90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, April 26, 2021

Purging The Inconvenient Truth...

Here’s How You Can Beat Leftism in the Classroom Before It’s Too Late

In her Advanced Placement government and politics class, a high school student named Anna was assigned to read a New York Times commentary that called the U.S. Constitution “imbecilic.” Many of her peers agreed with this conclusion based on the author’s argument that the Constitution is too difficult to amend.

So, Anna approached her teacher with an article that explained why the Times’ piece was historically inaccurate and logically ludicrous.

The next year, the teacher assigned that same Times article, but he also included Anna’s suggested counter-article. And instead of siding with the Times, that class concluded that the Constitution was not “imbecilic,” but, rather, wisely designed to protect people’s rights.

To borrow a phrase from Vice President Kamala Harris, “That little girl was me,” and by speaking up, I was able to positively impact subsequent groups of students. My experience with leftism in school was not an isolated incident and represents a much broader, serious problem within the U.S. public education system.

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Generation Z is on track to be the most educated generation in history, and yet, nearly half hold favorable views of socialism and 70% say that the government “should be doing more to solve problems.”

Ronald Reagan famously said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” and if these trends continue, Gen Z will bring that tragedy to fruition.

So what has turned teens who typically yearn for freedom into a herd of statist sheeple? Leftist indoctrination not only runs rampant in higher education—it has infiltrated public schools, leaving young minds susceptible and sympathetic to left-wing propaganda.

Race-based 1619 Project curriculum infects 4,500 classrooms across the country, Seattle public schools force “trans-affirming” education on their kindergarten students, and L.A. County schools claim it is “white supremacy” to ask students to show their work.

There are nearly four Democrats for every Republican in the teaching profession, and the nation’s two largest teachers unions donate a total of $51 billion to support...

A defining characteristic of those on the political left is their ever-shifting language. Nothing is as it seems, and their verbiage is forever changing as people figure out what they stand for. Even the moniker for their movement has transformed from communist to socialist to liberal to progressive and is moving back to socialist. The recent pledge by some liberal news outlets to start pushing the term "climate emergency" in place of the previous environmental fear phrases "climate change," "climate disruption" and "global warming" is another example of their never-ending search for a label that will allow them to accomplish their goals before enough people realize what they are talking about.

Other examples include "common-sense gun laws" (a euphemism for banning guns), "pay their fair share" (increasing taxes) and "affordable health care" (socialized medicine). The left has spent decades devising vague catch phrases that sound great to the uninformed and their willing accomplices in the media, but are simply euphemisms for things they could never get passed if they were honest. For example, the claim of affordable health care is how it became the federal government's business if you use tobacco or have a firearm in your home.

We have seen this all-powerful intrusion on steroids over the past year with governments' COVID measures. The government forbidding you from going to work? The government telling you what items you are allowed to buy at the store? The government ordering you to take medicine? These massive expansions of government power over the smallest details of Americans' lives is exactly the point of broad but vague manipulation of the language of public policy as a means to disguise political power grabs.

Since the change in administration, the left has found its new version of "affordable health care." Every liberal initiative is now promoted under the pretext of "infrastructure." In addition to roads and bridges one would expect in an infrastructure spending bill, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., contends mandatory child care and paid time off work are "infrastructure". Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says revamping America's immigration laws to allow a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens could be considered infrastructure. Other big-government goodies stuffed under the new catch-all phrase "infrastructure" include...