Trump: Time to Restore ‘Patriotic Education’

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WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - President Trump is announcing a plan to restore "patriotic education" in schools to overturn the havoc wreaked by Marxist infiltration.

As he spoke to reporters Aug. 31 at the White House, the president made the case that the rancorous division in the country can be traced to an educational system that teaches young Americans to cultivate communism, not good citizenship that in turn leads to riots and violence.

The key to bridging the divide, Trump argued, is to rebuild a shared identity by teaching what Americans have in common instead of promulgating Marxist ideology that destroys pillars of American life, especially the Constitution.

"What we're witnessing today is a result of left-wing indoctrination in our nation's schools and universities," he added. "Many young Americans have been fed lies about America being a wicked nation plagued by racism."

"The left's war on police, faith, history and American values is tearing our country apart, which is what they want," he exhorted. "The only path to unity is to rebuild a shared national identity focused on common American values and virtues, of which we have plenty. This includes restoring patriotic education in our nation's schools, where they're trying to change everything that we've learned."

The president's remarks come in the middle of intense civic turmoil occurring throughout the United States, particularly in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon whose instigators are members of leftist groups including Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

"To defeat them, we must jail lawbreakers, and we must defeat their hateful ideology about this country, about America. We must teach our children that America is an exceptional, free and just nation worth defending, preserving and protecting. And that's what we want to do," Trump said.

Destructive 'Critical Theory'

President Trump is not the only one to connect the violence playing out in the streets to the educational system and its indoctrination of young Americans.

In an article titled "From Critical Theory to Chaos in our Streets," published Thursday in The Epoch Times, author Michael Walsh draws a line from Nazi Germany of the 1930s to Columbia University in New York during the 1950s and 60s to the violence and death occurring on American streets 2020.

A group of Marxist professorial refugees, as Walsh describes them, established an academic "beachhead" from which they developed their philosophy of critical theory, sending it to educational bivouacs throughout the country. Their theory "holds that there is no received tenet of civilization that should not either be questioned ... or attacked."

Walsh argues that the effect of this theory has wreaked havoc on the nation and sowed seeds of national self-hatred.

"When you've been raised to hate your country — to see it as historically illegitimate and in dire need of 'fundamental transformation,' to quote Barack Obama — then, in a time of relative international peace, there can be no moral crusade higher or more important than its destruction.

"What we're seeing today on the streets of Portland, Kenosha, Seattle and elsewhere is critical theory in practice," he concludes.

'Defund' Colleges

Father John Zuhlsdorf, a popular Catholic blogger, has also weighed in on this issue.

Instead of defunding the police, Zuhlsdorf encouraged Americans to defund the colleges that graduate students who hate the nation.

"DEFUND ACADEMIA. DEFUND PUBLIC SCHOOLS," he exclaimed. "The problems we face aren't coming from the police. They are coming from our classrooms."

"Grade school and high school present empty shells to colleges and universities, which in turn fill them up with dangerous BS," he pointedly observed.

"If you have any money designated in your WILL for your dear old alma mater, college or university ... change your will," he recommended. And "If you can, get your kids out of public schools. And be wary of Catholic schools, too."

President Trump's announcement also comes shortly after he released his second-term agenda just before the Republican National Convention. The agenda prioritizes educational goals including providing school choice to every child in America and teaching American exceptionalism.

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