We need our own “long march”, so to speak. We have let that flank go undefended for too long and we will suffer in the wilderness until we beat that back.

I can’t think of a really polite way to say KMA, so I’ll just put it out there. And if you think I am engaging in a little hyperbole, you would be mistaken.

DO NOT BLAME CONSERVATIVES.

You have a point in that the education system is rife, up to its eyeballs, with leftist indoctrination. But you are GROSSLY mistaken if you think conservatives and conservative parents ALL across America do not know this and are not battling tooth and nail to break the stranglehold. You have no idea the massive struggle underway, with no help whatsoever from the GOP in general.

For ignoring our schools, conservatives are losing the battle for America’s hearts and minds at the earliest of ages. And conservatives deserve the defeat for this failure.

Hell, why don’t you blame conservatives for the leftist courts too? And for Al Queda? The credit crisis? The Cowboys losing to the Rams 3 weeks ago?

Absolutely despicable to hang this around the necks of conservatives. You want to blame somebody, blame the Republican Party [you know, the one that nominated McCain, OVER the objections of conservatives.]

I have generally enjoyed and respected your writing. But this one is a vile, near-criminal offense against decency. Conservatives fight a lonely war against the encroachment of socialism, Marxism, and the influence of a grossly immoral pop culture. This is the thanks we get.

“The dust has settled. The glow of the stadium lights has faded. Thus concludes the latest season of “American Statist.” Wasn’t that a warm and fuzzy ending? I kind of liked the part when the liberal neoconservatives who hijacked the Republican Party
were totally repudiated. No longer able to feed at the Beltway trough, many of them are now out of work. I hear Russia’s hiring.”
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=80582

Enjoy the article, as it points out what the party elite will never.

I totally agree they will never understand as long as they are spending their first 18 years being indoctrinated by the NEA. If you see the problems from John Dewey and the socialist foundations why not advocate for the end of gov financed schools? How can something from that animal ever turn out with good results? The ideas behind it bad. Children belong to their parents, the state has no place demanding under the threat of incarceration of their parents that the state has to have them from 8am to 2pm once they turn 6. How can we say lets teach them conservatism when it’s a socialist type of deal that makes them show up in the first place? Even the conservatives and republicans who win positions in the school board/system are never conservative. They always have one thing they talk about and it’s money. It’s a flawed from the start when each kid showing up represents cash to them.

Does anyone remember The Gabler Family The Gabler FamilyTX has that special fund for textbooks so they call the shots for many of the publishers. If I can find their story I will post

nt

No, more directly, conservatives are at fault for the singular fact that many millions of Americans saw no reason not to vote for a socialist. They mistakenly imagined his ideas were still just as American as anyone’s. These voters haven’t the first clue that their vote stood four-square against true American ideas. Unfortunately, conservatives are at fault for this rampant inability of our fellows to understand what is an American ideology and what isn’t. Sadly, we have allowed several generations to pass without being educated as to why Barack Obama’s basic political creed is blatantly socialist.

McCain isn’t a Conservative and it’s his responsibility to communicate why Obama shouldn’t be president. The Moderates have controled this party and it’s message for 4 years now…they’ve spent like Democrats, stuffed values voters into a corner and refused to acknowledge them and generally told Republican voter’s who hold a traditional view of America to go to hell…and now you dare the declare us at fault for the fiasco that was McCain’s squish Campaign for President?

I’m reccommending this and encourage every conservative on Red State to do so as well…not because it desearves consideration as a serious diary…but as a perfect example of the vapid and foolish example of how Moderates view the rest of the party…

Well done…you’ve shown exactly why Conservatives need to take the reigns of this party from this day forward!!!

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

If you want to lay the blame of the failure of education, lay it at the doorstep where it belongs, the left. And then you lay it on the GOP who fail to support thousands and thousands and thousands of parents trying to retake the educational system in this country on a daily basis.

Parents battle school boards, school systems, textbooks, fuzzy math, dumbed down sciences, radical teachers, radical policies across the country daily and where is are those GOP leaders standing by helping the parents? They are non-existent.

Most educational institutions just wait parents out. Wait them out until they are too tired or too broke to continue on the fight. The educational dynasty has the backing of the NEA, too politically correct laws, and layers and layers of bureaucracy that effectively mitigate the chance of reform.

How many state and local politicians run on the basis of educational reform? How many have the cajones to stand up to a system that is downright thuggish in its operations? Very few. Lip service is given during campaigns about education but very few follow up after being elected.

No, conservatives aren’t the problem. The problem is the failure of our elected leaders to take seriously the decay of our education system.

Give me a legislator that WILL take on the system and attempt to change it and I will give that legislator my unwavering support.

/rant

The conservative movement has taken measures to be heard in politics, the economy and the law, but unless conservatives begin to infiltrate the schools, we cannot win the long war. If our children don’t even have the basic skills to understand why conservatism is the correct American outlook, they simply will be unable to understand it when they become of voting age.

This is absolutely true. It is also absolutely true that Obama would be unelectable were it not for 30 years of liberal indoctrination that has made the dangers of an Obama seem benign and made his very radicalism ‘hip’ and ‘cool’.

I think you ruined your point with a misleading headline. I was ready to fly off the handle before I read your point.

Better headline might be:

*WHY WE LOST? IT’S THE EDUCATION SYSTEM, STUPID! *

Right now, in MY KIDS SCHOOL, they are indoctrinating kids with books like “Hoot” (environmental lawbreakers good, police and developers bad) and “Esperanza Rising” (immigrant people of color good, unions goods, police and whites bad). they had a ‘global warming’ project (ug!) and the only reason I can trust that my kid wasnt brainwashed by it was I went to the trouble of sending her a Marc Morano email (Inhofe’s guy with great climate science weekly news) that showed the NON-warming in temperature trends, like antartica getting colder.

But its an uphill battle. If I try to get those books not used, I’m a ‘book banner’ and suggestions to have better books are responded to with a polite ‘no thanks we need to teach these kids multi-culturalism, its the new world’.

How do I as a conservative parent stop it? HOW DO WE TOGETHER STOP THE INDOCTRINATION AND LIBERAL BIAS IN SCHOOLS?

I want school choice. How do I make it happen?

I dont think you can blame conservatives for the educational predicament. We know about liberal indoctrination. The problem are the ‘UNWASHED MASSES’ of moderates who JUST DONT GET IT. Some conservatives try. MAYBE WE NEED TO GET ALL CONSERVATIVES AWARE AND LINKED IN SO THAT WE SUPPORT EACHOTHERS AGENDA JUST LIKE THE LEFTISTS DO. Education is a part of that agenda.

“Why not advocate the end of public schools?” one commenters asks. Go ahead. Make a stink about it. But dont expect the GOP to carry that banner, or they will get slaughtered in elections. Here in conservative Republican Texas, the teachers unions STILL HAVE A LOCKHOLD ON OUR LEGE! Why? Because most people will knee-jerk support the schools ‘for the children’ and ‘attacks’ on public schools are anti-children.

Solution? Dunno. Multi-level approach. Run for school boards. Fight curriculum wars to get the multi-culti BS out of schools. Make a stink to your teachers and your principal.

Support organizations like “ISI” which has been fighting bias in academia and supporting consrevative principles there. MAYBE WE NEED AN EQUIVALENT FOR K-12?

And lets work together.

Conservatives in the Republican Party have been the only ones fighting for school choice, the voucher system, and a return to basic principles in the school system as a stop gap to getting rid of the Dept of Education. When Reagan came to power in 1980 he wrote all those things into the Party Platform. It has been the squishes and moderates who have actively avoided this fight. Seriously, if you want to focus on the schools I say absolutely, but don’t act like Conservatives haven’t been doing that since Buckley wrote “God and Man at Yale”. To do so shows your own ignorance and the fact the you are showing up to the big game after half has been played.

In other words, piss off!!

Church goers/conservatives pulling their kids out tomorrow. I think people forget that money is tied to the kids being in class. That would make a HUGE impact. Let them know why. Have a conservative leaders encourage parents to exit the public schools.

Write letters to colleges about changes in their education departments before donating. Even Christian colleges are infiltrated with the leftist thinking in their education and soft science departments.

Tutor reading in your community. People can be brainwashed a lot easier when they can’t read. The public schools are not cutting it. Reserve a library room and bring your wife and recruit college students. Put the GOP label all over it too. Email a few schools/teachers and put an add in the paper. It’s not that hard to set up. Most libraries have meeting rooms for free. Have the local republican leaders show up at these things too. Thanks to the Christian publishers like Bob Jones, Abeka and Ace/SOT that didn’t follow the whole word method garbage there are ready made reading programs that anyone can teach.

I don’t understand the big deal about name calling? Would you explain more about that? We know it’s a lie. The system is ruining generations of people and all their potential by not even teaching them basic skills to function. If the community calls us anti-child we should present them back with the truth.

nt

The problem I see is that conservatives, by definition, seek to stay out of the public sector in general, including the education establishment. Many people advocating limited government have followed their own philosophy to the extent of keeping their own ideas out of government, hoping the free market can sell them. Future generations are then left to stumble upon conservative ideas on their own. This is difficult because, unlike liberalsim, understanding conservatism actually requires using one’s mind. People, especially young people today, don’t want to do that. This is ESPECIALLY true when it comes to business and economics, which is both boring and complicated. That is perfectly okay with the liberals in the education establishment who often aren’t interested in making students think too hard.

The only hope I see of getting young people to think is to get more conservatives in the public education field (teaching, administrating, textbook editing, policy-writing) who won’t tolerate passing students just to pass them and won’t let them advance without knowing very basic facts.

The term “natural selection” ia apt. Only the ideas that are passed to future generations can survive. Liberalism, by defintion, provides for a government mandated means of getting its ideas out. Conservatism seeks to exclude government-mandated means of getting any ideas out. Guess who wins?

Similarly, conservatives’ instinctive lack of attraction to the field of education has not helped. As I said, they generally want to work in the private sector. Unfortunately, that does not help their cause.

Put your children in a private school, home school them, do something. I know a number of people my age or younger who grew up in a conservative home but were brainwashed into liberalism at school.

Instead of merely complaining about the rottenness of public schooling (although we ought to do that as well), we need to take our kids out and take responsibility for what they learn.

Isn’t this a little like blaming the victim. Conservative college professors have difficulty getting tenure in liberal arts departments. Primary and secondary teachers do not set the curriculum or write the textbooks.

Conservatives have certainly been demonize in the textbook wars of the past. It’s not like conservatives have not fought the good fight, we just been losing. Our views are routinely presented in the mainstream culture as hate. Yet, in recent election over 30 percent of the voters self-identified as conservative, while only 22 percent self-indentified as liberals.

When I see reliable allies at each others’ throats, something has gone very wrong.

So let’s all back up a couple steps while I try to mediate.

Warren, your article lays out well your thesis that Conservatives are losing the education battle, which leaves our country increasing ripe for a socialist takeover as our youth’s minds are left unequipped to choose conservatism over the siren song of socialism.

Certainly, your observation that public schools are a breeding ground for leftist thought is solid.

The correlative evidence from the election was that the youth favored Obama far more strongly than older voters.

Nonetheless, by all surveys, the leftist youth are still a minority, though Thus the proximate cause for Obama’s victory was more related to the fact that the majority was denied the opportunity to have the facts about Obama, due to media complicity, and thus too many otherwise conservative-inclined citizens made a faulty decision based on lack of evidence, a decision aided and abetted by an incompetent campaign by McCain that failed to lay out the case.

So insofar as you stick with diagnosing a distressing trend with our youth, you’re on firm ground

The problem comes when you use the “blame” word to attach it to conservatives. That is what’s setting readers off and making them defensive.

You see, failure does not equal blameworthy. And here, you are blaming the victims, not the perpetrators.

As many readers have pointed out, conservatives have fought the good fight against the liberal radical education establishment and have mostly lost because they get outgunned, including shots from Republican sell-out leaders.

I don’t know if you have children of school age, but anyone with children knows the colossus that one faces in trying to exert any control over what your child is taught. The education leaders view themselves as the experts and the rightful educators of your child – from State boards of education on down, not to mention the Federal-level education dictators.

So please, stop with the blame game and instead let’s regroup and determine our ongoing strategy.

for the past 8 years. The blame is squarely on conservatives for the mess our country is in! Weren’t we all doing great under Bill?

Conservatives DID have their shot. They have won more elections in the last 30 years than liberals have. Conservatives are 95% responsible for the mess we are in and we can all start by pointing the finger at Bush and his lies and economic policies. How many trillian a month in Iraq? Now wouldn’t that money come in handy right now?????

If you know about what happened at Anzio, Tarrawa, Normandy, and Antietam Creek you realize that our casualties in the war on terror have been low. And when you realize that, you’re less likely to get sucked into the “Bush-lied” lies.

Most boys would probably find military history more interesting than most of the rest of school, too.

First of all, you are correct that education is an issue that has been placed on the back-burner by the GOP far too often in favor of comparativly irrelevant issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cells. If we are allowing our next generation to be indoctrinated with idiotic and anti-american swill, who cares about that junk? There is blame to go around. Bush campaigned on school choice in 2000. As soon as the leftists in Congress said boo, he caved, we had to setle for NCLB. The best line in McCain’s acceptance speach was when he said that ‘education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century’. And that was the last time I heard him speak on the subject. As far as I’m concerned, the two most important long term issues are school choice and SC apppointments. On some of the other stuff…

‘Nonetheless, by all surveys, the leftist youth are still a minority, though Thus the proximate cause for Obama’s victory was more related to the fact* that the majority was denied the opportunity to have the facts about Obama, due to media complicity, and thus too many otherwise conservative-inclined citizens made a faulty decision based on lack of evidence, a decision aided and abetted by an incompetent campaign by McCain that failed to lay out the case.’*

Wrong. They knew all about the Obamessiah, they just didn’t care. Especially the ones who stayed home because of McCain’s history of playing Dem in GOP clothing.

‘Blame the GOP, not conservatives. We didn’t get us Obama. The wussie-fied party that nominated the moderate got us Obama.’

The moderate was nominated because of the brian-dead Huckster fans. In the primaries, McCain did best in the states that were going to vote for the real Dem anyway. The Huckster (BTW, the only anti-choice candidate running- appearantly Unions are more important than kids in Arkansas) did best in the states that would be Red no matter what. The candidate that did the best in the swing/battleground states? The Huckster (who never had a snowball’s chance in Phoenix of winning the general election) and his followers drained enough votes from him to give McCain the nominatiuon.

Props.

‘The Moderates have controled this party and it’s message for 4 years now…they’ve spent like Democrats, stuffed values voters into a corner and refused to acknowledge them and generally told Republican voter’s who hold a traditional view of America to go to hell…and now you dare the declare us at fault for the fiasco that was McCain’s squish Campaign for President?’

Tom Delay is a ‘moderate’? Thanks for the update. Going back to the ninties, the choice was between Newt and ideas, or Delay and power. We lose one Congressional cycle, Newt is out, Tom is in, spending foes through the roof, touchy-feely issues become all important…

And kids are still stuck in a disfunctional school system.

“Our religious traditions have been ridiculed and relegated to scorn.”

Truer words were never spoken. This blog brings up some very important points. And Madelyn Murray O’Hair, let’s not leave her out. Madelyn Murray O’Hare was a terrible person. Where were the Conservatives when she was having her way? I actually met that horrid creature; I was working as a waitress at the airport while putting myself through college, and she sat at a table in my section. She was greasy, rumpled, rude, and smelled bad.

Her success in taking prayer out of public schools was the beginning of the end. When I was a little girl, I attended public school where we said the Pledge of Allegiance every day. All sports events were preceded by prayer. In the public school system, I received a wonderful primary education. Then things changed, and my parents sent me to a private high school. How fortunate I was.

Left-wing lug nuts gravitate towards social work and education. It’s a shame. The bureaucracy they’ve created gives even right-minded teachers no time to teach. Nowadays, children leave high school barely able to read.

No disrespect whatsoever intended, but I’m guessing that you, Mr. Huston, graduated a public school after 1970 (based on the grammatical errors in your post)? It’s not your fault; it’s proof of your argument about the decline in our schools when you wrote “set their sites” instead of the correct ‘set their sights.’ Also, I think you could’ve made your point very well without resorting to using a vulgar term like “Islamofascism” which does not fit the context of your argument.

Using such terms and resorting to radical name-calling with words such as “Obamessiah” will not change anyone’s way of thinking. Ugliness and name-calling are tactics I expect from the left-wing lug nut faction, not from Conservatives. Isn’t enlightening people what we’re supposed to be about on sites like this one?

Also, I don’t understand how every discussion – especially one as vital to our future as this one – turns into an argument filled with personal slams. It’s so disrespectful.

Unless I’m wrong, and the only purpose of this website is for people to vent their anger? I’m not being snide. If that’s all this site is about – if nobody else wants to discuss education and talk about ways to improve it – then I’ll just stay away.