Why Global Citizenship and Not American Citizenship?

Photo credit: Ileana Johnson, 2014

I have asked many students over my 30 teaching years why they attended college. The answers encompassed a wide range:

-          It’s a family tradition and my parents are making me

-          I want to learn more about a particular subject

-          I want a higher-paying job

-          I want to be a doctor, a vet, an engineer, a pilot, an astronaut, an artist

-          I want to do research and find a cure for cancer

-          I have nothing better to do with my time and I like being a student

-          I want to be perennial learner and the tuition is paid by the government

-          I want to make American lives better

-          I want to be the first college graduate in my family

-          I don’t want to work in a blue collar job like my father

-          I want to help my small hometown who needs a doctor or a vet

Not one time did I hear a student say that they are pursuing a college degree for “diversity,” “global citizenship,” and “social justice.” Not one time did any student tell me that they were studying in order to make other nations better, spread the wealth of his/her earnings to the downtrodden of the world, or rearrange America in the image of social justice, code words for communism.

I am not sure I talked to anyone who said, I really want to change this country into a communist society because I was taught by academia that Marx’s teachings would make it better. America has been so rotten for over 250 years and we must fix it.

The electronic board I saw in a large D.C. mall pictured a young man and proclaimed in bold letters, “WORLD READY. Honor. Excellence. Service. Preparation for work, life, and citizenship in the global economy.*” I asked myself, do we live in America or the globe? Shouldn’t this college prepare students for American citizenship in our economy? The asterisk explained that the University of Mary Washington subscribes to the 2012 Association of American Colleges & Universities: Promising Practices for Personal and Social Responsibility.”

As a parent and former teacher, I wanted to know what this AAC&U 2012 platform was, so I started digging. The electronic ad at the mall intrigued me and I could not get it out of my mind.

The platform (the pdf file has 112 pages) which grew from a 2006 AAC&U initiative with a grant from the Templeton Foundation, “Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility,” emphasized “learning skills and dispositions appropriate for living and working in a diverse society, such as their ‘ability to see the world from someone else’s perspective,’ ‘tolerance of others with diverse beliefs,’ and ‘ability to work cooperatively with diverse people.’” The wording for “Core Commitments” in higher education sounded eerily similar to some of the wording in Common Core Standards for elementary and high school education.

The problem with “diverse” and “diversity” is that it is not a civic strength despite liberal promotion of multiculturalism, “multicultural festivals,” and political speeches about multiculturalism that present America as stronger because of diversity. Europeans have already admitted publicly through Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy that multiculturalism has failed miserably in Europe.

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam found out by interviewing 30,000 people across America that the more diverse a community, the fewer people vote and volunteer, the less they give to charity, and the less they work on community projects. Putnam’s study, the largest on civic involvement in America, found that almost all measures of civic participation are lower in the more diverse settings. (The Downside of Diversity – The Boston Globe, August 2007)

Max Fisher explained that studies also show that diversity tends to correlate with low Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and conflict. The African continent tends to be the most diverse and with lower GDP.

In concert with AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative, the Core Commitments require five indispensable “capacities” for college students:

-          Strong work ethic

-          Personal relationships and academic integrity

-          Contributing to a larger community

-          Taking seriously the perspectives of others

-          Developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning and action

https://aacu.org/core_commitments/.../promising_practices_rc2012.pdf

The five Core Commitments “capacities” contain elements of indoctrination as well as elements of parental guidance that should have been instilled into their children long before they made it to college.  Taking over the parental role and reshaping their children’s view of the world smacks of indoctrination. What kind of action are our students supposed to take? Do these five “core capacities” and especially the development of “competence in ethical and moral reasoning and action” reflect our American values or are they reflecting the values of a global entity that is pushing global citizenship?

Americans are not responsible for the outcomes and lives of those around the globe. Americans already engage in volunteerism and service, they do not need mandated curricula from an institution of higher learning.

Americans are already one the most tolerant cultures when it comes to racial and ethnic diversity. As research shows, diversity makes our civic societal fabric weaker, not stronger.

Why would colleges then mandate preparation of our American students for global citizenship, should colleges not prepare students for American citizenship?

 

 

 

 

 

 

So Tolerant, We Are Stupid, or Vice Versa

John Kerry said to a crowded internet café in Berlin, “In America you have the right to be stupid, if you want to be... and we tolerate that.” Let me translate. Conservatives, you have the right to be wrong, and we, liberals, tolerate your right to be wrong. I would like to add that you also have the right to open your mouth and eliminate any doubt of stupidity.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284792/John-Kerry-says-Americans-right-stupid-tells-lost-diplomatic-passport-age-12-sneaking-Soviet-controlled-East-Berlin-1950s.html#ixzz2M46DIy6N

How contrasting these words are to John F. Kennedy’s, in his famous speech in Berlin, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” in which he told Germans indirectly that he understood their plight of living with a country separated by the Wall of Shame, the Berlin Wall, erected by the Russians. Families living on opposite sides of the same street had found themselves separated overnight by a tall concrete wall and barbed wire, guarded by East German soldiers who shot for keeps from looming towers.

President John F. Kennedy had told the roaring crowd that he was a jelly doughnut, yet the world and the Germans applauding him knew what he meant even though the German phrase he had spoken had one too many words, “ein.” Ich bin Berliner, I am German like you.

John Kerry is no JFK. On a nine-country tour of Europe and the Middle East, the newly-minted Secretary of State is promoting religious and political tolerance by showcasing the tolerant America and its multiculturalism. Tolerance is 'something worth fighting for,' he said.

John Kerry continued, “We live and breathe the idea of religious freedom and religious tolerance, whatever the religion - and political freedom and political tolerance, whatever the point of view.” He forgot to mention that this tolerance is one-sided, as long as conservatives agree with the liberal and Democrat points of view. If conservatives disagree with their talking points, they are racists and hate mongers.

“As a 12-year-old, I saw the difference between the east and the west. I saw people were in darker clothing and there were fewer people in the street. There were fewer cars. I didn’t feel the movement and the energy that existed elsewhere.”

Kerry had lived in Berlin in the 1950s with his American diplomat father and his family. He had snuck out one day to the other side, to East Berlin, part of the German Democratic Republic, a totalitarian state established by the Soviet Union with the communist party in power and a socialist collectivist economy.

Kerry first speech as Secretary of State promoted global warming fear mongering and population changes in a speech at the University of Virginia. “We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren: an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly super storms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate." It does not matter how many times the non-existent global warming is de-bunked. Arrogant liberals, who think they can control nature and weather-related disasters that have occurred since the beginning of time, continue to promote their manufactured global warming/climate change crisis because there is too much money to be made from carbon swaps and carbon taxes. Well-informed Americans are getting weary of misinformation and propaganda. “Americans are tired of being tired.” http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/kerry-gives-first-foreign-policy-speech-climate-change_703024.html#sthash.zZ9n9Np3.dpuf

Global warming and population change/manipulation are enshrined in the U.N. Agenda 21, a form of global communism control operating on the premise that the environment must be protected from faux man-made global warming and destruction.  Carbon-taxing citizens from developed nations, redistributing their property to third world countries with the help of the United Nations, and social engineering, moving people from the land into high-rise, congested living/walking/areas into the city would somehow restore the planet to its “pristine” condition. When the definition of “pristine” is evaluated carefully, a scary picture emerges in which man can no longer occupy the land it owns or desires to own, capitalism is a dirty word, and man becomes “persona-non-grata,” an unwanted person.  

That is exactly what communists did to people in East Germany and behind the Iron Curtain when they moved people off the land. Yes, we had fewer cars, wore dark, drab clothing, hid in our dirty grey concrete multi-story apartments without heat, water, or electricity for endless weeks and months, and standing in long lines to get our daily rations of food if we could get to the front of the line before they ran out. It is hard to be energetic when you are hungry and beaten down psychologically. Yet liberals promote U.N. Agenda 21, the return to the very same type of existence. To “protect” the environment that renews itself, they demand fewer cars on the road, public transportation, buses, trains, biking, and walking to work/school, dependent on government for all our needs, a government that cannot run anything right except the military.

We are so tolerant in America that we accept the killing of millions of innocent unborn who want to live as “choice,” we tolerate and reward financially millions of illegal aliens trespassing our borders as “undocumented Americans,” we accept political gridlock, we allow government intrusion into our lives, health care, we endure political correctness, we accept Sharia Law which is incompatible with our Constitution, and permit the deliberate incompetence and corruption of politicians. Yes, we have the right to be stupid in America and, unfortunately, we are fully exercising that right, to the shock and delight of the rest of the world.