Folks,
Because of the time zone I live in, I sometimes miss things that you in earlier zones pick up on hours earlier. This morning, I woke up to the frothing of the mouth of our beloved local radio talk show host, who was angry at the Dixie Chicks for something (I couldn't tell exactly what it was) - again. When I was finely able to come and check the blog, I saw Eleanor's post (republished here in its entirety!), and understood immediately what our radio talk show host was upset about.
Here's Eleanor's post:
"Did you hear about the Dixie Chicks, girl band that is 'sickened by American patriotism'? They don't understand how one can 'love the whole country' and why 'patriotism is necessary' or 'why people care about patriotism.'"
Ever wonder how it is that these three pretty, talented, wholesome-looking American girls happened to have such hostile attitudes towards the country of their birth (to say nothing of the opportunity if afforded them to earn such a very nice living), despite what they observe here and around the world?
And make no mistake about it; they really DO think that "patriotism" is sick, they really DON'T understand the idea of pride of nation, and they MEAN it when they say they don't care about our country.
These girls are the most successful products and examples of the American educational system. I kid you not; it's no state secret; they got their hatred for patriotism, for love of country, for pride of nation, straight from the classrooms of our school system.
Those of you who visit this blog fairly often know just what I think of the American educational system.
You also know that several of us have been posting things about the increasing awareness of many people about the growing influence of the UN in the United States, an unattractive appeal that many in government and in the population have developed for the "sensitivity" about whether other nations "approve" of what we do, or whether they "like" us.
The UN and other like-minded individuals and institutions value 1) the "One World" idea, 2) the soon-to-be-established (2010) North American Union, 3) the fact that the borders between Mexico, the US, and Canada do not, in fact, exist, 4) the disarming of private citizens of the U.S., and more recently, 5) the desire to make homeschooling difficult or even illegal.
These issues are all related to each other and to the hostile attitude of the Dixie Chicks.
Instead of just telling you "our educational system played a very strong role in teaching the Dixie Chicks this U.S.-hating attitude," I'll put down a few historical snippets and some quotes from the academic and government establishments for you to consider.
I think that this material would make a great sci-fi movie about our future; it's absolutely Orwellian, or like the story "Logan's Run," or Ayn Rand's novella, "Anthem."
First, there are growing numbers of people - I am one of them - who are alarmed at the increasing pace and SNEAKINESS with which the One World concept is being implemented.
It is not uncommon for the government to conclude unpopular deals in smoke-filled back rooms when they know that the people will oppose them. Remember the Dubai Ports fiasco, and how we, the "little people," didn't find out about it until it was literally days from becoming a done deal? (By the way, that deal is still waiting in the wings until we "little people" with our "short attention spans" forget about it, and it can be quietly slipped past us like the Doncaster deal was shortly afterwards. As you recall, Doncaster's is a British company that makes sensitive items for the Department of Defense, and was sold to Dubai while we were breathing a sigh of relief that our ports hadn't been handed over to the Muslims, and while we were distracted by the problem of illegal invaders pouring across our borders).
Anyway, back to the Dixie Chicks and their anti-American, patriotism-hating, nation-despising statements and attitudes.
I am particularly sickened by the use of the school system as a principal means of accomplishing it.
When did this project of the globalization of America begin? It was probably earlier than you thought possible.
The Framers of the Constitution had an incredible opportunity, during a unique moment in history, to design a brand new nation from scratch. The opportunity was a “perfect storm” of sorts.
For thousands of years, people all over the world had lived in an uncomfortable relationship with their governing bodies. Almost from the beginning, the ruler had absolute power over the lives of individuals. This relationship had become accepted almost as a given because it had "always been that way."
But then, during the Enlightenment, an astonishing breakthrough in philosophy occurred. The Enlightenment was a period of thunderous philosophical growth. It was during the Enlightenment that it was discovered that the rights of individual human beings were more important than the raw power of governments.
This - the breakthrough in thinking about a proper relationship between a government and its citizens - was "Part I" of the "perfect storm."
"Part II" was the discovery of vast lands where a new country based on the breakthrough ideas could be created.
Because the technology of the period made it difficult for the rulers of the Old World to control the people living in the New World, the Founders were free to establish a totally new kind of country. For the first time in history, a nation was deliberately designed to recognize, in writing, that the rights of the citizen stood above the power of government, and that the power of government should properly be restricted to those activities that protected rights. It was not, according to the new philosophical discoveries, a proper function of government to tell people how to think, what to believe, what to do with their lives, etc.
But the old view that had prevailed throughout history up to that time was not to be so quickly or easily dismissed.
As early as the late 1700s, around the time of the ratification of the Constitution, utopian social reformers Robert Dale Owen (son of socialist reformer Robert Owen) and Frances Wright were working together, and established a commune. They had a vision where, through the utterly “equal” (read: “identical”) education of all children by the government, from ages two through sixteen, 24/7, all property and income would eventually be equalized. Their idea was not adopted “as is” right off the bat, but it helped seed ideas that would shape the course of education in the United States about eighty years later.
Dr. Dennis L. Cuddy, a former Senior Associate in the U.S. Department of Education, was disturbed long before many others were by the direction being taken by American education. He understood that the teaching programs in our schools would lead to precisely the attitude we see in the Dixie Chicks.
Cuddy compiled an interesting timeline called "Chronology of Education" which gave example after example of statements by proponents of education for the "New World Order." Another former government official, Charlotte Iserbyt, served with the Department of Education as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. She quietly collected many memos and internal documents about the plan to "globalize" American children, then left her job and later published the material she had collected as "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America." Another exceedingly accessible collection of information is in Berit Kjos' book, "Brave New Schools."
There is some very interesting information in Cuddy’s "timeline." I can only put a few selections here, but you’ll have no trouble connecting the dots.
First, by way of a preamble to these two "whistle blowers," our tax-supported, compulsory-attendance, lock-step curriculum school system did not exist at the time of the founding of our country, or for nearly a hundred years thereafter. There is no mention in our Constitution of the establishment of an educational system by the government. Education is NOT a Constitutionally mandated function of government.
Out government-run school system was modeled after the one in Germany, which was established in the early 1500s by Martin Luther. He knew that not everyone in Germany favored the idea of his split from the Catholic Church, and that something needed to be done quickly if his ideas were to "stick." He knew that the most effective way to bring Germany on board was to teach as many of the children about Lutheran piety as quickly as possible.
It worked; the first schools based on his idea of a tax-supported, compelled attendance (they even had truancy laws!) and controlled curriculum were set up by 1527. The idea spread rapidly, first to Calvin's Geneva, then to Holland, and from Holland, the concept was brought by the Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Each of the Colony's municipalities had such a school. The idea at that time was that in order to have “social stability,’ every child must be taught to have the same belief system. No competition of ideas permitted - that would rock the boat!
Horace Mann, who is credited with the founding of the US public school system, was a descendant of those colonists. He grew up in the traditional family belief system, but converted to Unitarianism, a very tolerant religion, one of whose founders was British chemist Joseph Priestley. Mann converted only in part because of the gloomy atmosphere that prevailed in the family religion; a significant part of the reason was a matter of retaliation.
Mann's brother had skipped Sunday school to go swimming, and had drowned. On the occasion of the funeral, the preacher made a mean-spirited object lesson of the death, and Mann could think of no better way to punish him than to reject his religion. Mann's conversion notwithstanding, he retained many of his Calvinist ideas, including the one that said that children were predisposed to evil, and that "social stability" could be acquired only through the teaching of a uniform Protestant orthodoxy.
Mann wasn't thinking "globalization" when he established the government education system in the early-mid 1800s, but his desire for a social stability based on a single belief system laid the groundwork for it. The dream of the "One World" people saw in the new system an irresistable opportunity to teach their collectivist ideas to entire generations of school children.
The final impetus for Mann to act came with the immigration of thousands upon thousands of Catholics to the U.S. He was utterly convinced that nothing less than the salvation of the nation was at stake should Catholic children not be taught his beliefs.
The unintended result was the first serious sign of social instability; Catholic parents, outraged that their children were being compelled to study "Protestantism," established their own school system, which remains in place to this day.
In the peri-Civil War period, Americans were still pretty pissed off at the Brits because of the Revolution and the War of 1812, so instead of sending their sons to complete their educations in Britain, which was the birthplace of the Enlightenment principles on which our nation was founded, they sent them instead to Germany.
Germany was one of the European countries where the old ideas of the relationship between government (it was all powerful) and the citizen ( subject to government whim) still heavily influenced the culture. In fact, it was a German philosopher, George Hegel, who popularized the notion of the "Organic Theory of State." According to this theory, the state (the "organism") was supreme, and the citizen (the "cell") existed only by the state's permission, and was expendable.
The education of the flower of our youth in the old collectivist system was a disaster for our country; our red-blooded American boys got thoroughly infested with this old, outworn, and totally invalid philosophy, which was 180 degrees away from the Founders' views. The boys came streaming back to the US, where they entered every field of endeavor, generation after generation after generation.
Think about it; they became politicians, academics, businessmen, philosophers, journalists, entertainers, and - of course - teachers.
Does it surprise you, then, to observe that so many of our politicians, universities, journalists, publishers, entertainers and - of course – teachers - hold collectivist views? Over the years, it has been a small step from the collectivist philosophies of the day (which evolved into the American Left, socialism, Communism, Fascism, the Nazis, etc.), to the even larger collectivist ideal of today, Globalism. And please, don't forget the nastiest collective ever, Islam, which has the same remote ancestor as the rest of the collectivist doctrines, including globalism.
That's the reason the Left here in the U.S. and the other collectivists elsewhere in the world, including at the U.N., seem so chummy.
Formal planning of the globalization of education began very soon after Mann had established the system in use today, and is teaching the ideas to millions upon millions of American school children.
Let's take a look: We've already mentioned the Utopian Socialists Owen and Wright, and their pure culture of communism (no capitals).
In 1905, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was founded. It is a major promoter and funder of socialist and globalist education projects.
Soon after that, in 1919, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace gave a grant to establish the Institute of International Education. Socialist philosopher/educator John Dewey, often referred to as the “Father of Progressive Education,” and one of the developers of the American philosophy of Pragmatism, was on the National Advisory Council of the brand new Institute of International Education. Dewey also served as Honorary President of the National Education Association (NEA).
By 1934, the NEA was actively promoting an “equitable distribution of income” as well as the view that the “major” function of education was to seek to give the student “understanding of the transition to a new social order” (remember Owens and Wright?). The NEA is famous to this day for its very strong dedication to "socialist ideals."
By 1942, early in WWII, the NEA’s journal had an editorial called “The United Peoples of the World,” in which it explained the proposed New World Government’s need for a single World Police Force, a single World System of Money and Credit, a single World Bill of Rights [a collectivist’s definition of a “right” is a very distorted and dangerous one] and ‘Duties’” (read “duties” to mean “obligation to serve the State” in the sense of the “Organic Theory of State”), and last, but certainly not least, the means of producing entire populations around the world that would support such a notion. They would need an Educational Branch. The Educational Branch of the World Government which would establish a single, uniform system of education for the whole world, with the same textbooks used in every school around the globe.
In 1946, the same publication stated that “…to establish an adequate World Government, the teacher…can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children…At the top…must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession.”
Also in 1946, Canadian psychiatrist Brock Chisholm, then head of the World Health Organization (the UN was founded in 1945), said this:
“We have swallowed all manner of poisonous certainties fed us by our parents…the re-interpretation and eventually eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training…are the belated objectives of practically all effective psychotherapy...the study of such things as trigonometry, Latin, religions and others of specialist concern should be left to universities. Only so…can we help our children carry their responsibilities as world citizens…We must be prepared to sacrifice much...putting aside the mistaken old ways of our elders if that is possible. If it cannot be done gently, it may have to be done roughly or even violently…”
In 1948, the NEA produced a set of guidelines called “Education for International Understanding in American Schools—Suggestions and Recommendations.” It included the following:
“Many persons believe that enduring peace cannot be achieved so long as the nation-state system continues as at present constituted. It is a system of international anarchy.”
Please read that part carefully, because the Dixie Chicks and many others have learned this lesson about the anarchy that is supposed to exist because of the existence of nations very well indeed. It is for PEACE that they, and all the Left, want to demolish the United States!
In 1962, the plan for globalization was beginning to catch the public’s attention. In an editorial about NEA goals and power, the Chicago Sun-Times said: “…real control over the Nation’s children…is being shifted rapidly to the NEA. That organization has about completed the job of cartelizing public school education…It is extending that control over colleges and universities…it will be a simple matter to extend control over whatever Washington agency handles the funds.”
In 1965, a book authored by a UCLA professor, John Goodlad ("Citizens for the 21st Century"), and funded by money from the Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, said:
“…the school is perceived…as a…box where boys and girls come to sit still for six hours a day…to be told about some fragmentary pieces of ‘knowledge’ thought to reflect the rudiments of their ‘culture.’ This image must be shattered, violently if necessary—and forever.”
In 1970, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, a branch of the NEA, published “To Nurture Humaneness: Commitment for the ‘70s.” Here’s some of what it had to tell us:
“Many daily decisions and value judgments now made by the individual will soon be made for him…How to plan for one’s children’s education will be partially taken out of his hands…” (John Loughary, University of Oregon).
By 1973, the Global Education Associates was founded. In "Toward a Human World Order," a book written a few years later by GEA’s founders Gerald and Patricia Mische, it said “It examines the strait-jacket of the present nation-state system and…explores world order alternatives…”
Here it is again, the promotion of the existence of independent nations as an evil entity. The Dixie Chicks applaud!
In 1976, an article by Harold Shane, Project Director for the NEA Bicentennial Committee, was printed in the Phi Delta Kappan. It was “America’s Next 25 Years: Some Implications for Education.” Here is a little of what it had to say:
“As young people mature, we must help them develop…a service ethic which is geared toward the real world…the global servant concept in which we will educate our young for planetary service and eventually for some form of world citizenship.”
The Dixie Chicks are among the first of our most loyal world citizens.
In 1983, the Institute for 21st Century Studies was founded by Gerald O. Barney (and funded by the Rockefellers, the World Bank and UNESCO). Its mission is “to provide support for…21st Century Study teams...in exploring alternative national futures…adopting a global perspective.”
In 1985, the State Department gave the Carnegie Corporation the authority to “negotiate with the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which is known to be an intelligence-gathering arm of the KGB, about the ‘curriculum development and the restructuring of American education.’”
In 1990, in “The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion," author Malachi Martin described the transnationalists’ goal that “ideally the same textbooks should be used all over the world…and…a concrete initiative in this direction has been under way for some years…undertaken by Informatick, a Moscow-based educational organization, and the Carnegie Endowment Fund…” The values the transnationalists promote are: “Good” will not longer be colored by a moral or religious coloring. “Good” will simply be synonymous with “global.”…We must all become little Transnationalists.
In 1993, Howard Gardner, author of “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences” (if you are interested in education, you probably remember all the swooning that took place with the publication of this book) said: “…the educational plans…help the society to achieve its larger goals…individuals with gifts in certain directions must nonetheless be guided along other, less favored paths, simply because the needs of the culture are particularly urgent in that realm at that time.” (Read "needs of the culture" as "whims of the globalists.")
In 1994, South Dakota passed a bill that would require that home school teachers be certified by the year 2000. Parents and private schools would not be able to teach without going through the training required to teach children the new beliefs and attitudes.
The list goes on and on, but this should be sufficient to cause you to suspect that your complaints about the schools and what’s being taught in them are not just some accident, the product on an atypical few with loud mouths.
The goal of the collectivists, ever since Mann established the government school system, has been to hijack it and hitch it to the wagon of globalism. Author Iserbyt has aptly said, “The soil has been tilled and the seeds have been planted. We now await the blossoming of what John Dewey and his followers have worked for since the early 1900s: universal socialist/internationalist education for the world government’s planned economy.”
The Dixie Chicks are hardly the only well known products of our educational system. There are many others, from “academics” like Ward Churchill, political activists like Cindy Sheehan, politicians like Kerry, Kennedy and Bush (yes – and I mean both Bush 41 and Bush 43), military personnel like John Murtha (whose uniform should offer no disguise or protection from criticism for his thinking, any more than the label of "religion" should offer Islam protection from scrutiny and criticism), CNN’s Ted Turner, and too many judges, journalists and entertainers (in addition to the Dixie Chicks) to count.
Don’t believe for a minute that the sudden rash of articles being published about how the UN wants to create a borderless world, how Bush wants to create a North American Union, how the Supreme Court is listening more and more closely to world opinion, how the UN wants to disarm citizens of the United States, how the UN wants to make it unlawful for parents to teach their own children, and so on and on, are just the rants of wild-eyed conspiracy-theorists who are running about waving signs with messages about the end of the world as we know it.
If you do think that, just you wait and see.
