Hide Your Children: Exposing the Marxists behind the Attack on America’s Kids by Liz Wheeler (ISBN: 978-1-68451-391-8) provides a look at how the education system has deteriorated further since the 1980s. The book starts with an overview of just who the Marxists the subtitle is talking about and then gives specific examples of how attacks on the nuclear family, endless accusations of racism, critical theory, queer theory, and attacks on homeschool, a proxy for attacks on personal responsibility and liberty, fit into the Marxist program meant to destroy society. Each chapter gives some history of where the modern Marxist threat originated and, using specific examples, how it became more mainstream than it ever should have. The historic sections are followed by a discussion of how it is today and the threat that presents to America, a country built on the idea that it survives only if the people who inhabit it are a moral people. The book ends with a chapter providing some suggestions on how to change the tide and fight back against the Marxist wave that has overpowered our educational system since it’s much easier to change the minds of the impressionable young than older people more set in their ways. The author’s suggestions include fighting the culture war, working to ban critical theory from public institutions, homeschooling whenever possible, fighting for school choice, working against ESG and DEI, remembering that local politics have an outlandishly large impact on our lives, returning to religion, and protecting the innocence of our children. Finally, there were some appendices with the Constitution and papal encyclicals that discussed the dangers of Communism.Looking back on my time in school, I can see some of the early beginnings of what was discussed in the book. I remember having lessons on self-esteem in fifth grade. The discussions about just what constitutes a put-down are exactly the kind of thing that gets rolled into social-emotional learning in the mid-2020s. Homeschooling was a great experience for me that taught a lot about personal responsibility and putting forth the effort to better one’s own life. That was the ultimate message of the book, but it also presented a good picture of what some of the problems with the modern American education system and how much of what is taught is at odds with the liberty needed to be self-sufficient. One interesting undercurrent of the book was Wheeler’s belief that while religion was key to containing Marxism, Catholicism was the preferred route. The appendices included two very long papal encyclicals, both of which accurately described Communism as a problem, but were also inclined to support organized labor as a rather fuzzy concept of how to deal with poverty. The descriptive portion of the book was its strongest and make it worth reading. The prescriptive part was fine, with ideas that were good, but left me wanting more specifics (something that would improve many books about politics).
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The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture by Joshua Kendall (ISBN: 978-0425-24545-3) tells about how that “big, red book” came to be thanks to another person who was very interested in words and language. The book chronicles Webster’s life from boyhood to death, taking a very detailed look at the parts of his life that led to his creation of the famous dictionary, part of Webster’s desire to make America its own unique country. Somewhat unusual for his day, Webster went to college even though he came from a farmer’s family. He then pursued a career tied to literature. He wrote extensively, including many essays, letters, and pamphlets in support of American independence and then in support of a federal republic. While his writings are not as well known today as those of others like Hamilton, at the time, there were many leading Americans who believed Webster’s efforts were essential parts of swaying public opinion. Webster initially made his name by publishing a speller, a book that helped schoolchildren learn to read and write. This book provided him with a foundational income throughout his life. He also worked as a lawyer, editor, and publisher. What he realized he loved doing, though, was more similar to the speller: compiling, organizing, and ordering information. This led to his interest in dictionaries. He found flaws in extant dictionaries and decided to improve on them by publishing his own. One motivation he had for this was that he believed a uniquely American language would help create and uphold a uniquely American culture, one that was needed to help the nascent nation maintain its distance from its former imperial overlords and move forward. While his ideas on government changed over the course of his life, his belief in America did not. The dictionary took much more time and money than he thought it would, but it was eventually published and created a new standard as well as codifying much of what was then a unique American language with new words expressing the new ideas embodied by the new nation.