This is why the first place the progressives started, was in the universities. They knew full well that they had to steal our Founding Fathers away from us before they could ever snuff out our liberty. Today, it's routinely implied, or even outright taught that our Founders were just a bunch of old rich racist white guys(and athiest!) that hated blacks and enslaved them. Sure, there was an abolitionist movement, but often times that's looked at as being separate from the Founders. And the black patriots that were instrumental in the revolutionary war have all but been eliminated from just about every modern text book you could lay your hands on. The revisionism that goes on in education has gone way beyond universities at this point, it's long since perverted the lower levels of education as well. Middle school and high school. So bad has the revisionism gotten and so long has it dominated, that someone who has documents to prove their case such as David Barton does, can easily be laughed off of the stage all the while he points to the very document proving what he's saying. The faith that all our founders had in the Protection of Divine Providence is something that progressives knew they couldn't compete with. So they had to eliminate it. It was Woodrow Wilson who once said that "If you want to understand the real Declaration, do not repeat the preface". Have you read the preface of the Declaration of Independence lately? What do you see there? That's all the stuff the progressives wished wasn't there. And at this point(almost to 2012) it can be said as a matter of practicality, that stuff isn't there. Go ask your high school son/daughter - that's all the proof right there, your high schooler hasn't been taught the preface. This is all being done on purpose.
Sure, there are religious leftists out there, but they're not in the majority. And those who are of a higher profile see the word merely as a tool. Jim Wallis is very open about this, stating that "the gospel is all about wealth redistribution", even though Benjamin Franklin stated rather plainly that wealth redistribution is what tyrants do. And progressives have been abusing their Christian faith for a very long time, to reach an authoritarian end. After the small clip of Ravi you see above(further in part 4), he makes the point that students are lost in high school, they have no meaning in their lives. And isn't that true to a large degree? Has life in America gotten better or worse over time, since all evidence of religion has been expunged from schools. One of the communist goals of 1963 is the elimination of meaningful art(see 22/23), it's certain that they'd target other meaningful things as well. And I'm not advocating that one particular faith be placed above another, rather that certain underlying foundational core beliefs that all religions believe in(even those outside of Christianity) that used to be taught in America's schools are no longer there. What are the results of this? It certainly can't be a coincidence that over time we're not in a better place. For those of you who are fans of the book "The 5000 Year Leap", will be familiar with the following which used to be an elementary school book: A Catechism on the Constitution. Another book titled "The New England Primer is a book that used to be in schools, and is one of the earliest known books printed in America. As Ira Stoll writes in his book "Samuel Adams: A Life", Adams was likely taught as a young boy with this very book, given that there wasn't much else around. That was the book to use back then. Here's a cover picture of one that came from the printing presses of Benjamin Franklin. The New England Primer, which also goes by another name, "The Little Bible of New England" because so much of what's in it is overtly religious. But it doesn't place one over the other.
And now as I look above I see that it's official, I ranted. Oh well. Someone has to put all this stuff together to show it's relevance and relation. Without core, meaningful, and foundational things being taught to students, is it any wonder why school shootings have happened, and have even appeared to be on the rise? When Columbine first happened, everybody was shocked and mortified. Sure, school shootings are still shocking and mortifying to a point, but the numbness has set in because it's happened so many times now. And as I asked in the beginning, why is all of this happening? How did we get here? There's been much that's happened outside of the realm of religion that's salient in answering this question(like what Wilson said above), and that's primary what my blog has been and will continue to be about. But for now, I'll leave you with the words of Benjamin Franklin:(In his letter to Thomas Paine)
I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person, whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a great deal of regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?
I can see that I have opened up a potential can of worms with this, with regard to the issue of religious teachings in textbooks. So before it all hits the fan, this should be said: At this point in America's history, an overtly religious message in the schools may not even be necessary, despite it's historical presence, and it may be preferable anyways that one shouldn't be there, due to how it can be abused. Even with the fundamentals that all religions generally agree with. Besides, our Founders faith in the Protection of Divine Providence is more than enough to tip things back in favor of liberty. After all, progressives have for a century shown how afraid of it they are. There's certainly enough that the Founders wrote that would make certain religious teachings unavoidable without making it central to the classroom, yet bring meaning and substance. My gripe is that students aren't taught what it means to be an American, and obviously the religious history cannot be ignored, and it shouldn't be. But primarily, students are not taught how to defend their freedom from those who are working in the shadows to take it from them. History is not a bunch of trivia questions, it's a map.(See november 20th blog posting) More than anything else, that's something that would be learned by learning about the Founding Fathers. And you could even say that that's the point that Ravi was making, that we don't know who we even are or what we believe in. So we cannot defend it.
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