Government Schools 'Destroying Belief' In Christianity, Venezuela Hits Rock Bottom

Expert: Government schools ‘destroying belief’ in Christianity

There’s a slow erosion of Christianity in America and it flows from the nation’s public education system, according to the co-author of the book “Crimes of the Educators.”

“One of the big things we looked at for ‘Crimes of the Educators’ was how the educators – and by this I think it’s important to say we don’t mean the average teacher in the classroom; we’re talking about the education establishment – but what we looked at was how the government schools were systematically destroying children’s belief in biblical religion, in Christianity,” Alex Newman told WND in an interview.

Christianity in America does appear to be declining slowly but surely. While 78 percent of Americans identified as Christian in 2007, only 71 percent did so in 2014. According to a Pew Research Center report,younger generations are successively less Christian than those before them, so that while 85 percent of the Silent generation considers itself Christian, only 56 percent of younger Millennials do so.

Accompanying this decline in Christian affiliation is a decline in belief in God. While 71 percent of the American population in 2010 said they were “absolutely certain” God is real, only 64 percent of those aged 18-29 said so. Meanwhile, 77 percent of those over 65 were absolutely certain God is real.

Newman, an international journalist and educator, said people are mistaken if they think American public schools are secular or impartial toward different religions. He said schools do try to force a religion on children, but it’s not Christianity; rather, it is humanism.

It all goes back to the famous American education reformer John Dewey, according to Newman. Dewey was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto, the very first plank of which reads, “Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.” From there, the manifesto goes on to thoroughly reject most of the beliefs of Christianity and theism in general. It also calls for a “socialized and cooperative economic order” to replace the “existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society.”

Dewey’s humanist beliefs have trickled down into today’s U.S. public education system, according to Newman.

“This Humanist Manifesto really has become kind of a template and religious humanism is being taught in the schools,” he declared. “And people think humanism’s not a religion. Well, it is a religion. It has been found to be a religion by the courts because it is a religion. It has articles of faith. It is based on faith; there’s no actual evidence to support these ridiculous notions that there is no god or that we need to surrender private property or that we came from monkeys.”

Humanist author John Dunphy explicitly laid out the humanists’ plan when he wrote the following in the Humanist Magazine in 1983:

“[A] viable alternative to [Christianity] must be sought. That alternative is humanism. 

I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level.”

It’s not only humanism invading the schools, either. Newman pointed out foreign religious beliefs have been creeping into American public schools in recent years. For example, last year students in Madison, Wisconsin, were assigned to pretend they were Muslims, while students in Florida were instructed to recite the Five Pillars of Islam as a prayer and perform other Muslim rituals. Students in Tennessee were assigned to write the Shahada – the Islamic conversion creed.

And it’s not just Islam. Schools all around the country promote mindfulness meditation, a Buddhist religious practice similar to prayer.

Meanwhile, Christian expression appears to be under assault in many schools. The Supreme Court long ago declared school-sponsored Bible reading unconstitutional, but more recently one Florida school system banned a Christian group from even offering free Bibles on National Freedom of Religion Day. In 2013 an official at a California college ordered a student to remove or hide her cross necklace while working at a freshman orientation fair. And one elementary school in Texas banned any mention of Christmas at a “winter party” held in December 2013.

It all seems so odd, Newman confessed – unless you understand what the goal is.

“Any religion that doesn’t have Christ in it is fine in the schools and is promoted in the schools, especially humanism and these types of things,” Newman said. “So what’s going on here is really a war on Christianity.”

Again, it goes back to John Dewey and his ilk, according to Newman. The Humanist Manifesto called for a socialist system, and Dewey used the public education system to try and soften Americans’ attitudes toward socialism.

“He understood quite well that you would never be able to get [to a socialist society] as long as the American people were Christian and were literate,” Newman revealed. “It just wouldn’t happen if people value the Bible, and the Bible’s quite clear: you don’t steal. The Bible’s not compatible with these types of ideas.

“So he set out to undermine the… biblical religion, the Christian faith of the American people, which really was at the foundation of American society. So what we’re seeing in the schools is a deliberate undermining of Christianity, and parents need to understand that.”

"It's Pure Chaos Now; There Is No Way Back" - Venezuela Hits Rock Bottom As Its Morgues Overflow

When we previewed Venezuela's upcoming hyperinflation, which in January was predicted to be 720% and as of this moment is likely far higher...

... we said "This Is What The Death Of A Nation Looks Like" and said "there is no good news in any of the above for the long-suffering citizens of this "socialist paradise" which any minute now will be downgraded to its fair value of "socialist hell."

Subsequent news that Venezuela was now openly liquidating its gold reserves while its president, in an amusing twist, announced last week, that henceforth every Friday will be a holiday, (the term there was a slightly different meaning) to cut down on electricity usage (while blaming El Nino for its electricity rationing) merely confirmed that the end if nigh for this once flourishing Latin American nation.

Sounds a little like Chicago on a Friday... only in Venezuela things are even worse: "an economic, social and political crisis facing Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s unpopular president, is being aggravated by a rise in violence which is prompting fears that this oil-rich country risks becoming a failed state."

Even the morgue employees are asking if they should give up. 

"What can we do?" Mr Mejía asks. “Give up.” The morgue employee in charge of handling the corpses notes that a decade ago he received seven or eight bodies every weekend. These days, he says, that number has risen to between 40 and 50: "This is now wilder than the wild west." 

Critics say that the Venezuelan government is increasingly unable to provide citizens with water, electricity, health or a functioning economy which can supply basic food staples or indispensable medicines, let alone personal safety. 

In other words, total socioeconomic collapse. This is what it looks like:

Last month alone, Venezuelans learned of the summary execution of at least 17 gold miners supposedly by a mining Mafia, the killing of two police officers allegedly by a group of students who drove a bus into a barricade, and a hostage drama inside a prison at the hands of a grenade-wielding criminal gang. On Wednesday, three policemen were killed when an armed gang busted a member out of a lock-up in the capital. 

At least 10 were killed in a Caracas shanty town after a confrontation between local thugs armed with assault rifles, while a local mayor was gunned down outside his home in Trujillo state last month. There are widespread reports of lynchings. 

All this is creating a broad unease that Mr Maduro is unable to maintain order... There is a lack of basic goods. Analysts warn that the economic crisis risks turning in to a humanitarian one.

Alas, a failed state is precisely what Venezuela has become: Venezuela is already one of the world’s deadliest countries. The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, a local think-tank, says the murder rate rose last year to 92 killings per 100,000 residents. The attorney-general cites a lower figure of 58 homicides per 100,000. This is up from 19 per 100,000 in 1998, before Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez took power.

It gets worse, because in addition to a soaring murder rate, the government itself is implicated. 

"Venezuelans are facing one of the highest murder rates in the hemisphere and urgently need effective protection from violent crime,” said José Miguel Vivanco HRW’s Americas director. “But in multiple raids throughout the country, the security forces themselves have allegedly committed serious abuses.”

And like all other failed governments, Maduro's administration is quick to deflect blame, instead accusing violence within its borders on Colombian rightwing paramilitaries "engaged in a war against its revolution." But as David Smilde and Hugo Pérez Hernáiz of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think-tank, recently wrote: “Attributing violence in Venezuela to paramilitary activity has been a common rhetorical move used by the government over the past year, effectively making a citizen security problem into a national security problem.”

Blog: Society is reaching critical mass

ATF now spying on Phoenix residents using equipment mounted on utility-owned power poles

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives admitted Thursday that a box mounted on a Salt River Project power pole near 21st Ave and Glendale was in fact part of a massive surveillance, data collecting, operation which officials refused to give details.

Local residents now feel that their privacy has been violated and the utility company, SRP, said that the equipment was mounted without their knowledge and that they did not give the ATF permission.

The manager of a nearby barber shop said, “It makes me feel like they’re up to something grimy.”

Although SRP was not notified of the operation, the ATF said that they are “acting within their bounds.”

A similar camera system and equipment was torn down by the several occupiers of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon back in January, and was found to be linked to the United Nations and an International spy grid.