It starts at school.
Our country is not in great shape. In any direction you look, you see a cultural, political and economic landscape piled high with difficulty.
We start with inflation. Inflation like we haven’t seen in more than 40 years is making people poorer by the day. Rising prices for food, clothing, utilities, shelter and gasoline are impacting everyone. The upper middle class and the wealthy and certainly the coastal elites who dominate media, entertainment and Washington, D.C. are coping comfortably. But working-class families and the poor are, as always, getting clobbered. It’s now the consensus among bankers and economists that we will suffer a significant economic recession in 2023.
The chaos on the southern border continues unabated. More than four million illegal migrants have come to the United States since Joe Biden took office, bringing with them poverty, illiteracy, a disproportionate need for social services, crime and a flood of illegal drugs like Fentanyl.
Rising crime and homelessness have become the defining characteristics of most of our largest cities. Murder, aggravated assault, robbery and burglary are rising to levels not seen in decades.
To top it all off, school-aged children are now alarmingly behind where they ought to be academically. The education industry – not without justification – blames COVID. But American education was in trouble long before the pandemic. The long-festering decline in American education is directly connected to the economic, cultural and political problems that are piling up like cordwood.
Over half of American adults cannot read above a sixth-grade level. Consequently, even though information on any topic is readily available with the tap of a finger, the American populace is both less informed and simultaneously more misinformed than at any time in the last century.
The cultural knowledge of today’s teens and young adults is increasingly limited to what they see on their phones via social media. And even as tuition and concomitant student debt continue to rise, U.S. universities increasingly marginalize classical liberal education in favor of a progressive “woke” curriculum that, among other things, is hostile to the founding principles of the country.
The result of all this dysfunction is a society filled with people whose economic illiteracy makes it impossible for them to understand that those free “stimulus” checks they received in 2020 are directly responsible for the groceries they can’t afford in 2022.
High schools and colleges that have dismissed Shakespeare and Homer and the Founding Fathers as contemptible “dead white men” have led to a generation of misanthropes who, rather than celebrate America as a beacon of freedom, instead condemn it as a place of irredeemable racism and oppression.
Young adults in America are increasingly favorable toward socialism for the simple reason that the schools they attended never told them that socialist societies are by their nature repressive. An entire generation knows literally nothing of the mass murders committed by Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao.
The country is in trouble. The education system is failing. The two are connected. We’ll never fix the former until we address the latter.
We enjoy reading your comments here and hearing them when you fill in on the Jimmy Failla show. Unfortunately, our family is all too familiar with Stalin–our Auntie Sonia was one of the few remaining survivors of the Holodomor, Stalin’s man-made famine. You are correct than they teach about the Holocaust, but very few schools include the Holodomor. Even at 95 she was still visiting schools and telling her story to middle and high school students. Unfortunately, she passed this year, but many got to hear about Stalin and his regime. I pray they remember.
I struggle to express my ideas, so I am very happy and proud when I read your “You Tell Me Texas”. Thank you for your efforts.
Excellent column. Kudos sir!
As President Trump has recently made direct mention of at a number of events, much of what’s missing in AMERICA today is common sense. And on that matter, the Democrat party is certainly NOT the party of common sense and anyone who values that quality should never vote in that direction “as in left or “leftist” as the Democrats have become radical Marxist/socialist/communists having more in common with Cuba, China, and Venezuela than AMERICA.
Instead, be sure to vote “RIGHT” as in Republican if you care about our country and its future as it is an IMPERATIVE, for we must make at this moment in time a course correction if our REPUBLIC is to survive.
The United States of America as Founded in 1776, a FREE nation under GOD, patriotism, respect for The Flag, LAW & ORDER, a secure border, the teaching of Reading, R(writing), & (a)Rithmetic aka (the 3 Rs) not wokeism are only held in high esteem and and viewed as crucial by one party.. the party of MAGA.. the party of Trump Republican conservatism.. or as he has said.. the party of COMMON SENSE.
When you vote on November 8, 2022, consider what “weighs in the balance” ONLY the entire Constitutional Republic of our Founding and which CAN BE again “if” we vote Republicans “in” and Democrats “out,” by voting for the party of COMMON SENSE, America First, and “We The People.”
Good one. I’m passing it on.
Thanks, Paul
If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you’re liable to be given more money to do it with. Well, we’ve discovered that money alone isn’t the answer. Ronald Reagan
How absolutely true!
When in school, we were EDUCATED about many things and some of that being… WORLD HISTORY being made. Films would be shown in grade school shortly after happening on the world stage. We didn’t get watered down events told by our “media” today. Films were shown of the USA showing other countries how to plant and increase their food supplies. Maybe of no interest to people today but it was in the fifties, even to school children. What people do not understand today is just where our standing in the world has gone to…rock bottom! Once the world looked to the USA to learn from on many levels! Now we are nothing but a laughing stock around the world. Where did it start? Why in the schools! Saw this as a child. My Grandmother just had an 8th grade education but was far more EDUCATED than my schooling. Instead of increasing our level of education, we have gone backwards. Something that seems more PLANNED than by accident.
Linda is indeed correct. At the core of what is wrong in this nation is our education system. At every level, our “educators” are poisoning our children’s minds.
Yep. Must be the teachers. Great solve, everybody.
Teacher’s Unions aligned with the Democratic Party seem to be a central theme in the complete and utter reversal of all things American. This Brandywine lady who heads the National Teacher’s Union is a total kook and mouthpiece of chaos for the Democrats. I hope we all know there are many more good teachers out there than one’s who buy into this CRT, gender change garbage, and destruction of our traditions and history. Part of the problem with our children started when every child was given a trophy and not taught how to fail, pick themselves up, and work harder to succeed. Sticks and Stones is no longer in our vocabulary; only racism and micro-aggressions. No one can have a fist fight without kid and parent going to jail. Spankings, OMG, prison time, and national news for the teacher or administrator who perpetrated such a heinous act. Our kids are all destined to fail without learning hard life lessons; because all of us know life is not fair and will crush you if you do not know how to achieve and push forward in times of adversity. WE did not stay home, nor did the teachers, when a flu epidemic struck our area in East Texas. Our kids are taught to be soft and whiny, given handouts without working for them, and how to cry foul when someone calls them a name. Society does that. We must ask ourselves why this is happening. The short of it is; because WE are allowing it to happen. We the parents and grandparents do not teach our kids or grandkids to stand up to what is wrong; we just go with the flow because that is how it is today. WRONG. To change this devolving society, we must stand up and push back. Are YOU going to simply lay our last chance on an election and a politician to change society back to what it was when we were kids in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s? I sure as hell am not. Trusting a politician is like playing with a docile venomous snake; sooner or later you will be bitten. ALL nations go down the drain at some point in history; all of them. The question we must ask for Texas is what we want it to look like after this election cycle in three weeks for our children and grandchildren. And then we must come together and do something about it. We still have two more years of Biden and Company. The damage they will do in the next two years is beyond my imagination compared to what they have done to our children and us for the past two years. Don’t think they are not cooking up their next move.
Wokeism is EVIL, wherever it is found — whether it be in the school class room or work place. And it has NO PLACE in The United States of America as Founded 1776 a free Republic under GOD established on Christian beliefs of goodness and that which is right as set forth in the Bible since our very beginning as a nation.
Wokeism is Marxism. It’s an attempt –going on here in our country and others– to normalize evil calling it good. In short, it’s all about going against every good thing we believe as Christian men and women and families across our land and forcing us to accept it.
NEWSFLASH — Americans will “never” accept evil or Marxist/socialist/communism. NEVER. I consider it the highest of callings for every American who cherishes our Constitutional Republic to PUSH BACK HARD against the evil of wokeism (Marxism). Raise your voice, write a letter, or an email, make a phone call, just to name a few examples of what you can do to call out and influence change in the right direction to fight back against this corrupt ideology.
One last point, just so all who may read this know, the Democrat party is the party of wokeism.
The Republican party is not and it is the only party that still holds God, the traditional family, our Constitution Republic, and Freedom in the highest of esteem.
It is an easy and clear choice on November 8th if you love America, your family, and God.
I agree with the column. What’s missing is reasonable answers. ( if their are any ) My thought’s as I see my five year old grandson go off the kindergarten are, first, thank goodness I live in rural Texas. I don’t believe the poor education system is as wide spread as we are led to believe. Second, we teach him here at home all we can starting with respect. Respect for law enforcement, his teacher, his elders, etc. I lived on an island for twenty one years years where respect came first in society. Where I was the outsider and was treated with respect most of the time. I’ve come to believe that no matter where you are in the world there are about five percent of #$@holes. On a small Island everyone knows who they are, here in America it seems the list starts at the white house.