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How Our Anti-American Education System Made Riots Inevitable; So, You Still Want To Pay Top Dollars For a College Liberal Arts Education?
The Federalist ^ | 06/16/2020 | By Inez Feltscher Stepman

Posted on 06/16/2020 9:26:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

The past fire-lit weeks in America’s cities have made clear that the protests, and the riots that attend them, have little to do with the condemnable alleged murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.

Even in the non-violent demonstrations, protesters can be seen burning the American flag, an act that just 30 years ago engendered such outrage it spurred Congress to pass an unconstitutional law, but doesn’t even warrant coverage today. In broad daylight, protesters have defaced and toppled statues dedicated to any and all figures of America’s history.

Lest anyone think the mob’s Year Zero behavior stopped with the slaveholding Confederacy, in Boston a monument to the 54th Massachusetts, an all-black Union regiment during the Civil War, was among those vandalized. Matthias Baldwin, an early abolitionist, got the same treatment in Philadelphia, as did the lesser-known Rotary Club founder Paul Harris, whose plaque in Washington D.C. was marked simply with an ignorance-acknowledging “probably a racist.” The monument to the author of the Emancipation Proclamation on the National Mall was likely spared only because of the protection of the National Guard.

As John Daniel Davidson has noted, toppling statues is not a good sign for the future of the republic; it looks a lot less like a policy conversation about police reform than it does regime change and revolution.

Nor are revolutionary sentiments limited to the youthful protesters. Much as they have in newsrooms and corporate boardrooms, the cultural revolutionaries find only willing kneelers among their elders in the Democratic Party.

After presiding over several nights of free-for-all looting, beatings, and police deaths, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said “400 years of American racism” excused the violence and social distancing violations. In Fairfax, Virginia, known as a moderate county, the Democratic Party put out a tweet praising rioting as an “integral part of this country’s march towards progress.”

Teaching Americans to Hate Their Country

At the heart of the unrest is the belief that the United States is a uniquely bad country, instead of an exceptionally free, prosperous, and powerful one. It’s the same message that the Pulitzer Committee endorsed when it crowned The New York Times’ 1619 Project: the United States is, always has been, and likely always will be, a deeply racist society.

Ibram Kendi, a leading promoter of what is euphemistically termed “anti-racism,” suggests as a solution to America’s alleged systematic racism an amendment that would gut the Constitution and its commitment to equality under the law and freedom of speech. “Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principles: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals. The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials.”

It should be clear from Kendi’s view, which replaces the equality of individuals based on natural right with “equality” of collective racial groups, that what the left innocuously now terms “anti-racism” requires the total destruction of the American system.

The narrative that systematic racism has been embedded in America’s DNA from her founding is a dangerous lie. Escaped slave turned statesman Fredrick Douglass, no stranger to harsh and righteous criticism of his country, called it “a slander upon [the framers’] memory.”

America Is Not Systemically Racist

No one denies America’s original sin of slavery, including the Founders. But slavery and racism are not at the heart of the American experiment or its documents and institutions.

Injustice, unfairness, and bigotry are, indeed, an ineradicable part of life. But America is not a systemically racist society. Far from being fruit of a rotten tree, America’s founding principles form the best recipe for racial harmony, and rebuke to inequality, yet devised by man.

Where does this poisonous anti-American idea, acceptance of which seems to be toppling institution after institution, come from, especially after the United States has advanced so far in living up to the promises of its birth?

As many of us warned years ago, the radical ideas born on campus have already metastasized across society. Today, K-12 public schools across the country increasingly teach some version of the lie.

The error-ridden, America-hating 1619 Project, and its associated Pulitzer-endorsed, Common Core-compliant lesson materials, is already being taught in more than 3,500 schools across the country. Anecdotally, ever more superintendents are responding to the current unrest by promising to adopt the 1619 curriculum. The problem will get worse before it gets better.

Most ‘Educational’ Institutions Indoctrinate

Well before protesters spilled into the streets in 2020, the largest national teachers’ union gave its official stamp of approval to Black Lives Matter and to indoctrinating teachers with the concept of “white fragility” and its supposed cause, “white supremacy culture,” as part of professional development. The effort to re-educate the nation’s teachers in the left’s radical image will also likely be accelerated due to the protests.

The same national union runs a division solely dedicated to advancing Black Lives Matter and encouraging identity politics in schools. During that same meeting, the National Education Association failed to pass a resolution pledging to “re-dedicate [the union] to the pursuit of increased student learning,” ostensibly its purpose for existence.

Out of the 100 largest school districts, precisely none have the words “America” or “patriotism” in their mission statements. This fact is even more shocking when one considers the public school system was originally created to teach American citizens how to preserve the republic they had been bequeathed.

Noah Webster, one of the country’s earliest textbook publishers and education advocates, wrote of a future American public school system: “begin with the infant in the cradle, let the first word he lisps be ‘Washington.’” Now the public school system teaches students to view the “indispensable man” as, foremost and unforgivably, a slaveholder.

Marxist College Grads Descend Upon Society

If elementary and secondary schools lay the foundation, colleges and universities, now attended by 40 percent of young Americans, provide the activist training to turn passive beliefs into action. The cultural revolutionaries produced by our education system then advance into corporations, tech startups, Hollywood, sports, and of course, media.

If conservatives ever believed the canard that safe-space social justice warriors would implode on impact with the “real world,” now’s the time to forget that happy notion. They’re not John Mayer, waiting on the world to change; they’re remaking the world as they see fit, consistent with what they’ve been taught from K-12 to the highest echelons of learning.

Where the right finds itself today is a direct consequence of its appalling failure to take culture, and the institutions that shape it, at least as seriously as it takes tax cuts, deregulation, and economic growth.

Is it any surprise that we’re now seeing 1619 in the streets? The anti-American ideas of the radical left have already won nearly everywhere else.

Where the right finds itself today is a direct consequence of its appalling failure to take culture, and the institutions that shape it, at least as seriously as it takes tax cuts, deregulation, and economic growth. I like taking home more of my paycheck as much as the next person, but minor economic reforms will not change the overall trajectory of the country if its schools and academies continue to preach disunion instead of e pluribus unum.

Two thirds of millennials believe that America is a racist and sexist country and close to 40 percent think the United States is “among the most unequal societies in the world.” Not just racist and sexist, but uniquely so: this is the historically-illiterate worldview of the graduates of our nation’s education system.

Some Americans might comfort themselves with the notion that this is a passing madness, but it is instead the inescapable consequence of what is being taught from kindergarten through graduate school. A nation that teaches its children to hate their country cannot endure. A nation that pays out $700 billion a year, and trillions in taxpayer-financed student loans, to train future citizens to see their country as hopelessly and irreparably racist cannot continue.

If the justice at the heart of the American project is no longer taught in the education system, there will be no peace.


Inez Feltscher Stepman is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is also a senior policy analyst at Independent Women's Forum and the Thursday editor of BRIGHT, a women's newsletter.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: antiamerican; education; riots
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1 posted on 06/16/2020 9:26:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

I never imagined I’d say it, but pull ALL public funding of education. Every last penny. Give parents tax credits for school age kids.


2 posted on 06/16/2020 9:28:19 AM PDT by brownsfan (Behold, the power of government cheese.)
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To: brownsfan

I think the bigger problem isn’t teaching hate; it is failing to teach any kind of job skills/work ethic - or morality, for that matter.

There are no gainfully employed workers at these riots.


3 posted on 06/16/2020 9:29:58 AM PDT by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: SeekAndFind



4 posted on 06/16/2020 9:31:50 AM PDT by democratsaremyenemy (Streepisacreep)
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To: SeekAndFind

ANTIFA is for the most part organized and run from college campuses. Most of it’s consiglieres are faculty. The daily perp walks should have started two weeks ago.


5 posted on 06/16/2020 9:35:37 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog (Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer)
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To: SeekAndFind

I for one think some good will come out of this nonsense that the left is trying to firm it right now

Everyone knows this tribe about the public school systems and universities at least in the liberal arts being marked as indoctrination centers

I went to the University of California Berkeley and observed all these idiots and decided whatever therefore I’m against

I was a chemical engineering student in there was no politics whatsoever in my chemical engineering curriculum

What is happening five months out of the election right now is the Democrats are displaying themselves in for view of what they believe with the likes of AOC and Ilhan Omar being the leaders

America is a very good nation founded on liberty freedom unlimited government and I would say a good majority of the population of this nation watchers the riots diluting the nonsense the promotion of a clearly marked this organization black lives matter , with disgust

So now they’ve gotten all the headlines these black lives matter idiots in their courts and there’s idiot millennials that follow them and now they have to get into the policy realm

What policies do they support? What do they want to do with all this newfound power?

And so we’re starting to get a view of this :defund the police ; attack the police. Reparations. Substitute a list of what Bernie said. And so on

And of course we still have another four months to go before the election or longer which is an eternity in politics

And that’s going to give a lot of time for all this happened in the last few months and what’s coming up to Saint Kevin to the American populace

As Americans see people fired for innocent tweets about things like “all lives matter “ They will simply hug her down view from a far and know that their voice will be heard on November 3

I believe this entire fiasco this set up with George Floyd and everything is a desperate attempt to try to force black Americans back into the Democratic fold - they know that they are slipping away!

I still have no idea on gods green earth why Jewish Americans would ever vote for the Democrats

These are the two groups that are somewhere on the order of 90% 10%

When you look at the Blasio is attack on the Jews clearly at least in New York they’ve written off the Jews and are just going for the blacks

Are great and wonderful president Donald J Trump loves all people has employed tens of thousands of people of all races sex is sexual orientation’s religions and I believe holds no malice toward anyone ( OK maybe Isis)

The very fortunate thing that we live in in this era of mass media is the truth battered as it is is going to get out

Right now the riders looters and aggressive van or kiss or getting concessions but this will end very soon

Why will this end?

Because they will get greedy and overstep reasonable demands

Witness the all out attack on everything Washington Jefferson Lincoln or anything to do with any of the history of the United States of America statues monuments whether or not it has anything to do with the confederacy

This is simply just an orgy of destruction and is very simply a window into the mental illness of these leftists

Hate , in the end , only destroys the hater

Love , forgiveness and steadfastness are the only powers in this world


6 posted on 06/16/2020 9:40:05 AM PDT by Truthoverpower (The guv-mint you get is the Trump winning express ! Yea haw ! Trump pence II!)
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To: SeekAndFind
So, You Still Want To Pay Top Dollars For a College Liberal Arts Education?

The leftist indoctrination starts much, much earlier than college. Conservatives have chosen not to fight but instead to retreat to home schooling and private schools, while American society has become filled with the grown children of parents who didn't or couldn't pull their kids out of the indoctrination camps.
7 posted on 06/16/2020 9:43:20 AM PDT by AnotherUnixGeek
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To: democratsaremyenemy

Weak minds that don’t think for them self become dangerous history has a long list of them.


8 posted on 06/16/2020 9:52:56 AM PDT by Vaduz (women and children to be impacIQ of chimpsted the most.)
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To: SeekAndFind
A degree in Liberal Arts prepares you to be an unemployed rioter.
9 posted on 06/16/2020 10:00:21 AM PDT by airborne (I don't always scream at the TV but when I do it's hockey season!)
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To: democratsaremyenemy

Why would a conservative parent pay for their kid to go and take useless anti American liberal courses? Indian parents manage to force their kids to take stem courses or at least business. American parents somehow don’t think they have the right to dictate what school and courses their kids take. If you are conservative stop paying to educate your kids to destroy the country that you love.
I am have written one of our kids out of our wills because he has become a America hating liberal. I refuse to reward him.


10 posted on 06/16/2020 10:31:46 AM PDT by Oldexpat (Stand strong VA.)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Liberals are killing academia and little by little it will fall. Sports die, college towns die, alumni walk away, businesses recruit online, salaries drop, staff thins. high Schools teach skills and community colleges rake it in.


11 posted on 06/16/2020 10:32:56 AM PDT by cnsmom
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To: Oldexpat

“American parents somehow don’t think they have the right to dictate what school and courses their kids take. “


Uh,no. You are painting with a broad brush here,lots of American parents care.

.


12 posted on 06/16/2020 10:39:21 AM PDT by Mears (.)
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To: SeekAndFind

They teach our children lies... and we pay them to do it. They are cancerous to society.


13 posted on 06/16/2020 10:51:48 AM PDT by Lexington Green (This is what Hillary means by ''Resistance''.)
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To: SeekAndFind

College education can have only one legitimate goal: To make yourself more valuable to others. That’s it.
..........
If there are no, or very few, others because the demand for, say, minority studies, is limited to teaching, the potential reward outside of teaching is about zero.
..........
So many go to college to either marry well or fit some expectation by family and friends.


14 posted on 06/16/2020 10:52:33 AM PDT by gandalftb
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To: Mears

Some not all. Or some. Most not all? Not sure but somewhere in there?


15 posted on 06/16/2020 10:57:22 AM PDT by Oldexpat (Stand strong VA.)
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To: SeekAndFind

And this is exactly why we need foriegn workers.


16 posted on 06/16/2020 10:58:37 AM PDT by rrrod (6)
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To: SeekAndFind

The word so in the headline is entirely unnecessary.


17 posted on 06/16/2020 11:37:42 AM PDT by upchuck (Windows 10 is just a fancy spying machine with troublesome, mandatory updates.)
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.

TIME TO DEFUND LEFTIST ACADEMICS

.


18 posted on 06/16/2020 11:59:52 AM PDT by elbook
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To: elbook

TIME TO DEFUND LEFTIST ACADEMICS”!

Elections have consequences whether it’s public or private education at any level! The RATS have become political. We haven’t because that would take us out of our comfort zones. Well, were being driven furhter and further out of our comfort zones right now, aren’t we?

We simply have to get off of our asses and on our feet and get to our local folk who agree with us; find causes and candidates, and fight like hell—because it’s time to kill RATS, literally and figuratgively.

I’m looking for not RINO Republicans because that’s the best chance we have to turn this nonesense around.

If we don’t we’ll become dead victims of RATS Run Amuck.


19 posted on 06/16/2020 3:31:35 PM PDT by sciencewriter86
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To: elbook

TIME TO DEFUND LEFTIST ACADEMICS”!

Elections have consequences whether it’s public or private education at any level! The RATS have become political. We haven’t because that would take us out of our comfort zones. Well, were being driven furhter and further out of our comfort zones right now, aren’t we?

We simply have to get off of our asses and on our feet and get to our local folk who agree with us; find causes and candidates, and fight like hell—because it’s time to kill RATS, literally and figuratgively.

I’m looking for not RINO Republicans because that’s the best chance we have to turn this nonesense around.

If we don’t we’ll become dead victims of RATS Run Amuck.


20 posted on 06/16/2020 3:31:36 PM PDT by sciencewriter86
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