How Poor Education, Politics, and the Lack of National Identity are Compromising America's Youth

PATRIOT MISSION is a national leadership development company and small business facilitator partnering with local communities, entrepreneurs, veterans, and everyday Americans from all walks of life to celebrate what makes America GREAT!  We are dedicated to ‘Protecting our Nation’s Liberty and Preserving the American Dream through The POWER of Small Business.’TM

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This post is the final post in a series of seven describing the core LIBERTY Principles upon which PATRIOT MISSION is founded.  All PATRIOT MISSION members, affiliates, and supporters agree to and adhere to these principles.

1) We believe the economic Backbone of America? is powered by the LEADERSHIP of Small Business Founders, employees, and their families.

 2) We believe providentially inspired American INGENUITY has created the strongest economy and most generous society the world has ever known.

 3) We believe it is important to elect leaders who share a common BELIEF in our Judeo-Christian heritage and the magnificence of the US Constitution.

 4) We believe ENTREPRENEURSHIP is the primary economic means to inspire men and women to pursue their dreams and achieve prosperity.

 5) We believe Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are put at tremendous RISK by those who reject capitalism and promote excessive public spending.

 6) We believe Personal Property Rights and the Free Enterprise System are TIMELESS constitutional cornerstones upon which America was founded.

LIBERTY PRINCIPLE #7: We believe it is crucial to inspire YOUNG citizens to become tough-minded, ethical entrepreneurs and to help create long-term solutions for America.

In order for any organization or idea to endure, it must be able to sustain itself with fresh blood and new supporters and advocates. At Patriot Mission, we believe that in many respects, America has failed to ensure that her foundational tenets remain relevant in the eyes of her YOUTH; we think it’s critical that we teach these ideas both at home and in the schools and we have a plan to do that through targeted events, programs, and services, original video productions, and educational presentations delivered by some of America’s foremost and authoritative historians. 

PATRIOT MISSION makes it a priority to inform, educate, engage and inspire the youth of America so they will know and understand what makes their country special in the history of the world.  We want them to realize the gravity of the precious knowledge we pass down to them for posterity so that as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”  

As a substitute teacher who works in urban schools from Kindergarten through High School, I can speak first-hand to the condition currently afflicting our youth.  Make no mistake, it is an affliction, which inherently implies that there is a cure, but it will not be easy and it will not come quickly. 

I would like to preface my remarks by stating for the record that I am not one who subscribes to the grand conspiracy theories suggesting that “the Left”, has somehow, over a period of decades and despite an ever-changing cast of characters, surreptitiously and maliciously plotted the overthrow of the Republic through a coordinated and persistent effort to co-opt the press, entrench themselves in the schools, and through political action, direct the decline and fall of our personal liberties and freedoms. 

They don’t have secret back-room meetings where they all get together and regularly discuss tactics and strategies to bring about the demise of America.  They don’t have to because in a practical sense, that is EXACTLY what has happened.  Through persistent messaging conducted primarily in the schools and through the mainstream media, the Progressive world-view has become a mainstay of American political thought.  But it wasn’t always that way.

Progressive theory and rhetoric has directed an insidious, almost unconscious conversion of the masses.  It has undermined the roles of religion, morality, private property laws, and individual liberties.  Worst of all, it has sought to, and has largely succeeded, in capturing and converting our most impressionable demographic, our youth, at key points in their social development. 

In a quote often erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, American author Thomas Charlton once said that, “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”  Sadly, we have failed to heed his insightful commentary.  We have not been vigilant and we have let the forces of Statism and Progressivism overtake the foundational tenets of our country. 

The hard part is all but over for the Left.  Their persistent efforts to capture the social and political narrative in America have been underway for decades and have been largely successful in converting not only the current generation, but also their parents, their grandparents, and their grandparents parents. 

Thus, there is seldom a concerted effort to push back against the Progressive agenda because those who in previous eras would have, are unaware and under-educated on what they’ve lost.  And in a Progressive-dominated public school system, you can be assured that they’re not going to learn about it in the public schools.  Generations of Americans have become so comfortable with the slow but steady erosion of their personal liberties as directed through Liberal, Progressive policies, that few have even noticed it happening.   

The Progressives have effectively “bred out” the opposition via their dominant roles in the media and the schools.  By not teaching civics, government, religion, and politics in the schools, they have successfully eliminated the competition. 

In the vast majority of cases, students simply don’t even know that there is an alternative to the Progressive philosophy.  In fact, in most cases, they don’t even know what a Progressive, a Conservative, a Libertarian, a Socialist, or a Communist actually is.  The messaging they get in the media and in the schools is so persistent and pervasive that they simply accept it as fact. 

In the rare cases where they do get even a brief exposure to other political ideas, it is typically colored by the messaging of the Progressive left which essentially says that the ideas of the Founding Fathers were great for their time but have since been overcome by time and circumstances and that we’ve progressed as a people past that na?ve understanding and belief in “certain unalienable rights” granted to all men equally through their creator. 

Consider the current landscape in our public school curricula.  The media and academics routinely talk about the failings of U.S. public schools citing declining test scores when compared to other children around the world (mind you, this was not a problem prior to the federalization of the public school system).  The response; a radical and sweeping over-reaction to a problem that doesn’t actually address the cause; flawed curricula and flawed teaching processes.

We are currently seeing a massive and comprehensive shift towards science, technology, engineering, and math at the expense of the liberal arts and social sciences.  Concurrently, we are seeing art, foreign languages, tradecraft courses, civics, and music programs being cut across the board.  And we can’t even remember when it was mainstream to teach religion in the schools (FYI, it was commonplace prior to the 1930s). 

I’m not talking about practicing religion, I’m talking about teaching religious studies so that our students can understand the inherent nature of such global conflicts as the Sunni-Shia rift, the politics surrounding the importance of Israel, the impact of such significant events as the Protestant Reformation and the impact it has had on the Christian world, the nature of the Global War on Terror, and so on.      

Most of the American Founding Fathers spoke more than one language and many spoke several.  They were all somewhat accomplished musicians, artists, inventors, or philosophers, and they all studied history and religion almost to the exclusion of most other things.  Thomas Jefferson once said that history is probably the single most valuable topic one can study.  We used to teach all this stuff in our public schools.  That system seemed to have worked pretty well for an awful long time. 

Nonetheless, logically, we can conclude that future generations, 20 to 30 years from now, may be quite accomplished engineers and mathematicians but will have no concept of politics or government, will have no understanding of the religious struggles that feed the world’s conflicts, will never master the skills of diplomacy and statecraft required to lead a global superpower through dangerous waters, and in short; will have no clue how to run a country.  We're simply trading one problem for another.

Rather than spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on this misplaced shift in education, why don’t we instead consider that we’re not teaching the correct material in the correct fashion?  I would submit based on my experiences in the schools that we’re not even teaching the wrong material well.  We’ve adopted new methods of teaching that actually make it so much more difficult for kids to understand the content that it is truly tragic to behold.  

Case in point; I’m a history major and by no means particularly skilled in math.  I recently taught a math lesson to a fifth grade class.  We were doing a lesson on finding volume and area of shapes.  I asked the kids before we began if they’d seen this content before and they said they had.  So I gave them a worksheet that had 20 problems on it to work on for the next hour. 

While the children worked at their desks, I went up to the board and did each problem the way I’d been taught back in 'olden times', using simple formulas like Length x Width x Height = Volume.  I did all 20 problems in about 10 minutes.  As I looked around the room to see where the kids were at, most were still on the first or second problem.  I was astounded and couldn’t imagine what was taking them so long. 

I saw that they were drawing pictures on their sheets to graphically depict the shapes and to group various numbers in a particular format all towards the end state, apparently years down the road, of somehow being able to conceive of different ways to see and solve problems.  This made no sense to me.  So I showed the kids that I had completed the worksheet and they thought I was some sort of magician!  “How did you get done so fast?!”, they asked.  I showed them the formulas and suddenly the lights came on.  They had no idea it could be done so easily.       

In subsequent lessons, I also discovered the kids no longer memorized their multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction tables.  Thus, I would routinely spot them making these fundamental calculations out on their fingers, thus slowing their ability to complete more complex problems in a reasonable amount of time.  The entire experience could only be described as painful to watch.  The moral of the story?  WE’RE DOING IT WRONG!

In the end, our youth don’t and won’t know what they don’t know and they are content, as are many of their parents, to be entertained instead by the mainstream media; to watch the Oscars, the CMAs, the IHeartradio music awards, The Kardashians, The Walking Dead, and other high-brow programming that stimulates our minds and teaches us what is truly important. 

Does anyone remember The Learning Channel (now TLC)?  How about the History Channel?  These networks used to at least try to give us educational content.  Now, all we get is Pawn Stars, Ancient Aliens, American Pickers, Sister Wives, Cake Boss, and Honey Boo-Boo.  What does this say about our priorities and our world view? 

Remember the old saying, ‘be careful what you ask for, you just might get it’?  We get what we demand folks!  Try this little exercise.  Ask yourself, whether you can you have an intelligent discussion on the ramifications of the Iranian nuclear deal or on the implications surrounding the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Scalia or, are you better equipped to discuss last night’s episode of Sportscenter or The Bachelor? 

Worse, our politics directly reflect this cultural shift in priorities.  Most Americans will continue to latch on to the latest cults of personality, captivated by sound-bytes, name-calling, and threats of violence, rather than getting smart on the political issues affecting us both globally and locally. 

We no longer seem to care about the real issues.  We don’t seem to understand that HOW we achieve a policy end is important and that the details DO MATTER.  We apparently don’t realize that the reason we have so few good options in terms of our political candidates, is because in a democratic republic, politics works along the lines of free-market capitalism.  Supply and demand drive the quality of our candidates.  Again, we get what we demand. 

Most Americans don’t choose to get smart on politics and to demand a better product.  Instead, they wait until the eleventh hour prior to elections, watch some debates or just casually ingest the Progressive media narrative that tells them why they are victims, who is to blame (HINT: anybody who’s NOT a Progressive) and who to vote for.  Make no mistake, this is an easy sell for the Progressives. 

It’s very easy to tell someone that their problems are not of their own doing and that someone else owes them and represents the true root of their problems (CAUTIONARY NOTE: see 'Nazi Germany').  It’s a compelling message to tell someone that they are owed a free college education and free healthcare. 

Conversely, it’s a lot more difficult, and far less appealing, to tell them that their problems are largely due to their own inaction and/or their own poor choices, and that if they want something they need to be responsible, accountable, professional, and EARN it.     

Here’s a thought, perhaps before we decide to complain about a candidate or policy, before we decide to go out and obstruct a highway in protest of an issue, before we determine that young black men are always guilty or that police officers are always abusive, we should take some time, check our premises, do some objective research, and get to the real substance and truth of an issue. 

Perhaps rather than sitting on our couches, playing Call of Duty or watching cat videos on YouTube, we’d all be better served by getting smart on the important issues affecting our society, our country, and our communities.  We could start by getting involved in the day-to-day academic lives of our children and administration of our schools...and demanding better when we see a need for it. 

I would submit that the best place to start is in making sure that our youth get a suitably challenging, comprehensive, and informative education and that they understand the true value of America not just to Americans but to the world.  It’s critically important that they understand our national identity.  Of course, at the moment, that is problematic since I would submit that our lack of a national identity is at the very root of the current internal strife across America.  We aren’t clear on what we stand for and neither is the world, and that is creating serious problems both at home and abroad, but that is another discussion for another day.

Sadly, that means we probably need to go back to square one and define for our youth, exactly what our identity was and what it should be.  That means actually reading and talking about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution both at home and in the schools.  It means understanding our national actions in the spheres of politics, economics, and foreign policy, within the context of those foundational tenets, and it means understanding that the Progressive agenda is the EXACT thing that our Founders were guarding against when they crafted those documents; overbearing government power to coerce and compel the private citizen.        

As mentioned earlier, Progressives don’t have regular meetings to discuss how to subvert the Republic.  In fact, most Progressives don’t even realize they ARE Progressives.  Progressives today follow a broad blueprint authored largely by early to mid-twentieth century Progressive luminaries like Charles Merriam, Carl Becker, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt, some of whom most Progressives today have never heard of.    

Progressive doctrine seeks to cast the core tenets of our national founding in a decidedly negative light.  They insist these tenets are antiquated relics of a bygone era and that any truly patriotic citizen should realize that as time progresses, so too does the nature of man.  Consequently, they argue, we need to fundamentally reshape America and progress away from the initial ideas the country was founded upon.    

Witness the writings of Charles Merriam.  Merriam was a prominent political scientist of the early 20th century and one of the most prolific advocates for Progressive thought.  He served as a key advisor to Presidents Taft, Wilson, Hoover, and Roosevelt and is generally credited with being one of the guiding lights of Progressive thought and theory. 

 In his work, A History of American Political Theories (1909), Merriam writes, “THE INDIVIDUALISTIC IDEAS OF THE “NATURAL RIGHT(S)” SCHOOL OF POLITICAL THEORY, ENDORSED IN THE [AMERICAN] REVOLUTION, ARE DISCREDITED AND REPUDIATED.  The notion that political society and government are based upon a contract between independent individuals and that such a contract is the sole source of political obligation, is regarded as no longer tenable…

 “It is of vital importance to notice that LIBERTY IS NOT A NATURAL RIGHT WHICH BELONGS TO EVERY HUMAN BEING without regard to the state or society under which he lives.  On the contrary, it is logically true and may be historically demonstrated that THE STATE IS THE SOURCE OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.  IT IS THE STATE THAT MAKES LIBERTY POSSIBLE, determines what its limits shall be, guarantees and protects it…It is denied that any limit can be set to governmental activity [because the natural rights theory of the U.S. Constitution] no longer seems sufficient.”  (Caps added to emphasize key facets of the text).   

Can you imagine if Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, or John Adams had read that?!  This man served as a key adviser to 4 U.S. Presidents!   

If you thought Merriam was disturbing, let’s take a look at Carl Becker.  Becker was a prominent Progressive historian whose works were stunningly original in terms of their interpretation of the events surrounding the American Revolution. 

In his seminal work, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Ideas (1922), Becker writes, “To ask whether the Natural Rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is true or false is essentially a meaningless question [because THE DECLARATION] WAS FOUNDED UPON A SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY [AS WELL AS] A NA?VE FAITH IN THE INSTINCTIVE VIRTUES OF HUMAN NATURE [that] could not survive the harsh realities of the modern world…”   

So to be clear, Mr. Becker claimed that the American Founding and the Declaration of Independence are meaningless because the people who founded the nation were na?ve and ignorant.  This is the same group of men who many have called the single greatest collection of intellects to have ever convened in one place and time in the history of man.

Not to be outdone, let us consider the following comments of 4-time President elect, Franklin Roosevelt taken from a 1932 speech to the Commonwealth Club.  Roosevelt states, “The Declaration of Independence discusses the problem of government in terms of a contract…Under such a contract rulers were accorded power, and the people consented to that power on consideration that they be accorded certain rights.  The task of statesmanship has always been the RE-DEFINITION OF THESE RIGHTS IN TERMS OF A CHANGING AND GROWING SOCIAL ORDER.” (Caps added to emphasize key facets of the text).  

I bet you thought that man was "endowed by his creator with certain unalienable rights" didn’t you?  But that would mean those rights are permanent and binding wouldn’t it?  Of course, but clearly Roosevelt disagreed. 

A more recent perspective further validates the degree to which Progressive thought has permeated the American psyche in the modern era.  Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Progressive, famed attorney, jurist, and author, and a self-anointed authority on the U.S. Constitution and Constitutional Law, wrote in Rights From Wrongs (2004), “The truth is that a specific set of rights based on natural law simply does not exist [because] natural law is a human invention, much like religions that believe in an intervening God.”

Hmmmm.  Are these really the people we want teaching our children, running our media, and running our country?  What kinds of decisions are people who think in these terms likely to make in economics, law, domestic policy, foreign policy, etc?

Progressives have taken a long view of the philosophical war between Conservatism and Progressivism.  Recognizing that America’s youth represents our future leaders and that they are among our most malleable and impressionable demographics, they have indeed employed strategies targeting the youth of America who, being young and relatively unseasoned, tend to be na?ve and idyllic in their perspectives and world-views anyway.  The Progressive movement is thus the perfect vehicle to focus those young minds in exactly the wrong direction. 

The Progressives have succeed by re-casting the American narrative, our history, and the idea of American exceptionalism as a vile and contemptible history of genocide and social inequity.  They have co-opted generations of America’s youth through lies of both omission and co-mission, delivered through the schools, the media, and through political rhetoric that incites and exacerbates social divisions (see a definition of ‘Communism’ for a more detailed description) along racial, gender, sexual preference, religious, and economic lines. 

Perhaps most importantly, they have convinced large swaths of the American public that they are victims through no fault of their own and that the State should be empowered to re-distribute wealth in this nation such that things are more equal. 

Progressives are interested in equality of outcomes, Conservatives are more interested in equality of opportunities.  The Founding Fathers, as we established in earlier posts, were Capitalists who believed in innovation, ingenuity, personal accountability and both personal and social responsibility, liberty and freedom.  

They did indeed create a contract between Americans and their government that said that as an American, you have an equal right to pursue your dreams and to make as much or as little money as you are able to within the confines of the legal boundaries of the contract (aka the laws of the nation).  This worked pretty well and transformed not only America but the rest of the world as American values and ideals of liberty, personal property rights, and capitalism began to spread around the globe. 

But the Progressive mentality says, “Wait a minute Bill Gates/Steve Jobs/Andrew Carnegie, etc!  We understand that you personally have fundamentally changed the world and produced more wealth (either in the form of money or otherwise) for more people around the world than anyone in history.  Certainly your effort, intellect, and vision coupled with your willingness to accept great personal risk, have yielded more benefit to mankind than have the general masses, and for sure, far more than the efforts of the panhandlers and those among us who choose not to pursue their education seriously.  However, we think you personally have made far too much money in the process so we’re going to take it away from you, a LOT of it, and give to some of those folks.”   

Does this seem fair to you?  Do you think America’s youth are getting this message when they turn out in droves to support Socialist candidates for President?  What do you think the result of this mentality will be on those who create, build, and innovate?  Will they continue to pursue those objectives and take those risks if the government is simply going to remove any incentive they may have had for creating and innovating in the first place?  I think you know the answers. 

One of the great challenges going forward is to ensure that our youth understand these answers as well.  Aside from teaching them basic math, science, reading and writing, we must make sure we teach them the truth about the American Founding, about what makes the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution such seminal documents in the history of mankind, such that they’ve been revered the world over for centuries now. 

We must teach them about Capitalism, free-enterprise, free-markets, and economics.  They must understand the nuances and knowledge needed to not only conduct commerce but to protect the socio-economic landscape in which that commerce is conducted both domestically and abroad. 

They must be taught how to be tough-minded, ethical entrepreneurs who can continue to innovate and improve the lives of millions around the world while securing their own personal liberty and that of their families, friends, and their country. 

They must understand the role religion plays in the world both in terms of its capacity to serve as a regulating influence on society and morality and also in terms of the socio-political influence it has on various state-to-state relationships around the world. 

We must also teach them civics and government so they understand the social contract between America and Americans; the notion that they have certain unalienable rights and freedoms but that in a democratic republic, they also have certain obligations as American citizens to be informed, intelligent, and engaged practitioners in that republic.  If they choose instead to abdicate their civic responsibilities, over time they will end up right back where we are today.

In the end, we owe our youth a fighting chance not a $19 trillion debt.  We owe them a solid education grounded in truth and in the foundational tenets that made our country great to begin with; social and political liberty, personal and economic freedom, and an appreciation of how OUR country, THEIR country, has been a beacon of hope, a “shining city on a hill” for all of mankind to aspire to for over 240 years.   

At PATRIOT MISSION, we stand firmly behind the fundamental principles upon which America was founded.  Our sole purpose is to “Defend our Liberty and Protect the American Dream Through the POWER of Small Business”.  We want to help our members save time, save money, and find solutions to their problems so they can succeed in their pursuit of the American Dream, and we believe that a robust community of entrepreneurs, mentors, and leaders located in each and every city, county, and independent parish across the nation, will re-ignite our economic engine, create more jobs, and generate a better standard of living for more people than ever before!  Like so many Americans in the past, we’re willing to put our time, money, intellect, and energy into proving it!  Join us!  Check us out at…

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