Detroit’s (predominantly black) public schools are the worst in the nation and it takes some doing to be worse than Washington, D.C. Only 3 percent of Detroit’s fourth-graders scored proficient on the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, sometimes called “The Nation’s Report Card.” Twenty-eight percent scored basic and 69 percent below basic. “Below basic” is the NAEP category when students are unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level. It’s the same story for Detroit’s eighth-graders. Four percent scored proficient, 18 percent basic and 77 percent below basic.
Michael Casserly, executive director of the D.C.-based Council on Great City Schools, in an article appearing in Crain’s Detroit Business, (12/8/09) titled, “Detroit’s Public Schools Post Worst Scores on Record in National Assessment,” said, “There is no jurisdiction of any kind, at any level, at any time in the 30-year history of NAEP that has ever registered such low numbers.” The academic performance of black students in other large cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles is not much better than Detroit and Washington.
What’s to be done about this tragic state of black education? The education establishment and politicians tell us that we need to spend more for higher teacher pay and smaller class size. The fact of business is higher teacher salaries and smaller class sizes mean little or nothing in terms of academic achievement. Washington, D.C., for example spends over $15,000 per student, has class sizes smaller than the nation’s average, and with an average annual salary of $61,195, its teachers are the most highly paid in the nation.
What about role models? Standard psychobabble asserts a positive relationship between the race of teachers and administrators and student performance. That’s nonsense. Black academic performance is the worst in the very cities where large percentages of teachers and administrators are black, and often the school superintendent is black, the mayor is black, most of the city council is black and very often the chief of police is black.
Black people have accepted hare-brained ideas that have made large percentages of black youngsters virtually useless in an increasingly technological economy.
This destruction will continue until the day comes when black people are willing to turn their backs on liberals and the education establishment’s agenda and confront issues that are both embarrassing and uncomfortable. To a lesser extent, this also applies to whites because the educational performance of many white kids is nothing to write home about; it’s just not the disaster that black education is.
Many black students are alien and hostile to the education process. They have parents with little interest in their education. These students not only sabotage the education process, but make schools unsafe as well. These students should not be permitted to destroy the education chances of others. They should be removed or those students who want to learn should be provided with a mechanism to go to another school.
Another issue deemed too delicate to discuss is the overall quality of people teaching our children. Students who have chosen education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major. Students who have an education degree earn lower scores than any other major on graduate school admission tests such as the GRE, MCAT or LSAT. Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university. They are home to the least able students and professors. Schools of education should be shut down.
Yet another issue is the academic fraud committed by teachers and administrators. After all, what is it when a student is granted a diploma certifying a 12th grade level of achievement when in fact he can’t perform at the sixth- or seventh-grade level?
Prospects for improvement in black education are not likely given the cozy relationship between black politicians, civil rights organizations and teacher unions.
Liberal educators and policy makers want to keep Blackie on the Urban Plantation so they will remain ignorant, impoverished and Democrat. It never ceases to amaze me how the black community fails to see that they are simply being used like a two-bit whore.
Yes! Yes, Mr. Williams!
I wish the liberal Jews who hide behind the name, “Democrats,” would also join together with the Forever Liberals all over, to pull this country back out of itssinking into the sea. Mr. Obama is so ashamed hof his country and he is therefore so apologetic, that we have no hope of regaining our failing nation through him, becvuase he is the primary force behind our failure.
Unwittingly and without even being aware of it, Mr. Obama is causing a great gathering of new and old Conservatives to rise up and restore this country's majesty.
The real issue, and today maybe the only issue, is the culture that has developed in the black community and it centers on the decline of the strong nuclear family. There will only be marginal success (and that is overly generous) in black education until the rot of the family is fixed. Tossing money at the black community only deepens the problem and produces corrupt race traders. Whatever the soluion needed will have to come from the black community and, frankly, I'm coming to the conclusion that things will get a lot worse before they ever get better. It's clear today that whites simply cannot make any positive impact on the black culture. It's time the non-black community (whites, Asians, Hispanics, etc.) asked the black community what they're going to do. Mostly, it's time the black community grows up and at least gets to post-adolescence and takes responsibility for their kids.
If conservatives had any testicles at all, this is the issue they would be willing to go to literal war over. It's a disgrace. And I say that as someone who has taught, and whose wife is a teacher.
Forget voting, forget 2012, forget Sarah Palin, forget tea parties, forget all that crap. Until we FIX the school system, there is absolutely no hope for this country. Zilch. Zero. Nada. And fixing means we start by demanding that the Marxist/leftist stranglehold be broken and smashed and torn down. The schools were better when they were being run by creationists.
You remind me of the Marcus clan vampires in 'Underworld' preaching to the crowd to get them pumped up for the Werewolf Wars to come! Wow. Excellent, dude.I'm with you! Let's go stake some Lefties through the heart! Bring your silver bullets too.
The problem with the education system is that the kids are coddled, pampered and not held to a high standard. In fact, the standards are very low.
For various reasons, I spent the last couple of years becoming a certified teacher. (This is a second career-first one being in law.) As part of the training I taught at an inner city charter school. The goal for me was to have my eight graders pass the state's assessment test in social studies so the school would score well for the No Child Left Behind requirements. Well, as I got into it I discovered that in order for my students to pass they only needed to know 53% of the material. (I had always understood that to say that you have mastered a subject you needed to know at least 80%.)
53%-think about it-is that even competence? That is what the schools want the kids to know-this is for white kids too.
Oh by the way, all my kids passed and I no longer teach…..
One of the worst crimes committed against the cause of black education was in 1991, when Detroit was just ready to begin operation of special schools for black males growing up in female-headed households, a traditional breeding ground for gangs, crime and more illegitimacy. Unfortunately feminist intellectuals filed for an injunction to prevent those special schools from operating. In other words, the purely emotional, purely intellectual needs of feminists was considered more important than the practical needs of society. But then, intellectuals (feminist or otherwise) have always placed their emotional and ego needs above other peoples' practical needs.
Williams is right when he says, “These students should not be permitted to destroy the education chances of others. They should be removed or those students who want to learn should be provided with a mechanism to go to another school.”
This is the #1 problem. All other education problems pale in comparison. It is not bad teachers or lack of funding or integration; it is poorly behaved students that are allowed to hinder the education of others for 12 years. They disrupt class and slow down learning for everyone and no one can say, “Hey kid either stop acting like a jerk or get out!”
I am a teacher and I guarantee if you give me the power to expel a few trouble-makers I will improve the education process by leaps and bounds. I might not even have to expel anyone, just the power to do so could be enough.
[...] Black Education – by Walter Williams | FrontPage Magazine [...]
I believe education is the most important issue we need to tackle. If we do not have educated people (black or white or whatever) than we will continue electing people based on how cool they are, or the style of clothes they wear. Uneducated people have nothing to vote for, or against, because they do not have the critical thinking skills to make decisions.
Beyond that, uneducated people cannot find good jobs and wonder why they cant make a living working a MickieD's. People, fast food restaurants are good jobs for high school students so they can learn how to work, not to make a living for a family. How many more years are we going to give the NEA to continue to experiment with our childrens future? They should be rejected, discontinued, thrown out and a model based on private schools should be used. Look at the evidence, compare private schools to public schools. Its definately not an issue of money, because most private schools spend less and get much better results. Why do you people continue to support this broken system that clearly isnt working. Demand a voucher system that will allow your children to go to better schools and escape the poverty machine.
As a conservative Jew, I also wish my Liberal Jewish brethren would come to their political sense. But let's not overlook that a significant percentage of influential conservative thinkers these days are themselves Jewish, like David Horowitz and Jamies Glazov, and Kristol, Frum, Krauthammer, Goldberg, and so many more.
Until we understand, as a society, the importance of strong, two parent families and religious freedom, all of our kids, and society as a whole will continue to decline. What we are experiencing in our schools and in our larger society is the natural outcome of generations of assault on the family and religion by statists who believe that citizens exist to serve the state. Marx and Lenin, and all the dictators and despots who came after them understood that the family and religion had to be destroyed to gain control of their citizens. Leftists in America have been trying to kill God and the family for generations, and they have had much success. It seems that now, a lot of Americans are waking up to this assault, and we have a new year beginning. Where there is life, there is always hope. Happy New Year!
“Many black students are alien and hostile to the education process. They have parents with little interest in their education,” says Walter Williams and he is right. However, until this parental problem is fixed, black students will continue to do poorly in big urban cities.
These students have been doing poorly in both conservative and liberal administrations so it is fraudulent and lazy of Williams to blame it all on the left or the right. He should be blaming it on their parents lack of interest in education and hopefully, Williams will invest the time and energy to find out why that is.
Wished you'd continued!
The Black –teacher, Mayors, administrators, Governors are products of these schools. THe Democrat party want Blacks in effect barefoot and pregnant . They want their votes.
Slavery is here. Its master is the Democrat Party.
Try the Republican way. It cannot be worse.
Require emphasis on reading, mathematics, and writing.
Require emphasis on citizenship and personal responsibilities. Drop BS classes.
History books must emphasize US accomplishments vice mistakes by 9-1 to get Federal funding.
Emphasis on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers.
Schools that criticize the US lose Federal funding. Do not allow the biting of the hand that feeds them. They can say what ever they want on their own dime.
I spent 25 years in East Africa, a place where there is very little public education, no welfare, no food stamps, section 8 or any of the myriad of programs to to prop up those who cannot or do not care to stand on their own two feet. A place where it is ingrained in the bone that education is the only way out of the poverty trap.
A friend of mine was a Catholic missionary and I helped him build a school in the bush, a few hundred dollars for four walls, a roof and a blackboard. Doors, windows and school benches had to wait for more funds. It was a proud day in that little village when the primary school was moved from under the mango tree to under its own roof, school was no longer interrupted by the rains. Paper was an unknown luxury, a slate did just as well and was good for a few years.
Free school did not work for the locals, unless they were paying for it, they believed they were getting an inferior product, so the school fees were set at a few shillings a month, an extra drink for us but a sacrifice for them. Many a time did I visit the station and lunched on “school fees”. Nobody ever skipped school, there were never any problems of discipline, every child was desperate to get an education. Were they ever able to get their A levels, they could get a job as a government clerk and who knows where from there. If they flunked, they knew they would have to spend the rest of their lives scratching a living from the meager soil.
In short, the education in the US does not work for the very simple reason that there is no cost for failure. It is the same in for many of the poor in Europe, Socialism has robbed them of the need to strive and to compete. In England you now have families who are in the third generation of welfare. Unfortunately this is also the segment of society that is the most prolific, you and I have had to limit our family to our ability to care for them, with the state caring for the shiftless they have no such problems. Because unemployment is such a dirty word to a politician, they are not unemployed.
In England there are nearly two million “disabled” which may be the best word to describe them because they are not able to do anything but leech of society. Alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, sore back are all good cause for permanent disability.
Fortunately for the US, this problem is on the way out. At the rate this government is spending, there will soon come the time when they have nothing left to spend and welfare will go the way of the dodo.
Walter Williams, along with Thomas Sowell, are among the best examples of Black Intellectuals working to to exemplify what Bill Cosby tries to tell our young Blacks about the debilitating effects of trying to be accepted in a culture of self-destruction.
With all the success many Blacks have had in Free Enterprise, which includes athletics, it is unfortunate that not enough work to inculcate higher values in their own communities and that the forces of the Welfare State want to to promote and expand dependency upon elite, statist politicians who benefit more than they do from their dependence when Government is the Boss.
You said it all Uncle Walt! Now, what do we do about it? We can modify influence
on the child. Like TV. Maybe make the good guy dignified again. And perhaps
a little patriotism wouldn't hurt.
But it won't happen. We'll sit back and wait for disaster.
Three converging evils produced the inferior inner-city school system: 1) a fraudulent, inferior culture, 2) the reward for failure, and 3) teacher unionization.
The black inner city is a product of a sub-culture created from myth and dedicated to the advancement of a few race-hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Marion Barry. This sub-culture thrives on victimization and the wholesale rejection of cultural traits that can be attributed to any other skin color. Failure is guaranteed by this subculture, yet it is embraced by those in it. It is no culture at all, really, and should be rejected by its practitioners and by anyone who has any judgment. Yet, liberals promote this culture because it renders its members easy prey.
The free market works. You get more of what you pay for. The system has failed. When a school fails the administrators cry out and ask for more money. They get it. Thusly, failure is rewarded. Were a school to succeed with its budget, it would never get an increase. Therein is a problem. If the schools are rewarded for failure, they will produce more failure. If they are penalized for success, they will quickly adjust their approach and stop succeeding.
The most powerful union in America is the NEA. It is nearly impossible to terminate a bad teacher. It is even more difficult to terminate a failing administration. The NEA promotes mediocrity and failure and coerces legislatures into passing legislative barriers to prohibit any “uncertified” teachers from teaching. As Dr. Williams states, those with the lowest scores and the least to offer populate our teaching colleges. As they say in computers: “garbage in; garbage out.” It is a disgrace. At the same time, the NEA prohibits professionals, scientists, concerned parents, and capable stewards of the flame of knowledge from passing that flame onto the next generation. The NEA thugs stand in the way of our children's education and they are backed by the government because they hold the purse strings.
It would be almost impossible to alter the course of inner-city education were only one of these three pillars of failure addressed. The other two would certainly hold it up for a long time to come. Were two of these pillars toppled then the system could recover, but not in time for those already in school. It will take the wholesale destruction of all three before something wonderful happens quickly enough to matter.
What are the chances?
I agreed with your post until you said that schools shouldn't criticize. Should teachers say that slavery is the right thing in the US? Or 'no opinion' which is worse? The US is secure enough to take criticism. If we have no criticism of US, hence, no discussion of topics, then we may as well have robots, not teachers.
I'm glad you mentioned the voucher system, I would like to remind everyone that one of the first things Obama did when taking office was cancel the DC School voucher program. I guess he wants to keep Black children dumb and dependent also.
LucyQ,
I didn't say they couldn't criticise, I just said they had to do it on their own time. I'm sick of schools/teachers indoctrinating students on the”Evil U.S.” and the saintly Marxist/Socialist/Communist governments on my dime. We are the best country in the world. When we make mistakes we correct them (some sooner than later) – but our intentions, to a very large extent, are for the good of all.
The “Great Society” welfare programs have led to the breakup of the family which is a major conributor to our education problems. Welfare as a pillar of government enables survival without any attempt at getting educated in anything but the street, leading to a perpetual underclass with no respect for anything but raw force. When you add these guaranteed “D” voters (only way to get more money with no education) to the “D” voters indoctrinated in our schools and by the MSM – our capitalist society is going down the tubes.
SOLUTION: BOOKS NOT BASKETBALLS!
I also have what I call “Three Strikes and You're Out!” Not for the students but for the teachers.
All of us can remember the GOOD teachers and the BAD teachers–the HARD teachers and the EASY teachers. THEY GOT A REPUTATION as students said, “Who did you get?” “AHH, she's hard.” “Oh, he's easy and will let you do anything.” Many teachers can't control the kids so they give up and show videos or let them have free time. REMEMBER?
So by students taking the easy way out, who loses but whose fault is it really? THE TEACHER who breezes he way through the month and collects his check.
SO MY SOLUTION: STRIKE ONE—-TRANSFER THEM TO A DIFFERENT SCHOOL BUT DURING THE SUMMER, THEY MUST TAKE A DISCIPLINE CLASS FROM SUCCESSFUL TEACHERS. By moving them, they can start off on a new foot and no reputation.
If they lose control again and the kids aren't learning, STRIKE TWO!
AGAIN? STRIKE THREE AND YOU'RE OUT!!!!
Think about why a kid is great in one class and uncontrollable in another. IT'S THE TEACHER.
Many kids have idols and most all of them are sports figures or musicians so they spend all their time practicing one or the other but what are the odds of them becoming a pro in either one?
BOOKS NOT BASKETBALLS! They also need something other than winning sports teams to have PRIDE IN THEIR SCHOOL!
Yes there are good teachers and bad but that has always been true. That is not the problem.
The kid is NOT uncontrollable because of the teacher. The kid is uncontrollable because the kid is uncontrollable. To many kids have no self-control, none!
Teachers are expected to control and teach these hoodlums but they are not given the tools to do so.
When are people going to start making their children behave? I guarantee my own kids won't be disrupting class, not twice.
Parents of good kids would be screaming bloody murder if they only knew how much crap their kids are put through by the kids that are out of control.
That's quite a damning indictment of liberal policies. Will the liberals ever be smart enough to change their policies? No. As Quinn from the Quinn & Rose Show states, “Liberals don't believe that what they do is wrong. They just believe they haven't done enough of it.” More at http://www.warroom.com/quick_start.php
The teacher's union is not the problem but if you want to get rid of it then it can be done swiftly and cheaply. Just make it illegal for parents to sue teachers. This insurance protection, which schools do not provide but the unions do, is the number one reason new teachers join the Union.
Jonathon is correct that we must fix the school system or there is no hope for this country, but voting and voting wisely is the answer. Elections have consequences. Conservative ideas lose because too many of us do not have the resolve to engage in political battle. Run for your school board or support someone with conservative ideals who will.
All liberals are devils while all conservatives are angels, isn't that essentially what you're saying? You are the one who is indoctrinated!
Public education in the US isn't nearly as bad as you paint it. If it was, there wouldn't be so many bright students going to college. I'm against getting thought police in the schools to say what can and cannot be criticized in school. It's not possible to have honest debate with information flowing freely if a teacher fears getting fired for saying this or that. In fact, that is tyranny.
I've been hearing this point of yours for years. My question is why don't conservatives other than a handful, become involved in the public education industry if they're so concerned about it and our nation?
And, we ought to have 'shop' programs for those who don't want to go to college but want to have jobs. Car shop, print shop….like that.
Not angels and demons, just people who believe that the US is fundamentally good while others think it is fundamentaly bad. Yet history shows that less government gives the greates achievements and we're goming away from that. If we have people in authority (teachers) telling students that the US is bad, it becomes fact not opinion. Teach what the history actually was, not with the distortions of the teachers opinions. I'm a physicist/mathematician/engineer and I believe I can tell facts from BS but can students?
We had shop when I was in school, and my county has a technical school to teach engine/car repair, etc.
There's a very big distance between being bright (high IQ – and I (blush) have one) and being smart. I, at this point in my life, feel I'm experienced while people like Dr. williams are smart. I'm a reading omnivore and that info tied with the internet, magazines, TV, and life experiences give me the opinion that if we don't instill discipline and respect into our young while they're young we get those who feel the government is the Almighty. Come to think of it, there was a MSM commentator who essentially said our current President was God.
At the rate things are going, expect to see missionary teachers being sent to Detroit – from Africa.
How I found great Webkinz bargains…
As mentioned on “Black Education – by Walter Williams …”…
I don't usually throw myself into the fray of armchair education critics who believe that they could do a better job of running a school or school system yet they have never volunteered nor stepped into a classroom since they graduated. Blame is for the weak and cowardly. Mr. Williams did a wonderful job of saying how blacks suck at education. We suck at being teachers. We suck at being students. We suck at administration, both school based and city-wide. Michelle Rhee must be right. Let's just get all the blacks out of the school because they are taking up space and don't know what they're doing. Only the stupidest become professional teachers anyway. Replace them all with some good white folks from top to bottom and the whole thing will be fixed. Look at DC's latest math scores.
Nothing happens in isolation. Blame has never fixed anything. Hiding behind the anonymity of the internet casting stones is pathetic. The Pontiac Silver Dome just sold for less than the cost of my house. A city in that much depression is going to have a substandard school system. A better correlation can be drawn to parent income level to student achievement but then you wouldn't have the wonderful buzz words attached like: “over $15,000 per student, has class sizes smaller than the nation’s average, and with an average annual salary of $61,195, its teachers are the most highly paid in the nation” or black, unions and civil rights. Let's not even begin to factor in outside media influences.
This article was not worth this much effort from me. Sadly, many will fall for this typical republican rhetoric.
any one who thinks the system will be fixed is delusional. (perhaps a graduate of said system)
those who think money has anything to do with education is also delusional.
the system has been and will remain in the socialist/marxist hands in the foreseeable future.
personally I am planning for a Mad Max type of world if reason and common sense doesn't return to the american government in the next cycle. hopefully there will still be enough will to reverse the insanity which 2009 brought.
wow …I am negative on the system but you are completely wrong in your comments.
you need to stop making excuses ..there are rational reasons for the educational systems failure. I will not go into them with you as you cannot grasp the insight given by the essay.
I agree the conservatives do not have the time or the numbers to counter the liberals.
I think the will is there, but lacking the support that will get you past the first encounter(with the liberals whether in a meeting or debate or any form of discourse).
peer pressure .. it is stronger then you think. those that see will escape, but they are in the minority.
good luck getting rid of the liberal strangle hold on education. …but you are correct that is the problem.
there are too many race-baiters making big money from this system of victim hood to let it change.
The quality of our schools are a direct result of political correctness and total unified integration of our school systems. Intergration was supposed to bring black students up to par with white students. But, Today, all our children are getting an education equal to what black students used to get in the old preintegration all black schools. And our culture has gone down the toilet. Instead of the black students adapting to the white culture, white students have adopted the black culture.Don't believe it. Look at the white out of wedlock birth rates that have skyrocketed since the schools were integrated. In addition, the discrimination against white male students has destroyed the advancement of the very element of our society which has always been the backbone of our economy. Over 60% of our college students are now women. When you add in the number of minorities who are getting preferential treatment, that doesn't leave many positions for white males. It's little wonder we are having to import Inidans and Pakastanis to do our high tech and engineering jobs. Our students who have the intelligence and talent to learn those trades are left out by governmental fiat. The most tragic part is that those few white males who do manage to get a college degree find their only opportunities are in the military. It's no wonder we are on our way to becoming a third world country. Any country that uses it's best and brightest as cannon fodder while educating and promoting the less than most qualified to leadership positions must have a death wish. You can't solve a problem until you face up to the truth,. and the truth is that the do gooders who instituted this second reconstruction have just about destroyed our country. Now, instead of just the South being buried in debt for projects never built, the whole country is inundated in debt. And it looks like the carpet baggers who have surrounded out affirmative action President are stashing away the loot just like their counterparts did in the 1800's. Think I'm a racist? So what. I'm an old woman and I call it like I see it. If more people dared do the same we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today.
I do have experience with one small sample of your article…but one that has stuck with me all these years.
In the mid-70s I had to take Miller's Analoges Test as part of applying to a Grad School (in add to the GRE). The test norms were provided. I was shocked to see the mean scores of recent graduates in Education. Since the MAT encouraged guessing (with no points taken off to adjust for the guessing, then a random poke at the answer would yeild 25% correct.
Which was, sadly the mean score of teachers coming out of a school that offers on a Bachleor level in Ed…..Schools that had a post-graduate system (M.A. etc) did better (even with the BA level people.
Not getting scores above random guessing is not a good sign. I hope it is better today.
The only way it will be done is with violence and/or unrelenting civil action by hard core committed change agents. The better solution would be for states to take back their schools and reimpose the founders' will by the ballot, one state at a time. But, it's not going to happen.
Guess what. Africa is already sending missionaries here.
No. Conservatives have the numbers and they don't need much time if they get their act together. What they lack is a coherent philosophy of what they believe, what kind of culture they want, and what kind of nation they want to build. In short, Conservatives have NO VISION anymore; they lost the basis of it when they gave up on what made built their nation.
People in this country are DYING for a leader who will stand up and say the things that have not been said in so long. Who will directly and harshly confront the leftists in the ways they need to be confronted. We owe this to the world. My God, people. Have enough people considered what will happen to this planet if the United States allows the beacon to be extinguished?
Do we not see that the culture of the black community is LEFTIST culture? What has been done to the black community since 1900 has been done to them by WHITE LEFTISTS.
And do we not see that this is happening to whites also?
Folks, this isn't accidental. Everywhere the Marxists go, they work to destroy the family and the parent-child relationship. Remember that. Marxists want ONLY the individual and the state, and the former is only loyal to the latter, absolutely.
MaryAnn is absolutely correct.
Conservatives don't, or shouldn't, believe in education controlled by the federal government. Conservatives should support locally and privately controlled education with specifically targeted state oversight.
But, conservatives are involved in public education. And a good many of them are involved in education policy, reform, as well as in homeschooling and private education.
Absolutely correct MarilynA
I don't see any leader who will get it done. The other thing is the
socialists/marxist don't play by the rules. It will not matter if all the
smartest people are with you, the stupid ones (like those that voted for
obama) will still beat you.
I agree they need to fight them for control. Just the odds are overwhelming.
We didn't get to this point without fighting, they (socialists) fought
harder.
I see your points. I don't see a leader on the horizon either, aside from Ron Paul, who speaks truth at the basic level. But even he is too meek and mild. I know what needs to be done, but I don't have the money, the credentials or the squeeky clean background.
But take heart. It is also true that WE are the majority in this country. Not them. It's just the we have been silent. There is much to be positive about, even in the midst of the gloom.
Personally, I hope Obama gets reelected, and I hope another Democrat wins after him, like Hillary maybe. Twelve years is about what it would take for the left to run this country into the ground and hopefully provoke an active revolt of some sort. Unless the public gets slapped in the face with the sorts of realities that much of the rest of the world faces everyday – they'll never wake up. Starvation is a good motivator.