I have said repeatedly, here and on other blogs, that Reagan, despite everything that he accomplished, by implementing conservative leadership and agendas, was blindsided by two extremely significant oversights. George Herbert Walker Bush was not a conservative but for the exception of establishing and using an exceptional military and in that regard the Mid-East, Europe and America is in his debt. But conservatism is more than that and even more much than monetary and fiscal policy. Unfortunately the apple, his son, also never fell far from the tree.

Carter, the author of stagflation, was also responsible for the CRA which went a long way towards kindling the 2008 financial crisis but his most monumental negative achievement was the creation of the Department of Education which blossomed and grew into a goliath bureaucracy that is centrally controlled and operated by an unholy symbiotic partnership between government and unions, for which the American taxpayer is bilked into paying billions of dollars to educate generations of youth into believing the complete opposite of what Jen has so eloquently emphasized and brought attention to in this article. This bureaucracy has been responsible for creating millions of Manchurian Candidates which are responsible for the successful election of our Nihilist-in-Chief, who derides Founding principles and Judeo-Christian values. If Reagan could have only known the extent of the damage wrought by this government monstrosity and that he would not be followed by anyone like himself to implement damage control he would have fought as hard to take down the Department of Education as he did to end the cold war.

It is education which has brought us to where we are and it will be education that will (must) take us to a future that circles back to where we started.