OPINION:
This past week while President Biden puttered about the White House, addled and confused, in his rainbow-striped pajamas, two surveys were released that should chill the blood of even the most progressive among us who still think we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The first survey was conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and reported that 23% of America’s college students now think it’s okay to use violence to silence those with whom they disagree, and 66% currently support shouting down a campus speaker whose ideas they don’t like.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Nearly one-quarter of our precious darlings, whose education we helped pay for with hundreds of millions of our hard-earned tax dollars, now tell us they have no problem beating us into submission if they don’t like our views. And the two-thirds of these fragile snowflakes who don’t go so far as to think we should be physically accosted have no problem plugging their ears and throwing a temper tantrum if we dare to suggest that their self-absorbed chronological snobbery just might be wrong.
The second survey hails from the Trafalgar Group. It tells us that American Democrats overwhelmingly support Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s militarization of “law enforcement” personnel to literally ride roughshod over working-class people who simply want to be left alone to make a living and do their jobs.
According to Trafalgar, Democrats overwhelmingly favored Mr. Trudeau’s “Castronian” response to the Canadian truckers, with 65% saying they approved and only 17% saying they disapproved.
Yep, approximately two-thirds of those who voted for Uncle Joe openly admit they think roughing up old men, seizing their bank accounts, putting pastors in jail and riding horses over the top of women in wheelchairs is a moral good if their “Dear Leader” declares it so.
The results of these two polls are staggering. In case you missed it, the common thread here is this: Huge swaths of the American left now openly declare they fully intend to use physical force to silence you if you don’t submit to their way of life. Think differently than them, and you will be shouted down. Refuse to tow the party line, and you will lose your job, your assets, your truck and your freedom. Disagree, and you will be crushed, physically!
If you’re wondering how this “fundamental transformation” of America’s way of thinking about freedom and tolerance happened almost overnight, you need to look no further than your local public schools. When you send your kids off to reeducation camps, you shouldn’t be surprised to find that they come home reeducated.
For decades we’ve been asleep at the switch while our country’s educational system was a virtual train wreck. We said little while our schools lost their minds and our kids lost their souls. We knew our progeny was being butchered in a grisly game of social engineering and, yet, all many of us did was nod obediently when the “experts” told us we were overacting.
But, common sense and sense that was common told us this wasn’t true.
We could see the blatant racism of critical race theory. The ontological lie of LGBTQ was obvious. The overt misogyny of trans-ideology was clear. But many of us sat silent.
When our parental authority was mocked, how many of us spoke up? How many said anything when the schools we were paying for started misusing pronouns and denying the physiology of a female? When our own sons and daughters started coming home telling us George Washington was a white supremacist and that our Constitution is xenophobic, did any of us bother asking what the heck was going on? And when our schools started assigning child porn to 14-year-old minors, how many of us objected or even bothered to stand publicly with those who did?
It is said that Dietrich Bonhoeffer once challenged 1930s Germany — a culture in much the same state as our own — with the following words: “Not to speak is to speak and not to act is to act. Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. God will not hold us guiltless.”
Our silence is deafening, and survey after survey proves it. Violence is in the offing, and our inaction is greatly to blame. We have the responsibility to raise our children to hold dear the American ideal of freedom and if we don’t God will not hold us guiltless.
If you listen carefully, you can almost hear John Dewey chuckling: “You can’t make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society.”
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery) and, most recently, “Grow Up: Life Isn’t Safe, But It’s Good.”
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