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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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by Steve Farrell
It has been said that the most effective way to conquer a man is to capture his mind. There is no slave more devoted, no disciple more dedicated than one who has become completely obsessed with the vision of what he considers to be a great idea. (1) Thus, education has long been a proper object of concern among both freemen and Statist, among both the good and the evil. Most everyone senses that what a child is taught in his youth has an enormous prospect for good or ill in individuals and in civilizations. In 386 BC, Plato laid out one the most complete and oft studied handbooks on communist totalitarianism in his work Republic. A grand key of successfully implementing the plan was education. Society, he taught, must be remade from a clean slate: But how? "All above ten years of age in the city must be taken out into the country, and all the children among them (infants through age ten) must be taken charge of (by the state) and kept outside their present surroundings and the ways of life led by their parents, and the reformers must bring them up in their own ways and customs." (2) One central teaching facility, with a curriculum designed by the omnipotent elitists of the state, bereft of parental influence (at least parents of the old school of thought), has been the plan since the beginning for designing men. Lenin bragged: "Give me a child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevist forever." Adolph Hitler declared: "In my great educative work, I am beginning with the young." And Khrushchev wrote: "Like every other form of state-directed activity in the Soviet Union, education is conceived as a weapon serving the interests of the Communist Party and dedicated to a single objective -- the victory of the Soviet system. (3) Karl Marx, setting the modern stage for men like Lenin, Hitler, and Khrushchev outlined a ten-point plan to be used against the most advanced capitalist nations to bring them to their knees. Plank ten: "Free education in public schools." (4) He knew, the phrase 'free education' would be attractive, but deceptive and dishonest as well. What is really meant is the payment of federal taxes by you and me (a method of funding central control), and the granting of federal subsidies with grasping claws, for state and local schools (a method of enacting central control). In America, Communist Party USA Founder William Z. Foster, wrote in 1932:
Such is the final aim of free and federal education! Not surprisingly, freedom lovers and wise ecclesiastical leaders have long been the opponents of federal education schemes. The Republican Party, that party for which I have most often cast my vote, has often been in the forefront of calls for the abolition of federal aid to education. This resistance peaked with the election of Ronald Reagan, the President who got elected on the pledge to abolish the Department of Education. He appointed T. H. Bell to do the job, but the job was never done. In fact, before Reagan departed, the Department of Education decreed there was a problem, with American education and the problem must be solved with higher federal goals and more federal money. Under the Republican leadership of President George Bush and his Secretary of Education William Bennett, the goals became more defined, and the Federal government was once again to become the savior of our children, and of the United States into the 21st Century. Ever since then, Republicans still point to federal education schemes, the Democratic Party and the 'nationalization of education' czar Bill Clinton as the source of our continued grief over our dumbed-down pro-socialist school systems, but they really don't mean it. The fact is, as Ramesh Ponnuru, revealed in his November 22, 1999 National Review feature story State of the Conservatives: We are all Clintonites Now, Republicans in record numbers, including candidate George W. Bush, are abandoning ship on what was just a few years ago, standard faire, inflexible platform principles. He points out: "It was a Republican, Bill Paxon, who first proposed that the federal government finance the hiring of 100,000 teachers." Now the Republican Party, rather than admit and back away from a socialist idea that they (not Bill Clinton) generated, climb upon their white horse, pretending to cut a favorable deal for our children and the states by adding a flex feature to federal educational aid. Incredibly, they create the problem and then they champion the useless compromise, a compromise, which has never worked and never will, for the subsidizer, sooner or later takes all. Footnotes: 1. Skousen, W. Cleon., The Naked Capitalist, Salt Lake City, UT, W. Cleon Skousen 1970, p. 25. 2. Plato., Great Dialogues of Plato: A Modern Translation, by W. H. D. Rouse, New York and Scarborough, Ontario, Mentor Books 1956, p. 341. 3. Benson, Ezra Taft., An Enemy Hath Done This, Salt Lake City, UT, Parliament Publishers 1969, pgs. 229-230. 4. Marx, Karl., Communist Manifesto. 5. Foster, William Z., Toward a Soviet America, Balboa Island, CA, Elgin Publication 1961 (Original Publication 1932) p. 316.
NewsMax contributing columnist Steve Farrell is the former managing editor of Right magazine, a widely published research writer, a former Air Force Communications Security manager, and a graduate student in constitutional law. Have a comment? Contact Steve at Cyours76@yahoo.com |
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