Are America’s children being taught to hate their country?

An Illinois football team of players ages 8 and under took a knee with their backs to the flag last month during the playing of the national anthem before one of their games. The youngsters did it after their coach told them about the movement former quarterback Colin Kaepernick started in the NFL.

Veteran journalist and historian Charles Sasser, watching from afar, could only shake his head and grimace at the thought of young children mimicking the disrespectful anthem protests of adult football players.

"Eight years old and younger – they don't understand all this stuff," Sasser said during an interview with baseball legend Curt Schilling on the latter's "Whatever it Takes" radio show. "They've got adults using these kids to show hate for the flag, for everything America stands for. And so you start that early, guess what?"

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It starts in elementary school, and it continues in college. As Sasser noted, many colleges are de-emphasizing history while simultaneously teaching the supposed merits of socialism and offering majors such as "gender studies" and "women's studies." In fact, a 2016 report found fewer than one-third of the top colleges and universities in the U.S. required history majors to take even a single course in American history.

"So we teach them nothing, but what we're doing is propagandizing these kids, and it's been very, very successful if we look around us," Sasser said.

He gave an example from his own experience as an undercover journalist among Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York City in 2011. Sasser interviewed several protesters, many of whom went to Ivy League schools, and he found them to be "the most ignorant people I have ever met" in terms of their knowledge of democracy, liberty and the U.S. Constitution.

Charles Sasser's "Crushing the Collective: The Last Chance to Keep America Free and Self-Governing" is available now at the WND Superstore!

Everywhere Sasser went, he saw "occupiers" holding signs demanding free things and railing against inequality. But as a historian who wrote the book "Crushing the Collective: The Last Chance to Keep America Free and Self-Governing," Sasser knew the type of "equality" the protesters wanted – equality of outcomes – has mostly kept members of the working class equally poor in socialist countries where "equality" has been a major goal. Moreover, equality of outcomes is not guaranteed by the Constitution – only equality of opportunity.

Schilling agreed.

"This generation believes that everybody should be equal, when in fact the world can't work that way," he argued.

The retired baseball star decried the millennial generation's lack of gratitude for their country.

"You won't find a kinder country, you won't find a more accepting, diverse, caring country in the world than the United States of America," Schilling asserted. "We've taken in more immigrants than the rest of the world ... but this generation would have you believe that somehow we are the bad guy."

Of course, one of the younger generation's chief complaints is that America is a racist nation. Sasser, for his part, believes the concept of racism has been severely overplayed.

"Everybody is a racist anymore," he groused. "I don't care what, anything you do – but that's the design. The design is to shut people up, use political correctness, use self-censorship so nobody speaks out other than the party line. If you speak out on the progressive party line, hey, you're going to be protected, you're going to be lauded, you're going to be a hero. But if you speak out with an opposite point of view, guess what? That's when you become a racist."

But not every American has surrendered to the entitlement mentality of the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Schilling revealed he had traveled to Texas recently and met face-to-face with victims of Hurricane Harvey. He was moved by the deep sense of pride the Texans displayed in not wanting to accept charity.

"They took the food that was going to help their families survive and all the things that go with that, but every time I tried to offer them something, they were adamant – I had to force them to take it," he recalled. "And I get chills talking about things sometimes; that sort of pride, that this country still makes people like that, makes me proud."

Directly addressing Sasser, Schilling added: "But your book is insight into the fact that we're losing that, and that's such a valuable thing to have, and for us to be losing that scares me."

Charles Sasser's "Crushing the Collective: The Last Chance to Keep America Free and Self-Governing" is available now at the WND Superstore!