Author and unabashed capitalist Andy Kessler in a Wall Street Journal essay today tries to answer the question gnawing at most of the intelligent, responsible adults in America: What is wrong with these Occupiers?
“Maybe this is really about disappointment (among the protesters),” Kessler writes. “We (American culture) embraced mediocrity to a entire generation of kids during good times who are now finding themselves mediocre in bad times.”
Mediocre and unaccountable. Victims, in other words. That’s what is wrong with them. They live in a great nation that rewards work and perseverance but it’s easier to be a victim — of other people’s actions, presumably — so they take that path.
The victim path has led them to the streets, where they live and act like animals. But that’s not why the Occupiers make so many of us so angry. What ticks us off is that they, and others sucked into their pathetic camp, want us to believe they are just like the patriots who rose up and became the Tea Party.
To that, let me respond as clearly as possible: Occupy this.
While there may, in fact, be a few moderate participants in the Occupy camp, there simply is no chance for compatibility between these angry, lawless protestors and those who assemble in approval of the Tea Party. Doug Schoen’s poll of the Occupy Wall Street throngs found that one-third support violence to achieve their objectives, and three-quarters say civil disobedience is OK. Tea Party patriots decry violence and certainly do not embrace civil disobedience.
You will recall that the elitist left was quick to blame Tea Party “rhetoric” for the senseless deaths of Tucson residents gunned down by the madman who also shot Rep. Gabby Giffords in the head outside of a supermarket. There was no connection whatsoever, but the left droned on about civility and demanded that the Tea Party curb its use of “hate speech”. Within hours of the attack on Giffords, the media had pinned the tragedy on Sarah Palin.
Now, here in October 2011, we have Occupy Wall Streeters carrying signs reading, “Taxidermy the Rich”, “Tax the Rich and Make The Poor”, etc. A particularly vile protestor in northern California expressed her utter contempt for her landlord, threatening to “eat her”.
These protestors are being organized by the same reckless union thugs who gave us Madison, Wisc., earlier this year, by the same SEIU leader who said the group would replace the “power of persuasion with the persuasion of power.”
The Tea Party assemblies were about pledging allegiance to the United States. They were about singing “God Bless America”. They were about restoring American values and the beacon of American Exceptionalism endowed by our Creator (the very Creator ignored by Barack Obama when he recites the Declaration).
You could bring children to a Tea Party rally. You could bring an elderly military veteran. You could bring your dog. Can anyone comprehend wading into the stench and vitriol of the Occupiers with a child at his side? They’d probably kill the dog and eat it.
The Occupy Wall Streeters mock capitalism, mock patriotism and mock civil society. They want to overthrow our way of life, hijack our institutions and pillage the bank vaults. They despise private property ownership. They despise productive people who have built businesses and acquired well deserved wealth.
If Tea Party members are true to our calling, we must take every opportunity to denounce this Occupy movement and to undermine its continued expansion.
There can be no common ground when those standing, or urinating, or vomiting, upon it seek to decimate it.
Franklin Roosevelt assured Americans “we have nothing to fear.”
John Kennedy encouraged us to ask what we can do for our country.
Ronald Reagan envisioned an America with its best days still ahead.
Barack Obama advocates angry, violent uprisings in the streets by those who, like Obama himself, view a free-market economy as a threat to civilization.
Ladies and gentlemen (and radical Socialists), accuse me of fear mongering if you wish (I have been accused of worse), but today it became clear that America is in the midst of one of the most perilous chapters in its history.
We have a thug in the White House. He has a desk in the Oval Office. He is the 44th President of the United States. He is sowing seeds of conflict, hand to hand, in the streets, day and night.
This is the Saul Alinsky playbook in action. Create chaos. Stir unrest. Stoke the embers, from simmering hatred to full-scale rage. Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals” is essentially the Obama 2012 campaign bible. Or Koran, if you like.
“In (Alinksy’s) view,” writes author David Horowitz, who published Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution to magnify Obama’s parallels to Alinsky, “criminality was not a character problem but a result of the social environment, in particular the system of private property and individual rights, which radicals like him were determined to change.”
During a press conference today, Obama was given an opportunity to denounce the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators many of whom, as noted by New York Congressman Peter King, are breaking the law in the course of raging against Wall Street brokers and the financial services sector at large. Obama could have demonstrated leadership. He could have admonished the demonstrators in New York and elsewhere to find more productive avenues through which to channel their energies. He could have called for unity in a crucial time in our nation’s history.
Instead he said nothing critical about the demonstrators’ agenda, other than to suggest that they are merely a reflection of a “broad based frustration”. In other words, President Obama loves the anti-capitalism mobs and encourages all of you entitlement addicts coasting on unlimited unemployment subsidies to take a break from your video games and reality shows. Rage with us. Get your Grecian grove on. Hope and change is so 2008. Today, it’s hate and rage.
Make note of this moment. The President of the United States is not - is NOT - the President of the United States.
He’s the President of the 90% of Americans who pay 30% of federal income tax. He is the sworn enemy of, and field general in the war on, the 10% of Americans who account for 70% of federal tax revenues.
Barack Obama is a bitter man. His base has scorned him. His voice no longer causes lightheadedness. A majority of us now live in disbelief that this radical lightweight was ever the Democrat candidate, let alone the elected President. He still chants, “Yes we can”. A chorus of Americans in 2011 replies, “But when?”
We fear his answer, if the essence of the man could by some miracle be laid bare, would be, “When I’ve seized all the wealth.”
“We have to take action that is big enough to meet the moment,” Obama said Thursday.
He should be cautious about what he wishes for. November 2012 is coming. We have to take action, indeed.
“American Patriotism refers to the steadfast devotion for the First Principles of our nation’s Founding, individual Liberty as ‘endowed by our Creator,’ and the extension of that legacy to our posterity.”
- Mark Alexander, founding editor, The Patriot Post
While we have not seen a repeat of Sept. 11, 2001, on American soil in the past decade, the inevitable clash pitting American patriotism against creeping multiculturalism and its subtext of “tolerance” is unlikely to go away. It will not come and go in a single morning. It is not a subtle war on symbols like the American flag, but a challenge to patriotism’s very existence as the fabric of our free society.
European leaders, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, have declared multiculturalism an unqualified failure in their countries.
But here in the U.S. those who might dare suggest a similar re-thinking of multicultural sensitivity would be swiftly labeled racists or bigots, and reminded of well-worn ideals — we are a “melting pot” and “nation of immigrants”. These are increasingly flimsy justifications for multiculturalism as a defense against rampant oppression, if only because such oppression is inconsistent with our society. This constant demagoguery ignores that what’s bubbling today in America is not a pot of opportunity. It is a cauldron of absolute contempt toward Western civilization — more intense, perhaps, in a post-Bin Laden world — found more often than not on college campuses, where pliable future teachers are in training.
Islamic terrorism expert Robert Spencer, author of the acclaimed book, Stealth Jihad, issues this dire warning: “Teachers are highly susceptible to an organized campaign by U.S.-based Islamic organizations and their primary benefactor, Saudi Arabia, to present a view of Islam that whitewashes its violent history and intolerant religious imperatives.”
The assault on patriotism on American soil is not new but it is building, even as most citizens go about their daily lives blissfully unaware. It is rarely manifested in flag burning or vitriol. More frequently it is raised in the context of those who seek to openly embrace patriotic fervor. But instead of framing this return to patriotism as a positive trend, cynical media reports infer that “angry mobs” (families, retired veterans, children and loyal pets) have assembled for Tea Party rallies.
Patriotism today does not struggle under the cloud of some abstract threat. It is a real threat. And our children and grandchildren occupy the front battle lines.
“We are in a life and death battle to win the hearts and minds of our young people,” said U.S. Army (Ret.) Major General James Donald, chairman of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, and a frequent speaker before youth and civic groups. “People who can’t appreciate that have their heads in the ground.”
The son of a Mississippi cotton farmer, Donald is a Gulf War veteran who was a task force commander of the 101st Airborne’s Screaming Eagles. He recently joined an advisory board to support a national initiative known as Patriotism Rocks. Still in development, it will be the catalyst for nonpartisan educational materials, traveling interactive exhibits, dynamic speakers and concert tours. Patriotism Rocks was conceived by Atlanta marketing executive John Bevilaqua to bring American history to life and restore a connection between children and their appreciation of country.
“Our theme,” Bevilaqua said, “is, ‘Honor the Past. Invest in the Future’. And in the process of doing so, we believe we will learn from the kids as they help us define patriotism through their eyes.”
There are occasional glimmers of youths embracing patriotism, though, remarkably, they are met with scorn more often than with approval.
More than a year ago in the northern California town of Morgan Hill, south of San Jose, a high school administrator ordered five students to be sent home after they refused to remove their American flag T-shirts and bandannas — garments deemed “incendiary” on Cinco de Mayo, the day that commemorates a Mexican militia’s temporary put down of French occupation. (After the French came back for more and won, which neighbor to the north do you suppose backed Mexico with military support?)
An Arlington (Mass.) High School freshman waged a three-year campaign to have American flags placed in all of the classrooms where previously there had been none. But he did not succeed in the convincing an administrative panel to approve voluntary reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Administrators said they have nothing against the Pledge but, according to media accounts, were “concerned that it would be hard to find teachers willing to recite it.”
Last November, a teenage student at Denair (Calif.) Middle School placed a small flag on his bike in a nod to military veterans in his family. At first, school officials told him he couldn’t fly it because it might stoke racial tensions. But the school district superintendent revoked the ban on the boy’s flag after being deluged by phone calls, including some by members of the U.S. military deployed in Afghanistan, he said.
Perhaps even more dangerous than suppression of patriotic symbols is a steady erosion of positive feelings toward, or even tacit societal recognition of, American achievement, which for many years has been diminished in the pages of school textbooks and through the subtle manipulation of curricula. Instead, educators readily use the buzzwords “diversity education”.
“There is no question that it’s origins were in a deliberate effort to re-write much of the American narrative,” said author and policy consultant Seth Leibsohn, a fellow of the Claremont Institute, the statesmanship and political philosophy think tank.
De-emphasis of American history is “the water they drink and the air they breathe” in middle and high schools, Leibsohn said in an interview. “Fifty percent of high school seniors are functionally illiterate in American history. We are making aliens of ourselves, of our own children.”
Reforming the methods used to teach social studies is slow to gain acceptance, said Marka Ormsby, a consultant who developed interactive approaches to help children tackle learning in STEM - science, technology, engineering and math.
“In the state of current education it is very difficult, particularly in studying the history of our country, to find the time to do the active projects to get the kids interested,” said Ormsby, who with her sister Robin Daniel created the STEM Initiative, and will partner with Patriotism Rocks. Plus, Ormsby added, “Many people who gravitate to the profession are fundamentally uncomfortable with new approaches.”
The plague of political correctness within the American media that has rendered it a dangerous weapon of the radical progressive political left has proliferated within the nation’s public educational institutions. Any number of established scholars and analysts warn of an insidious poisoning of fundamental patriotism in schools. The predominant force at work: the escalation of hyper-sensitivity to other cultures, value systems and religions.
What have they found? In a nutshell, there are parallel forces strangling American values in the classrooms. One is public teacher unions that see children as pawns to be exploited; the other is radical Islam’s corrosive saturation of the roots of western culture through the leveraging of a nearly fanatical American attraction to multiculturalism. Neither is to be underestimated, as we will explain.
“At (California State University) Dominguez Hills, in the Los Angeles area, the school of education there cites the radical leftist Brazilian education philosopher Paulo Freire as one of its guiding lights,” said Pacific Research Institute fellow and former Reagan Administration staffer Lance Izumi in a reply email. “Freire promotes the concept of the revolutionary teacher who disdains teaching students facts and knowledge because that is what the oppressor class of capitalists would prefer how and what students are taught.”
Izumi, who has written extensively about myths surrounding the perceived missions of public schools, added, “The leftist dogma peddled by the university schools of education sprouts fruit when their alumni filter out into the public school systems. The teacher unions become hotbeds of leftist advocacy.”
College English professor Mary Grabar, who is a frequent blogger on “academentia” at her web site, The Literate Citizen, recounted her attendance two years ago at the annual conference of the National Council for the Social Studies.
“I spent two days and one evening sampling from over 400 sessions,” she wrote. “When actual U.S. history was presented it was from the perspective of various ‘victims’. … In workshops, the goals of effecting ‘social justice’ and using children in the public forum were openly advocated. … The idea of patriotism never came up.”
The American Textbook Institute’s 2008 study, Islam in the Classroom, points to another determined group of infiltrators, pro-Islamic activists, who “use multiculturalism and ready-made American political movements, especially those on campus, to advance and justify the makeover of Islam-related textbook content.”
Stealth Jihad author Spencer, director of Jihad Watch for the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has written as to his concerns about “teachers deeply steeped in the multicultural ethos”. Perhaps unknowingly, teachers in otherwise normal American schools dwell in an environment that “is being exploited by groups like the Council on Islamic Education, which whitewash and proselytize under the guise of multiculturalism.”
The Claremont Institute’s Leibsohn, who for several years produced and co-hosted with former Secretary of Education William Bennett a radio program, Bill Bennett’s Morning in America, believes we ignore the embrace of Islam in public schools at our national peril. He and Bennett co-authored “The Fight of Our Lives”, an examination of how political correctness has crippled America’s ability to interpret threats to our way of life.
“For years we were taught that religious orthodoxy was something we had to tamp down in schools,” Leibsohn said in an interview. “(Today) the subject of religion is basically disfavored unless, unless, it is orthodox Islam.”
Political correctness grips future teachers while they are earning degrees on college campuses, where the agenda revolves around a “liberal academic axis” that co-exists perfectly with an academic narrative of religious tolerance, Leibsohn said. Not religion broadly, of course. Specifically, “Islam gets a pass.”
The indoctrination of teachers continues as their careers move along, Izumi replied by e-mail. They are exposed to various teaching philosophies found in handbooks published by university schools of education. The books revolve around the premise that “everyone needs multicultural, anti-bias education”. Parents and children are then groomed accordingly.
“Patriotism, American exceptionalism and long-held American values are all four-letter words and evil concepts” in the teaching manuals, Izumi writes.
Parents - those who bother to recognize that what their young children are hearing in the classroom is not merely a benign message of peace and love - still have choices, and some exercise those choices by moving their kids to other (private or charter) schools. In some circumstances parents are turning to homeschooling, where the p.c. filters are more or less eliminated.
“That is right and good as a personal matter,” wrote Bill Bennett in response to questions submitted by e-mail. “(But) it can not always be done and, moreover, we still live in a society that is going to be occupied by and find leadership from the graduates of all our schools: private, charter, home and public.”
Which is what is motivating Bevilaqua to raise funds for Patriotism Rocks, which he hopes to launch in early 2012. In particular he wants kids in communities where dropout rates are high and optimism about the future is low to be exposed to historically based, fact-focused learning. Plans are being developed for traveling exhibits and games contained inside a customized, expandable tractor-trailer; supplemental teaching tools via the internet; and coordinated appearances by celebrity entertainers and athletes.
“The most effective way to reach the youth of today is to reach them ‘where they live’,” Bevilaqua said. “In other words, we need to reach students using technology they are intimate with. We need to engage music, sports and celebrities to help define the meaning of patriotism. We simply can not sit idly by.”
Overcoming decades of status quo teaching and patriotic indifference is a formidable task. But President Ronald Reagan, in his 1989 farewell speech, warned of the consequence of future generations lacking an “informed patriotism.” The President spoke plainly. “If we forget what we did,” he said, “we won’t know who we are.”
More than two decades later that remains sound advice. Yet there’s even more at stake. Reagan could not have imagined Americans inclined to regret what we did.
“We can not cede a major part of American culture - education - to an anti-American ideology and pedagogy,” advises Bennett, the former Reagan lieutenant. “Too much of the country will be lost.”
A decade after 9/11, threats to our homeland continue to lurk and vigilance is not optional.
