highest casualties in any war in
our history – fighting to end the enslavement of blacks here more than 150
years ago. A practice, I might add, that was fiercely defended by Democrat
politicians of the time.
It was a Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who signed
the Emancipation Proclamation. In the
aftermath of the Civil War, it was Democrats that enacted the Jim Crow laws, and
then fought against desegregation for another hundred years. It was also
Democrats – led by former KKK recruiter Senator Robert C. Byrd, who tried to
stop passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I’m sure they be shocked to learn Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. was a Republican.
Their perspective might change if they were taught what
this nation has done to improve the lives of millions here and billions around
the world. Or if it had been revealed to them that no other nation in the
world has been as consistently generous with aid to the people of other
countries, even our adversaries, suffering from natural or manmade
catastrophes. And that countless Americans in uniform have paid the ultimate
price to rescue millions elsewhere from the tyranny of dictators and genocidal
murderers.
To this day, most countries would prefer the United States
to be the world’s superpower over any other contenders, like China or Russia. They
understand that we are basically a good and generous nation, if at times too
idealistic for our own good. They may not always agree with us, or how we do
things, but they realize our goal has never been world domination.
Most of the world knows this. But our own kids and
younger adults don’t. They’ve been taught something entirely different.
Something essentially untrue about America. A lot of things, in fact, that are
simply false. Such as we are a racist
nation, founded on racist principles, and are no better – probably worse,
ethically and morally – than just about any other country on the planet.
As a result, they know almost nothing about why people came
here in the first place, and why this nation is still so attractive to millions
in other countries who would do practically anything to be here, live here,
work here, and raise their families here.
They have no understanding of how and why our government was
deliberately designed the way it is – with three coequal branches. Why we were
set up as a republic and not a pure democracy – and why that distinction
matters. Why every state, big or small,
gets two Senators. Why there’s an
Electoral College so the biggest states alone don’t pick every
President.
They don’t grasp that our Constitution is one of the most unique in the world for expressly limiting the power of the government. They don't understand the reasoning behind the Bill of
Rights and why these amendments remain so essential to maintaining a free
society in the face of a potentially authoritarian government.
This is heartbreaking because that’s where we are headed
now. Out of ignorance.
If they’d been taught the realities of what happens to those
under authoritarian regimes as in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China, Russia,
Iran and much of the rest of the world, maybe they’d understand why so many of
their people want to leave. Ask anyone
who left one of those countries to come here and you’d gain an entirely
different perspective on America.
If more of our younger people knew the real history of what Marxism, Communism, and socialism delivered practically
everywhere these were tried – the suppression of speech and basic human rights,
and the imprisonment and execution of dissenters – these wouldn’t seem so
attractive. Or that Marxism, Communism, and socialism many times led to
widespread deprivation and starvation. If they did maybe they wouldn’t be so
quick to embrace these failed ideologies.
I have no idea what today’s students are required to read in
school, if anything. Or even if most of
them can read. That’s not exaggeration on my part: many colleges and
universities are now forced to provide remedial reading classes to their
incoming freshmen. That’s scary.
A good starting reading list would include classics from my
school years. And yes, these were assigned reading in public high school at one
time. They are: Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, and 1984.
These are all especially relevant right now.
Orwell’s fictional Ministry of Truth in 1984 mirrors
precisely how our current government and media work together to actively edit,
remove, and revise historical events and statements that actually happened to promote
a new narrative.
His Thought Police should be readily identifiable today as the online trolls, political correctness scolds and doxers.
Children in the Junior Spies train to monitor and report any suspicious anti-State
behavior or statements by their parents or others. The organized Two Minutes
Hate sessions could just as well focus on Donald Trump in today’s political
environment.
It’s almost as if Democrats and the media have used 1984
as a guidebook rather than the warning it was intended to be. I don’t believe I’m the only one who sees the
similarities.
I doubt many of the younger members of our population will
ever read any of these books. Probably because they either aren’t interested in
reading, or simply can’t. Or maybe because the current ruling elite controlling curricula has deemed these books too dangerous.
If they did, it might give them a shock on how
closely and quickly our political environment is moving toward our own version
of Big Brother, following their "progressive revolution.”
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