Neal Boortz: Take note of Marx’s mark in classroom

By Neal Boortz

For The AJC

The beginning of another government school year is right around the corner, and with that comes your child’s first experience with the government’s attack on private property rights.

Now I know this little scenario I’m about to spin for you won’t happen in every school, but it will happen in enough government schools to make it a real problem.

Have you done the school supplies shopping bit with your new student yet? There you were, you and your proud new student, walking the aisles of the local Walmart with your list of school supplies in hand. You check items off your list as you drop them into the basket: pencils and erasers, notebooks and pencil holders, construction paper and paste.

By the time you made it to the cash register, you had a full basket and a happy kid. As soon as you got home, your budding Einstein took the supplies to his room and spread everything out on the bed. This is his stuff, and it is important stuff, too —his very own tools and supplies, the things he will use to learn and grow. Soon he will be taking them to school. He couldn’t be more proud. The night before that first day of school, your young student would pack all his stuff in his backpack, then unpack it, then pack it again.

The next morning, it’s showtime! Off we go, full of apprehension and pride. Your young man is taking another grand step toward adulthood! What could go wrong?

Plenty, that’s what.

Remember, you’re placing your child into a government operation designed and operated by government employees. As soon as the students are seated, the bell rings, and as fast as fast as the teacher can write her name on the blackboard, the indoctrination will begin: Your child is about to be introduced to the wonderful concept of “the common good.”

Before the learning can begin, the teacher steps in front of her virtual hostages, including your child, and promptly delivers the first raw lesson in the power of government: She instructs her students to bring all of their precious new school supplies to the front of the classroom and put them into a huge box.

Wait just a minute here! Why am I putting my stuff into that box? My daddy took me to Walmart and bought that stuff for me! It’s mine! You can’t take it away from me!

You think?

As your child sits in stunned silence, the teacher tells him and his classmates that these supplies now belong to all of the class. What was once private property has been seized and transformed into everyone’s property. The teacher says it shall be so, and so it shall be. The teacher’s demands amount to a virtual government mandate. There is no due process. No rule of law. No property rights. In school the teacher is the law. It’s time for some school supply redistribution.

As Karl Marx said (with some license): “From each according to their ability to purchase school supplies, to each according to their need for those school supplies.”

Know this: This whole “dump all of your school supplies into this box” is no mere innocent exercise, no simple whim of a few individual teachers. It’s a conscious policy, and it has a purpose that goes beyond making things easier for the teacher.

Your child, and every other child in that classroom, is being taught that their private property rights end when the government says they end. In this instance, that person in authority is the teacher — a government employee. And even if your child isn’t able to understand that it’s actually the government who’s seizing his property, he certainly does understand that his property is being seized, and converted into everybody’s property. Worse yet, he is told, very clearly, that this is a good thing.

In a few years you’re going to wonder where your child is getting all of those whacked-out leftist ideas.

Save this column as a reminder.

Listen to Neal Boortz live from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays on AM 750 and NOW 95.5FM News/Talk WSB.

His column appears every Saturday. For more Boortz, go to boortz.com