Over the years that I have been writing I have quoted from the great British historian Arnold Toynbee on a subject that I think is entirely relevant to the American people. According to Toynbee, history records that “… great nations rise, and great nations fall. But the autopsy of history is that all great nations commit suicide.”
In my relatively brief lifetime, I have seen enough to recognize the self-inflicted wounds that threaten to destroy this nation. The social pathologies that afflict us are all of our own doing -- the result of liberal social policies of one kind or another that have infected our culture and are weakening our nation.
For instance, in my lifetime there has been an astonishing devaluation of children, largely due to failed welfare, divorce and abortion policies. The out-of-wedlock births in our nation have gone from rare to the routine, from single digit percentages to a third of all children born in this country. Along with the out-of-wedlock birthrate we have seen divorce skyrocket to the point that 24 million children, 34 percent, live in a home without their biological father present. Worst of all, over the last 30 years we have aborted almost 45 million unborn children.
In addition to the loss of our cultural values, we have lost our minds on immigration policy. Through the efforts of liberal politicians, our nation has gone from reasonable policies that allowed people to come to the United States to work for a better life to policies that allow people to come here to take advantage of our social welfare system. Even worse, instead of requiring that immigrants be assimilated into our culture by learning our language, our law and our values, liberal social engineers have encouraged them to maintain their languages and customs which only serve to isolate them.
Former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm recently said that one of the best ways to destroy America is to turn America into a multilingual, multicultural nation. Lamm said, “History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures.”
Lamm went on to point out that one of the surest means of destroying this nation is to pursue a path of multi-culturalism. To allow immigrants to come to this country not to become Americans legally and culturally, but to instead encourage them to maintain their native culture is to create whole separatist sub-cultures. He quoted historian Seymour Lipset who said, “The histories of bilingual and bi-cultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy.”
Lamm, who is a Democrat, is right. In my lifetime our education system has devolved from educating children to fostering social experimentation through means including multi-culturalism which not only encourages cultural separatism, but challenges the idea that American ideals, systems and values have any more legitimacy or success than those of any other culture. Millions of American schoolchildren and college students are being taught to be ashamed of America’s historical beliefs and accomplishments, and the wealth/power that have accompanied them, while at the same time millions of minorities are being indoctrinated with the idea that they are victims of America.
No wonder the majority of our American high school graduates are leaving our public schools without adequate training for work or life. Instead of teaching students how to think, propagandists in our schools and colleges are teaching them what to think.
If you think this is an exaggeration, look at the resolutions adopted by the National Education Association (NEA). The NEA has passed resolutions supporting multiculturalism, bilingual education, gay rights and gay marriage, radical feminism, and a whole host of other left-wing ideas. In fact, the NEA was a financial sponsor of the recent abortion rights march in Washington, D.C. Sadly, many conservative teachers nationwide, including thousands in Alabama that are members of the NEA, continue to support the NEA’s destructive agenda through their state association dues.
In addition, as Lamm also points out, it is not just the NEA that is involved in funding and promoting an anti-American agenda. Big corporations and foundations are giving millions of dollars to support multicultural education and the diversity movement that is undermining our nation
This, my fellow citizens, is a recipe for losing this nation. But there is a solution. People of character must rise to meet this challenge. Good people must enter the arena in the media, education and particularly in government. And they must register and vote.
As Arnold Toynbee also said, "As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility."
Gary Palmer is president of the Alabama Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets, limited government and strong families, which are indispensable to a prosperous society.
This column is a copyrighted feature distributed free of charge by the Alabama Policy Institute. For information or comments contact: Gary Palmer, Alabama Policy Institute, 402 Office Park Drive, Suite 300, Birmingham, Alabama 35223, (205) 870-9900, email: mailto:garyp@alabamapolicy.org
HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to mailto:Malia@HawaiiReporter.com
