Every now and then, I feel a sadness for what I see happening in America, and I go into a kind of grieving process. I go through the usual processes of shock, denial, anger in a fairly predictable manner. Specifically, there are areas in which I mourn on an almost continuous basis: public education and university education; our leftist-bias Judiciary; Environmental destruction of our prized public lands; a nation growing ever-more impoverished. The sadness I feel is not for myself, but for our innocent children, who will inherit this debacle.
But the next stage, acceptance, is a much harder step, as the interlocking forces bent on the destruction of America always seem to open old wounds. There can be no closure, because the underlying ills in America lie deep and unfathomably against the grain of what I once perceived to be a self-correcting moral compass.
The loss of any moral compass has been a deliberate agenda of the ACLU, the NEA, and Leftist professors who have a childish need to destroy the white, conservative, Judeo-Christian base. The Left will not rest until they tear down what they perceive as the power structure of the Right, which represents and stands for our national interests, as outlined in the US Constitution.
In a 2000 interview with Mary Pride of Practical homeschooling Magazine, John Taylor Gatto (former New York State Teacher of the Year) had this to say of institutional schooling:
Quote:
John Taylor Gatto: Let me begin by characterizing where I'm coming from. I taught for thirty years in the Manhattan Public School. It was never my intention to teach. It happened by accident. I expected only to teach for a year or two. I got caught up in what seemed to me inexplicable problems that were so interesting that I would ask, "Would you mind if I stay an extra year?" When I woke up, thirty years had passed. After I got out, I still didn't have the answer to these puzzles. That was almost exactly nine years ago, and I set out to answer my questions. Had I known that it would take nine years to do that, I might very well have gotten a new set of questions. But as it was, one thing led to another, and I began to see that schools were functioning exactly as they had been designed to function, and that just puzzled the heck out of me. I said, "How could this happen? What purpose would explain schools being the way they are?" So I've been on a detective hunt for nine years.
And what I'd like to say first of all to homeschoolers in particular - because they're right on the front lines, and they have to depend largely on themselves for courage and for inspiration - is that you made the right choice. You've made a choice to free your children to be the best people they can be, the best citizens they can be, and to be their personal best. But had you allowed those kids to remain in the grip of institutional schooling, the kids would have become instruments of a different purpose. People should understand that the local insanity that they think they're reacting against, if that's in fact their motive for homeschooling, is institution-wide, it's quite intentional, and it leads to an end that's useful to somebody.
MP: But not to parents or children.
JTG: Not to children. Not to me. (Small laugh.) I hope not to you. But it is useful to a certain idea of history. The hypothesis is that national states ceased to exist in reality just about a hundred years ago. That is - they exist in legal reality for most of their citizens, but for the guiding parts of the citizenry, they haven't existed for a full century.
MP: Yeah, they're citizens of the world.
JTG: So there is no United States, there is no China, there is no Saudi Arabia, there is no Germany. There's an international virtual nation made up of a small elite leadership, and this leadership guides the destiny of the masses. Now, the problem they run into, is that all sorts of traditional ways to live had created institutional forms. Christianity had created churches, the family structure was almost universal, tradition was a strong part of most parts of the world at most times. All of these things had to be overthrown, but they couldn't be overthrown by military force, it had to be done slowly, incrementally, and the most efficient way to do that was through children. So you have to isolate the children from those things for the better part of the day, for the better part of their youth, and you have to inculcate them with a different attitude. You have to make them antagonists of their parents, their religions, their own cultures, their local traditions. You have to get them to swear allegiance to some distant ideal, whose leaders they can't even see.
Is there a better factory to break down loyalty to local authority than a disruptive classroom? Think of it for a moment. Most of the children in a disruptive classroom are victims of the disruptors. If the authority has no power to offer relief to the people being victimized, a profound transformation takes place in relationships. Not only do the children write the teacher off as of no use, but after all, who confined them there in the first place but their own parents? So here you see a way to sever these parochial connections, for the good of a global principle. Which of course, is meant to result ultimately on a citizenry schooled in responding to external rewards and punishments, not in internal acts of conscience.
Like Mr Gatto, I have questions: Given that that the elitists have largely succeeded in high-jacking our educational goals; given that these same elitists have largely usurped our democratic processes; given that the Judicial branch, and the executive branch are in lock-step in their quest to sink our ship of state - what do we do now? The first order of business is to put doubt from our minds, and get to work. There are many people in America who would like to see the United States crumple and fold. I understand that. How do we muster will enough to bring this slide to a halt? It is not as if there is no one fighting at every step of the way. America has many warriors, true warriors, both men and women, who have rallied to her defense.
Why does the Left appear to be be so successful? Probably, it's just an inherent factor in a democratic republic.
American President Woodrow Wilson in 1913 opened the door for such chicanery, when he allowed private interests to control our money supply...
The year is now 1913, the year after Woodrow Wilson was elected president of the United States. Prior to his election he needed financial support to pay for his campaign, so he reluctantly agreed, that if elected, he would sign the Federal Reserve Act, in return for that financial support.Actually 1913 was a pivotal year: it was also the year that the (unratified) sixteenth amendment was pushed though Congress, as well as the year that the (third) central banking system was adopted, in the form of the Federal Reserve Bank, which was and is a privately-held banking system to which our nation is currently in thrall. Congress has the power, if not the will, to abolish the Federal Reserve, and put us back on a gold standard.
In December 1913 while many members of Congress were home for Christmas, the Federal Reserve Act was rammed through Congress and was later signed by President Wilson. At a later date, Wilson admitted with remorse, when referring to the Fed."I have unwittingly ruined my country".
I believe that the righting of America will be possible if we, as a nation, address 1. the fundamental basics of money and governmental spending and, 2. The education of our children, including university-level training. The whole educational process must be re-vamped from top to bottom.
Congress, being mired down in it's own problems, lacks the will to address the problems of education, and certainly, we cannot look to them to redress a hundred years of unsound fiscal policies. That leaves open the question of where the power to put these usurpers down will come from. A national prolonged out-cry from a nation of outraged citizens would probably do it, but that isn't likely to happen. Like most watchdogs, I have more questions than answers. Never-the-less, the questions need to be asked.
Meanwhile, on the policy of homeschooling, we can take Karen De Coster's words to heart:
...Homeschooling folks have greater objectives for their children than do most parents, and that is, to shield their children from the harmful, unwanted effects provided by outcome-based education techniques; they wish for their children to develop a sense of spirituality and a values system that is desired in the home, and can only be taught at home, by family; they desire an individualized, more classical-oriented education for their children; they wish to control the daily influences that their child receives; and they wish to make all time spent learning quality time, which cannot be the case in the never-ending, disciplinary atmosphere of the public zoo.
Some folks homeschool their children because they exalt the individuality of their offspring and they take parental responsibility seriously. This is showing the greatest respect for God's gift to them. If you don't homeschool your kids, that's your choice. However, keep your empty-headed slurs to yourself, shut your mouth, and put these folks on a pedestal, because they deserve it.
September 5, 2001
The rest of us had better find a proper sword, and go forth into battle. It is not too late.
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