Most of us would probably judge Newt as a pretty astute political type. I see he’s out this morning saying, “I’ve never been as wrong as I was this year.” “It makes me challenge every model I’m aware of, and realize that I have to really stop and spend a good bit of time thinking and trying to put it all together.” He thought, as did leaders on both sides, that inflation and crime and the border would swing elections coast to coast. They didn’t.
To me the factors already mentioned all played a part in the outcomes. The one that shocked me, though, was the impact of abortion. The evening after the election I saw a Democratic analyst state that single American women, regardless of party affiliation, broke +37 points for the pro choice/pro abortion candidate. The next day I spoke with a good friend who’s single and he said that didn’t surprise him at all. All the women he knows are concerned about crime and the economy but the single most important issue to them is having a means to have their babies killed if they choose.
As for trading freedom for security, Mr. Franklin already “nailed” that one.
“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Ben Franklin
And as for seeing bigger government as the answer,
“A government that is big enough to give you anything you want is big enough to take everything you have.” Thomas Jefferson
On reflection, I see I don’t really know and understand the majority of Americans like I thought I did.
The schools have been conquered by the left. It happened over the last 50 years. The public schools became Godless, soulless empires of the teachers unions, that drove the dumbing down and results free end result of a “free” public education. That is how people today consider having the “right” to kill their spawn more significant than the economic reality of an inflation rate of 10%, year over year, that if it continues will render their future wages irrelevant.
You got what you paid for.
I was in 7th grade in 1973, in a social studies class that had a pair of lunatic leftists team teaching two classes. I clearly remember the indoctrination of how the pilgrims practiced communism upon their arrival, and what a wonderful and benevolent system it was. My Dad took the time to read my notes, and pointed out that the system of communism was very quickly abandoned after it was discovered that some people on the frontier would allow others to produce for them, up to the point of death. The system that replaced what they started with looked very much like a capitalist endeavor as we know it, and the leadership quickly realized it was working vastly better than what had been in place.
The teachers never mentioned that. When I did, supported by data from the Junior High School library, I got an hour of principle’s detention over it.
My public school education was NOT the education my Father received at St. Paul Mechanic Arts High School, circa 1948. Nobody I know would try to argue that fact, but, they are oddly accepting of it, for some reason.
I pulled my kid out of the public schools and started him in a private, Catholic High School (Thanks, Lloyd for leading by example). We aren’t Catholic. But, my kid is now an A student at a school with a solid reputation for excellence and a wonderful grasp of college prep.
You younger guys with kids, just a few of you, here, I know, had better give this some clear eyed thought. What passes for education in the public school system, today, in the United States, is considered incomplete and unacceptable in most of the third world.
Best,
Ted