These headlines have become all too common: “U.S. students' math scores plunge in global education assessment,” reads the latest from Axios.
But the phenomenon of declining academic prowess isn’t just relegated to unfortunate American students. While the U.S. lagged in math scores, it led the way in reading and science among first-world countries — and by “led," I mean it lost less ground. Why the recent pronounced decline in the education of the world’s children? The graph accompanying Axios’s story is instructive:
That rapid plunge in intellectual ability is the result of the world’s overreaction to the cheap Chinese knock-off of the flu, COVID-19. The resultant shutdowns — the Great Stupid, as I like to call that period — didn’t just demolish wealth, wreck businesses, rack up debt, and erode civil liberties; it destroyed the future for a generation of children. And it’s an important lesson in how far those who love power will go in order to keep it.
Recall what was going on in the world in the late 2010s just before the flimsy excuse of COVID-19 was floated to justify government clampdowns across the globe. At the virus’s epicenter, Hong Kong was roiled by protests as the population sought to escape Beijing’s iron fist. Just in the nick of time, the government had an excuse to lock it all down. The key was that the establishment terrified enough people into going along with it, even though the virus did not pose a threat to the young or the healthy. And so, the re-establishment of CCP control was accomplished, Hong Kong is now securely under China’s thumb, and the eastern giant is taking aim at its next target, Taiwan.
At the same time in the West, a populist uprising was also well underway. The UK voted for Brexit in 2016 and overwhelmingly elected Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party to finish the negotiations in 2019. Following Britain’s example, other European nations were also eyeing the exit. The situation was a massive threat to the power of the EU lordlings in Brussels. The Chinese virus was a Godsend to those who needed to slap down the rambunctious populists by isolating them from one another, destroying their upstart independent small businesses, and most importantly, terrifying them into running back into the arms of Daddy Government for protection from their fears.
In the United States, historic outsider president Donald Trump, who was waging a full-pitched battle against the D.C. swamp, was up for reelection. The threatened establishment saw the lockdown juggernaut spreading westward and seized upon the opportunity to scare the nation back into submission to its government masters. In one fell swoop, it was able to undo Trump’s massive economic successes as well as throw off all election integrity safeguards, and it successfully clawed back the White House from the American rebels who had voted it out of power. The damage from the Great Stupid in America was mind-blowing, from shattered dreams to lost jobs, businesses, and wealth to a mental illness crisis that we have been unable to shake to this day.
The lesson is this: those in power will literally destroy their constituents, their infrastructure, and their prosperity rather than lose their grip on it. And you can bet that children — aka the future — will suffer the most.
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There is a little-known chapter in American history that fully illustrates the burn-it-all-down mentality of American Democrats. If you visit the small central Virginia town of Farmville, be sure to visit the Robert Russa Moton Museum. Before it was a museum, the building was the tar-paper shack that served as the high school for the town’s black children. The white children, naturally, went to a fancy high school with science facilities and gyms and all sorts of nice facilities. Black students protested the unfairness with a walkout, and the situation eventually led to the famed Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education. When the Court ordered schools to desegregate in 1954, Prince Edward County Democrats reacted as all power-hungry leftists do when they lose: they threw a tantrum.
Rather than relinquish control over its caste system of elites and everyone else, the county literally shut down its entire public school system. Civil Rights Travel tells the story:
Back in Virginia, officials first ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling against school segregation. When forced to integrate, it adopted a strategy of massive resistance closing all its schools. Many white children were soon enrolled in quasi public academies, but the 1,700 Black students had no similar option. Some families sent their children off to live with relatives in other cities. And during the summer, college students from the North came to Farmville to teach classes.
In total, Prince Edward County went without public schools for five years. Those children without an option for education became what is called now “the crippled generation” since they missed so many years of school.
Many children in Prince Edward County went on to become illiterate adults, buying groceries according to the picture on the package and signing their names with an X. When Southern Democrats acted on their hate and fear of losing control, they doomed their own children — and their society — to a future of ignorance and hardship.
The episode was a notable precursor to the COVID clampdown that began in 2020 — just in time to throw a general election cycle into chaos, the welfare of children be damned. Once again, the Left's hatred (this time of Donald Trump and patriotic, traditional Americans) and will to hold power have created a "crippled generation." It's a shame and a disgrace, and we need to be vigilant against a repeat performance in 2024. Most of all, we need to remember the extremes to which these people will go.
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