Your Children Belong to Us

A Tulane professor and MSNBC host named Melissa Harris-Perry, in a video found here, suggests that your children do not belong to you, but rather, they belong to the collective. If only we can "break through the idea that children belong to their parents or kids belong to their families," she says, then we can make "better investments" in public education.



The problem with our educational system is that not enough taxpayer money has ever been applied to it, she says. No number of college degrees can make this assumption plausible. Since the 1970s, federal spending on public education has more than doubled, and the results have been not only dismal, but regressive in many areas. So a logical person might come to the opposite conclusion -- that increased government influence in education has a negative effect on our children, if educating them about math, science, and linguistic skills is indeed the aim of "education."



But traditional educational metrics are not what she is talking about. That stuff is just a red herring. No, her true intention is purely socialistic, and the motive is political, not scholastic.



She suggests that children should not be educated by their families, but rather, they should be educated by the state in a manner which the state approves. Since the state administers the education system, it decides upon the textbooks that children read, and the lessons they learn. And if only the state can be given more authority and resources to do so, the collective will thrive.



Another, more famous socialist said something quite similar: "Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state. The state will take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing. Your child belongs to us already... what are you?" These are the words of Adolf Hitler. One has to be careful with references to Nazism, because often they are interpreted as outrageous hyperbole. But this is not hyperbole. The purpose of both statements is to destroy the individualism that results from unique family and cultural experiences, and replace it with a homogenized humanity that is engineered by the state. What are you, after all, in the context of the greater collective?



Individualism is the problem, and collectivism is the solution. Occasionally, while outwardly promoting the supposedly high-minded ideas of "equality" and "fairness," the mask slips and progressives expose themselves as hardline adherents to this thoroughly un-American and extremely dangerous socialist concept.

This was Ms. Harris-Perry's moment. And perhaps more frightening than the video itself is the fact that too few Americans seem frightened by it. William Sullivan blogs at http://politicalpalaverblog.blogspot.com/and can be followed on Twitter.