The following is a sampling of the product of America’s “educational” system:
Less than 50% of U.S. adults know the basic purpose of the U.S. Constitution, or can name even one of their rights under it.
- 83% of U.S. college graduates don’t know the difference between the free market and centralized planning.
- 80% of seniors at America’s most elite colleges and universities cannot pass a basic high school history test, yet all will be able to graduate without having taken a single history class of any kind.
- Elected American politicians are even less fluent in basic civics than the general public; 25% cannot identify even one right contained in our First Amendment.
- 50% of American adults cannot read above the 8th-grade level, and most college students struggle with “complex but common literacy tasks,” such as understanding the basic point of an editorial, or comparing the cost-per-ounce of food.
The simple fact is that America’s “educational” establishment – the very institution that is most responsible for inculcating American children an understanding of the essential facts of history, economics and the historic clash between liberty and tyranny – has been airbrushing this knowledge out of existence. Worse, it is replacing knowledge of, and rational appreciation of the virtues of liberty, individual rights and the sacrifice that American soldiers have made through time to defend our principles, with an appreciation of the very ideologies that constitute the primary threat against us:
- By a 49%-43% margin, Americans age 18-29 view socialism more favorably than capitalism.
- A national survey revealed that 51% of Democrats, and 37% of Republicans support passing a law that would criminalize “hate speech,” meaning any statement or expression that a racial, religious, sexual or ethnic minority might find offensive.
- 34% of Americans surveyed in 2012 believe the First Amendment “goes too far in the rights it guarantees,” a jump from 13% in 2011 – the largest single-year jump in this survey’s history.
The 1983 report, A Nation At Risk, described America’s devolving educational system, in part, as follows:
“If an unfriendly foreign power
had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”
In the generation that passed since A Nation At Risk was published, it has become clear that America’s disintegration is not due to incompetence in our educational system, or to the general population’s intellectual laziness (although both are significant problems). What we are facing is indeed a war – but an undeclared, subversive one: a war to undermine, and ultimately obliterate our ability to comprehend liberty.
Rather than recognizing this war for what it is, and responding accordingly, in defense of liberty, America, and the next generation, our “leaders” (and their allies in the “news” media and Hollywood) have continued to pour more resources into, and protect the very “educational” establishment that is doing this to us.
The Disconnect
As we head into another president election season, we can see the fruit that has been borne of what we’ve allowed to be done to us, with our tax money, by the elected “leaders” whom we put into office. They, and all those around them, speak in effect an entirely different language than we do – and which few of us can learn about, using traditional communications methods, due to how many of us – even our most “educated” – struggle with basic literacy tasks. This graphic sums up where we are right now:
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The Cashing-In
Having intellectually disarmed the American people, a significant if not dominant swath of us continue to be manipulated into electing personable, statist charlatans – and into desiring more of the very poison that is destroying our culture, but which is sold to us as the elixir that will heal it:
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The American people are not stupid
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