By now, most Americans who have school aged children have heard of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. If you aren’t aware of this program, the Common Core program is billed by the progressive base as the program that will revive education and establish one set of standards nationwide, enabling generations in the future to be more globally competitive. As always, the devil is in the details. Next to the Affordable Care Act, no greater threat exists to the future of our nation than the liberal-progressive Common Core State Standards Initiative. The Common Core is designed to “dumb down” generations of youth, take parents out of the education process, and turn out millions of generic “workers,” an accomplishment which would make even Karl Marx proud. We were warned that the election of Mr. Obama to the Presidency would lead to the fundamental transformation of America. This progressive movement aims to manipulate certain populations through a deliberate, controlled takeover of public education, accomplished by camouflaging its true intent and motives, all to the detriment of the nation.

The tactic of taking over public education has been in the works for the past three decades, and progressive think tank controllers have honed their skills at deceiving the American people. Most Americans are simply too busy and too distracted with their own lives to focus on issues like Common Core and the Affordable Care Act. They woke up one morning and were surprised to realize that the government was mandating health care. Since 2009, Americans have been burdened with new education standards that frustrate parents and students alike. Once we peel back the onion, we can see that this putative unifying initiative, like “Leave No Child Behind” and “Race to the Top,” is just another failing government program. Common Core is falsely cloaked as an initiative that would allow more American students to succeed in the global workplace. In reality, it steals money from the American taxpayer, it steals opportunities from children, it steals from our nation opportunities to influence events around the world, and it exploits children for profit. When people ask me how low Progressives can go, I tell them it depends upon how much money is at stake.

Progressives have shown themselves to be masters of deception by developing naming conventions specifically created to play into the ignorance and blindness of the American people. Look at the titles of many of their leading socialist programs, such as Welfare, Social Security, Affordable Healthcare, Planned Parenthood, Leave No Child Behind, Race to the Top, Electronic Benefit Transfer, and last but not least, Common Core. A closer examination of some of these progressive programs, such as Welfare, Affordable Healthcare, and Planned Parenthood is warranted in order to illustrate the power of skillful marketing. A lack of due diligence on the part of citizens changes lives in ways that are neither wanted nor needed.

Welfare: This title is a misnomer. In truth, it represents taking money from one person and giving it to another. The only persons who actually benefit from the welfare program are the persons on the receiving end because all of the funding is wrenched from the paychecks of working Americans. Progressives prefer to refer to this method of government theft as “wealth redistribution.” But, let’s call this theft “welfare” because the government wants us to feel good when it steals our money from us and gives it to others whom the government deems to be in need of it.

Affordable Healthcare: There is nothing affordable about it when it comes to healthcare, government interference, and mandates. When President Obama took office in 2009, approximately 48 million people did not have healthcare. Today, with the Affordable Care Act signed into law, approximately 41.7 million people still do not have healthcare, and 8 million people lost their healthcare plans. All of us have seen our healthcare insurance premiums increase by more than $2,500 per family in order to subsidize the 7.3 million people whom Mr. Obama and his merry band of Progressives decided needed healthcare insurance coverage. This program, like most other government programs, may have looked good on paper. Unfortunately, it failed during its implementation. When all is said and done, the American taxpayer will be required to pay for the bailout of this failed program because it was a bad idea from the start. After over forty-one executive order delays and changes, the American people have yet to see the full effects of this lemon, and I believe the worst is yet to come after 2016. Somebody is making a ton of money and it’s at our expense, courtesy of our progressive-led government.

Planned Parenthood: If there was ever a cover for legalized and federally-subsidized murder, this is the beast of progressive programs. Cloaked as a program to help with parenthood, this program is actually a mass genocide program reportedly aborting more than three hundred thousand babies while receiving more than half a billion dollars of taxpayer monies from the government to accomplish these acts. There is nothing “planned” about Planned Parenthood and it’s a far cry from anything remotely resembling parenthood.

Progressive politicians have learned over time what works and what does not work when it comes to manipulating the American people. They are masters of deception, and as Rahm Emanuel says, “You never want a serious crisis go to waste.” With the economic crash of 2008, the election of Mr. Obama as President, and the debate over healthcare, Progressives who were waiting in the shadows to launch their crusade on education finally had the “perfect storm” moment to effect their plan of transforming America through the re-education of her children. Enter the progressive Common Core program.

Glenn Beck’s book, Conform, details in a very succinct fashion the dangers of the progressive Common Core program while debunking the progressive narrative that Common Core is state-led. I believe this deception will ultimately be their undoing.

The Tea Party is a great watchdog organization that keeps its eye not only on the government, but on Progressives as well, and that scares Progressives to death. Because of this close scrutiny of Common Core, Progressives knew that unless they could bill this program as state-led, Common Core would fail to pass muster with the people. Progressives enlisted three private groups to deceive the American people: the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve, Inc. The rationale behind these choices was that no one would question the first two organizations because they sound official, and as to the last, well, why would anyone question a company called “Achieve”? Doesn’t that sound like something good?

Phase one of the Progressives’ strategy was to choose a memorable brand name (Common Core) and to deputize three surrogate assassin groups to execute a ruse against the American people after the Department of Education rolled out Common Core for public scrutiny. Phase two was an unadulterated exercise in arm-twisting by the federal government. With the implementation of President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus, funding earmarked for education became carrots to money-starved states. In order to receive these monies, states would have to implement the Common Core program initiatives as part of the on-going “Race to the Top” program. I found it outrageous that many state officials who accepted this quid pro quo from the federal government retired or changed jobs after rubber-stamping this deception, thus ensuring zero accountability to the electorate. Adding insult to injury, the feds assured these officials that implementation would not occur for seven years, allowing for said retirements and job changes. That is how we got to where we are today, and this is how a progressive-led government rolls. The scary part is yet to come.

When it comes to educating children, the first line of defense should be the parents, and not the government. As an Anti-Federalist, I have a deep distrust for initiatives that the government says will be good for me and my family. None of the Common Core education standards were tested or evaluated before they were implemented. According to Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers, “the public wasn’t involved, parents weren’t involved, and the districts weren’t involved.” Now, guess who was involved? That’s right, Bill and Melinda Gates (along with their foundation). But that’s not all. There are two companies developing the standardized tests for Common Core: Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, both of which are funded by the federal government. Do you still believe that Common Core is a state-run initiative? Here’s one more fact: The federal government will be involved in the vetting of the proposed questions to appear on the standardized tests for quality control purposes. I don’t know about the quality part, but you can be assured that it is all about control, and that our children are the targets.

I firmly believe that America is an exceptional country filled with exceptional people. However, where there is exceptionalism, there are also people who don’t want to be exceptional, nor do they want others to be exceptional. Those “anti-exceptionalists” want America to retract its global influence. In order to accomplish that goal, the thought police are manipulating the populace by implanting unquestioning conformity into the malleable minds of school aged children. Free thinking and time-tested standards are being replaced with a “critical thinking” process foreign to parents and known only to Common Core educators. It is a move to replace parents with school officials as the primary influencers of children, where children learn that the school provides them with both food and knowledge. I know that sounds Orwellian, but it is a more common occurrence than most citizens know or realize. For example, just a few weeks ago, a teacher led her class in an assignment where they were to compare similarities between Adolf Hitler and former President George W. Bush. Perhaps one is tempted to dismiss that anecdote as an aberration, an exception from the norm. Then let us ask ourselves why the Common Core math protocols are so ineffective that Stanford University professor R. James Milgram, Ph.D. would refuse to sign off on the validation of the proposed standards? Why are many of the literary standards being eliminated as required reading? What genius would eliminate a parent from a child’s educational learning process, and what is their motive for doing so? If your answers point you in the direction of exploitation, you are on the right path; keep going.

As a society, there is no greater crime than one perpetrated against a child. Even criminals in prison live by this code of conduct, which is why those who are incarcerated for crimes against children have a shortened life expectancy and are kept out of the general population, due to death threats. How, then, is the exploitation of children in our public schools for political purpose, business gain, and/or data collection acceptable? Is it because a physical violation has not occurred? Are our nation’s children nothing more than lab rats to Progressives? Many of the Progressive faithful truly believe that most parents aren’t equipped to know what their children really need, and therefore governmental intervention is necessary. Today, concerned parents are taking action by removing their children from traditional public schools in favor of charter schools or home-schooling. In response, the Department of Education is attempting to impose new requirements upon parents who oppose them. Progressives have identified a gold mine that they can exploit for both monetary and political gain. They will not go away quietly nor will they relinquish control without a fight. That fight is coming and it’s coming soon.

In recent years, the United States government has exposed its tyrannical side, unleashing agencies such as the NSA, the IRS and the FBI to collect information on its citizens, in violation of the U.S. Constitution. In a move supported by the likes of progressives Bill Gates and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the government has stated that it is collecting data/information on children so that researchers can determine what the best instructional methods are. Didn’t I mention lab rats and child exploitation earlier? Not only is the government collecting this data with a flagrant disregard for individual liberties, it freely admits that it is doing so. It gets worse: in 2011, the Department of Education changed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to allow schools to release student records without parental consent.

Sadly, this is the nation that Progressives want America to become. They want us to have open borders and open lives. They want to impose control in place of individual liberty, and conformity in place of free-thinking. This leads me to the final question: Is Common Core the mechanism that leads to the abolishment of our Constitution and Bill of Rights? Or can we roll back the progressive agenda that is destroying the very fabric of America’s exceptionalism and innovation? Our founders made the decision to fight against the odds because they believed in freedom and liberty. I, too, will stand and fight against this government-imposed tyranny.

The Common Core initiative is just another failing federal government ruse designed to hurt our nation and to inhibit growth, innovation, and exceptionalism. All of the states that have been hoodwinked into adopting the Common Core State Standards Initiative should take steps to formally withdraw from the initiative. The future of our nation depends upon it.