Bob Livingston recently published a piece concerning one issue (not germane to this article) and as is often the case, the comments got way off track.  One of the commenters took umbrage with Mr. Livingston’s attacks on public schools (an attitude I share), which I reproduce with all its grammar and other errors:

Mr. Livingston,

I, like you have no love for the “Patriot Act.” I was appalled that President Bush was able to use 9/11 to push this monstrosity through and furious when President Obama supported it’s continuation (ultra Liberal my A$$). I do, however take umbrage with your incessant attacks on our education system. I realize that the right has as one it’s goals to end Federal involvement or privatize anything and everything, but I disagree with the assumption that education would improve simply by getting it out of government hands.

I have worked with my children’s teachers for many years. I have graded and sorted papers, assisted children who were having trouble in a subject and provided a male presence when needed to keep some children in line. What I found was not a lack of ability or dedication on the teacher’s part. They work long hours for little money, the class rooms are underfunded to the point that teachers often have to buy supplies out of pocket, and the materials are often outdated. No, the problem lies with the students and their parents. Disrespectful children and parents who won’t even take the time to help their children learn their ABCs create a class room where a small group requires extra attention and extra resources. This is not often an issue in private schools where they have the option of kicking students out for their failures. Privatize all schools and they inherit this problem. End federal involvement and you eliminate the general guidelines, but the parents remain the same.

Respect for k-12 teachers has been on a steady decline, often prompted by the “Right Wing Talking Heads” and individuals like your self. Claims that they are all empty headed liberals is nons ense and the idea that their union demands are the source of our educational system’s troubles are clearly more a part of the attack on unions in general then a thoughtful discussion of how to fix our schools. It’s time for a thoughtful discussion on restoring respect in the classroom and how our schools are administered.220

The above is all too often the knee-jerk reaction of people who claim to be both smarter and more educated than all us libbertorian types.  There were a few responses to “Kenetic”:

DaveH says:

How do you explain the “Honest” Abe Hoax, Kinetic? Did the kids just learn that at recess? To imagine that Government wouldn’t tout Big Government to the children in the Government-Controlled schools is just that — pure imagination.

Our “primitive” (at least according to the Progressive Propaganda) ancestors knew over 300 years ago the potential for indoctrination that existed when Government was allowed to control the schools. How have so many decent people come to believe otherwise?

Someone had to jerk Dave H’s chain, of course, and really stuck his foot in his mouth, showing (again) another example of exactly the point: government-run, tax-supported schools mean government propaganda.  Government must promote the myths of Lincoln and the Roosevelts and secession and education run by the government.

eddie47d says:

In Dave H’s mind it always has to be Progressive propaganda or blame the Liberal and so forth. Lincoln was a Republican and most Republicans were and still are Conservative. If there is a history being sold on Abraham Lincoln it was brought to us courtesy of Republicans. Time for Dave to get a reality check for that history was written long before Progressive was a common word.

True, “eddie47d,” or before “socialist” or “communist” or even “libertarian” were common.  Even Lincoln advocates will never claim that “Honest Abe” was a conservative.  Hamiltonian, maybe, but not conservative. Fortunately, some other people provided at least a somewhat educated response.

CJ says:

Lincoln’s ‘Republican’ party is NOTHING like that of today. They are similar in name only. The activities of the 19th centruy party have more in common to the 21st century Democrats. I use the example of Lincoln forcing Tennessee to rejoin the union by only allowing citizens of the state who voted for him in his election, or would swear loyalty to him, to vote on rejoining. As mentioned, the education ‘system’ in the U.S. has biased the understanding of history in its favor, which is far from the facts.

Of course, anyone who REALLY sees the modern GOP for what it is: the party of Romney and McCain and Dole and Boehner and T. Roosevelt and A. Lincoln and R. Nixon, realized that the Republican Party hasn’t changed that much.  And this little example of Tennessee is a footnote to the real history.  As the next guy points out:

Sam Boes says:

There is an ironic reason the GOP color today is “red” on the maps. Lincoln, Fremont and the rest of the founders of the GOP before the War between the States were progressives and many of their number were Socialists who fled from the failed Socialist Revolutions in Europe in 1848: they came to America to get a new start – in promoting their ideals.

They did it in a way that gave the appearance of following traditional American politics, but THEY are the ones that turned many of the states which remained LOYAL to the Union into military dictatorships (Maryland, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio), THEY are the ones that precipitated the crisis and set up the temptation to hotheads in South Carolina to fire the first shots, THEY are the ones that set up the Indian Reservation system, THEY are the ones whose military occupation of the South poisoned black-white relations, THEY are the ones who created the first American empire of the Philippines and all the other conquests from Spain, and if not originating then tacitly supporting and not repealing the policies of Wilson, FDR, and Johnson. So don’t think that the real leadership – the elite – of the GOP today is anything remotely resembling “conservative” or even “American.”

Another mother had to support public schools – and again cites the propaganda about public schools that is so heavily pushed today (and for that matter, for the last fifty years):

CaroleAnn says:

I agree with you on the subject of education, public schools educated the majority of us during our country’s greatest times. I also disagree with privatizing everything, that only makes services out of reach to most people.

But the Patriot Act is too important to shove aside.

Sam Boes also had to respond to her and “Kenetic 1” both:

Sam Boes says:

Dear Kinetic 1:

Believe me, the “public schools” (government-run, tax-funded) are key parts of the transnational liberal agenda. My parents were both public school teachers and got out of the system when they could no longer teach the truth (and my mother was a MUSIC and ART teacher!, my father a social studies/history teacher) and when discipline and standards were destroyed. I myself taught as a substitute teacher while going to college (I was an Army Cadet and now am an Army officer): I’ve seen the deterioration for decades: my sons spent some time in public schools mostly to let them see the evil in it; they were schooled at home and in private schools so that they could LEARN. The school system we have today was imported from Prussia specifically to “make good citizens” which could be controlled by government and industry, but as Americans tend to do, we “improved it” to make it into a hideous system which both makes the student malleable and subject to control by their “betters” and effectively dumbs them down to the lowest possible common denominator. Teachers who stay in and support the system with its sickening (and intentional) flaws and results deserve no respect: either they are hypocrites or they are themselves products of the brainwashing they are now giving students and incapable of human reasoning. This especially goes for the teachers who claim to be religious.

Readers may not be so interested in this exchange as I was, but it shows that more and more people are rejecting the propaganda that has supported institutions that have destroyed this once-great nation.  Institutions like the “Grand Old Party,” and “public schools” have infiltrated and wrecked homes, churches, communities, and towns and cities.  Their work was always “an alternative” to the agendas of the Democratic and other “left” leaning parties and organizations, and the supposed dangers of ill-educated and nihilist mobs: but in reality, they were supporting just those kinds of things.

It is reported that new Texas curriculum standards encourage students at various ages to consider the Boston Tea Party (the original one in 1774, not the current libertarian Boston Tea Party or the GOP-oriented “conservative” Tea Party movement) to be an example of terrorism, and for American patriots seeking to regain and keep the “liberties of Englishmen” as terrorists.  This is not the only deadly thing to come out of Texas schoolbook depositories (other than L. Harvey Oswald’s bullets): Texan educators and educrats are nearly as notorious as California’s for propagandizing and dumbing down the curriculum.  But the truth is, virtually EVERY state does this, and the idea that Federal standards are the only reason to reject public schools and promote the separation of school and state is a dangerous weakness in the movement.