Plenty of parents are worried about what their kids are learning at school. But maybe they should be more concerned with what they aren’t learning. Based on the latest survey about communism, that’s a lot. As part of a group project between YouGov and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, the groups surveyed 2,300 Americans to gauge the impact of people like Bernie Sanders who’ve popularized the collectivist system.

In a shocking showing of America’s knowledge gap, only 37 percent of 18-34 year-olds have a “very unfavorable” view of Communism. In fact, more millennials agreed with Karl Marx than the Bible when asked to compare the two! Only 53 percent agreed with 2 Thessalonians 3:10 – “If any would not work, neither should he eat” – 11 points lower than the 64 percent who supported Marx’s “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need.” To the groups’ amazement, 32 percent of millennials believe President George W. Bush killed more people than Joseph Stalin, who was behind as many as 40 million deaths pre- and post-World War II (in addition to the “purges, expulsions, forced displacements, imprisonment in labor camps, manufactured famines, and torture”). A quarter of them even had a favorable view of Lenin.

Obviously, our education systems aren’t working. This all goes to the issue of what’s being taught in our classrooms – which, as this survey shows, isn’t history! Twenty-five years removed from the Cold War, our young people have absolutely no concept of the threat of communism. They may be able to name the 58 genders accepted by Facebook, but when it comes to the murderess regimes of their grandparents’ generation, they have no clue. And those are hardly insignificant facts. Three times as many people died at the hands of atheist regimes between 1917 and 2007 than all of the casualties killed by war, civil war, and individual crime in the entire 20th Century combined! One hundred forty-eight million innocent victims were slaughtered in the deadly visions of dictators like Adolf Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong – but that hasn’t been explained to our young people.

These murderous regimes don’t just happen. They’re advanced in the vacuum created when God and orthodox religion is removed or corrupted from the public square. Should we be surprised that when God has been kicked out of our schools and relegated to the recesses of society that millennials then flirt with dangerous concepts like socialism and communism? And the tragic irony is that the end result for these social justice proponents is no justice. Instead, their lack of knowledge puts them on an ideological path that ends in the most unjust government known to man. “One of the concerns of [the organizations sponsoring this research] is that an emerging generation of Americans have little understanding of the collectivist system and its dark history. Unfortunately, this report, which we intend to release on an annual basis, confirms this worrisome impression.”

Hitler understood the power of controlling the minds of youth, saying in 1933: “When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.’” If our schools won’t teach the lessons of history, we must. The liberal strategy to realign American thinking through their perversion of our education systems has worked. It’s time to fight this indoctrination by getting involved in what districts are teaching at the local level. As George Orwell warned in 1984, “Those who control the present control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

Up Close and Personnel…

The next president is inheriting plenty of messes – but the military has to be one of the worst. Morale is in the (gender-free) toilet, suicides and sexual assaults have never been higher, readiness and retention are in the basement, and our equipment is falling apart. Making matters worse, this president’s radical shift in priorities is already having a devastating effect on the next generation of service members. And now, on the brink of a personnel crisis, the Defense Department is scrambling to stop the bleeding.

With more troops running for the exits, Secretary Ash Carter is desperate for a quick fix. His latest attempt is the creation of a DOD “Speaker’s Bureau,” which he hopes will boost the military’s appeal in a nation increasingly wary of serving in Obama’s PC army. The goal of the bureau is to send senior leaders on the road to “educate key audiences” on the benefits of joining the military. “Building the Force of the Future isn’t going to happen overnight,” Carter cautioned. “It’s going to be a generational effort, and this is just the beginning, because our goal is to address challenges and seize opportunities that have arisen over years and decades, and we have to sustain and build on this over the years and decades ahead as well… We won’t be selling the newest phones or trying to get you signed up for the newest credit card. Ultimately, what we’re selling is service and mission…”

Unfortunately for Carter, the mission of Obama’s military hardly resembles the proud tradition embraced by decades of brave men and women. After eight years of social engineering, the cause of these recruitment woes is hardly a mystery. As FRC’s Lt. General Jerry Boykin (U.S. Army-Ret.) pointed out, so many people were trying to join the military before Barack Obama became president that the branches had to institute a delayed entry system. That’s all changed now, as the Army struggles to meet its recruitment goals. “What has happened since 2008 are the radical programs that have been implemented by this administration – to include the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ women in front-line units, transgender [policies], and budget cuts. And by the way, if you look at the statistics for the other services, I can assure you they are in a similar kind of condition [as the Army, which hit World War II lows in 2015].”

The reality is, trotting out the White House’s propaganda won’t change the underlying problem – which is that our commander-in-chief is too obsessed with advancing the culture war to fight the real ones. If Defense officials want to boost recruitment, they don’t need a speakers’ bureau. They need a return to the warrior ethos. Our leaders are too focused on drafting our daughters, funding gender reassignment surgery, and cracking down on religious liberty to inspire people to join a transcendent cause like serving their nation. And until that changes, the shortfall of troops won’t either.

A Labor of Gov

Governor Phil Bryant (R-Miss.) has enough on his plate. He shouldn’t have to do Attorney General Jim Hood’s (D) job too. Unfortunately, the popular conservative leader didn’t have much of a choice after Hood refused to lift a finger to protect the state’s religious liberty law.

The Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act had barely been signed into law when intolerant liberals vowed to file suit. Right before the statute was set to take effect, the Left won another victory from the courts that it couldn’t achieve legislatively. Under Mississippi’s law, Governor Bryant had made certain that churches wouldn’t be the only ones protected from government punishment for their natural marriage and sexuality beliefs – so would businesses, wedding vendors, and even public officials. But thanks to one unelected, activist judge, those protections were put on ice. The court’s Carlton Reeves blocked the Act from taking effect – and despite the fact that it’s the attorney general’s duty to defend the law, Hood refused.

If he thought that would stop Governor Phil Bryant, he was mistaken. With the help of our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom, Bryant is appealing the ruling anyway. The law “gives the opponents of same-sex marriage the same conscientious-objector protections that federal law confers on the opponents of warfare, abortion, capital punishment, and physician suicide,” ADF wrote in arguments filed with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Fortunately, Governor Phil Bryant ® who’s been tough as nails under pressure, didn’t roll over before – and has no plans of doing so now. If only every conservative in office had the backbone of this Mississippi leader. Imagine what a different nation we’d be!