Losing our identity as Americans

Phyllis Schlafly has proof that half of Americans do not understand "American" civics:

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), which earlier has conducted in-depth studies of what American college students know, and don't know, about civics, now reports equally depressing facts about grown-ups. It appears that adults, too, lack the civic knowledge they need to be informed citizens and intelligent voters.

ISI administered a very basic test on American history, government and economics to 2,500 Americans age 25 and older. The multiple-choice test asked citizens to identify terms that everybody should know, such as the New Deal, the Electoral College, Sputnik, "I Have a Dream" and progressive tax.

The 2,500 adults scored an average of 49 percent – that means they get a pitiful F. Those who had received a bachelor's degree averaged 57 percent on the test, compared to 44 percent for those with only a high school diploma. Worse still, 164 adults who had held elected office also scored an average of 44 percent.

Almost 40 percent of respondents said they thought the president (rather than Congress) has the power to declare war. Only 50 percent knew that Congress shares authority with the president over U.S. foreign policy. And almost one in four thought Congress shares authority over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations.

And this fact points to America becoming ripe for the "New World Order":

The 2006 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) Civics Test revealed that the majority of eighth-graders could not explain the purpose of the Declaration of Independence. No wonder young voters are not shocked at those who talk about "interdependence," globalism and becoming "citizens of the world."

And here we find the source of American identity crisis:

It's not just that American citizens lack knowledge of historical and constitutional facts about our country, but they also show a declining appreciation of who we are. A survey by Harris Interactive reported that 84 percent of respondents believe we have a unique American identity, but 64 percent believe this identity is weakening, and 24 percent believe we are already so divided that a common national identity is impossible.

Political correctness in colleges and public schools over the last decade has gone a long way toward replacing patriotism with the trendy dicta of multiculturalism, diversity and global citizenship.

Again I provide a link to FedEd: Education for Global Government, a book review of Allen Quist’s FedEd book that I have been giving out, to further support Schlafly’s point:

Quist lays out the reasons for the anti-academic and anti-cognitive biases in government schools that are producing graduates who cannot walk up to a map of the world and find the United States – much less grasp our founding principles. In a sense, given their aims, government schools have to be regarded as spectacular successes rather than dismal failures. The evidence all points in a single direction: their intent has been to dumb down the citizenry of this country and produce a "new serfdom" – a global workforce totally subservient to the needs of omnipotent world government and its internationalist corporate partners.

And here we learn about the agenda and those who are some of those who are behind it:

In 1994 alone, this effort received three major boosts, in the form of the Goals 2000 Educate America Act, the School-To-Work Opportunities Act (STW), and a bill known simply as HR6, a funding appropriations bill for most federal education programs. Bill Clinton signed all three. (More recently, of course, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which we are led to believe superceded STW.) Taken together, these bills hand control over curricular content to federal educrats, resulting in the New Federal Curriculum: FedEd, for short. Quist identifies seven themes running through FedEd (p. 43, p. 100, pp. 131-32, etc.):

1. Undermining national sovereignty (moving us toward world government under the auspices of the United Nations).
2. Redefining natural rights (substituting for the American view a Marxist and internationalist view justifying massive redistribution of wealth).
3. Minimizing natural law (essentially by neglect).
4. Promoting environmentalism (emphasizing the global nature of environmental issues, including promoting the pagan pseudo-religion of Gaia, Mother Earth).
5. Requiring multiculturalism (including acceptance of homosexuality).
6. Restructuring government (toward the idea that we live in a "global village," defining citizenship in global terms).
7. Redefining education as job skills (preparing "human resources" for the global workforce).

He names names and organizations (p. 13). Some will be quite familiar; others have been operating behind the scenes for years:

1. The Clintons, obviously. ("It takes a village," remember?)
2. Marc Tucker, Director of the National Center for Education and the Economy, author of a certain letter addressed to Hillary Clinton you may read here.
3. Lauren Resnick, Co-director of the New Standards Project.
4. Charles Quigley, Director of the Center for Civic Education (CCE). (No relation to Carroll Quigley I know of.)
5. Margaret Stimmon Branson, Associate Director of the CCE.
6. Shirley McCune, a federal education researcher.

Others deeply involved in this broad based effort include the National Education Association and, of course, numerous multiculturalist and environmentalist groups who stand to extend their own turf. The overriding purpose, however, is a world in which the majority of people are Information Age serfs ruled over by a global elite, their minds enslaved to such notions as celebrating diversity, embracing tolerance, and worshipping Mother Earth. They will know how to "multitask," but will have no grasp of economics or Constitutional principles, any significant knowledge or their historical origins or even much knowledge of basic math (they will have calculators, after all). One of the most pertinent prior developments was the UN’s World Declaration on Education for All (1990).

Read the whole thing.