The Washington Times: Moral disarmament, by Mona Charen.
The National Education Association has weighed in with suggestions to guide teachers on the first anniversary of the terror attacks. "Do not suggest," the NEA advises, "that any group is responsible. Do not repeat the speculations of others, including newscasters. Blaming is especially difficult in terrorist situations because someone is at fault." Well, yes, someone is always at fault. And unless those "someones" are right-wing radio hosts, liberals just hate to see them blamed for anything.
In New York (the NEA would like this), a teacher was suspended merely for telling her class that all the individuals who attacked this country on September 11 were Arabs. Liberals have done their best, in the months since the attacks to make it unseemly to notice this, as if with the smallest rumor, the mob mentality that characterizes the average American would make him charge off, pitchfork and torch aloft, to murder and terrorize innocent Arab-Americans.
The NEA also tells teachers to say: "We have no reason to believe that the attacks were part of an organized plan of any other country. The terrorists acted independently, without the sanction of any nation."
...They want, above all, to prevent Americans from feeling any sense of righteous fury. How dare we, when we were responsible for slavery, imperialism, racism and an inadequate minimum wage? The liberals have cultural hegemony on their side, but neither logic nor facts.
But just in case teachers do all of the above and their little charges nevertheless say something "intolerant" about terrorists, the teachers are encouraged to "discuss historical instances of American intolerance."
Some students will yawn, since they've heard little else in public schools for a couple of decades now. But others will swallow it whole and emerge from their miseducation as "men without chests," as C.S. Lewis prophesied. They are learning so little about what America has done right in its history, so little about what made generations of our ancestors lay down their lives for this nation - this experiment in ordered liberty. Can most students tutored by the NEA think of a reason Abraham Lincoln would call this "the last best hope of Earth" when we held slaves and mistreated the Indians? We call the passengers on Flight 93 heroes, but do the kids understand why the White House or the Capitol is worth a battle with cutthroats? Do they realize that tolerance is not the only virtue?
The liberal hold on our education system amounts to a kind of moral disarmament of the nation. Before there can be an Army, Navy and Air Force capable of protecting us, there must be a citizenry that believes we are worth defending.
Fantastic.
Wednesday, September 4, 2002
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