Veep's Wife Champions Curriculum

Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice president, disputed educators who want to teach more multiculturalism in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, promoting instead an America-first curriculum.

``If there were one aspect of schooling from kindergarten through college to which I would give added emphasis today it would be American history,'' Mrs. Cheney said Friday in remarks prepared for a speech to the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

Cheney, a well-known critic of political correctness and former chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, took issue with published comments by the deputy chancellor for instruction in New York City schools, Judith Rizzo.

In a Sept. 30 article, The Washington Post quoted Rizzo as saying: ``Those people who said we don't need multiculturalism, that it's too touchy-feely, a pox on them. I think they've learned their lesson. We have to do more to teach habits of tolerance, knowledge and awareness of other cultures.''

Cheney agreed that children need to be taught about world cultures. But, she said, ``to say that it is more important now implies that the events of Sept. 11 were our fault, that it was our failure to understand Islam that led to so many deaths and so much destruction.''

The assertion that Americans need to learn more tolerance implies, Cheney said, ``that somehow intolerance on our part was the cause.''

``But on Sept. 11, it was most manifestly not the United States that acted out of religious prejudice.''

A time of national crisis is a time to study national history, ``to know the ideas and ideals on which our nation has been built,'' Cheney said. She cited a recent survey of college seniors at 55 elite American universities that found only a third could identify George Washington as the American general at Yorktown. Not one of those 55 universities requires a course in American history, Mrs. Cheney said.

``Let me suggest that if there is a failure here, it is lack of commitment to this nation's history.''

Political correctness has edged out and re-written American History. Along with a commitment to this nation's history, every student should be an expert on the United States Constitution and what it means. Parents should insist on that instruction and parents should also attend.

What always amazes me in the "multicultural diversity" issue is that for some reason the Western European Christian culture is always taught as being the most "intolerant" when in fact it is the most tolerant when compared to Eastern or Asian cultures. Teaching multicultural diversity has nothing to do with actually teaching diversity or tolerance - it is a tool of the leftists to cause people of Western heritage to doubt their culture and the very obvious superiority of that culture. It is taught to divide people of all cultures and keep them divided; it is taught to cause resentment among the majority culture of the U.S. and to cause feelings of helplessness and frustration. And it is taught especially so that the young (of Western European heritage) will feel rootless, without foundation, without any sort of direction... and they become easy targets for those wishing to recruit them to their anti-American cause.

The only way we are going to get American History and Patriotism back in the Class Room is by appeasing the liberals and renaming it American Culturism.
The liberal academics have taken Patriotism from being a matter of respect, to being a matter of perspective, and their perspective is perverted, in that they believe Patriots to be baby Killers and Storm Troopers. They did this to discredit the United States military forces and encourage their supposed piece campaign, which we all know is actually a campaign of disarmament.

Great post - glad to see such common sense in Washington DC. Mrs. Cheney is an unashamed patriot and completely correct in her criticism of the renewed call for multi-culturalism. The ONLY successful culture in this world where I would want to live and raise children is AMERICA. It needn't be diluted or fragmented, but strengthened. Our strength is not our diversity - it is our UNITY.

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