Our Most Expensive Commodity
From the EIB Network, Rush Limbaugh:
“I keep telling people: The most expensive commodity we have in this country is ignorance, not gasoline, not rice, not wheat, not corn. The most expensive commodity we have is the ignorance of way too many Americans. It is ignorance that allows liberalism to prosper. Get this: “Three out of 10 US public school students do not graduate from high school, and major city school districts only graduate one out of two students, according to a study released Tuesday. In a report on graduation rates around the country, the EPE Research Center and the America’s Promise Alliance also showed that the high school graduation rate — finishing 12 grades of school…” They have to even throw that in there because half the country reading the story doesn’t know what it takes to graduate! Can you believe this?
“The high school graduation rate — finishing 12 grades of school…” They have to add that? Really? I thought you only had to get to tenth grade and you graduated! “The high school graduation rate — finishing 12 grades of school — in big cities falls to as low as just 34.6 percent in Baltimore, Maryland, and barely over 40 percent for the troubled Ohio cities of Columbus and Cleveland. And it said that black and Native American students have effectively a one-in-two chance of getting a high school diploma.” Now, stick with me on this, because while this is tragic and while it is horrible and while it is disconcerting, this is a French News Agency story, and it doesn’t even bother to analyze why this is. It doesn’t even bother. Let me give you the dirty little secret here. America’s Promise Alliance was a group founded by Colin Powell, and they looked at high school graduation rates at America’s 50 largest cities. In 17 of our 50 largest cities, not even half the kids attending high school finish. That doesn’t even touch on what the hell they’re being taught while they’re there.
But I will guaran-damn-tee you it’s not Economics 101 in a way that they could understand it. I will guarantee you that most of what they’re being taught is a multicultural hybrid of hate America; America sucks. America’s out to screw you. You don’t have a prayer in America. Ronald Reagan sucks. George Bush sucks. Bill Clinton was fabulous. The Founding Fathers were racists, and they were atheists, and this country originally belongs to the Indians from whom it was stolen by evil white Europeans. This is what these people come out of school knowing, thinking. “In large metropolitan areas, you may as well draw a target around the inner cities if you want to isolate this problem. In Baltimore suburbs, over 80% of the kids graduate. Thirty-four percent who live in Baltimore’s inner city graduate.” Suburbs okay, not great, 80%. We shouldn’t even be happy with that. There’s no excuse for anything less than a hundred percent! It’s basic. We all talk about education. “We gotta educate our children. We need more money to educate our children.” then how can we be happy with anything less than a hundred percent?
Anyway, by contrast, we’re ecstatic about 80% in the suburbs of Baltimore, because the inner city is 34%. In Detroit, about a quarter, 25% of the kids graduate. Twenty-five percent! Indianapolis public school system, 30% graduation rate, Cleveland, 35%, inner city. In response to the report, Secretary Powell said, “When more than one million students a year drop out of high school, it’s more than a problem. It’s a catastrophe.” It’s worse than that, Secretary Powell. Let’s go back to Obama’s big race speech for a second, shall we? Obama like every other Democrat, talks about schools failing minority kids, but he never addresses how they got that way. There’s no question that inner city schools are failing minority kids. Why do you think the biggest supporters of school vouchers are the parents of kids in inner city schools that will take the first chance they can to get them out of there and get them into a decent school? These are primarily black and Hispanic kids in Democrat Party-run cities, and they are left to fail year after year, decade after decade! Liberalism is giving us this problem, and it has for a long time — and look at the billions that we are spending on education to boot. You now throw that into the mix.
You talk about being mad about something? You talk about being mad at the high cost of something and getting nothing for it? These kids are caught in a stranglehold, folks, of liberal politics. Liberal politics is designed to keep unions strong, including the teachers, and minority kids underachieving. I mean, to the extent that there’s institutional racism in America, it is in these blue states, run by liberal Democrats for years. Their own kids are not even being disserviced. It’s just criminal, the way they’re not being taught and what they are being taught. So I was asked, “How do we get this way where people don’t understand we gotta go get our own oil to become independent?” They don’t have the education; they don’t have the information. They’ve been taught that America is bad, that America is rotten, that America steals from the rest of the world. America deserves to suffer. America deserves to be hated by the rest of the world. That’s what they’re taught. So when Big Oil boys get calls up to Capital Hill, and get called on the carpet for these prices, “Yeah! Yeah! You stick it to them. You stick it to them, those big, fat white guys taking all the profits, just getting rich while I’m sitting here poor. That’s right, you stick it to them!” The sad thing is that, actually, this is not a catastrophe, Secretary Powell. This is just liberal business as usual.
In all of this stuff, the education problems in the inner cities of this country, the problem’s not the American people. I’m still bouncing off Senator McCain’s speech to the midshipmen at Annapolis. The American people are spoiled and they’re a little too cynical and they take their freedom for granted, blah, blah, blah. Overall the problem is not the American people. The problem is the government and how government manipulates people, how the government literally abuses people, and how the government uses them. The problem, folks, is liberalism. Liberalism that controls most of the government and how it seeks to transform our society for the worst. We can’t run around and say the American people are great one day, that left to their own devices they’ll succeed, but on the other hand condemn them or most of them or a lot of them. This is an argument against liberalism and Big Government.
Here’s what liberals do. Liberals say that people are too lazy, too stupid, and that they need to be managed. Liberals have contempt for the average American. Liberals do not believe the average American can overcome obstacles in life. Our position is just the opposite. We have the greatest faith in the world and in the American people. We want a great nation. We as conservatives do. We want people to be the greatest they can be. We don’t want to hold anybody down and we don’t want to give anybody any excuses. And we don’t want to make them victims of anything. We don’t want to treat them like children. There are people out there like that, but not overall, but the liberals are out there trying to create as many of those people as they can.
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