Mike Pompeo Saw America's Biggest Issues, But Campus Clampdowns Chill Him to the Bone More Than Anything Else
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had plenty to say about college leftist clampdowns during an interview Sunday on American entrepreneur and radio host John Catsimadidis’ program, “The Cats Roundtable.”
Pompeo told Catsimadidis, “I get asked all the time, what keeps you up at night? What’s the thing that worries you the most? What’s the thing that’s most on your mind?”
Before being tapped to lead the Trump State Department, Pompeo served for over a year as CIA director. In other words, he has been at the forefront of solving many of America’s most dire and critical problems and has seen it all.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t North Korean nukes, biological agents or a terrorist attack that scares Pompeo most, but rather the silencing of different opinions on college campuses. The same people instituting this silencing and going along with it will be our nation’s next generation of leaders, and if they are taught to aggressively silence dissent, that’s a very big problem.
“None of that scares me as much as what’s happening in our universities and on our campuses today,” Pompeo said.
“The inability for us to speak our mind, the fact that folks want to just put pressure on people who are, have a conservative mindset and just deny them the space to go speak, the fact that we now are accusing people who are just saying things that are common sense about how to treat everyone equally and fairly — are being accused of being racist — those are dangerous things in our democracy, in our republic.”
Pompeo continued, “They pose a staggering risk that if you cross that Rubicon, and we don’t push back, if we don’t fight for those values that we all care about — our founders knew this. These were a set of founders that created a nation that depended on people with virtue and character and faith, and if we lose those things, if we lose the bubble on those, you could send diplomats to 180 countries in the world and none of it will matter.
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“Because if America’s weak at home, our capacity to influence the world is diminished.”
It’s been clear for decades that universities are hotbeds of liberalism.
But I think what Pompeo is driving at is the more recent phenomenon of the left’s absolute intolerance of those who disagree with them. They refuse to allow conservative students an opportunity to voice their opinions.
The overwhelmingly left-wing bias of university faculties has had an impact on a whole generation of college graduates. But over the past few years, something more sinister has been happening.
Their attempts to “influence” students to adopt a liberal worldview have hardened into outright indoctrination. Dissenting ideas are no longer permissible. Students with conservative views are being silenced, even punished.
While liberalism once dominated the political discourse on college campuses, it has become the only acceptable political ideology.
Worse, this far-left ideology has now begun to infiltrate the entire U.S. educational system. Elementary school students are being introduced to critical race theory. They’re being exposed to concepts such as transgenderism and sexuality.
The left is trying to shape the thinking of the next generation of Americans, a job once left to parents. If they succeed in turning these children into social justice warriors, it will guarantee Democratic rule in the U.S. for years to come.
Last week, a Chinese-American woman who grew up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution sounded the alarm at a Loudoun County, Virginia, Public Schools board meeting.
Xi Van Fleet warned board members and parents of the striking similarities between the left’s fevered campaign to force critical race theory into the U.S. educational system and her own childhood experiences.
She told the group she is watching a replay of the Maoist Revolution, and she is concerned.
“I’ve been very alarmed about what’s going on in our schools. You are now teaching, turning our children into social justice warriors and to loathe our country and our history. Growing up in Mao’s China, all this seems very familiar. The Communist regime used the same critical theory to divide people. The only difference is they used class instead of race,” she said.
Watch a brave parent who grew up in Mao’s China point out all of the identical traits b/n the Cultural Revolution and what LCPS, and really every school system, are doing through the use of CRT. pic.twitter.com/zH7XuyBmW6
— The Virginia Project UAC (@TVPUAC) June 9, 2021
“This is indeed the American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism. It should have no place in our school.”
Pompeo zeroed in on the problem — as many of us have. The children of today will be the voters and the leaders of tomorrow. They will set U.S. policy and decide America’s future. If they are being led astray, we barely stand a chance.
Fortunately, parents are starting to take notice and fight back. Their voices are growing louder.
Indeed, this is one of the most urgent issues facing Americans today.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
