by Al Benson Jr.
Here is more material, much of it taken from my own notes about the West Virginia book protest, made back in 1975.
To recap a bit, I refer back to Zach Montgomery, Assistant Attorney General of the United States back in the 1880s and his book, "The School Question." On page 133 of his book Montgomery stated (and his words should make every American parent shudder) "There is no kind or degree of communism so utterly revolting as that which, for educational purposes, virtually asserts a community of title, not only to the property, but also to the children of the private citizen. Yet this, unfortunately, is the communism of America; a communism having for its main trunk an educational system the most ruinously expensive and the most demoralizing that the world ever saw." Montgomery, a man believing in private education, could, as far back as 1886, see the direction the public schools were going in. His apt description of these "institutions of learning" could well be considered prophetic.
A personal friend and mentor, Pastor Ennio Cugini (now deceased) of the Clayville Church in Foster, Rhode Island, felt that Karl Marx, in the "Communist Manifesto" envisioned a public school system that would be the depository and the recorder of the gains made by the Communist world movement. Then, the worldview of the Communist movement, by the use of socialist-oriented textbooks, would be passed along to the students under the guise of "education." Pastor Cugini was right. Think about his comments for a moment. This is what was happening in Kanawha County when the parents revolted against the terrible textbooks. The parents, for the most part, did not realize all the implications of their revolt against the rotten texts, but those that promoted the use of those textbooks did--all the way back to Washington, D.C.
In 1974 I did not fully understand all the implications of this, and I asked myself, as I looked at the situation in West Virginia, why? Why here? I had found out that year that filthy and anti-American, pro-socialist textbooks were being used in public school systems in around thirty states across the country. To be sure, in many of those states, there were a handful of dedicated parents fighting against the evil being perpetrated by the public school system. But in most states they were only a handful. Not to belittle those folks--I asked God's blessing on their heroic efforts, and still do, because even if you do not realize it, this struggle still goes on, and if anything, it is even more intense now than it was in the 1970s, just in different ways. If you doubt that, try to get hold of the movie "IndoctriNation" which I mentioned in a previous article. It not only shows the continuous history of this sort of thing in public "education" but it shows how intensely this anti-Christ agenda is still being carried out today. Yet, what happened in West Virginia was different from what happened in other places, and I wondered why.
Early in the summer of 1975 my family and I had just returned from West Virginia. While there I got to take a good look at the area and to talk to people. We stayed with the Paul family in St. Albans, a fine Christian family that opened up their home to us when they knew we were coming to West Virginia. At that time, my experience in West Virginia had convinced me that there was a vestige of what really made this country so strong and independent still abiding in those hills in West Virginia. Within three months of this trip my family and I had moved to West Virginia.
Since that time, I have found out that there are still pockets of what made this country strong in the South, and in a few places in the West, but it is in the process of disappearing, thanks to the orientation provided by socialist textbooks in public schools that breaks down morals and then propagandizes students with socialist hogwash. This is what was happening in West Virginia in 1974. The textbooks that were to break down student morals were being put in place. The next step was socialist indoctrination.
In 1974 there were still many West Virginians that grasped the meaning of their God-given heritage. They cherished their God-given liberties and they were independent--all traits that have to be watered down or removed from students in public schools if the New World Order is to be successful.
In the November 17, 1974 issue of the "Charleston Gazette-Mail" there appeared an article about the textbook protesters entitled "A cling to yesterday's values." The main thrust of this article from what I could gather from reading it was, that the West Virginians who were protesting the rotten books were fighting a losing battle. They were trying to hold onto a set of values that simply didn't exist any longer. The article seemed to imply that the protesters were not living in the real world. This was simply because they took a stand for God and their children, even if they did not fully understand the insidious agenda of their adversaries. The values these folks stood for were the values this country was founded on. If those values were, and are, "yesterday's values" then this country is in deep trouble and may just not make it. And maybe part of the reason these values no longer seem to exist is due to what has been taught in public school classrooms for the past several decades.