The Republican Party in America is slowly committing suicide.
Its death is slow and unobvious. In fact, the party has no one but itself to blame.
The poison is in, no doubt, reckless and runaway spending. Particularly (and especially) the funding of centralization and subsidization of education.
A Republican Problem
The poisoners are Congressional Republicans who, with every passing omnibus spending bill, vote “aye.” These Republicans betray the party year after year, whose platform maintains a constitutional approach to achieving limited government. These Republicans lie to their constituents election after election, when they promise to live up to that platform.
They are, unarguably, killing the Republican Party and all of conservative ideology.
The Republicans have no one but themselves to blame. In 2018, Congressional Republicans couldn’t pass a bill to cut $6.5trillion over ten years. The Republican base is no exception; voters consistently fail to hold their candidates accountable. In spite of all of its glaring failures, Congresspersons have about a 95% reelection rate.
The Power Trap
Republicans lie to themselves as well. After President Reagan called for the abolition of the Department of Education, mainstream Republicans thought they could use the department to their own ends.
President George H.W.. Bush proposed America 2000 and the G.I. Bill for Kids. His son, President George W. Bush, passed No Child Left Behind. Like all education reforms, Republican efforts have been a colossal failure. Moreover, they have completely failed to displace, prevent, and render unnecessary the establishment of Democrat programs.
In truth, President Trump has been the first President since Reagan to call for the abolition of the Department of Education. However, his budget request tells another tale.
During the 2016 election, Trump supported the ideas of voucher programs and school choice. Unsurprisingly, the Education Department’s spending request includes $1billion for school choice subsidies.
Since Trump’s election, Republicans haven’t proposed or enacted an education overhaul. The only exception being Representative Massie’s proposal to abolish the Department of Education altogether.
Therefore, the Democrats’ failing Common Core program is still the national standard. Unforgettably, it was the pet project of hard-left Bill Gates whose foundation spent tens of billions of dollars in promotions.
Democrats promoted is a voluntary program for the states. Meanwhile, the federal government threatened to pull funding from (read: extorted) states that opted out. The US Government has a habit of bullying the states via funding threats. The power moves range from healthcare to transportation, and much in between.
Common Core
In order for a policy or program to be good, it must pass a cost-benefit analysis. A directly proportional, beneficial output must coincide with every dollar spent. And ultimately that output must coincide with the goal of the program.
For example, the Homestead Act of 1862 sought to encourage western expansion and settlement. Initially, two million people settled west. Ultimately, Americans claimed 270 million acres of land for settlement and agriculture.
The Brookings Institution measured the efficacy of Common Core in 2015. They found that Common Core failed to produce significant changes in student performance and success compared to the previous policies. In fact, their statistical measurements found that Common Core fell 80% below the benchmark for “noticeable” change.
The following year, the American Institutes for Research also conducted a study on the program. True, initial look at the Kentucky rollout looked promising to AIR in 2015. However, by 2016, the data compiled from all adopters and non-adopters showed disarray.
K-12 Nightmares
Whether tied to Common Core or not, the curriculum coming from many schools across the nation is horrifying. And the Department of Education, and therefore taxpayers (including Republicans) are footing the bill.
The radical-progressive left’s woke, social justice warrior culture is infecting the Seattle school districts. They are proposing to teach children that ancient mathematics has been “culturally appropriated” by the West, and that “mathematical identity” exists.
An image of a Common Core math quiz stoked a fiery debate, as well. A student was given two incorrect marks for two ultimately correct answers.
Last month, a Florida teacher was reassigned when a multiple choice quiz question referred to President Trump as an “idiot.” Two months prior, a Florida principal denied that the Holocaust was a “factual, historical event.”
An teacher in Alabama was placed on leave for assigning a math test that included questions about gang violence and prostitution. Colorado parents were left outraged when their local school hosted a drag queen for career day.
A Vermont elementary school came under fire for asking children about their gender identity and their sexual history.
An Illinois high school student was forced to remove faith-based references from his valedictorian speech in Illinois last year. Meanwhile, some teachers, along with the greater Democrat base, encouraged students to skip class for a climate strike.
In reality, these are just a few examples of the radical left’s ideological usurpation of the education system. What’s more, Republicans are doing absolutely nothing to stop it, locally or nationally.
Higher Education
The indoctrination of children does not end with high school. Leftist propaganda fills the college and university systems to their brims.
In 2018, Mitchell Langbert published a study with the National Association of Scholars. Publications across the political spectrum, from liberal Bloomberg and Washington Times to conservative Daily Signal, covered the text.
Langbert titled his study “Homogenous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty.” He found that,of the top 60 liberal arts colleges, 60% claim party affiliation. Of those with party affiliations, more than 90% of teachers are Democrats.
Furthermore, 39% of those universities had no Republican representation whatsoever. In STEM fields, Democrats outnumbered republicans anywhere from 60% to a whopping 550%.
Within liberal arts fields, the results were far more dramatic. Anywhere from 100 to over 130 Democrats were identified to as few as one Republican, or none at all.
Langbert joined fellow academics Anthony Quain and Daniel Klein in 2016, two years prior. They published “Faculty Voter Registration in Economics, History, Journalism, Law, and Psychology.”
In the top 40 universities of those specific fields, Democrats outnumbered Republicans almost 12:1.
Cause and Effect
Children go into our higher education systems believing in the sanctity of the institutions, the marquee of the academia, and the unobjectionable knowledge of its proctors.
They are, for all intents and purposes, blank canvases, upon which radical left teachers and professors take their brushes.
And the outcome is obvious.
We need look no further than the riots at Berkeley for an act as mundane as a conservative speaker taking the stage. Protesters in Salk Lake City, Utah were also arrested, and for the same reason.
A radical marxist at The New School interrupted an academic discussion on Venezuela’s collapse this week, refusing to allow them to speak to the attendees.
These are just a few examples of the intolerance has plagued the left within universities that once championed free speech and the free exchange of ideas.
The Outcome of Institutional Leftism
Student Loan Hero, of Lending Tree, produces a Federal Student Loan Portfolio as a public guide to student loan debt.
They show that, as of February of this year, the Federal Government holds nearly $1.44 TRILLION of student loan debt that was issued to nearly 43 MILLION borrowers.
That does not account for previous loans fully paid, to date. Therefore, it stands to empirical reason that the federal subsidization of the leftist agenda through the university system stands a great deal higher than the $1.4T already stated.
And to this point, the Federal Government, assisted by Republicans, has seen an ideological decrease in young Republicans and conservatives.
The Pew Research Center released a study called “Milennials in Adulthood.” In it, they find that Republican identification over a 10-year period (2004-2014) declined 10%. Identification as an independent rose by 12% over the same period.
Those who considered themselves conservative dropped by 9% from the previous generation (Gen X), whose identification with the ideology dropped by only 6% from the generation before (baby boomers).
On top of the horrendous decline of conservative, classical liberal, or even republican ideas in academic spaces, the disastrous ideas promoted by marxists and socialists are taking hold among the youth.
Ending the Rift
The Brookings Institute, in February of 2018, published a study with surprising findings.
In this study, titled “My Kids, Your Kids, Our Kids: What Parents and the Public Want From Schools,” they sought to find what the different objectives were among parents in their children’s’ education.
Parents generally wanted the same three objectives for their children. The surprising aspect, to them, was that the prioritization of these objectives were switched among Democrats and Republicans.
They concluded that these priorities influence the policies thereby promoted by the two parties.
Let’s face the facts.
There is no bipartisan consensus for national education reform.
Moreover, nothing in the US Constitution authorizes the Federal Government to meddle in education to begin with.
The national programs are giant, financial sinkholes that produce no measurable effects on students or their performances.
Educational institutions have become machines of propaganda and indoctrination for radical left agendas.
It is time for Republicans to act, rather than incessantly pay lip service to Republican and conservative ideals.
For the good of our society and the preservation of our republican institutions, it’s time to abolish the Department of Education and every program, policy, rule, regulation, grant, loan, and subsidy that accompanies it.
