Can America’s traditional cultural possibly be restored?

 

September 2, 2025

A kindergarten teacher posted some comments on Facebook about her experience with some youngsters on their first days at her school.

“It broke my heart these past 4 days to see how many kindergarteners showed up to school with NO previous exposure to almost anything. It was so overwhelming for them to understand the concept of staying in line, wiping themselves, buttoning their own pants, opening a milk container, holding a pencil correctly.

“I had one who didn’t understand how to unzip his lunchbox so he could eat. Some can’t tell you their name, or don’t KNOW their actual given name that is on the roster. So many had never held a pencil at all, couldn’t sing the alphabet song (let alone recognize any letters/numbers), couldn’t count to ten or recognize shapes/colors.”

She expressed the frustration others show her, saying things like: “Isn’t that what school is for??” Or, “Why should parents have to do YOUR job for you?”

“Yes, school is for learning,” she said, “But when they come in SO far behind right off the bat, it is so defeating and frustrating for these babies. Even at the age of five, they recognize when they don’t know things other kids know. If a child knows who Pennywise the clown is and can recite every word (including the explicit ones) to the latest Cardi B song, but can’t recite the alphabet, count to ten, or open a ketchup packet, we got probs.” 

Now to be realistic, there probably have been some young people like this for as long as there have been humans on the Earth. But apparently, the proportion of this type of unpreparedness for life’s basics has grown enormously.

In the old days, things that previously occurred at home started the learning process. Learning to dress ourselves, feed ourselves, follow rules and procedures, doing simple tasks. And when we got to kindergarten or first grade, or whatever the first “school” experience was, we had a functional basis to begin learning our ABCs, numbers and the other subjects that schools help us learn.

But the nuclear family that has been such an important part of America since its founding is dwindling away. Far too many single-parent families exist today, with many children growing up in a family with no father, or perhaps only a part-time dad.

And there seems to be a lack of understanding among adults about true parenting, the importance of proper and traditional child rearing. And, there is a substantial lack of knowledge about America’s story, and the culture upon which our country was built that parents would pass on to their children by interaction.

And so, we now find that many in the younger generations — Gen Z, Gen X, Gen Alpha, for example — have less and less of an understanding of the background that the older generations have always had. And with the decreased understanding of our founding and our development, we find a country with an ever-weakening sense of itself. 

Our traditional values, institutions, arts, and morality are weakening. More and more we see family instability, materialism, entertainment saturation, and political division. We are losing our identity, our soul. We are committing cultural suicide.

Not only have we as a people failed to maintain our standards, but the ridiculous and dangerous virtual open border of the Biden administration, which invited millions of people — we still do not actually know how many — to enter the country illegally, has compounded the problem. This was done without having any idea of who these people were, or what their intent was.

Some of them were good people looking for a better life. But many others were drug and child traffickers, robbers, rapists, terrorists and murderers. And even those illegals who sought a better life were not oriented to the core values of America, which further diluted our cultural values.

Feelings about a cultural decline are not new. Former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett noted in an article in Education Week back in 1993 the following: “When the late Walker Percy was asked what concerned him the most about America’s future, he answered: ‘Probably the fear of seeing America, with all its great strength and beauty and freedom ... gradually subside into decay through default and be defeated, not by the Communist movement, demonstrably a bankrupt system, but from within by weariness, boredom, cynicism, greed, and in the end helplessness before its great problems.’”

At the end of the article, Bennett offers this: “The social regression of the past 30 years is due in large part to the enfeebled state of our social institutions and their failure to carry out their critical and time-honored tasks.”

Thirty-plus years past Bennett’s dire observations we find the country even further down the path to cultural collapse. Whether that direction can be reversed is a question yet to be answered. 

A teacher’s view of how America’s history is being taught

February 13, 2024

A major problem in America is that so many of us do not have a correct understanding of the origins of our country, and the ideals put forth in the founding documents.

The political left is working very hard to transform the country from what it is and was to something that suits the left’s ideals, the primary one of which is perpetual control of the government and the people residing here.

That concept is 180 degrees from what our Founders created. Their idea was a limited government with the maximum degree of personal freedom: a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The concept of government of, by and for the people was part of a speech by then-president Abraham Lincoln several decades after the Constitution was ratified in the Gettysburg Address in 1863 as the nation fought the Civil War.

Lincoln’s now-well-known phrase is an apt description of the way our government was perceived and designed, and has operated for over 200 years..

In every nation, regardless of its ruling ideology, there are some who have different ideas about how things should be. In many of those nations, you can die or be severely punished for expressing ideas contrary to the ruling philosophy. But not in America, where we have the Bill of Rights as part of our Constitution that guarantees us the right to free speech, among other valuable freedoms.

Today, we see free speech and other guaranteed rights being restricted by some. We see efforts to challenge our history and aspects of that history under attack, both in plain sight and under the table.

Education is one of those places where un-American ideas are being pushed on our children at every level of schooling. These efforts are being strongly denied by the indoctrinators, who blame critics of their efforts by those with conservative, traditional views of America as exaggerations or lies.

“American history must be taught fully, fairly and honestly or else we have a limited understanding of the past, with no way to explain the present, and no hope of building a better future.”

That truth was written by Michael R. Burgess, in The Island Packet on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Burgess is and has been for many years a history teacher, and now teaches in Lexington County, SC. He was selected as the state’s 2023 History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and is recognized by the S.C. Department of Education.

Of what is currently happening, he wrote, “We are at a crossroads in South Carolina with how American history is to be taught in our classrooms. We are trapped between those who want to whitewash and sanitize our state and national story to omit those truths we find uncomfortable and those who want to erase any part of our past that does not meet our 21st century social and cultural norms.”

He described a false perception that “the dedication to learn, embrace and understand American history is lost among our youth.” It is the education system that is to blame for the failure to present true history to children, not a lack of interest.

“We do not devote enough time to teaching it at the elementary, middle or high school levels. Our standards do not require a thorough teaching of key figures and events in American history. We are losing our best U.S. History teachers as a consequence of large class sizes, long hours, low pay, and bureaucratic overreach. And, U.S. History teachers are the focus of a war being waged against them by groups who wish to whitewash or erase our history.”

“Many U.S. History teachers believe it is safer to create neutral, vanilla, plain -rice-cake learning experiences which fall short of needed instruction, but avoid the onslaught of those who tear teachers down.

If we want American history to be told and taught fully, fairly and honestly, and if we want our children to be prepared to lead this nation forward, we must make significant changes to the way we approach teaching American history.”

Burgess goes on to say that those teachers presenting U.S. History in the proper way need the strong support of the public, and not attacking the devoted and honest ones with “innuendo and false accusations for the wrong-doings of a few rogue actors.”

The problems he sees in his state are not restricted to South Carolina. This same mentality exists in many states, perhaps every state in the country. There is an active faction determined to subvert the strong traditional education that has been the rule for many decades.

Burgess closes with a quote from George Orwell: “The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

And the actions cited by Orwell can be easily seen in education in many, many classrooms, schools, and districts across the country. If they are not reversed and our education system returned to its previous structure of honesty and integrity of mission, our nation will continue its slide toward the misery of socialism.

More changes are being offered to satisfy the “cancel culture”

January 3, 2023

Here we go again! Along with all the efforts to “cancel” things that upset someone, a few people, or lots of people — like the names of buildings, streets and schools; and statues of people, and actual people living and dead — there is a new movement. This one seeks to eliminate words and phrases used for years, decades or centuries.

In an act of “we gotta get woke,” Stanford University has published an index of "harmful language." The school plans to eliminate this language from its websites and computer code, and will offer replacement terms to be used in the future. And likely these rules will apply to those on campus and otherwise associated with the school.

Stanford calls this project the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, and it is described as a "multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford," according to the project guide.

The guide goes on to say that its goal is to eliminate "many forms of harmful language," including "racist, violent, and biased language, including disability bias, ethnic bias, ethnic slurs, gender bias, implicit bias, and sexual bias. "It also states that it wants to educate people on the impact of words.

It should be fairly obvious that the language Stanford finds “harmful” consists of words and phrases that have been around in popular usage for years or decades. But in this new hypersensitive world, they are no longer useful because of some relatively under-lying meaning that someone might find offensive.

Here’s one example. Under a section titled “Imprecise Language,” the guide advised readers to replace the term “American” with “U.S. citizen.” The reason for this is that calling people who live in the United States of America (USA) “Americans” insinuates that the USA is the most important country in the Americas.

There are four groups of countries in the Americas: North America, Central America, South America and The Caribbean. And in those four groups, there are more than 40 individual countries. However, only one of them, the United States of America, has the word “America” in its name. The USA has also been known as “America,” for a long time. Therefore, the citizens of the USA can properly be called “Americans.”

This example is plain evidence of how foolish this and many other such efforts are. Perhaps the powers that be at Stanford realized this, had it explained to them, or gave in to the outrage over this cancellation, because it has back-tracked on this word, and now claims to absolutely welcome the term “American.” 

Progress? Perhaps.

Some of the terms Stanford deems harmful and has not back-tracked on include "abort," which the school wants to replace with "cancel" or "end," due to moral concerns about abortion; "child prostitute" to be replaced with a "child who has been trafficked," so the person is not defined by just one characteristic; and "Karen" is to be replaced with "demanding or entitled White woman."

The index suggests using "accessible parking" instead of "handicap parking," "died by suicide" instead of "committed suicide" and "anonymous review" instead of "blind review." We also should use "unenlightened" as a replacement for "tone deaf," and a "person with a substance abuse disorder" as a replacement for "addict."

The institutionalized racism section says to avoid using phrases like "black hat," "black mark" and "black sheep" because of "negative connotations to the color black." It also says to avoid using "grandfathered" and use "legacy status" instead, because of "roots in the ‘grandfather clause’ adopted by Southern states to deny voting rights to Blacks."

“Immigrant” is out, and the preferred substitute is “person who has immigrated.” The Wall Street Journal noted about this cancellation that, “It’s the iron law of academic writing: Why use one word when four will do?”

“You can’t ‘master’ your subject at Stanford any longer,” the Journal added, saying “in case you hadn’t heard, the school instructs that ‘historically, masters enslaved people.’” 

Does Stanford still award “masters” degrees? Or, will they simply be renamed “post-bachelor,” “bachelor-plus,” or “pre-doctorate,” “not-yet-doctorate,” or something else?

Given that these words and phrases “trigger” the sensitivities of some folks, and that the multitude of other things that people want to cancel are things that have been around or in common use for a long time, and their meanings have been understood and accepted as useful and normal.

Why is it now suddenly necessary to get rid of them?

These days there is virtually nothing that doesn’t bother someone. So, the question that arises is, are we going to give in to this new mania and change everything when some people become uncomfortable with them? Or, are we just going to learn to deal with the discomforts, as we have been doing since humans have existed?

The things that are now considered as unacceptable are part of American society and history. They are “us.” If they are removed, we lose the valuable lessons they can teach us. If we reword things, we are giving in to what in many cases are hyper-sensitive feelings about things that we historically have simply accepted. 

We aren’t perfect, and will never be. We need to learn to live with these imperfections.

The cancel culture judges America by her mistakes, not her strengths

As the nation watches the riots and criminal behavior that evolved from protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Black Lives Matter (BLM) has turned its attention to removing monuments to personalities from the Civil War that led to the end of slavery in the United States with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865.

But the mission to take down these monuments was confused from the beginning. It could have been a civil effort to have the “offending” items removed legally by petitioning the appropriate government agencies or property owners on which the statues reside, which is the proper way to do things. The statues could have been moved to museums or other places, if the proper authorities agreed with the petitioners.

But that wasn’t good enough for the cancel culture, which felt that the things must be removed now! And so, rioters — not protesters or demonstrators — turned their criminal behavior to destroying these historical items.

In addition to the monuments to southern Civil War personalities, they also blindly go after some who were on the same side of the slavery case as they are.

The statue of Ulysses S. Grant is one example. Grant was the 18^th President of the United States following the Civil War, from 1869 to 1877. But more illustrative of what a magnificent error it was to take down his statue, Grant was the Commanding General of the U.S. Army that defeated the hated Confederates — the targets of BLM — and won the Civil War, leading to emancipation of the slaves.

An even more astonishing mistake is the threatening to take down the Emancipation Memorial. Because this memorial features the likeness of Abraham Lincoln with a black man, Archer Alexander, in chains at his feet, it is regarded by the rioters as a symbol of slavery.

The former slave and now-famous American Frederick Douglass, however, predicted that members of his race “will think of [the Memorial] and speak of it with a sense of manly pride.”

Rather than being a passive, submissive slave, the Memorial was in fact designed to show Alexander at Lincoln’s feet exerting his own strength to break the chains that bound him.

Douglas said, “We have done a good for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator [Lincoln], we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us,” and “we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”

And then there is Charlotte Scott, a former slave freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, who said upon hearing of Lincoln’s assassination, “the colored people have lost their best friend on earth! Mr. Lincoln was our best friend, and I will give five dollars of my wages towards erecting a monument to his memory.”

Her contribution sparked a movement among freed slaves to raise money for a memorial to Lincoln which totaled more than $12,000. At that time $12,000, and even $5, was a lot of money.

Female RE-Enactors of Distinction (FREED) is a group of actors that is committed to accurately depict the role of African Americans, including the U.S. Colored Troops and their families during the U.S. Civil War.

Marcia Cole is a member of FREED who portrays Charlotte Scott. Regarding the Memorial, she told Washington, DC TV station WJLA, “I’m here to speak on behalf of the legacy of Charlotte Scott. I understand there’s a big campaign trying to raise money to either take it down or mend it, and I say ‘no’ on behalf of Ms. Charlotte.” 

But the rioters don’t know this history.

So, the historical figures and sites that the BLM wants removed will not be decided by the American people and their governments, but by a relative handful of the people, who don’t know history and don’t care about history. They care nothing about what others think and willingly, eagerly, turn to criminality to accomplish their goal.

That isn’t the American way. But America and her ways are a foreign language to most of these folks. They judge America by her mistakes only, ignoring her strengths. They apply his same myopia to Civil War figures. They see only a part of the lives of the individuals that they target. That small part is all that matters to them.

That sentiment was fairly clearly stated by Hawk Newsome, president of the Greater New York Black Lives Matter. “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” Newsome said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Story” with Martha MacCallum.

And so, what we really have is not merely a crusade by a relatively small group to cleanse the land and remove elements they dislike and that stain our history, it is to wreak havoc and impose their will on the rest of us.

In the wise words of Marcus Aurelius: “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”

Order must be restored, and those committing crimes must be held accountable.

Potpourri: Some thoughts on current topics

 ** A liberal journalist has set aside his ideology and written something honest and positive about President Donald Trump. Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser, in an article examining the Trump judicial appointments and their likely effect on the courts, wrote, “In less than three years as president, President Trump has done nearly as much to shape the courts as President Obama did in eight years.”

But in what could be expected to be nothing more than a leftist lecture against Trump’s judicial selections, Millhiser gave this objective evaluation. “Trump hasn’t simply given lots of lifetime appointments to lots of lawyers. He’s filled the bench with some of the smartest, and some of the most ideologically reliable, men and women to be found in the conservative movement.”

And then, this: “In other words, based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president’s nominees.”

** Poor Joe Biden. He’s failing in his bid for the Democrat presidential nomination, and unlike Bernie Sanders in 2016, he has no one to blame but himself. Uncle Gaffy continues to issue non-sequiturs at a dizzying pace, and recently he said that immigrants, legal and illegal, are “a gift” to America.

Immigrants have been, and can still be a gift to the country. But they must be here for the right reasons, and they must become true Americans and contribute positively to the country in order to qualify for that honored status. However, Biden does not understand, or ignores, that illegal immigrants are not “a gift,” and too often are dangerous.

** A criminal investigation that began nearly two years ago with a referral from the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, which concluded that Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had repeatedly lied about having authorized a subordinate to share information with a newspaper reporter for a 2016 article about an FBI investigation into possible crimes by Hillary Clinton. The DOJ has decided not to bring criminal charges against McCabe, despite the investigative conclusion that he lied to officials.

Many believe that the same result will apply to all those whose criminal behavior attempted to overturn the legitimate election of President Donald Trump.

** One of the most ill-advised actions taken recently by some Americans is the desire to remove things that remind them of events in times past that they dislike. One example is removing statues of people who represented the south during the Civil War.

Fortunately, some people still understand that while some things in the nation’s history are not proud moments, they still are part of its history, and therefore should not be destroyed. History is history, and we need to be reminded of both the good and the bad elements of it.

Thankfully, Virginia Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Moore has ruled that the statues of General Robert E. Lee and General Stonewall Jackson are now protected monuments and will remain standing. He said the way the statues made people feel did not change the fact the statues paid homage to the Civil War heroes.

“While some people obviously see Lee and Jackson as symbols of white supremacy,” Moore stated in his decision, “others see them as brilliant military tacticians or complex leaders in a difficult time.”

Moore is absolutely right.

** One of the most divisive topics in America today is abortion. The point at which life begins is an ongoing debate. And the question of when, if ever, it is okay to terminate a pregnancy is the major factor in the abortion debate. 

From the moment of conception, when the male and female reproductive cells unite, what occurs is the development of a new person over a nine-month period. The miracle of the birth of a new human being once was an almost universally valued event in our country.

Years ago, the result of passionate interludes between a woman and a man was the blessed event of a child, a new family member. Today, that result is regarded by many as an inconvenience to be corrected by ending the pregnancy through a medical procedure.

After millions of future children have been terminated before their birth, we find people who want to terminate children even after they have been born following a failed attempt at abortion.

Despite the desires of the mother, when a baby is born, that baby is a living person. It requires and is entitled to the same efforts by medical personnel to save its life as any other person in the ER, an OR, or in a patient room. Deliberately failing to provide that critical medical attention should be punishable as manslaughter, or murder.

Yet state legislators routinely defeat measures to assure that born-alive abortion survivors may be killed or allowed to die.

If a child’s life can be ended after a failed abortion on the basis of a weak rationalization based on the intent of the mother, can it be long before other rationalizations will be cited to end the lives of the elderly, or the infirm, or those with serious diseases?

Yet another misguided effort to destroy our country’s history

It’s been more than a year since the movement to cleanse America’s past began, as the idea of erasing unpleasant, unpopular aspects of our history is now the way some try to make things better, and includes removing statues and memorials of America’s Founders and notable personalities of the War Between the States.

The reaction to America’s period of slavery is the prime impetus for this mania to destroy history. But as manias often are, this one is ill advised and will do great harm to future generations.

One of the most important of the Founders, Thomas Jefferson, is a target of the movement to cleanse the past by removing statues and other reminders of those days. Jefferson is recognized by the crowd bearing the cleansing equipment for one thing only: he was a slave owner, and therefore unqualified for any attention or actual appreciation.

But like nearly all of them, Jefferson had many positive things to his credit, among them intelligence and wisdom. And his ideas of the value of history are right on the mark and deserve consideration.

Regarding history, Jefferson wrote in “Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14,” in 1781, "History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

Calling it “one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon,” The California NAACP now backs a movement to have Francis Scott Key’s anthem “The Star Spangled Banner” removed as America’s National Anthem. 

This furor arose from three lines in the third verse of Key’s 1814 poem that he wrote about the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. How many could recite any of the other verses, or even knew the song has more than one verse? And if you are looking for “the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black” song in the country, would three short lines in the third of four verses that hardly anyone knew existed really be the worst, or be worth all this hoo-hah?

At first glance, however, one might believe those three lines in the verse are racist. But, as with many controversies, a first glance is far less than is required.

Here is the text of the third verse, with those lines forming the basis of the objection highlighted in italics:

“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

However, american-historama.org informs what those lines really meant to the author at the time they were written.

● Francis Scott Key describes the British as arrogant and boastful in the lyrics “that band who so vauntingly swore.”
● He is venting his anger at the British with the "foul footsteps' pollution" lyrics inferring that the British poisoned the ground on which they walked.
● But the poison and corruption had been washed away by the blood of the British.
● The lyrics "the hireling" refers to the British use of Mercenaries (German Hessians) in the American War of Independence.
● The lyrics "...and slave" is a direct reference to the British practice of Impressment (kidnapping American seamen and forcing them into service on British man-of-war ships). This was an important cause of the War of 1812.
● Francis Scott Key then describes the Star Spangled Banner as a symbol of triumph over all adversity.

This is why context is important. Things do not always mean what someone thinks they mean, and by doing just a little research, the true meaning could have been discovered, and this particular tempest in a teapot could have been avoided.

The NAACP misinterpreted these lyrics, and assigned a completely false meaning to them. And therefore, its reaction is not appropriate, and there is no reason to seriously consider removing The Star Spangled Banner as the National Anthem on that basis.

However, even if the premise had been correct and the Anthem did contain racist language, America’s era of slavery, which began in the Colonies, ended a century and a half ago. Further, its lyrics represent a valid and beneficial historical record of a battle in an important event in America’s history.

“But history does matter. It has been said that he who controls the past controls the future,” as David Crabtree wrote in the article “The Importance of History” on the Gutenberg College Website. “Our view of history shapes the way we view the present, and therefore it dictates what answers we offer for existing problems.”

This is why we must preserve history, and learn from it, rather than destroy it.

The willful subversion of critical institutions threatens America

As the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was wrapping up, Benjamin Franklin was asked this question: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy.”  Franklin replied, “A republic ... if you can keep it.”

That has been one of America’s greatest challenges ever since, and there certainly are numerous discernible threats to our republic today.

Certain of our institutions play a critical role in sustaining the republic and promoting and protecting the unique character of the United States of America, and they therefore have a tremendous obligation to operate ethically and honorably. To the extent that they abandon their obligation, the country’s fundamental character is threatened.

Those institutions are: the justice system, the education system, and the information media.

Imagine you have a business renting apartments. One of your tenants, who has rented a place for $1,500 a month for three years sends you a check for only $900 for the current month.

You contact the tenant and are told that he views the lease that both you and he signed as a “living document,” the meaning of which may be altered as circumstances change. Having lost the job that paid $73,000 a year, his new job pays only $45,000, and he says he can now only afford $900 rent a month.

That is precisely the rationale that activist judges apply when they abandon the clear language of the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the land to make rulings they say are in line with current circumstances and the “mood” of the country, and because the Founders and those who enacted older laws were unable at that time to imagine current circumstances, that old stuff must be modernized.

However, the laws or Constitutional principles that activist judges disagree with must be amended or repealed through existing formal processes, not ignored or altered because they are viewed as inconvenient. If momentary interpretations are all that matter, and the Constitution is merely a “living document,” we don’t have a Constitution and we are not a nation of laws.

A nation needs its history and culture – all of it: the good, the bad, and the ugly – to be passed down from generation to generation so that its people will know who they are and where the came from, and can properly determine where they want to go and why.

While families should pass much of this along to children, we largely entrust this duty to formal education. To guide the learning process and assist students in learning an array of important and useful subjects and life lessons, we employ teachers, professors, instructors, and such, who coach and assist students.

Most of us had at least some teachers, professors, coaches who inspired us and helped us learn difficult subject matter, develop our skills, and learn how to think critically and logically. Hopefully, we did not have any that strayed from their professional duties and tried to tell us what to think about things, rather than developing the ability to think for ourselves.

Today, among the great number of effective educators there are too many who stray from the straight and narrow, especially in colleges and universities, where education too often takes a back seat to political and ideological indoctrination and politically correct policies. Imposing beliefs on students is worse than merely disrespecting the student; it is an outright abandonment of integrity and principle.

Along with an accurate base of knowledge about the country’s founding and history presented to them in schools, the people need to be well informed about current events. Information journalism contains two parts, and they must be kept separate. One is news about events, which must be accurate, honest and objective. The other is opinion, and must be clearly defined and omitted from straight news.

But far too often, opinion and political considerations sneak into news reporting, and also into the selection of what news gets reported and how it is reported, as well as what news does not get coverage. This is like playing golf blindfolded. You might find your driver, your ball and a tee, and you might tee up and actually hit the ball, but after that, you are literally in the dark, depending on the honesty of those around you to accurately describe the situation for you.

The American Left – liberals, progressives, socialists, etc. – has a vision of America that is in many ways sharply at odds with the founding principles. Both beneficial and harmful ideas that the Left pursues are at odds with the ideal of limited government, because using government to force things on the people is the Left’s tool of choice.

Fortunately, there are obstacles to using government to “fundamentally transform the United States of America,” as a former leftist president pledged. These obstacles are difficult to remove, as they should be. So the Left resorts not infrequently to re-interpreting the Constitution and the laws; managing and manipulating the information coming through much of the mass media; and sometimes indoctrinating children.

We all need to remember that worthy and broadly beneficial ideas will sell themselves; they don’t need people to take short cuts or cheat to get them accepted.