We are living in cultural chaos. Our children are taught in school that boys can be girls and girls can be boys because gender is a "non-binary spectrum" unconnected to biological sex. Elementary school students are offered pornographic books that depict graphic sex acts. Libraries and schools propagate the poisonous falsehood that white children are inherently racist because of the color of their skin and black children are oppressed based on the color of their skin.
This doesn't mean conservatives and parents haven't won tremendous victories against Critical Race Theory and transgender ideology in the past couple of years—they have, and they should be proud of it. Parents' eyes have been opened to the poisonous ideology aimed at their children like never before, and the proverbial Mama and Papa Grizzlies are ferociously—and righteously—defending their children.
And yet, we continue to live in cultural madness. While many parents were unaware of these attacks on our children until they looked over their kids' shoulders on Zoom school during COVID and saw firsthand the poison being poured into the minds of America's youth, these attacks aren't new. Certainly, the attacks are escalating, but the seeds of the plot to subvert our children's minds were planted decades ago in the institutions that help form our kids, from the public school system to public libraries, media, our health care system, many religious institutions, and even the law.
In other words, radical Leftist academics, ideologues, and activists played the long game, infiltrating, subverting, and capturing the cultural institutions on which American families rely. Now they have all the tools they need—in the form of Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, revisionist history like the 1619 Project, Comprehensive Sexuality Education, Social-Emotional Learning, and more—to force their ideology on our kids.
And yet, the Left is not solely to blame for the cultural chaos they've sowed. The Republican Party is just as much to blame—perhaps even more so—because we expect destructive policies from the Democratic Party, but ought to be able to count on the Republicans to serve as a bulwark against such attacks.
And yet, here we are living in cultural madness.
The Republican Party has not fought effectively to defend our institutions and our children, and there's one simple reason: it forgot its purpose and abandoned its values.
Public schooling didn't become compulsory in the United States until 1852; Massachusetts was the first state to mandate children attend public school. Massachusetts made public school mandatory because there was an influx of immigrants, particularly Catholic immigrants, coming to our country at the time. The Protestant politicians in charge of Massachusetts wanted to indoctrinate the immigrant children in American values—so they would be loyal to America first rather than the country of their birth—and in Protestant values, due to the centuries-long rebellion against the Catholic Church.
In other words, our education system was designed to serve as an indoctrination center. That's what it's supposed to do, and that fact alone is neither good or bad. The question is what is being indoctrinated. The Republican Party has completely neglected to attend to this question, or hold claim to the legacy of proper indoctrination in our nation's public schools.
After all, there is no such thing as a neutral education. The idea that children can be sent to school to learn only "Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic" is a utopian fantasy. Children don't spend six to eight hours a day with adults without some kind of values being imparted. Obey your teacher? That's a moral value. Do your homework? Another moral quality. Don't bully the other kids? A moral judgment. Every word and action in the school is based on a system of values. The million dollar question is: whose values?
The Republican Party has fallen prey to the utopian idea of neutrality in an effort to avoid disingenuous accusations of violating the separation of church and state. Yet such accusations are absurd. Nowhere in the founding, framing, or fabric of American government or civil society can one find the idea that basic morality must be excluded from policy and institutions. "The separation of church and state" is a phrase mentioned only once by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists assuring them that the United States government would uphold its constitutional pledge not to prohibit the free exercise of religion nor force religious practice on those who wish to abstain.
Yet somewhere along the line, the Republican Party abandoned the original purpose of the public school system: to indoctrinate American children in proper values. Republicans withdrew our morals in the name of neutrality, and the result was certainly not neutrality. The Left was only too happy to swoop in and use public schools to indoctrinate children in anti-American, anti-Christian ideologies.
It's a reality that has been proved again and again throughout our history: there is no such thing as neutrality. Either liberal ideologies will be indoctrinated into our children's minds at public schools, or conservative ideas—American values and Judeo-Christian morals—will prevail.
It's our choice. I challenge conservatives to grapple with this reality, to reorient our strategies in this existential fight, reassert our morals, and demand that the Republican Party fight to win. If we don't adjust, we'll continue to lose. For the sake of our children, and our country, we must win.
Liz Wheeler is host of "The Liz Wheeler Show."
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
