I am at once depressed and amazed at the lack of knowledge we are witnessing in America today. I suppose the rise of the Democrat Socialists of America has highlighted how important education is and how much it is in disrepair. Their ignorance of history—especially the horrors of socialist and communist tyranny played out for over a century—is appalling. If ever there was a system of governance that we should avoid, it is one where state power to control how we live, think, and speak must be avoided at all costs. It’s as if a brain parasite is eating away at the ability to think straight. But that presumes one has a foundation of knowledge that enables contrasting the nonsense of socialism with the proven record of a Constitutional Republic in sustaining a free society.
How has this happened? How is it that an entire generation has become so ignorant that they subscribe to a governing system that would have as its central organizing principle the ascendancy of a dominant state that would destroy the Constitution and free-market economy? Sadly, the answer is clear. They know nothing about the Constitution, its underlying principles, or free-market capitalism, which has made us the freest and most prosperous nation in world history.
You can thank the deplorable American teacher unions for conjuring up a national curse that threatens to upend our system of government, our economy, and our freedom. No entity is more corrosive in American education than teacher unions. Putatively organized to protect teachers’ rights and advocate for policies that improve education, they do the opposite. Their focus has been not to educate, but rather to indoctrinate young minds in the ways of the liberal left.
Consider how they have supported efforts to recast American history. Students are no longer taught the genius of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe in crafting the most remarkable governing order ever devised in human history. No, those men are to be regarded as racist, oppressive, and filled with evil intent. Is it any surprise that such thinking has given rise to a generation of empty-headed young idealogues who have followed the siren song of Marx, Lenin, Castro, and Mamdani?
This is not the only spell cast by the teacher unions. They have been prominent in supporting the worst of the feminist movement in America, particularly by advancing “toxic masculinity” as a deterrent to helping boys grow up to be confident men. No, boys must not be encouraged to play contact sports and certainly not to hunt or fish. Likewise, they have supported exposing young children to alternative sexual lifestyles under the guise of normalcy. They are undiminished in their anti-Christian sentiments while elevating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as an article of modern faith. If the teacher unions are known for one thing, it is this. They hate traditional American values with the same fervor as the rising stars in the DSA.
Others have done significant damage to the minds of the DSA cohort. American universities, with some notable exceptions, have been overrun by left-leaning professors who have one thing in common. They have never served in the military, signed the bottom of a paycheck, or engaged in the kind of hard work that has made America great in the past and can again. Moreover, these so-called educators have never read the Federalist Papers, James Madison’s Notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, or The Republic, Plato’s Socratic dialogue concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man. Why read any of that if you intend to pollute the minds of young people to advocate for the destruction of our republic? Perish the thought. Indeed, perish thinking.
Complicit with teacher unions and the corrupt academic establishment in America are left-leaning journalists unconcerned with fact and objectivity. They fuel the handiwork of those who want to see America changed into something it was never designed to be and something rational people have no desire to embrace.
What must be done? Educating must be done. And that will take a genuine revolution by those of us who are distraught with what is occurring in the classrooms and lecture halls of our nation. It won’t happen by magic either. It will require people of goodwill to insist on taking a place in education and academia to right the education system in America, which is foundering in ideological quicksand. It means former military, people with business experience, scientists, engineers, builders, and others with real-world experience who love this country step forward as educators to address the heresies of thought introduced to the youngest among us.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
SCOTT LINGAMFELTER is a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates, a retired U.S. Army colonel, and writer at Copybook Warrior.
