Crucial Times

Crucial Times

 Education, the very foundation forming the basis for our culture, government and its institutions, has been co-opted by the insidious infiltration of what some scholars call “Cultural Marxism”.  This trend began with the morphing of “progressive”, socialist and communist ideologies into our educational systems and universities after the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990’s.

 This does not consist of just “seeding” some courses at our universities with left-wing ideologies.  It consists of infusing our whole kindergarten through university curricula with Marxist  doctrines such as CRT, the 1619 project, oppressor vs oppressed and myriad leftist ideologies coached as| “social justice”.  

 In a long life that began in the 1930’s, I have lived and observed many changes in customs, beliefs and politics.  Until the last few years, most of these have been within scope of a distinctly western, Christian and American identity.  Pretty much across the board, we were proud of America and proud to be Americans.

 Differences in political beliefs did not alter our fundamental national identity.  We fought wars to preserve it and fashioned our government around it.  We may have debated politics and opposed wars and political parties, but we were bound together by the Constitution, Bill of Rights and our Laws.

 Our republic recovered from the Civil War, several race riots, two world wars, and the Vietnam War.  But our foundations of government pretty much stayed solid and intact.

 Three recent books alarm us to the takeover of our educational systems by “progressive” leftists.  “American Marxism” by Mark Levin, “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, and “Battle for the American Mind|, by Pete Hegseth.

 This encroachment of left-wing “progressivism” on our schools goes a long way toward explaining how seemingly intellectual and educated students and professors can be led to wrap keffiyehs, shemaghs and Palestinian flags around themselves and take part in antisemitic protests.

 And this is just one manifestation of an anti-American, anti-establishment, anti-religious movement that has corrupted our youth and American life in general.  Ask many modern “twenty-somethings” about their beliefs and interests, and the response is some vacuous paean to progressiveness-based selfishness and self-absorption.  This is particularly true in the Acela corridor and the West Coast, but is spreading to traditionally stable Middle America.

 Unless this attack on the very foundations of our republic are stopped and reversed, there is danger that we may be relegated to the dustbin of history.

 Ray Gruszecki

May 28, 2024