“Atheists and radical church-state separatists have taken particular offense to the continued uttering of the Pledge of Allegiance. To these individuals, the words “under God” have no place in the public square, even when utterances are voluntary in nature.

Now, there’s a new epicenter in the debate over the Pledge. Following the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the University of Connecticut’s interim athletic director, Paul Pendergast, decided to add the recitation as a viable way for individuals to remember both the nation and U.S. troops.

Following his decision, the Pledge was first uttered after a home football game on September 16 and the response was so positive that it was extended to all football and basketball games.

Geno Auriemma, UConn‘s women’s basketball coach, agrees with the decision to include it and has been open about his support for saying the Pledge. ”It’s like anything else, you’re gonna have people that complain about it and people that love it,” he said at a press conference last week. “And then you have the wackos that say ‘well we shouldn’t bring God into this,‘ because you have to say ’one nation under God’ right?”

The decision, which has now led to the Pledge being uttered before most athletic games, is angering fans who believe the action violates the nation’s separation of church and state sentiment. Others claim that it puts non-American athletes in an unfair position — even though these individuals are obviously studying on U.S. soil and can opt out of pledging any allegiance to the country.

Some legal experts, though they may personally disagree, claim that the university is within legal bounds — so long as the pledge remains optional.

Source

Hearing someone else say something patriotic is going to do some terrible damage to you? What rubbish! This is just the “hate America” brigade at work.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Tis the season for buying books for your loved ones and as always the The New York Times Sunday Book Review is here to help. And as always the Sunday Book Review is there to help us understand that anything from the right side of the aisle, especially the Tea Party, is to be put in the worst possible light at all times.

So, what is it this time? Book reviewer Kevin Boyle lets us all know that he thinks that the folks of the Tea Party movement are somehow just like the Ku Klux Klan. Nice, huh? That’ll get the holiday season started right.

In his Sunday book review Boyle reviews a pair of books actually on the KKK — meaning that for the first time bringing up the KKK in a New York Times article isn’t wholly gratuitous. So he has that going for him, which is nice.

But what was totally gratuitous was the way Boyle opened his review, slamming by inference the whole of the Tea Party and making of it a the modern day KKK.

Imagine a political movement created in a moment of terrible anxiety, its origins shrouded in a peculiar combination of manipulation and grass-roots mobilization, its ranks dominated by Christian conservatives and self-proclaimed patriots, its agenda driven by its members’ fervent embrace of nationalism, nativism and moral regeneration, with more than a whiff of racism wafting through it.

No, not that movement. The one from the 1920s, with the sheets and the flaming crosses and the ludicrous name meant to evoke a heroic past. The Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, they called it. And for a few years it burned across the nation, a fearsome thing to behold.

Yeah, cuz today’s era and the Tea Party is so dang similar to the KKK and the era of the 1920s, right? What is a more natural fit, anyway? What left-winger could doubt Boyle’s hatemongering?

But this is obviously absurd. Even if you accepted that some Tea Partiers are racists — and there is not a scintilla of proof of this — comparing the Tea Party to the KKK is as idiotic as comparing the local town grouch to Hitler!

Of course, unlike the KKK, the Tea Party movement has precisely nothing to do with racism. So, there is no comparison at all between the two groups. The Tea Party movement is one based wholly on public policy. Quite unlike the KKK the Tea Party has not tried to cloak itself in racial purity or religion. In fact there isn’t anything in the Tea Party even based on social issues. The Tea Party has almost to a group rejected social issues because their point has been mostly fiscal policy and they feel that adding social issues to their operations would dilute the message and make of it just another vaguely conservative movement with no central focus.

In the end, though, Boyle’s review is made less for the back hand to the Tea Party. It wasn’t necessary and he wasted two paragraphs of precious column space doing it.

His ending wasn’t so hot, either. At the end of his piece he makes another idiotic, childish, and ill-fitting comparison. He compares past eras of social strife to today’s “modern anti-Islam bigots.”

At the end of the book, though, Baker steps back from her texts. Suddenly her analysis becomes more pointed. Yes, the Klan had a very short life. But it has to be understood, she contends, as of a piece with other moments of fevered religious nationalism, from the anti-Catholic riots of the antebellum era to modern anti-Islam bigots. Indeed, earlier this year, Herman Cain declared that he wouldn’t be comfortable with a Muslim in his cabinet. It’s tempting to see those moments as Pegram does the Klan: desperate, even pitiful attempts to stop the inevitable broadening of American society. But Baker seems closer to the mark when she says that there’s a dark strain of bigotry and exclusion running through the national experience. Sometimes it seems to weaken. And sometimes it spreads, as anyone who reads today’s papers knows, fed by our fears and our hatreds.

This is all little but childish, partisan, facile blather. Once again Boyle and the author he’s reviewing make themselves look foolish. To compare what weak “anti-Islam bigotry” we see today — after Muslims killed thousands of Americans in a religious-based jihad — to the slave era, the Civil War, Jim Crow South, anti-Catholic fervor, or any other past era of bigotry is just plain nonsensical. In those other eras ethnic strife ended up killing people not to mention characterizing whole segments of the population, whether it be Irish, blacks, or Catholics, as the evil “other,” ostracizing them from good jobs and education. But today there is NO perceivable discrimination against Muslims in America and no crimes against them.

Unfortunately, I guess we can’t expect anything more than grubbing around in false stereotypes of their own making at The New York Times, even in book reviews.

An elementary school in Fort Collins, Colorado came under fire last week for having placed in the school a smaller sized Saudi Arabian flag in a higher, more prominent position than the flag of the United States. Many locals called this a disrespectful display and even wondered if it was part of some effort at anti-American indoctrination.

Colorado blog Greeley Report first noted the flag controversy by posting a photograph of the lobby display calling the positioning of the two flags “an outrage” and saying how the disrespect to the U.S. flag “shows how the indoctrination process continues without your consent or knowledge.”

Bauder Elementary School Principal, Brian Carpenter, told the Greeley Gazette that this was simply a careless mistake. Not only was nothing meant by the placement of the flags, but the matter was quickly corrected to have the U.S. flag hang higher than the others in the lobby.

But what was the Saudi flag even doing in the school in the first place?

According to the school, the purpose of the international flags is to recognize the nationality of the many students in the school who come from other countries. Carpenter said the school has many parents from other countries who attend Colorado State University… Carpenter said the school has approximately 20 other flags besides the U.S. flag throughout the building.

There doesn’t seem to be any reason to imagine that this school had any intention of demoting the importance of Old Glory, especially to give the Saudi flag a place of higher prominence. I see no reason to think that the school is engaging in any direct anti-Americanism.

However, there is still a problem here. The whole reason these flags of other nations were there in the first place is something that as a culture we should stop doing. This whole idiotic celebration of everyone’s “heritage” is a dangerous and self-destructive habit that we should end forthwith.

Over the last few years many European nations like France and England have seen their cities burning to the ground in riots caused by the same idiotic indulgence in multiculturalism as being displayed in the school in Fort Collins.

There is absolutely no reason whatever to have flags of other nations hanging in an elementary school. We are Americans, not Saudis or Mexicans. The more we push this unhealthy focus on distant heritage in the classroom the more we risk diluting any connection our young citizens have with this country.

There is nothing wrong with being interested in genealogy and family history, of course. But these interests should be the subject of things better done at home or at the very least if it has to be a part of the school curriculum as a single classroom project that can be done once and then left behind while other subjects are pursued.

There should be no large, permanent displays of other nation’s flags and other nationalities in our schools.

“Officials in this city where Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson are buried are considering limits on downtown flag-flying, including the Confederate flag, angering defenders of the divisive Southern symbol.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans organized a rally ahead of a scheduled public hearing Thursday night and an expected vote.

Officials in this college town of 7,000 insist the flag limits are not aimed at the Confederate flag. The proposal would limit the use of downtown poles to the flying of the U.S., Virginia and Lexington flags. It would not restrict the display of the Confederate flag elsewhere in the city.

“They can carry their flags anywhere they want,” City Manager T. Jon Ellestad. The city received hundreds of complaints the last time Confederate flags were planted in holders on lights poles, in January to mark Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday.

The NAACP launched an economic boycott of South Carolina in 1999 about the Confederate flag that flew atop the Statehouse dome and in the chambers of the House and Senate. A compromise in 2000 moved the flag to a monument outside the Statehouse.

This is not the first time Lexington, is at the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley, has clashed with the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The city attempted nearly 20 years ago to ban the display of the Confederate flag during a parade honoring Jackson. The American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully defended the group’s bid to carry the flag, is closely watching this dispute from afar.

“City council could live to regret this ordinance, as it imposes unusually restrictive limits on the use of the light poles,” said Kent Willis, the ACLU’s executive director in Virginia. “Sometime in the future when city officials want to use those light poles to promote a special event they may find themselves handcuffed by their own lawmaking.”

Source

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

The main thing that the article below is weak on is pointing out that many things considered Rightist today (such as patriotism) were strongly Leftist in the prewar era — and in fact continued to be so until some time after the war. JFK’s famous quotation from Pericles (“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country) was probably the last gasp of genuine patriotism on the American Left.

And Leftists of all sorts were great advocates of eugenics in Hitler’s day. And even Karl Marx was a great antisemite. Hitler was in fact a fairly mainstream leftist by the standards of his time. He just applied German thoroughness to Leftist ideas

The author below does make one slight mention of it but one of the most damning things about the American Left of the prewar era is that they were in fact a major source of Hitler’s ideas. I set out the details of that at some length here.

The article below is unreferenced but my monograph on the subject should supply all the references anyone needs –JR

By Bill Flax

“The line between fascism and Fabian socialism is very thin. Fabian socialism is the dream. Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator.” John T. Flynn

Numerous commentators have raised alarming comparisons between America’s recent economic foibles and Argentina’s fall “from breadbasket to basket case.” The U.S. pursues a similar path with her economy increasingly ensnared under the growing nexus of government control. Resources are redistributed for vote-buying welfare schemes, patronage style earmarks, and graft by unelected bureaucrats, quid pro quo with unions, issue groups and legions of lobbyists.

In Argentina, everyone acknowledges that fascism, state capitalism, corporatism – whatever – reflects very leftwing ideology. Eva Peron remains a liberal icon. President Obama’s Fabian policies (Keynesian economics) promise similar ends. His proposed infrastructure bank is just the latest gyration of corporatism. Why then are fascists consistently portrayed as conservatives?

In the Thirties, intellectuals smitten by progressivism considered limited, constitutional governance anachronistic. The Great Depression had apparently proven capitalism defunct. The remaining choice had narrowed between communism and fascism. Hitler was about an inch to the right of Stalin. Western intellectuals infatuated with Marxism thus associated fascism with the Right.

Later, Marxists from the Frankfurt School popularized this prevailing sentiment. Theodor Adorno in The Authoritarian Personality devised the “F” scale to demean conservatives as latent fascists. The label “fascist” has subsequently meant anyone liberals seek to ostracize or discredit.

Fascism is an amorphous ideology mobilizing an entire nation (Mussolini, Franco and Peron) or race (Hitler) for a common purpose. Leaders of industry, science, education, the arts and politics combine to shepherd society in an all encompassing quest. Hitler’s premise was a pure Aryan Germany capable of dominating Europe.

While he feinted right, Hitler and Stalin were natural bedfellows. Hitler mimicked Lenin’s path to totalitarian tyranny, parlaying crises into power. Nazis despised Marxists not over ideology, but because they had betrayed Germany in World War I and Nazis found it unconscionable that German communists yielded fealty to Slavs in Moscow.

The National Socialist German Workers Party staged elaborate marches with uniformed workers calling one another “comrade” while toting tools the way soldiers shoulder rifles. The bright red Nazi flag symbolized socialism in a “classless, casteless” Germany (white represents Aryanism). Fascist central planning was not egalitarian, but it divvied up economic rewards very similarly to communism: party membership and partnering with the state.

Where communists generally focused on class, Nazis fixated on race. Communists view life through the prism of a perpetual workers’ revolution. National Socialists used race as a metaphor to justify their nation’s engagement in an existential struggle.

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we mourn our losses. We mourn the loss of fellow Americans who died at the hands of a sworn enemy and we mourn the loss of those in the ranks of our military who have since fought a righteous fight to protect us from that enemy.

In a weekly radio address, President Barack Obama called for unity as the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 draws near: “We were united,” said the President, “and the outpouring of generosity and compassion reminded us that in times of challenge, we Americans move forward together, as one people.” Obama’s words are a brazen reminder of how far apart on ideas and ideals most Americans are from the current government. Americans recognize that it is the Obama government itself that has created “times of great challenge” that threaten our nation’s safety and sovereignty.

On 9/11, terrorists attacked our people and our nation. Knowing who the enemy was, and still is, is itself a uniting force in the battle to protect this great nation. Once in office and well-knowing that extremist Muslim terrorists were behind the attacks, overt efforts were made to diffuse public awareness. The Obama administration attempted to rename terror attacks as “man-caused disasters” and classify the global war on terror as “Overseas Contingency Operations.” Failure to identify one’s enemy unifies no one. 9/11 survivors well know who their attackers were. Osama Bin Laden proclaimed on video tape that his terrorist group Al Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks.

The Obama White House has issued guidelines for the 9/11 ceremonies. Al Qaeda’s threat is to be downplayed and the impact of America’s 9/11 tragedy is to be diminished by equating it with all other terrorists’ attacks globally. What will go unmentioned by Obama is that the Muslim Brotherhood, that is making power gains in Egypt and the Middle East, is allied with Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the jihadists. An earlier affront to and “de-unification” of the American people came when Obama tried to transport accused terrorists, housed at Guantanamo Bay, into our American cities and courts to grant them the same Constitutional rights allowed for U.S. citizens. Americans stood “united” and stopped the outrageous proceedings by Obama and his Justice Department. The first step in Obama’s reunification should be to call the enemy what it is — terrorists.

What cannot be overstated in the healing and reunification of America, after the 9/11 attacks, was the importance of prayer. Prayer and the call to God to protect and guide the nation were at the heart, the core, of bringing Americans together with compassion and determination. This nation was founded on Judeo-Christian faith and principles. Today, a reported 95% of Americans are people of faith in various religions. Yet, prayer and clergy have been banished from the 9/11 state run day of remembrance by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. By eliminating God, the state steps into the role of God with its ceremonies devoid of prayer. Politicos will direct attention to themselves as the guiding lights of national healing, looking to reflect a god-like glow as benevolent caretakers of the masses.

Historically, Socialist/Fascist regimes that diminished God and circumvented clergy began in seemingly benign ways. Today, faith is under siege in America. (See: Christian Purge – The Obama Factor: http://darwinsracists.com/book/?p=155). Politicians supplanting prayer with their own verbiage and public spectrum, lessens us as a nation. A major factor in America’s exceptionalism is that America is the preeminent nation in the world that turns to God and prayer for healing and guidance. America may elect an Obama or a Bloomberg, but it does not worship them. The current American President and Mayor of New York will ceremoniously memorialize “sacred” ground and memories of our lost as long as God is excluded despite the fact that “sacred” by its very definition means “connected with God.” To misconstrue an ambiguous moment of silence as “sacred” is itself a sacrilegious dodge. Public office is transient and any glory derived from it is short-lived. These politicians may learn that what really “unites” Americans is political leaders going against the people’s will by imposing state censure on religious expression. The ban on clergy should immediately be reversed.

Presidents nor mayors can separate God from His people. So, there will be prayer, there will be open tribute to their Creator by the faithful across the nation for the healing and “unifying” of this great nation on this important day of remembrance. May God bless the survivors, the families, our first responders and our military warriors. May God bless America as long as its people know that those blessings come from the Creator God and not from transitory politicians.

“Dawn Kamin said she would expect opposition to the flying of an American flag in more liberal parts of the country – but not the suburbs of Memphis, Tenn. Kamin said she was ordered to remove an American flag she had posted outside her optometry office.

According to a letter sent to Dr. Kamin, the flag pole and the flag violated the bylaws of the business condominium group. She was told to take down the flag or face the consequences.

However, a spokesman did release an email to Fox News Radio noting that the Corporate Center Condominiums, run by Tesco Properties, prominently flies two American flags. “Placing additional flags in common areas in order to bring greater attention to a particular business is inappropriate,” the spokesman wrote.

Kamin said she was flying the flag to honor the military. “I have family in the military and we have really become aware of our freedoms and what our soldiers do for us,” she said.

Kamin demanded to see the business condominium’s bylaws, but she said so far Tesco Properties has not complied. “They didn’t give me anything in writing,” she said. “All they gave me were threats.”

Source

A nasty lot by the sound of it.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Speaking to reporters tonight following an event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Texas Governor Rick Perry appeared to question President Obama’s patriotism. In response to a question from Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal, who asked Perry if he was suggesting that Obama didn’t love this country, Perry replied: ” I dunno, you need to ask him.” Watch it:

Here’s the video

Text via ABC News

“I think you want a president who is passionate about America — that’s in love with America,” Perry said during a visit to the Iowa State Fair on Monday.

At a Republican Party event Monday night, a reporter asked Perry whether he was suggesting that President Obama does not love America.

“You need to ask him,” Perry responded. “I’m saying, you’re a good reporter, go ask him”

Why would anyone question Obama’s patriotism? Just because he refused to wear a flag pin as a Senator, refused to put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem, bows to every foreign leader, apologized to the rest of world, has a wife who had never been proud of America before, increases the power and spending of the federal government, and wants to “fundamentally transform America”, among others, is no reason to think that he’s not patriotic.

And, jeez, it’s not like Obama has called people who won’t pay more in taxes unpatriotic. That would be wrong. And he certainly hasn’t questioned the patriotism of everyone who doesn’t agree with him. But, hey, Obama’s just like Lincoln!

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

On Thursday, I visited a new, high-tech factory in Michigan where workers are helping America lead the way in a growing clean energy industry.

And wouldn’t be able to do it without the $300 million in Stimulus grants.

Many Americans are hurting badly right now. Many have been unemployed for too long. Putting these men and women back to work, and growing wages for everyone, has got to be our top priority.

What he means is that it has to be Someone Else’s top priority, because he has other things to do.

But lately, the response from Washington has been partisanship and gridlock that’s only undermined public confidence and hindered our efforts to grow the economy.

So while there’s nothing wrong with our country, there is something wrong with our politics, and that’s what we’ve got to fix. Because we know there are things Congress can do, right now, to get more money back in your pockets, get this economy growing faster, and get our friends and neighbors back to work.

Got that? Because the GOP won’t give him everything he wants, he blames the politics, rather than the same old tired ideas that have so far failed to stimulate the economy. Ideas like

The payroll tax cut that put $1,000 back in the average family’s pocket this year? Let’s extend it. Construction workers who’ve been jobless since the housing boom went bust? Let’s put them back to work rebuilding America. Let’s cut red tape in the patent process so entrepreneurs can get good ideas to market more quickly. Let’s finish trade deals so we can sell more American-made goods around the world. Let’s connect the hundreds of thousands of brave Americans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan to businesses that need their incredible skills and talents.

The payroll tax didn’t work before. We don’t need to repave roads and paint bridges, besides the fact that these are short term jobs, and wasn’t that what a big chunk of the Stimulus was about? Patents? Gotta have people to have the buying power first for those products. Same with trade deals. Sure, we want those “brave Americans” (can’t he even say “soldiers”?) to have jobs. There have to be jobs first. I’m highly confident that the thing about the troops was thrown in simply as political fodder.

But we can no longer let partisan brinksmanship get in our way – the idea that making it through the next election is more important than making things right. That’s what’s holding us back – the fact that some in Congress would rather see their opponents lose than see America win.

And there you have it: since the GOP isn’t buying into and passing Obama’s worthless ideas, they are unpatriotic. There’s a reason I have been referring to him as NMP (not my president) Obama or simply Obama, Barack, Barry, Chump, or others: he is not worthy of being the President of the United States Of America. He’s simply the head of the DNC, and is part of the problem, and will never be part of the solution. He’s an embarrassment, still completely unqualified, and still acts like he did in 2008, when he was running for the office. Completely partisan, attacking those who have different ideas. January 2013 can’t come soon enough, when we watch him sulk off into the sunset.

The USA Today (and, most interestingly, many other media outlets) notices that Obama is urging citizen rebellion against Congress.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

The fact that Van Loon used the German term Weltbuergertum for the concept was unremarkable to me at the time as I already had a useful command of German by then but on thinking about it in more recent times it seemed obvious that the idea must go back to those two second-rate German philosophers, Karl Mark and his mentor, GWF Hegel. And in Mein Kampf Hitler also describes himself as originally being a Weltbuerger — though he changed his tune on that later, of course

On checking, however, I found that the idea actually goes further back again — to the classical German poet JW von Goethe. So the idea obviously has some simplistic appeal and now seems to be standard Leftist gospel. To the Left of today, patriotism is absurd and contemptible. Democrat politicians have to pretend otherwise in a country as patriotic as the USA but elsewhere on the Left — particularly in the educational system — Weltbuergertum is the only respectable stance, though not usually by that name

And as a means of avoiding war etc., the idea does have some appeal. Where it falls down, however, is in the composition of the world as we actually have it. Do I want to be a citizen of a polity that includes the corrupt and bloodthirsty tyrannies of Africa, the negligible civil liberties of China or the starvation of North Korea — not to mention the corruption and hate of the Arab world?

I can quite cheerfully imagine myself as a citizen of a polity that comprised all the English-speaking democracies but until the rest of the world reaches that standard of civility and respect for the individual, leave me out of it.

Walter Williams has some good comments on the matter below — JR

The National Assessment of Educational Progress reports that only 1 in 4 high-school seniors scored at least “proficient” in knowledge of U.S. citizenship. Civics and history were American students’ worst subjects. Professor Damon said that for the past 10 years, his Stanford University research team has interviewed broad cross sections of American youths about U.S. citizenship. Here are some typical responses: “We just had (American citizenship) the other day in history. I forget what it was.” Another said, “Being American is not really special. … I don’t find being an American citizen very important.” Another said, “I don’t want to belong to any country. It just feels like you are obligated to this country. I don’t like the whole thing of citizen. … It’s like, citizen, no citizen; it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s, like, to be a good citizen — I don’t know, I don’t want to be a citizen. … It’s stupid to me.”

A law professor, whom Damon leaves unnamed, shares this vision in a recent book: “Longstanding notions of democratic citizenship are becoming obsolete. … American identity is unsustainable in the face of globalization.” Instead of commitment to a nation-state, “loyalties … are moving to transnational communities defined by many different ways: by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, and sexual orientation.” This law professor’s vision is shared by many educators who look to “global citizenship” as the proper aim of civics instruction, de-emphasizing attachment to any particular country, such as the United States, pointing out that our primary obligation should be to the universal ideals of human rights and justice. To be patriotic to one’s own country is seen as suspect because it may turn into a militant chauvinism or a dangerous “my country, right or wrong” vision.

The ignorance about our country is staggering. According to one survey, only 28 percent of students could identify the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Only 26 percent of students knew that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights. Fewer than one-quarter of students knew that George Washington was the first president of the United States.

Discouraging young Americans from identifying with their country and celebrating our traditional American quest for liberty and equal rights removes the most powerful motivation to learn civics and U.S. history. After all, Damon asks, “why would a student exert any effort to master the rules of a system that the student has no respect for and no interest in being part of? To acquire civic knowledge as well as civic virtue, students need to care about their country.”

Ignorance and possibly contempt for American values, civics and history might help explain how someone like Barack Obama could become president of the United States. At no other time in our history could a person with longtime associations with people who hate our country become president. Obama spent 20 years attending the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s hate-filled sermons, which preached that “white folks’ greed runs a world in need,” called our country the “US of KKK-A” and asked God to “damn America.” Obama’s other America-hating associates include Weather Underground Pentagon bomber William Ayers and Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

The fact that Obama became president and brought openly Marxist people into his administration doesn’t say so much about him as it says about the effects of decades of brainwashing of the American people by the education establishment, media and the intellectual elite.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here