I think most area residents realize that our local school systems are doing a pretty good job and are assets rather than liabilities, but there is a lot of talk on the national level about the great need to improve public school systems, which are perceived by many to be failing. While I’m sure there’s room for improvement in every school system (just like there’s room for improvement in every business, organization, sports team, etc.), I think folks might want to start taking a closer look at what’s going on at the post-secondary level of education.
   Walter Williams, who is an economics professor at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist, recently pointed out a disturbing trend in some of the new courses being offered at some top universities. These include, Harvard University’s “Marxist Concepts of Racism,” which examines “the role of capitalist development and expansion in creating racial inequality.”
   In case you’ve forgotten a little of what your high school history teacher taught you, the father of Marxist concepts was Karl Marx. The people that his communist views inspired included Vladimir Lenin, who led the Soviets to power in the Russian Revolution and helped found the “Evil Empire” of the now defunct USSR. Sure, some of the Marxist/communist theories may look good on paper, but it’s a simple fact that, as David Remnick wrote, “Lenin … became the author of mass terror and the first concentration camps ever built on the European Continent. Lenin was the initiator of the central drama -- the tragedy -- of our era, the rise of totalitarian states. … He created a regime that erased politics, erased historical memory, erased opposition. In his short career in power, from 1917 until his death in 1924, Lenin created a model not merely for his successor, Stalin, but for Mao, for Hitler, for Pol Pot.”
   Is it wise to use concepts that inspired the person who was the “author of the first concentration camps ever built on the European Continent” and who created a model for brutal dictators like Hitler to criticize the “racism” of capitalism? More importantly, do we really want our leading universities to imply that Marxist concepts are preferable to the concepts of freedom upon which our country was founded? What’s next? A class titled “The Fox’s Concepts of Security,” which examines “the role of imperfect chicken houses in the premature deaths of chickens?”
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   In the interest of fairness, after showing my obvious distrust of communist governments, I’ll take a little shot at the federal government of the good ole’ USA. The Associated Press recently reported that during the last year the federal government awarded $12 billion (yes, that’s $12,000,000,000) worth of special “small business contracts” to companies that meet nobody’s definition of “small business.” The recipients included: The New York Times, Wal-Mart and Home Depot. The parent company of The New York Times reported $3.4 billion in revenue last year. Thanks for looking out for us little guys, Uncle Sam!
   I wonder if next semester Harvard will offer “George W. Bush’s Concepts of Small Businesses?”