WHERE DID WE GO?

I'm going to be visited by my son and his family soon, an occurrence that is all too rare. He is career Air Force, so coming home is a big deal to us. The world seems to be his oyster. When he was growing up I don't know if I ever imagined his life would involve so much travel to such far away places.

There is a Dr. Seuss book called, "Oh, The Places You'll Go." It's a child's book, but someone gave it to us when my son graduated from high school. When I read it I cried and cried. I must have had a gut feeling that this was it...the end of childhood and the beginning of his big, grown-up life out there in the big, grown-up world. It took me a month to even walk back into his room when he left for the Air Force Academy. Maybe this says something about how much fun we had as he grew up. He and his sister and I had a wonderful time supporting each other and learning so much about coping with and enjoying the world. Sometimes, still, even though he is doing just great, when we hang up the phone I will just burst into tears. It's so silly...but I can't seem to help it.

Anyway, I was reading an article by Mona Charen this morning about preparing to send her son off to college. It brought all those emotions back to me. She writes about the leftist take-over of "higher education" in America. All the hopes of America being dashed in American Universities. When I sent my son to USAFA 16 years ago, I believed an American military academy would be one of the best places for instilling an appreciation for American history. In recent years the Air Force Academy has installed a place of worship for Wiccans and Gaia worshipers. Who'da thunk it? And when my daughter went through a popular state university to study finance and business, she was not exposed to Western Civilization classes, as Mona Charen points out. In my daughter's case, she is avidly now interested in American history and is catching up on what she missed by studying on her own.

Mona Charen writes for Townhall below:

"In "The Vanishing West," the NAS examined the curricula at 50 leading colleges over time. In 1964, all of them required some sort of Western civilization survey course or interdisciplinary course treating the same themes. They began with Greek civilization and encompassed Rome, the rise of Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, literature, art, music, the history of science, political philosophy, the modern era, and so forth. By 2010, none of the 50 colleges required any course in Western Civ. Even for history majors, survey courses on Western civilization are rarely required. The same is true for American history."

"Students can still find courses on these subjects, but only as choices in a vast cafeteria of offerings that also includes courses like "Lesbian Queer Media Cultures" (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), "The Living and the UnDead: An Inquiry into Zombies in Cinema and Literature" (University of Mississippi), "the Militarization of American Daily Life" (Oberlin), and "The American Sexual Past" (Temple University). The term "higher education" is fast becoming a misnomer. American students are graduating with scads of courses on zombies and queer theory -- which is why we're importing an ever-larger number of our Ph.D.s."

If we don't know how we got here, we are going to lose site of our destination, which is to be the "shining city on the hill," as Reagan put it. Freedom exists in the blood of our fathers who gave it to us. That same blood courses through our veins. Denying the foundations of freedom in America is suicidal...and I'm not feeling particularly suicidal, thank you very much. Nor am I feeling like throwing away my children's futures for some Marxist tyranny based on the destruction of our history.

So, when my son, wife, and four little cuties come to visit this month, I will be celebrating the blessings of having a family in what was the best country on earth. I will also be reminded of why we are fighting so hard to put America back on the path to our true destination; liberty for all. There is a lot at stake and a lot of work still to do.