TEACHING AMERICA It's the culture, stupid!
By Samuel L. Blumenfeld © 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
The recent column by Paul Weyrich, arguing that conservatives could not
win the culture war through the political process alone, struck a familiar
note to this writer. Those of us who have been struggling for years on the
cultural and educational battlefield are not unfamiliar with that idea.
For example, it was clear to us in the early days of the Reagan administration,
when Terrel Bell was appointed to run the Department of Education, that
the Republicans hadn't a clue about how to win the culture war. Nor did
they seem to have a very good sense of what the culture war was all about.
Bell, well known as an establishment educationist, opposed the conservative
agenda from the start, which called for the abolition of the Department.
His memoirs, The Thirteenth Man, recounts the story of his battle against
the conservatives and how he found important allies among some top Republican
officials in the White House. To Bell, the influence of the conservatives
in the department was comparable to a plague.
Bell's book should be read if conservative Republicans wish to avoid some
costly mistakes in the next Republican White House. One of the first things
Bell did was get rid of Edward Curran whom had been appointed as director
of the National Institute of Education. Curran, a movement conservative,
found the Institute to be wasteful and useless and thought it should be
abolished. But the last thing Bell wanted was to shut down a river of federal
cash flow to the education research community which relies heavily on federal
funding to maintain its comfortable ivory-tower lifestyle. And so, Curran
was fired.
The last thing conservatives should do is appoint liberals to implement
a conservative agenda. So why do Republican politicians do that? The answer
is that too many of them have come to accept an expanded federal role into
everything. Once liberals manage to establish a new federal program, Republicans
can't seem to get rid of it. So they make it more efficient. That's why
Republicans in Congress, who profess to want less government, keep voting
to spend more and more money on education. They want government vouchers
which will, in time, bring government regulations into the private schools.
What a way to reduce government size or spending! Only a few conservatives
will argue openly that the federal government ought to get out of the education
business.
What happened in the Department of Ed no doubt also happened in many other
departments. And the reason why it happens so predictably is because country
club Republicans have a very vague political philosophy, and ideological
conservatives frighten the heck out of them. Besides, the name of the game
in politics is money, short and simple. (Clinton learned that fact early
on.) Movement conservatives may have great ideas but they don't have much
money. Conservative foundations can't come near the Ford, Rockefeller, and
Carnegie foundations with their billions. And so, conservatives have had
to make do with very little.
That is why many conservative families have ceased to hope for miracles
in Washington. So they go about their business quietly and purposefully.
They homeschool their kids or build private schools, they build new churches,
they create newsletters and magazines. They fight in court to protect their
rights and freedoms. That's where the culture war is being fought and won
in America: in the family. And that's why what goes on in Washington is
becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Obviously, the homeschool movement is the grassroots answer to the conservatives'
failure in Washington. As long as individual Americans and their families
have the freedom to detach themselves from the statist institution of public
education and its brainwashing influences, there is still hope that the
nation can be restored to its basic values of morality and constitutional
freedom. There is every indication that the homeschool movement is producing
a new generation of Americans who will be entering the political arena one
day. Already, the Home School Legal Defense Association is making itself
heard in Congress. That's the long range hope. There is much more to the
culture war than meets the eye. We now know that change will come slowly,
but change will come.
Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of "NEA: Trojan Horse in American
Education" and other books on educational issues.