IS OUR AMERICA BEING DISMANTLED? – AT 9:29 A.M. ET:  Thomas Sowell, one of the most brilliant writers working today, asks an alarming question:  Is the America we know headed for extinction at the hands of today's elites?

How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing?

Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years.

And...

It is not just evil people who would dismantle America. Many people who have no desire to destroy our freedoms simply have their own agendas that are singly or collectively incompatible with the survival of freedom...

...Someone once said that a democratic society cannot survive for long after 51 percent of the people decide that they want to live off the other 49 percent. Yet that is the direction in which we are being pushed by those who are promoting envy under its more high-toned alias of "social justice."

Inevitably, we must look at what our "educational system" has become, and what it is doing to our country.

It is not just particular segments of the population who are under attack. What is more fundamentally under attack are the very principles and values of American society as a whole. The history of this country is taught in many schools and colleges as the history of grievances and victimhood, often with the mantra of "race, class and gender." Television and the movies often do the same.

When there are not enough current grievances for them, they mine the past for grievances and call it history. Sins and shortcomings common to the human race around the world are spoken of as failures of "our society." But American achievements get far less attention-- and sometimes none at all.

And try criticizing this ugly trend in American schools.  Be prepared to be labeled a "McCarthyite." 

Abraham Lincoln warned of people whose ambitions can only be fulfilled by dismantling the institutions of this country, because no comparable renown is available to them by supporting those institutions. He said this 25 years before the Gettysburg Address, and he was speaking of political leaders with hubris, whom he regarded as a greater danger than enemy nations. But such hubris is far more widespread today than just among political leaders.

Those with such hubris-- in the media and in education, as well as in politics-- have for years eroded both respect for the country and the social cohesion of its people. This erosion is what has set the stage for today's dismantling of America that is now approaching the point of no return.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's well worth it.  Sowell has it right.

August 20, 2010