Teacher Unions Worse Than Islamic Terrorists?

From the Neal Boortz show:


Those of you who are constant listeners know my feelings about government schools and teachers unions. I firmly believe that in the long-term this country has more to fear from teacher's unions than we do from Islamic terrorists. I fully believe that Islamic terrorists will once again strike this country, and they may well manage to kill ten thousand or more, but at this point I don't think they can kill the dream of our forefathers. We recognize (I hope) the terrorists for the enemies that they are. We don't recognize government education and teacher's unions for the enemies that they are. Because we are so unaware and asleep at the switch, the education establishment can bring us down, where the terrorists probably cannot.
There is a level of ignorance in this country that the word "stunning" does not even begin to describe. Not only are we producing high school "graduates" who cannot read and comprehend the most basic of writings, they have no understanding of American government or our true history. These kids couldn't even begin to tell you the difference between a constitutional republic and a democracy. They have no concept of the differences between the rule of law and the rule of men. They cannot tell you that our founders feared a democracy, nor why a democracy should be feared. They're ignorant as to our culture, our history and our form of government ... not to mention basic math and science.
And then there's economics. Our typical high school grad has no clue as to how a free enterprise economy works. He couldn't write a cohesive paragraph on the law of supply and demand or the difference between a profit and a profit margin. This, of course, makes the high school grads just lumps of clay ready to be molded into whatever their union officials or teachers want them to be.
I was listening to my pal Sean Hannity do an "I hate Hannity" segment on his show last Thursday. Several callers began slamming Hannity on, believe it or not, the Wal-Mart issue. They just couldn't believe that Sean wasn't joining them in their hatred of Wal-Mart. It was clear, of course, that these were uneducated, union-oriented people. They would come up with lines like "Well, if the unions aren't for the workers, who will be?" Duh ... how about exercising that responsibility for yourself! At any rate, one caller really caught my attention. He started out with this "Republicans are for big business and rich people" nonsense. Then somehow he got into the subject of income taxes. Everybody knows, he said, that rich people don't pay income taxes. Sean reminded him that the top 10% of income earners in this country pay about 70% of all personal income taxes collected by the federal government. The caller said "That's only on paper. They have all these write-offs so they really don't pay anything."
That conversation was four days ago now, and I can't get it out of my mind. How, in this country, can anyone possibly be that completely and absolutely ignorant? How can they actually believe such nonsense? One answer --- government schools. There is no excuse for this level of stupidity, and it must be turned around or this country just flat-out isn't going to make it. The most immediate answer? Get rid of teacher's unions. Across the nation job one for teacher's unions is to fight school choice. Parents must be denied the opportunity to chose where their children will go to school at all costs. In Florida the teacher's unions recently managed to kill a voucher program in the courts. Only children who went to government schools that failed to get a passing grade for two years in a row were eligible .. but the teacher's unions declared war ... and won. One teacher-plaintiff even said that competition is not good for schools, and it's not good for humans. This is the lesson she's teaching someone's son or daughter right now.
Wake up folks. This country was handed to us on a sliver platter. Now it's up to us to save it, and we're not doing all that good of a job.