Republican Agenda: Destroy The Department of Education
Why do the Religious Right, the Moral Majority, Evangelicals, Neocons, Conservatives and Republicans try so hard to eliminate free public education? Ronald Reagan, as the Governor of California, commented after eliminating free state-paid education in the state: --why should I pay for your education when I know that after you graduate you will vote against me?" Thus began the war against public education.
There seems to be a misguided philosophy that colleges should provide pre-job training for the manufacturing, finance and service industries. Businesses demand cooperative employees, submissive to authority, dedicated to the corporate agenda of producing profits. What education has done instead, is to produce graduates with liberal attitudes grounded in critical thinking skills; those who would question authority when appropriate. College graduates are free thinkers, rational and logical people who do not accept dogma as an acceptable answer to their questions. Of course this really screws up the corporate mandate of making a profit. Sure, industry wants the brightest and best college graduates it can employ, but continued employment depends on not asking questions and toeing the company line.
The Religious Right, Evangelicals, and the Moral Majority would like the colleges to teach Creationism in place of evolution. The empirical facts of science are denounced in favor of Biblical teachings; allowing students to follow science until it conflicts with the Bible. Jerry Falwell founded Liberty University in 1971 to teach students the philosophy of a Christian education, and send their graduates on to infiltrate the politicians and legislators of Washington D.C. in order to bring their message into political debate. Of course their ultimate objective is to establish a Christian fundamentalist theocracy and an American national religion, in which the government will follow the Bible in making legislation and financially support religious faith-based societies with public money. They have their own television and radio stations and print media to pump their message into the public consciousness. They seem to run the Republican Party and claim "religious persecution" from the non-existent "liberal press."
The religious influence in establishing laws would push for family values, consider abortions as murder, outlaw all contraception with the exception of abstinence, criminalize homosexuality, ban same-sex marriages and partnerships, and keep the wives at home to serve and educate their children and service their husbands as often as he requests. They favor strong anti-abortion laws and the restoration of school prayer; support the teaching of Creationism in public schools; support curbing books and movies that they consider anti-religious or amoral; and oppose the Equal Rights amendment, especially the feminist movement demanding equal pay for women as men. Most disturbing is their support for war and the death penalty.
They skillfully manipulate public opinion through letter writing campaigns to make their extremist views appear mainstream. They lie, and they lie so loud and so consistently and pervasively that their lies are taken as truths. When they make up a new "truth," they inject it into their own media machine, at which time it is repeated over and over again and picked up by the far-right radio and television stations. Their lies are then picked up by conservative pundits on cable networks and then into the mainstream media, which grants credibility to their lies. From here, we find the creation of contrived national polls that are said to represent the majority opinion. One of their biggest lies is that the conservative MSM is actually liberal. In response to this claim, cable news networks go to great lengths in providing far-right viewpoints in their coverage.
The reasons to eliminate the Department of Education become extremely clear. Education creates people who are better-educated and critical-thinking opponents to their plan. College educated people are less likely to accept dogma as truth and would rather figure out the problems in life for themselves, rather than submit to the pseudo-authority of televangelists. Over all, liberals and progressives possess higher IQs and hold more degrees than their Republican, Neocon, Religious Right, Evangelical, and Moral Majority counterparts. Thus, education is evil in their brainwashed, impoverished world views.
Education provides logic, reason and reality, which allow critical thinking individuals to lift the veil of uncertainty and question ambiguous misinformation. Dogma is not an answer, and while they may be religious (many are not) they are able to separate truth from fiction in their religious beliefs. The Republican Agenda cannot be hidden behind a smokescreen any longer. If people are better educated, they see inconsistencies and the extreme viewpoints that Republicans try to label as conservative. In reality, Republicans are truly regressive and are trying to take the country back to a time before public education.
Investigative journalism presents a real challenge to maintaining the Republican smokescreen. If they are able to keep the public on edge, in fear of nuclear devastation, uninformed, uneducated and uncertain; the use of ambiguous statements and misinformation can be used; as it makes people more susceptible to accept lies and and more willing to defer their beliefs to pseudo-authorities.
Republicans cannot sell their policies to an educated American public, if they are able to see the truth.