We live in dark times, economically and socially. This crisis, however, has been a gathering storm front that conservatives should not have missed. The insidious undermining of our societal fabric was being unraveled just as we elected Ronald Reagan and felt a conservative tide that appeared unstoppable. During this time, so-called educators like domestic terrorist William Ayres and other such radicals were busy infiltrating an already weakened public education system.

The fissures formed in the wake of the silly notion that students should not be invoking God in the classroom. With ever-increasing power, the atheist religion has gained power as a State-sponsored dogma. Evolution became fact. Prayer was forbidden. Bibles were banned. Students no longer learned the pledge of allegiance to the American Flag. By the late 1960s it was vogue to despise America, but it wasn't wide-spread. Most Americans still felt unashamedly patriotic. This was largely the result of educators who had yet to be replaced by the radicals at the school walls.

During the 1970s, rock bands railed against the 'establishment' only to have their peers become the establishment with a new set of priorities.

But the opportunity they seized was hardly a new one. It had been coming since the time C.S. Lewis wrote The Abolition Of Man. He noticed the way textbooks were teaching 'debunking' as literary criticism. This debunking has grown into what Mr. Lewis saw as a dangerous social experiment to abolish self-evident values. One might debunk someone's feelings of virtue by saying something just makes them feel abstract emotions that they describe as virtue. In other words, there is no such thing as virtue or right or wrong, simply a feeling one derives.

We now live in the world where man is abolished. Our society has evolved to make all things subjective and debunk truth as ones personal perspective. Our generations X, Y and Z have been progressively influenced by the education of politics rather than value. They learn that they are highly evolved animals who must follow their instinct, which, as pointed out by C. S. Lewis, is the only basis for doing anything in the new society. Instincts for survival or pleasure drive us to achieve success or settle for find a particular vocation. An inherent value of taking care of parents or children or concern for posterity is simply cultural. To the extent that our instinct drives us to preserve society for our personal survival, we look out for others in some semblance of common good. We certainly don't do something because we might be responsible to a higher power or because there is an inherent Right versus an inherent Wrong.

Since our public education system has become a propaganda machine for secular thought and atheist religion, our children grow up with no sense of direction, no instruction on a solid Way that is true.

Parents have been subject to this attack as well. Parents have been lured into the deception of the Women's movment, which told countless women that they were not using their full potential if they stayed at home raising children. Thus we spawned a society that has abandoned kids to centers that simply manage the basic needs but provide none of the moral nurturing children crave. In the process, women have been broken. While they are told they can be as effective in the business world men, they are not. While the elite of society claim that there are no inherent differences between men and women, there are.

Together, the abolition of values in our schools and the luring away of parents from children, our society has reached a point of moral despair. Americans have drank the wine of an idea that we are not responsible to God or to eachother. We have allowed ideas to arive that everyone's desire is a value that should be given as a right, thus the housing fiasco. Legislators have passed off a utopian ideal that flies in the face of traditional values, stating that everyone should have everything from a quality education to a nice house without having to earn either one. In short, they have set the young generations up for failure and disappointment. For no matter what government funding can give, it can't hide poor students and bad loan risks.

Our education in America is in crisis. Our children are being passed through grades with high scores in self-esteem and liberal dogma, but with no sense of right and wrong and lacking any intellectual discipline.

Our economy is in crisis. Too many feel entitled to housing they cannot yet afford. Rather than work several jobs and save up for a downpayment, they look to Government to bail them out.

It is my hope that the current crisis will continue to prove impervious to the bailout strategy and reveal itself for what it is, the check due for putting our faith in the secular socialist mentality. While that realization is crucial for our economy, it must be accompanied by a resurgence of conservatives involved in education. If we hope to turn this country around we need to abolish the National Education Association. We need to break up the monopoly of thought that the radicals have in our schools. We need to eliminate public funing for schools and force them to compete for dollars based on their educational merits. We need to eliminate government money in our colleges and allow only those who work hard achieve entrance. This will foster true competition in our colleges and put higher education back where it belongs.

But most important, we need to stand up for traditional values and teach our children that there is an objective right and an objective wrong. We are not animals and should never behave as such.