Few people more desperate than desperate progressives. And there are few things more despicable than desperate progressives attempting to impose their worldview on impressionable children, using the public school system as their vehicle of choice. Two stories, from NYC and Bellingham, MA, vividly illustrate the depths to which such people will sink, if they are not challenged. That’s the small picture. The big picture? The calculated degradation of our public schools is no accident. We are currently “educating” millions of children – to become wards of the state.

First, the Big Apple. In NYC, the leftist-dominated Board of Education decided that children taking tests were little more than delicate flowers with psyches so fragile, the appearance of certain words in test questions might push them over the edge. What to do? Ban certain words from appearing in test questions, and send the list of banned words to test makers to make sure they comply.

What words? “Dinosaur” made the hit list because dinosaurs infer evolution, which might offend creationists, “Halloween” because it suggests paganism, and “birthday” because Jhovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays. Words like “poverty” and “wealth” were listed because of the class-warfare angle. “Divorce” and “disease” were also included, because students might have parents who have split up, or a relative who is sick. Here is the entire list, in alphabetical order:

• Abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological); Alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, or drugs
• Birthday celebrations (and birthdays); Bodily functions
• Cancer (and other diseases); Catastrophes/disasters (tsunamis and hurricanes); Celebrities; Children dealing with serious issues; Cigarettes (and other smoking paraphernalia); Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or library setting); Crime
• Death and disease; Divorce
• Evolution; Expensive gifts, vacations, and prizes
• Gambling involving money
• Halloween; Homelessness; Homes with swimming pools; Hunting
• Junk food
• In-depth discussions of sports that require prior knowledge
• Loss of employment
• Nuclear weapons
• Occult topics (i.e. fortune-telling)
• Parapsychology; Politics; Pornography; Poverty
• Rap Music; Religion; Religious holidays and festivals (including but not limited to Christmas, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan); Rock-and-Roll music; Running away
• Sex; Slavery
• Terrorism; Television and video games (excessive use);Traumatic material (including material that may be particularly upsetting such as animal shelters)
• Vermin (rats and roaches); Violence
• War and bloodshed; Weapons (guns, knives, etc.);Witchcraft, sorcery, etc.

BR> NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott actually got behind this Orwellian nightmare. “This is just making sure that test makers are sensitive in the development of their tests,” he contended, noting that there are banned test words in districts nationwide. That is hardly reassuring news. It tells you how far these progressive jackboots have gone, while the public remains largely unaware of their despicable machinations. Walcott buried himself even deeper, when as he admitted New York City’s list is longer – because the NYC student body is so “diverse.”

That’s quite an admission, inadvertent as it may be. Walcott is essentially saying is that greater diversity necessitates greater suppression of “offensive” subject matter, lest a Jehovah’s Witness (or a witch, for that matter), take umbrage. In other words, for progressives, true tolerance must be accompanied by sufficient amounts of censorship in order to find the lowest common denominator of “acceptable” expression – so that diversity can be accommodated.

That’s not tolerance, Mr. Walcott. That’s totalitarianism.

The progressives in New York overplayed their hands – for now. NYC parents were furious, forcing education officials to back off – for now. Here is their half-hearted concession. “We will continue to advise [testing] companies to be sensitive to student backgrounds and avoid unnecessary distractions that could invalidate test scores and give an inaccurate assessment of how students are doing,” said NYC education spokesperson Shael Polakow-Suransky.

In other words, when no one is looking again, we’ll try to do the same thing all over again.

Which brings us to our second blast of progressive desperation. In Bellingham, MA, public school officials attempted to remove the word “G0d” from the Lee Greenwood song, “G0d Bless the U.S.A.” that was supposed to be sung an upcoming assembly. When parents had the temerity to object, the progressives in charge did what progressives do best: they pitched a hissy fit and decided that no songs would be sung at all. Prior to the ban, the fourth-grade students at at Stall Brook Elementary School had been told to sing, “We love the U.S.A.” instead of “G0d Bless the U.S.A.” When the singing part of the assembly was dropped altogether, the school’s principal contended it was because he wanted to “maintain the focus on the original objective of sharing students’ knowledge of the U.S. States, and because of logistics, will not include any songs.”

As far as progressives are concerned, knowledge of the U.S. States (a redundancy) apparently doesn’t include any reference to G0d. What other kind of education omits all references to G0d? A communist education. Yet far more importantly, the removal of G0d and religion from the classroom is no accident.

It is an ongoing and calculated effort that allows progressives to present an unrebuttable worldview to children. A worldview progressives insist is undisputable, and factually sacrosanct.

Fortunately, ongoing parental pressure, along with national exposure, once again forced school officials to back off. Yet once again, the concession was half-hearted. The first line of their press release is key: “Political correctness is certainly a consideration in the public sector.” Translation: leftist dogma, which is the essence of political correctness, must be given its due. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the release also states that students would be free to sing – or not sing – the words “G0d bless the U.S.A.” It also claims that the school had not intended to censor a patriotic song. “We believe the use of the word G0d is acceptable in patriotic songs,” the release contends. Sure it’s acceptable. That’s why those in authority made a conscious effort to remove it, and only backed down when a combination of angry parents and national media attention no longer allowed them to operate in the kind of relative obscurity that allows the progressive termites to do their dirty work largely beyond the view of public scrutiny.

That’s the small picture. Here’s the big picture: Last week, President Obama issued what can best be construed as a veiled threat aimed the Supreme Court. If they didn’t make the “right” decision regarding his healthcare bill, such would constitute an act of “judicial activism.” He further noted that overturning Obamacare would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” because it was “a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

The general reaction? Most people were surprised – by the president’s seeming lack of Constitutional knowledge.

Who’s kidding whom? Anyone who thinks this president doesn’t know that the Supreme Court has been taking such “unprecedented steps” since Marbury v. Madison in 1803 is brain dead. So why would he say such a thing? Because he knows a substantial portion of Americans, victimized by the same public schools determined to keep dumbing down American kids, have never heard of Marbury v. Madison, and are completely unaware that he is telling an outright lie to further his agenda. Make that two lies. His assertion that “strong majority passed the bill” was also at odds with reality: the final House vote was 219 to 212, with all Republicans and even 34 Democrats opposing the bill’s passage.

What was really revealed last week isn’t the fact that the president is stupid. What was revealed is that he and his re-election campaign committee believe that you are stupid. Not necessarily all of you. Just enough of you to get him re-elected. Why would he think that? Because he and his party, in conjunction with the unionist educrats who have run the public schools for more than half-a-century, know precisely what kind of students those public schools are turning out into the world. In schools controlled by progressives, they are students who must be “protected” from “upsetting words,” and, just as importantly, insulated as much as possible from religion and G0d, lest they come to the pernicious notion that there is a higher power than the self.

Or the state.

Mr. Obama knows something else as well. The president was most assuredly certain that his take on the Court would be embraced by his legion of useful idiots in the media. Yale law professor and Daily Beast/Newsweek contributor David R. Dow was especially useful: he contended that a ruling against Obamacare should engender impeachment proceedings against one or more Supreme Court Justices. The New York Times’ ever-reliable harridan, Maureen Dowd, was right behind, claiming the Supreme Court is “run by hacks dressed up in black robes” and “mirrors the setup on Fox News.”

Thus, the president has his minions in the press more than willing to endorse “Chicago Way” thuggery and intimidation. Why? Because the progressively distorted educational standards that pertain to public schools are also entrenched in journalism courses at college campuses around the country. College campuses that have become little more than finishing schools for the progressive indoctrination. The epitome of such indoctrination? An Occupy Movement woefully bereft of logic and reason, but thoroughly immersed progressive/Marxist dogma.

For some unfathomable reason, decent people have allowed this usurpation of the public school systems around the nation to occur, absent the firestorm any indoctrination, left or right, ought to merit. They have allowed it to happen, even as the American public schools system has steadily declined to the point where Third World nations are cleaning our clocks on standardized tests, and more than three-quarters of high school “graduates” in several states around the nation require remedial courses in math and reading in order to attend college.

Again, Americans need to ask themselves, who benefits from millions of semi-educated Americans who can’t write a coherent sentence, can’t add without a calculator, haven’t the foggiest notion of what the Constitution really says, and can’t comprehend the concept of American exceptionalism grounded in our Judeo-Christian heritage? Which political party caters to the dependent class that inevitably arises from swamps of such educational malpractice? Which political party bases it desire for ever-expanding government on the theory that most Americans are too stupid to fend for themselves?

If you know the answers to these questions, chances are you’re part of the solution. If you don’t, you’re part of the problem. The 2012 election will reveal whether we are a nation where most people are willing to stand on their own two feet and meet life head-on, or one where legions of Americans will continue to demand a government-underwritten lifestyle, buttressed by a self-entitlement mentality that drives us inexorably towards national bankruptcy. In other words, we’re about to find out if the substandard public school education long championed by progressives, in order to further their statist agenda, has finally reached critical mass.

What make progressives desperate? The realization that if they taught America’s children how to think instead of what to think, their ideology would be consigned to the ash heap of history.