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[State-controlled] education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
~ Joseph Stalin
As I traverse through the old neighborhoods of Detroit where I was born, played, went to school and church, I am a silent witness to utter devastation – block after block, mile after mile, neighborhood after neighborhood – eastside, westside, northwest side, southside. In many respects, save for a few isolated areas, Detroit is perhaps America's largest ghetto.
How did Detroit fall so far, so fast? Was the cause the riots of 1967, which 41 years ago drove out the white majority en masse along with white-owned businesses and the know-how of middle and upper class? Could it be the ascendancy of Detroit's first black mayor in 1974, that five-term firebrand, the irascible Coleman A. Young (1974-94), who in his acceptance speech essentially gave the middle finger salute to the 92 percent white and the 8 percent black demographic who didn't vote for him, saying, in effect, get the hell out of town?
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Could any (or all) of those factors be the cause of the fall of Detroit?
As I traveled through Detroit's old neighborhoods, it suddenly came to me like a bright light from heaven. Yes, liberalism, or the secular faith that FDR-style, Big Government programs are indispensable to remedy all societal problems, is viewed by over 90 percent of blacks (and at least 50 percent of whites) as the 11th Commandment. Conversely, what institution or organization put those diabolical ideas inside people's minds?
It was the public schools all along! Stalin was right that the offensive-weapon effects of state-controlled education "depends upon who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." Whose hands are America's public education system in? That's right, the teachers and their powerful teachers union, the National Education Association.
The NEA is less an education association interested in improving quality education for all American students and more of a liberal special-interest group hell-bent on teaching socialist dogma and treacherous propaganda – "America sucks!" "Hip-Hop Summits," "safe sex," abortion, evolution, 2+2=5, outcome-based education, "Heather has two mommies," "Daddy's Roommate," metal detectors and other insanities.
Republicans weren't much better in the area of education reform. In 1994, after 40 years of being the loyal opposition, they regained congressional power under Newt Gingrich yet failed to even try to disband the moribund Department of Education, a bureaucracy instituted by President Jimmy Carter as a political payoff to the NEA.
FDR-style socialism and liberalism, established through the Department of [Propaganda] Education, is killing my people here in Detroit, in big and medium-sized cities and even in small towns across America, and our politicians from President Bush on down are doing nothing to stop the genocide.
Bush's education initiative, "No Child Left Behind," is a joke. A recent study by Gen. Colin Powell's "America's Promise Alliance" lists Detroit as having the worst public schools in America; over 75 percent of Detroit public school students drop out between grades 9 and 12. According to my mathematical calculations, that's a lot of children left behind.
Like many of America's oldest, largest cities, Detroit's state-controlled public schools date back to the 1830s and 1840s. For over 160 year this bloated, centralized, top-down administrative structure with its open hostility to morality and the Judeo-Christian traditions of intellectual thought has been ruthlessly enforced with Stalinesque efficiency through 75 years of litigation by leftist organizations.
Below is an open letter I recently sent to all the Detroit public high school principals as part of my own feeble efforts to stem the tide of violence, madness and mis-education that has plagued Detroit since the early 1960s. I was also outraged by the recent drive-by murder of yet another Detroit public school student who was to graduate in mere months before fate stood at the door:
April 3, 2008
To the principal of Cody High School:
My sincerest condolences regarding the death of one of your students, senior Jamaal Hurt, who was killed Monday [April 1], perhaps by one of his own classmates. My prayers are with his family and the entire faculty and student body at Cody High School.
Below is a notice regarding a new national column I'm writing on Detroit. I'm sending it out to as many businesses, schools, churches, clubs and organizations all over Detroit and the Metro-Detroit area as I can to try to stop the Sprit of Madness that has overtaken this once great city of my birth.
In this link, I wrote a piece in Jamaal's honor titled: "Detroit's tragic love affair with liberalism." Please send or post for all Detroit public school students and faculty, but especially to Jamaal Hurt's family members with my sincerest condolences.
Regarding my educational background, I descend from four generations of teachers. Both of my parents taught in Detroit (my stepfather, Jack Folson, for over 35 years). I taught in Detroit from 1983-87, 1990-91, but later left education to attend law school in part because some Detroit Public School students at Beaubien Middle School threatened my life simply because I told them to stop talking in class and the principal at that time treated it as a joke.
I would welcome the opportunity to speak to your students in any venue you deem proper.
Peace,
Ellis Washington, J.D.
Cass Tech High Class of 1979
Stalinism's greatest triumph against education through atheistic communism was not in killing hundreds of millions of people all over the world, but by killing the people's ability to reason, to think coherently, rationally based on logic, morality and classical modes of argumentation. Nowadays, it's all about emotion. A brilliant example of this is that Manchurian Candidate, Democrat Sen. Barack Obama. I'm convinced that he is devoid of reasoning and logical thinking. He and his wife, Michelle, has drunk every drop of Kool-Aid that Harvard Law School could pour down their throats (and then some).
Stalin was right: "[State-controlled] education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." By their allegiance to diabolical liberalism, the Democrat Party, the NEA and the white liberals controlling the teachers unions, together with their willing accomplices – principals and teachers in big cities across America – have killed Jamaal Hurt just as surely as his fellow comrade who pulled the trigger.
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