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We Have Failed to Fight Anti-Americanism in Public Education

by Rush Limbaugh - Jul 8,2020

RUSH: You know, I’ve got a couple things in my Stack today to delve into deeply on this whole business of education ’cause it’s been a bugaboo of mine all week.

I have done a lot of thinking. I really think that we lost this culture and political battle to the teachers, teachers union, education. I know the media’s a major factor as well. But there are far more people, kids, human beings in mandatory classrooms starting in grade school and then middle school and high school and college than watch the media every day. I mean, schools have become, the education system, the public schools have become the propagandization and indoctrination center for the American people.

We have two generations of this. It’s why we’ve lost so much of our country. It’s why you have so many educated, quote, unquote, people that have no idea what the founding of this country is. They’ve been taught that the country is villainous, racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, we don’t deserve any of our power, we don’t deserve any of the status as a superpower, and I believe it’s education where we’ve lost. I know it is.

And we weren’t on the field. We weren’t on the field in Hollywood, obviously, pop culture. All of these areas that we ended up losing this public battle for the mind and heart of the average American and the ability for the average American to have great pride and understanding of the country and how it came be to be, how unique, how special, how blessed it is. They haven’t been taught for two generations, figure 40 years, unless they have been homeschooled or gone to certain private schools.

And the Democrats have owned it. The American left has owned it. And I’ll tell you when it began. It began with the multiculturalism curriculum. That’s where it began, the tear-down of the distinct and unique American culture that was the envy of the world, that everybody in the world wanted to live in and be part of. The multicultural curriculum is where the tear-down of America began. And it continues to this day.

Now, there is, because of all this, there is a potential bright side, ladies and gentlemen. If the Democrats are gonna keep the schools closed, and if they succeed in keeping the schools closed because of the virus or what have you, they are willingly not taking advantage of the opportunity to continue the indoctrination and the propagandization of these kids. They’re gonna have to be taught somewhere. There will be an increase in homeschooling. So there is that possibility.

And look, if you’re saying, “Rush, if you think education has caused this much trouble, why are you so insistent that schools be opened?” I hear you. I know. It does appear to be a contradiction. And that is an illustration of how easy it has been for the left to take over public education and turn it into this wildly destructive institution.

Because every parent wants their kid to get the best education possible. And that means getting up every day and going to the finest, best school the parents can either afford or move into the neighborhood of or what have you. Even if what’s taught in these classrooms is tear-down destructive, doesn’t matter, the lure of an education and the need for a good one in order to give a person the best shot at success in life is an overwhelming, overpowering desire and motivation and something that responsible parents consider one of their primary responsibilities.

Even if they know that their kids are being indoctrinated and propagandized, they still want them there. So in one sense it might be good that schools don’t open because it could give us an opportunity to stop temporarily, for however long, the left’s exclusive clutches over kids.

But the president’s out there demanding that the schools open. And for the sake of the economy, for the sake of the divorce rate, for the sake of sanity among parents, they need to open. And for the sake of the children not starving, the schools need to open. It’s a fascinating thing to watch here as it plays out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: What else do I have next on this? Dah, dah, dah… (sigh) I don’t know.

This effort to keep the schools closed is just… How long is it gonna take — and maybe it’s happened. How long is it going to take for the American public to realize how destructive the Democrat Party is? It’s not… You know, you wouldn’t have to say the American left. We don’t have to say the radical Marxists. This is the Democrat Party.

The Democrat Party has become the home of all this radical leftism. The Democrat Party is trying to destroy the U.S. economy. The Democrat Party is trying to screw up the school system. They don’t want professional sports to open up and play. They’re doing everything they can to literally destroy any opportunity for economic stability and growth in this country.

Folks, there’s so little pushback against it, I’m scared. Where is the opposition to this? Is there any anymore, or is everybody just streaming video and tuning out, trying to find the latest horror flick on Netflix? Which, by the way, is Dark. If you’re looking for the latest horror flick on Netflix, it’s Dark. That’s the title of it: Dark. Three seasons.

Supposedly if you watch it, you’ll never be able to have a night without nightmares again. That’s the way they’re promoting it. Is everybody just watching Netflix and thinking, “Eh, it’s the best we can do”? It’s only a matter of time and we’ll find out. David Harsanyi, National Review has a piece, National Review Online: “Destroy the ‘Public’ Education System.”

That is his title.

That’s the objective.

“Destroy the ‘Public’ Education System.”

He says, “It’s largely a left-wing propaganda machine that funds Democratic politicians and entrenches racial segregation. ‘Public’ schools have been a catastrophe for the United States. This certainly isn’t an original assertion, but as we watch thousands of authoritarian brats tearing down the legacies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, it’s more apparent than ever.

“State-run schools have undercut two fundamental conditions of a healthy tolerant society. First, they’ve created millions of civic illiterates who are disconnected from long-held communal values and national identity. Second, they’ve exacerbated the very inequalities that trigger the tearing apart of” our culture.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me repeat this assertion from David Harsanyi. Again, the piece is at National Review Online. The title, the premise is, “Destroy the ‘Public’ Education System.” It’s an advocacy piece for doing that. “State-run schools have undercut two fundamental conditions of a healthy tolerant society. First, they’ve created millions of civic illiterates who are disconnected from long-held communal values and national identity.”

Bingo. Civic illiterates means that they’ve not been taught the founding. They’ve not been taught the greatness of the Founding Fathers. They’ve not been taught a single thing about the truth of the founding and the existence, the greatness, the decency of the United States of America. They are illiterate on it. Yet they think they’ve been told the truth. They have been taught that America’s the home of racism, that it was founded in slavery and racism and bigotry, that it is the home of white supremacy and that it must be torn down.

That’s what they’ve been taught. It’s illiteracy. They’ve been taught it, and now they’re out there as they’ve grown up and become adults, programmed almost like Stepford kids to act on it. Genuine mind-numbed robots who think that they are supremely educated.

So “they’ve created millions of civic illiterates who are disconnected from long-held communal values and national identity. Second, they’ve exacerbated the very inequalities that trigger the tearing apart of,” a culture. They’ve exacerbated the very inequalities, rather than be taught. As I said yesterday, you know what the greatest assault on slavery in the world has been? The United States Constitution. “What do you mean, Rush? The Constitution was written when there was slavery.”

The Constitution provided the road map for getting rid of it. Very simple. It establishes the premise that the individual citizen has primacy over the government and that everybody’s equal, everybody is equal. The United States, as long as there was slavery, was not meeting its promise. The Constitution provided the route to ending slavery at the same time the opportunity to be true and devoted to the Constitution. Had the Constitution not been written, did it not stand for what it stands for, there would not have been a legal premise for ending slavery and a legal premise for the Civil War and so forth.

Now, I realize this assertion is just gonna enrage people who have been taught that the Constitution enshrined slavery, Constitution enshrines white supremacy. Nothing could be further from the truth. And we’re 50 years behind now, two generations, in having this message, having this something be taught.

“If you’re interested in ferreting out ‘systemic racism,’ go to a big-city public-school system. No institution has fought harder to preserve segregated communities than the average teachers’ union. And I don’t mean only in the schools.”

Systemic racism, that’s what they want you to believe the United States is. It was founded with slavery, systemic racism. Systemic racism is found in any institution, including a big city public school system where segregation is sought, where it is achieved, where it is maintained. And segregation is the order of the day now, by orders of the radical left.

“Prosperous Americans already enjoy school choice –” If you’re doing okay financially, you have access to school choice, “and not merely because they can afford private schools. Anyone who has ever tried to buy a suburban home in a major metro area can tell you how acutely school districts influence home prices. Many middle-class and working-class families are priced out of areas with good schools because of inflated home values and high property taxes.”

And you think that’s an accident? It isn’t. It’s a way to keep certain people out. It’s a way to further segregation by making really attractive, decent places unaffordable for the people you don’t want living nearby. And who’s doing this? White liberals with their plantation mentality. “And families who might otherwise choose to live in more diverse areas are kept out because of failing schools.” And a failing school, by the way, is you can’t change it.

A failing school is itself a weapon. A failing school is itself useful to the segregationists. It provides the only option for many Americans who are being artificially priced out of neighborhoods and schools they would prefer to send their kids to. “Even in cities where limited choice exists, most poor parents, typically black or Hispanic, are compelled to send their kids to inferior schools.”

And if you’re gonna be compelled to send your kid to an inferior school, there better be an inferior school around. They have to keep up these inferior schools. They have to prop ’em up so as to send people somewhere. If you’re not gonna let them move where they want to move, if you’re not gonna let ’em live where they want to live, if you’re not gonna let ’em go to the school they want to go to, you gotta have someplace for ’em to go.

“More than a decade ago -” this is Mr. Harsanyi writing here. “More than a decade ago, I sat in a Denver auditorium with a single Hispanic mom who was, quite literally, praying that her kid’s number would be picked in a charter-school lottery. The mother wept as her number was passed over, not because she was a partisan reactionary — she didn’t care about politics — but because she knew her son would now be forced to attend a subpar and unsafe high school rather than one specifically designed to help first-generation kids assimilate.”

You know who loves charter schools? You know who loves school choice? It’s African-Americans and other minorities. And guess who opposes all of that? You’re damn right, their political party, the Democrat Party, the party looking out for ’em. The party’s gonna protect ’em against all these evil white devils practicing racial primacy, systemic racism, and all this stuff.

It’s the Democrat Party that is denying upward mobility opportunity in everything, including education. Harsanyi writes, “It was a heartbreaking scene. And it’s only gotten worse. Colorado has since become a blue state, and Democrats have killed or obstructed numerous school-choice initiatives once supported by moderates in their party. In Denver, schools systems have helped solidify segregated communities, and the achievement gap between white and minority students is one of the worst in the country,” under Democrat control.

Segregation’s been maintained, performance among poor minorities is getting worse because they are going to inferior schools, which are being kept open on purpose. It is a crying shame. This where I believe — if you want to talk about losing the country — and it’s not final yet, of course, but this is where we’ve lost so much ground is in the education system.

A lot of people, “Nah, it’s the media, Rush. If we had control of the media, we could fix it.” The media is a crucial element of it, too, I know, but education largely dominates.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’ll tell you something, folks. The truth of the matter is that the embedded nature of the left-wing Democrat Party in big school districts is now so normalized that parents don’t even say a word about it. When their kids are adversely affected by it. When their kids come home and tell ’em, “Hey, Mom, I didn’t have to take the test today because teachers gave us the answers to the test.”

When the teachers are taking history class and turning it into an anti-Republican hour, an anti-Trump or anti-George W. Bush hour, and then it’s a history class so the students are given the answers to a history class that’s never taught, the kids come home and tell the parents, the parents don’t say a word about it ’cause they’re afraid if they go to the school and complain that it’s gonna be taken out on their kids in bad grades, and so it just happens. The embedded liberal nature of big school districts is so normalized now, people so expect it that parents don’t say a word about it.

Look at it this way. A lot of people, a lot of parents can buy virtually anything from anywhere in the world because of worldwide economics, but they cannot use their own tax dollars to buy their kids an education that they want, an education that aligns with their values. It’s a crapshoot. The one thing they ought to be able to buy with their tax dollars is the kind of education their kids get, and they can’t do it. And they now just have come to accept it.

So they look for alternatives. Rather than reforming the public school system, they look for alternatives — charter schools, private schools, taking out big-time loans to afford all of that, moving, whatever. Did you see a recent study found that 60% of Americans could not pass the U.S. citizenship test? Sixty percent, folks! Do you know how easy the citizenship test is? It’s one of the easiest tests anybody could ever take. Sixty percent of people born in this country could not pass it.

People 65 or older scored best, 74% correctly answering at least six out of the 10 questions in this test. Of those 45 and younger, only 19% passed. And the younger the test takers, the less likely they were to pass. Sixty percent of the people that took the basic citizenship test didn’t know which countries their grandparents fought in World War II. Only 24% knew why American colonists had fought the British. I mean, folks, it’s scary.

Here we go, Olivia in Charleston, South Carolina, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Mr. Rush. Good to be here.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I hope you’re feeling better as well. I am a public school teacher. I teach science. And I just recently started my master’s program. And as you’re talking about education and how it’s being embedded, I’m currently in a diversity class, and I just yesterday finished writing a paper —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Hold, ho, ho, ho whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. You’re saying things I need to ask you questions about. You recently started your master’s program. You’re teaching science.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: And now you’re embedded in a diversity class. What’s that?

CALLER: Well, my degree is gonna be in instructional coaching, so I desire to teach other teachers how to teach well. And I’m about finished with my program. I’ll finish in December, and this class is —

RUSH: Wait a minute. So you have to take this diversity class to know how to teach women and then how to teach men and then how to teach drunks and then how to teach sober people, how to teach Hispanics, how to each African-Americans. Is that what you mean?

CALLER: Well, the diversity class goes over white privilege. I just finished my white privilege model.

RUSH: Oh, for crying out loud. Oh, for crying out loud. You had to learn about white privilege. And were you guilty of it? Were you told that in this class?

CALLER: I was. Every article and every textbook I have read is anti-American and anti-white. And I just finished writing a paper in which I was told to discuss how I came to know my racial being and how I came to understand my race.

RUSH: And you gotta go through this in order to get your master’s?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: How did you come to understand your race?

CALLER: Well, my understanding, I’m a Christian, and I understand that God created from one man and that it’s a social construct, and, you know, I’m not gonna apologize for how God made me and I’m not gonna expect my students to apologize for how God made them. They had no control over that. And to suggest that I should be guilty of what my ancestors have done, I mean, I had no choice in that, and that’s wrong —

RUSH: Wait. I’ve got a story in the Stack today. Black Lives Matter leadership person, somebody in the upper echelon says that the white race is – I gotta find it here. I don’t want to have to paraphrase it. The white race is defective because there’s not enough melanin — yeah, here it is. Black Lives Matter leader Yusra Khogali: white people are genetic defects because of lack of melanin.

CALLER: Well, and that’s with this professor with this paper I actually wrote — ’cause I’m a science teacher, and so I explored, you know, what the scientists say about it. And I went through and went through publication after publication about how, you know, science has proven that there’s not a significant genetic difference to say that there are all of these different races. And, you know, I went through and I pulled all the melanin science —

RUSH: Of course there isn’t, but you’re not gonna get your master’s if you run around saying that.

CALLER: Well, no. However, I feel like there are — I mean, as a public school teacher I know that we are out there, we want to teach our children truth, and we want to teach them to be American citizens and to love their country. We’re a small number, and so I decided that this was gonna be something I was gonna confidently stand up against her. I was not gonna apologize for being white. I was not gonna apologize for being born with two parents. And because I don’t expect that of my children —

RUSH: You know, everybody is. It’s just some people don’t know them. But everybody’s born with two parents. I mean, even one of them was in a test tube. Everybody has two parents. You have to acknowledge that in this stupid class? This is incredible. Anyway, maybe you should see if you get some melanin injections out there that last just long enough to convince the people running your diversity class that you’re taking it all seriously.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, I’m just telling you, if we had been able to maintain any kind of order over the public school system the last 40 to 50 years, we wouldn’t have pushed out all of these obliterating idiots who now have jobs as journalists and they don’t know history, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re pushing the hate-America, hate-Trump agenda. It all starts with the schools. Every single bit of this starts with the schools. And we haven’t been players in the last 35, 40 years, and we’re paying the price for this.


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