In recent columns, this writer has sought to address the root causes of the nation’s increasing polarization. One of the foremost of those is an education system that turns out generations of weak-thinking Americans whose command of the nation’s founding documents, civic structures, and historical foundations is virtually nonexistent — even as those same Americans are well-schooled in the nation’s shortcomings. If this effort is allowed to continue, our status as a constitutional republic and what is often referred to as the world’s “last best hope for mankind” is seriously threatened. Nationally televised congressional hearings would be a great way to begin shedding light on a contemptible dynamic that can no longer be blamed on incompetence.
               It is nothing less than a concerted and coordinated effort to “fundamentally transform” the nation, and it must be exposed.
               Yet there can be no mistaking the reality that the devolution of our education system has root causes as well. The failure factories otherwise known as public schools created — and nurtured — by the Democrat Education Complex are far easier to maintain in a disintegrating culture. There is a level of legitimacy in the all-too-familiar teachers’ lament that some children are “unteachable,” and that assertion is almost invariably accompanied by the reason for it: Most of these children live in circumstances that could be charitably described as “chaotic” at best — and wholly removed from anything resembling civilized norms at worst.
               How did we get to that place? Before the emergence of LBJ’s Great Society, Aid to Families with Dependent Children  (AFDC) was reserved for widows, as a means of funding once-married women who had lost the primary male supporter of the family. In the 1960s, Johnson and Congress changed the qualifications: Any household where there was no male family head present became eligible for taxpayer subsidies.
               The late Patrick Moynihan predicted the calamity that would follow, especially among blacks, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate has now reached 77%, and single-parent families are mostly headed by women. Moynihan was criticized for being racist, and for assuming middle class values “are the correct values for everyone in America,” as civil rights leader Floyd McKissick asserted at the time...  

~The Patriot Post  

             In a display of just how dumbed down American students’ civic awareness has become, thousands of students across America walked out of their schools Wednesday, using their First Amendment rights to protest against Second Amendment rights. The Leftmedia coverage has been fawning, to say the least. These kids are viewed with reverence as sages possessing moral authority that cannot be questioned. By contrast, little attention is given to the students who did not walk out, or gathered to show support for our constitutional rights. Spurred on by leftists, however, student protesters are being used as pawns in a play designed to shame conservative lawmakers for not creating more laws to limit the Second Amendment.
               A string of Democrats, including Nancy Pulosi and commie-Bernie Sanders, addressed the crowd of students in DC, which speaks volumes about the political agenda. But remember: Democrats don’t care about children unless they can serve the leftist agenda.
               Not that students are admitting it. “It’s not Republican or Democrat; it’s about keeping people safe,” said a 16-year-old student from Manhattan. “We know what we want from our society: to have less guns and, at some point, no guns at all.”
               There you go — safe spaces and gun confiscation. Unfortunately for this naive young lady, those two are mutually exclusive. Liberty isn’t defended with a smart phone and poster-board sign.
               In related news, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered all armed officers removedfrom New York City schools. You know, because he cares about kids.
               Capitulating to the misguided and ill-informed sentiments of a youthful mob is not how wise legislation is enacted — never mind how constitutional rights are defended. Rather it is often the means by which nefarious individuals manipulate the masses in designed efforts to promote their own totalitarian agendas.

Some footnotes.

First, some inconvenient stats, including that violent crime is down and has been for decades, and there is not an epidemic of school shootings.
               Second, the House voted 407-10 Wednesday to pass the Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence Act of 2018. According to The Washington Free Beacon, “The bill would provide new grants to train law enforcement and school personnel on the warning signs for school violence and how to intervene to prevent that violence. It would also provide grants for anonymous alert systems as well as funding for advanced door locks, further cooperation between schools and local law enforcement, and funding for crisis intervention teams.”
               Third, there have been no marches protesting the slaughter of innocent men, women and children worldwide by radical Islamists — by whatever deadly means they use. That includes the 49 murdered by a jihadi in Orlando in 2016, as well as the Florida 13-year-old stabbed to death by a radicalized 17-year-old classmate just this week.  

~The Patriot Post