To not know our enemy is precarious to say the least. We stand in grave danger when our enemy is established incognito in our midst. Our enemy effectively uses ploys to disguise himself as something innocuous or benign at any given point in time. Yet the egregious social bane it generates is ascertainable in the long run. Why would we expect anything less shrewd from the forces that lead to bondage?
For instance, what single American institution, above all others, has done more to erode liberty and morality in that society? I could ask the same for Canadian and European institutions as well. One might think of radical feminists, radical ecologists, radical environmentalists, gay activist groups, the corporate news media, the kiddie pornography industry, the family courts and child services divisions, or even loathesome government appendages like the Internal Revenue Service or the Federal Reserve System.
Yet, as bad as these institutions are, there is no single institution that has produced such widespread and long-lasting damage to "First-World" society as the government school, a.k.a. state indoctrination centers. TokugawaIeyasu (1526-1549) of Japan once said, “To come to know your enemy, first you must become his friend, and once you become his friend, all his defenses come down. Then you can choose the most fitting method for his demise.”
And this tactic is precisely the means by which our enemy has an iron grip on Northern Hemisphere society (also Australian and New Zealand)—right under our noses. Nonethless, following the logic of Chinese military strategist and philosopher Sun-Tzu (500BC) who said, “If you know your enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles” (The Art of War). Let us take his advice and get to know our enemy, the government school.
From its inception in the Nineteenth Century, having been spawned by The Communist Manifesto (1848) of Marx and Engels, the government school project has utilized outstanding subterfuge tactics to try to hide its true agenda. Under the guise of providing traditional education, children are conditioned to embrace wrong ideas. Spending for “public” education has reached record levels but academic achievement in areas like reading, writing, and arithmetic is appalling. But has the government school failed? In reality, the government school has in fact been fabulously successful from the point of view of the Left. The goal of “public education” is not merely to give pupils the basic tools and knowledge they need to succeed in life. It is to indoctrinate kids with ways that oppose both God and liberty. And to this end it has been stunningly successful.
As Dr. Steven Yates noted in 2004, the primary goal of the government school is to indoctrinate children with statist principles. Contrary to the vision of the American Founders, students learn that the state qua the state is to be revered and cherished. They must learn to fight for it and uphold the state's noble foundation. Students are also inundated with principles of Darwinism, “alternative” lifestyles, dubious environmentalist ideologies, socialism, and secular humanism in creating a modernist Worldview.
Dr. Yates is right to say that parents are to have dominion over their children’s education—not the state—and parents err greatly by subjecting their kids to “public” education. In that same year, Alan Melton opined that some Christian parents send their kids to public school in order to “socialize” them. But this activity has been an abysmal failure to the extent that 85% of public school kids from Christian families end up leaving the faith. (Besides television and movies, where else do children get their bad ideas from?)
What a tragedy indeed! Things have only eroded further over the last decade or so; public schooling is not now more pro-liberty than before. So, why is it that Christians have not widley joined with libertarians in the fight against government schools?
It is certainly bad for both groups to be involved with the public school. The enemies of liberty have gained the upper hand by spreading their government school program. While many libertarian and Christian families have been afflicted by it, many people still (surprisingly) do not see the public school for the major threat that it is. Instead, it is viewed as a “mission” field, a route of steady employment, a means of socialization for children and an "affordable" education alternative (including important bonus features like team sports and group music).
The Apostle Paul charged Christians with the business of “pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God” (I Cor. 10:4b-5). Thus, it is fitting that Christians should be tearing down the government school. Yet they continue to support it. So, why are they not fully-aligned with libertarians in championing the cause against government schools? Satan is attacking the church and liberty in general, but so many Christians are still unaware what or where their enemy is. At least libertarians generally have a clearer picture of what is going on, having fabulous authors to show them why: Rothbard, Mises, Nock, Spooner, Rand, et al.
Christ warned that, “while men slept, his [God’s] enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way” (Matt. 13:25). So it is with the government school evil, which has been sown right under our noses and now flourishes in the Northern Hemisphere, alongside so many well-meaning Christians and dedicated libertarians. How grim are the prospects for liberty when Christians defend the clearly-wayward public school! They work their own undoing without realizing it. Indeed some may not even realize where the real battle has been raging until the Day of Judgment comes and the government school program finds its final resting place in the lake of fire.
Sadly, those who tell the truth about the nature and consequences of government schooling (“critics”) often become pariahs in Evangelical and even Roman Catholic and Orthodox circles. Whether they are prohibited from being radio personalities or just ostracized by friends as “extremists,” damage is done to the church and the cause of liberty when such champions of truth are silenced or despised.
What a shame! Chritians rejecting the messengers who are sent to them is a recurrent theme in history. Libertarians have no such history or excuse yet oftentimes remain too apathetic with regard to this matter. Of all the evils in the First World (and elsewhere), from which many of us have moved to greener pastures such as Chile, little has been more pervasive and virulent in undermining the truth and liberty than the government school. May God help us to know our great enemy and unite to attack it!
John Cobin, Ph.D.
Escape America Now
