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One of the traits that so deeply and sharply distinguishes today’s far-Left Democrat Party from the rest of the country is its aversion to love of country. For globalist, open-border Democrats who have been raised to view the capitalist superpower America as the apex of greed, oppression, and exploitation in world history, “patriotism” and “nationalism” are obscenities. For the Left, the very founding of our nation is rooted not in the dream of liberty for all but in the enslavement of “people of color.” In their distorted view, America can never be, and should never be, redeemed from this “original sin” (a sin that was universal in history until England and America ended it).
The Left, then, disdains patriotism as jingoistic white supremacy, and celebrates prominent figures who openly express the most fervent anti-Americanism, from NFL anthem-kneeler Colin Kaepernick to former president Barack Obama himself, who smeared his fellow Americans – those who voted him into the White House twice – as racist in our very DNA. You may recall that he also dismissed the idea of American exceptionalism as, well, unexceptional.
Partly because the rest of the country is fed up with being ruled by a Party that demands we be ashamed of ourselves and our forebears, the Democrats were crushed in the recent election by a red wave fueled by MAGA pride. One of the reasons – perhaps the principal reason – the Left hates Donald Trump with the heat of a thousand suns is that he rejects this self-loathing and unabashedly loves this country and the American people. Now, not only is he moving back into the White House, he has put together a team that also embraces this unfashionable, populist love of country. The Left is terrified and enraged by the prospect that they will be at the mercy of an administration that rejects their neo-Marxist dream of the “fundamental transformation” of the United States.
As an example of their panic over Trump’s picks: the Left-wing outlet Politico.com fear-mongered in an article this week that Trump’s nod for Secretary of Defense, Marine veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, threatens to instill an agenda rooted in “patriotic principles and Christian theology” in the Defense Department – perhaps even in the country at large. Gasp!
In his article “A Hegseth DOD comes with a battle against public school education,” Juan Perez Jr. fretted that if Hegseth is confirmed, “he will have the opportunity to bend a key facet of the education system in his image. It would also be a way to resurrect the ‘patriotic education’ blueprint Trump advanced during his first term and set an example Republican-led states can follow.”
Perez is alarmed that Hegseth has described the American public and private education system as being “infected with leftist ideology.” “Get your kids out of government school systems right now if you can,” Perez quotes Hegseth as telling conservative media personality Shawn Ryan in a November interview. Exactly what I and many other conservatives have been urging for years. The Left’s decades-long transformation of our educational system into a Marxist indoctrination mill is a major reason that American patriots recently threw the Democrats out of power.
Perez also notes with concern that Hegseth wants to “purge critical race theory (and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives) from military academies.” Yes, he does, and again, his fellow conservatives are right onboard. CRT and DEI programs have infused our every cultural institution with a corrosive, divisive, and subversive agenda that must be reversed to make America great again.
Perez worries specifically that Hegseth will ruin the Department of Defense Education Activity agency (DODEA), which educates approximately 67,000 children of active-duty military and civilian service members, with his radical (read: traditional) approach to education.
In his 2022 book Battle for the American Mind, for example, Hegseth calls for embracing what Perez calls “classical education programs that are infused with great works of literature, plus the study of Greek, Latin and Christian beliefs intertwined with the American myth.” The Left hates classical education because it imparts critical thinking skills, logic, and most of all, an appreciation for the grand intellectual legacy of the Western tradition – all of which are imposing obstacles to the Leftist agenda to brainwash younger generations and cut them off from their past. And by “American myth,” Perez means, of course, the notion that the United States is a nation with a unique destiny and has been a unique force for good in the world. This is a perspective that makes progressives’ blood boil.
Perez quotes Max Eden, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who is enthusiastic about the possibilities Hegseth brings to the table. “If I were advising Hegseth, I would say let’s transform DODEA into a classical school network and let’s get away from the DEI, get away from the gender stuff,” Eden said. “And let’s give our military service members a world-class education that American parents are scrambling to get into but they can’t because we’re not there yet as a country.”
Eden continues,
What I could see unfolding politically is a patriotic curriculum inspired by Trump’s 1776 Commission — when it’s fully fleshed out and developed — is implemented in the DODEA schools. And spreads state by state until half of American states, because I don’t expect blue states to like this very much, have a patriotic curriculum.
This would be a nightmare for the Left, whose lust for power depends heavily on capturing the impressionable minds of our youth.
Pete Hegseth’s Senate hearing for his confirmation as Secretary of Defense is scheduled for January 14. He has already survived a gauntlet of opposition attacks, including the usual Brett Kavanaugh-style, personal smear campaigns which the Left always conducts against Republican candidates they fear the most. The Senate Armed Services Committee will vote on Hegseth first, and it is expected that they will advance his nomination to the full Senate. At that point there will be a few RINO holdouts, of course, but the outlook for Hegseth’s confirmation is positive.
And then he can get to work reinvigorating our military and our nation as a whole with that scary “classical education” and those abhorrent “patriotic principles” that are so anathema to progressives.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior