From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - The MisEducation Of America ft. Pete Hegseth

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

This week, Sean & Rachel bring co-host of FOX And Friends Weekend and moderator of 'The MisEducation of America' Pete Hegseth to The Kitchen Table to discuss the progressive indoctrination of the American education system.   Pete breaks down how this indoctrination started and how it went unnoticed by conservatives for so many years.   Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Gold tenders, no. But chicken tenders, yes. Because those are groceries, and we deliver those too.

Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hey, everyone. Welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm your host, Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, but also my partner in life, Rachel Campos Duffy. Thank you, Sean. Hello, everyone. We're back with more conversations from our kitchen table.

And today we have a very special guest. Very special. Yes. He's my co-host on Fox & Friends weekend. But also, people don't realize realize Pete and I go way back. We're friends long before I ended up even at Fox. So it is my pleasure to welcome to the kitchen table, Pete Hegseth. He is, as I said, the co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend. But he's also, and this is so exciting, the moderator for Fox Nation's Miseducation of America Live Summit, which he had last week.

And of course, this is the series that everyone's talking about on Fox Nation because it's everything you ever wanted to know about what's happening in your school. Pete, welcome to the kitchen table. Thank you so much for having me. You're right, Rachel. We've been co-conspirators for quite some time. Yes, we have. Yes. We've been accused of sharing the same brain many, many, many times. I don't know if that's a good thing. Just a quick side note, Pete. I don't know if you were, when I was in Congress, you came and did a town hall with me in the Western side of my- I did. I do remember that. On vets, with a bunch of vets groups.

We did. It was awesome. I was just like, welcome everybody. And here's Pete Hexath. And let Pete go, which was fun. Well, you guys are my two favorite Midwesterners. So great to have you. That's right. So, Pete, let's just get right into it because I don't know how you could have timed this summit and this series any better, but the whole country is finally awakened to something that you and I and Sean have been talking about for a long time, which is the indoctrination in our schools and this very systematic, methodical, well-planned out, patient, I don't know what you want to say. Takeover.

Takeover. Yeah, that's the right word, of American school. So no one knows more than you at this point on how this all happened. I want to talk about why you decided to do the series. And then I want to get right into like the how far back this goes. What were your takeaways, Pete? What did you learn? Yeah. I mean, first of all, you guys have been all over it. And and because you understand the key to the development of kids and how they think and what they love and what their affections are and what they value.

And that's even more important when they're very young. And we oftentimes obsess about college and where they get in and how that affects them. And that's true. Of course, universities have jumped the shark a long time ago. But the progressives have been laser focused on kindergarten and third grade and sixth grade and the development and molding of a worldview of kids. And it's timing wise, we kind of lucked out. The series got delayed a couple of times. And sometimes, you know, you need the good Lord to step in and have it have it hit when it does. And you're right,

the nation, because of COVID, because of the election in Virginia, because of critical race theory and the things that are just blatantly out in the open that the left both acknowledges and denies at the same time, calls them different names, hides them as something else, makes us sound like we're crazy when everyone can see it right in front of their eyes. And so what, and Rachel, you've been, you've been, as we've worked together, a big part of helping me understand how deep it goes. And I think we've all slowly, but surely peeled back the onion and thought, well, maybe it's just the inner city

schools or the really elite schools, or maybe it's the ones on the left coast and the right coast of America. And maybe it started in the 80s or maybe it was the 60s. And the further you start to dig and unravel, the scarier the reality becomes of how intentional progressives, early progressives, we're talking, you know, there was the progressive party. There was the progressive movement. Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive. Woodrow Wilson was a progressive. There was a huge progressive movement in Europe, which was really Marxist. And so the progressives here were like Marxist light and talked a lot about democracy as their end goal, as to use coded language to sound like they were on board with the American

project. And through using coded language and being very intentional about where they placed people, they were open about how important they knew education was. And one of the key discoveries of this film and other parts, there's actually a book coming in June, but that's is the how much they wrote about it in The New Republic, in The Progressive, John Dewey and others. Education was probably the most likely topic they wrote about is how do we develop a school system that prepares kids to be future progressives? Is there a famous Lennon quote about that? Like, give me four years and I can, what is the quote? Do you remember? I can't rattle it off the top

of my head, but it's something to the effect of give me four years and I can change, you know, essentially the child and then and then the future. I should have that. I used it in my last in the in on the last Fox News primetime as we were previewing the fifth episode. And this is what I love about your piece, because you're right. All of us were wondering how far back does this go? Because when you understand how far back it goes, you understand how invested and how they're playing for keeps. They are not going to undo this thing. So tell me how far the takeover of American schools goes back. Well, it really began in the mid-1800s with Horace Mann and the development of the modern school system. But it really took off in the early 1900s with Horace Mann and the development of the modern school system. But it really took off in the early 1900s with John Dewey and the formation of the modern public school system, which was a progressive school system from the beginning. They wrote about it. They planted

schools. They traveled across the country and formulated school boards. And you have to sort of mix in the conspiratorial part of it, not conspirit, but the agenda part of it with the reality that America was a young nation. There was a desire to have more kids in school, more kids capable of reading, more kids capable. You have people from diverse backgrounds that have emigrated to America. So there are practical reasons. But what the progressives were so good at doing is they saw those practical needs and they said, OK, we're going to start teaching kids to do a job. We're going to teach a skill at school. That was a very intentional pivot, because what we also go back to is where the Western Christian education system came from, which is from Athens, Greece, which moved through Rome and then merged with Christianity

and Judeo-Christian values and through the Holy Roman Empire, through the universities in Europe, ultimately the university system that transported to America. And you guys know, you know, elite universities, all universities up until basically the 1900s were truly religious institutions. Harvard, Princeton, all those, they were all built to train ministers. That's what they were founded in their crests and mottos still today. We don't know that. I mean, even I didn't know that. Like I kind of knew there were a lot of, you know, ministers that came out of there, but I had no idea that that was actually religious institutions meant to give, you know, modern education, scientific reason, philosophy to the minds of ministers who would then go out across the country and have the capability to not just explain the gospel, but to explain the great

books, to understand the latest scientific thinking. And so, it was an enculturation based on a Western Christian view. That was the model of the system. That was the water in which our founders swam. That was the great books and the great ideas they engaged with. It's why they knew a democracy was not the right form of government for the United States of America, because they understood that democracy in the wrong hands led to tyranny. And they wrote all about it. And it was all based on that understanding. The progressives knew how solid that core was in America. So their school project, the idea of school, focused on turning away from liberal arts, small L, which is the liberation of the mind. We all think we got a liberal arts

education if we went to a certain university. For the most part, these days, it's not a liberal arts education at all. It's a progressive education. But liberal arts was liberate the minds to think freely as free citizens. And every American kid got that view. Progressive started by saying, we're going to turn school into a vocational exercise. We don't you don't need to learn that pesky Latin stuff. You don't need to learn phonics. You don't need to learn world history, history, Western history. You need to learn to be prepared to do a skill.

And as you do that, you create, I mean, it's called the road to serfdom, actually. It was written about it famously. You create future workers who are not as liberated and capable of thinking for themselves about this kind of American experiment we have to perpetuate. So it started with a function, and then it turned into more agenda and indoctrination. And as I've kind of heard and looked at the piece, Pete, what shocks me is how smart the progressives, the radical Marxists were to say, I can't change someone who's in their late 20s or 30s or 40s or 70s. But if I can change the young mind, I can change America. And it's taken 100 years for them to fully infiltrate into the school system.

And now it's completely lost. And the teaching, to your point, we thought it was on the coast. It's in urban areas, but it's not across the country. And I think what we see now is it is across the country because teachers who are taught in teachers' colleges are fed this indoctrination, this form of instruction, this ideology that they then bring into the classroom. And so, if you get a teacher in small-town, farm-town America that was educated in one of our state universities, they're bringing those ideas into the school system, which is why this is kind of expanded like a rat. And I think, Pete, as you mentioned, their idea of how we educate people.

I don't know the stats on this. I don't even know if you looked at it. But in the 1800s, we seemed to have a pretty smart country, right? People were well-read. They knew their history. They knew the Constitution. They knew civics. They knew about democracy and the republic.

And they were moral good citizens. And they knew the Bible. They knew the republic. And they were moral good citizens. Yeah. And they knew the Bible. They knew the Bible. The Bible was openly taught in American schools until the early 1900s. Openly taught in the schools, used as the reading material. And that was intentional, Pete, to take it out. It was absolutely intentional.

And that's one of the things we discovered in the project is they created a series of schools, the flagpole of which was was called the Gary Plan, which were around vocational training. But what they wrote about in the New Republic, a great deal, because they transported this system from from from Gary, Indiana to New York City, is we know we can't get rid of God completely because the parents will be outraged. And we there's a whole there's's a whole, we dissect the idea. Nikki, little bastards. Yeah, they are. So, we're not going to get rid of it altogether. We're just going to say, we're going to do a pullout period where the students are going to leave the school and go get religious instruction and then come back to the school. And that merged with, and there's a lot that we talk about in the book also about Christianity in America, which had its own splinters.

You had the social justice side of the church, and then you had the very evangelical side of the church. And the evangelical side of the church basically abandoned the idea of education. It was all about saving souls. So, what you got instead was the development of Sunday school. Sunday school was the way in which the church continued its, quote unquote, education alongside the school because God had been pushed out of the school. But we all know that, you know, one hour on Sunday morning and one hour on Wednesday night can't compete with 40 hours a week in a progressive

school that's removed God. So they slowly but surely, it was never about, do they keep God in schools? It was always about how do they? And the debates were in the open in the New Republic. Do we do it more dramatically? Do we do it with a pullout period? And the crazy part, and it rattled my cage when we were doing the research, is that they replaced prayer with allegiance to America because they needed something else to bind the country and bind allegiance. something else to bind the country and bind allegiance. And so, the Pledge of Allegiance, the original one that didn't include under God, was written by Francis Bellamy, who was a socialist, a fellow traveler of John Dewey. And kids were saying it in school as a way to bind them together, not around God and the Bible, but around allegiance to the country.

And of course, because they're progressives, it was never about the flag. It was never about the pledge. It was never about the national anthem. Those can be discarded later on once our project has moved forward. And that's why we have a temptation to want to call it a conspiracy. But what it really was is just an intense willingness to do the work generation after generation, knowing they never knew what progress would really mean. All they knew is that it was progress away from our Western Christian values towards something that could be molded for political control, for social control. And ultimately, that's when the Frankfurt School and the Marxists showed up and they had this new theory called critical theory, which made its way into the number one teacher's college in America at Columbia University and then made its way throughout.

So when you talk about those local school districts, Sean, you're entirely right. What we're dealing with is an educational deep state. You can call it educational deep state. You can call it the educational industrial complex. Call it what you want. But all the curriculum, all the pedagogy, all the standards, now the test, the SAT has been completely destroyed of its reasoning functions. All are a product of a progressive system that handcuffs that good Christian local fourth grade teacher who really wants to teach the right things, but can't do any of that if they want to in today's classroom. Yeah, I mean, but yeah, we know lots of really good people from little towns and they send their kids to college.

And many of those kids want to become teachers and they just come back radicalized. But they don't it's not it's not even like they're they're not radical people per se. But like what they teach is completely steeped in what they got from the teachers. So they just all of it is just taken as assumption. There's been no point at all. You can't survive if you have a contrary opinion. You can't. So if you want to be a teacher, you have to go with the way of the latest teaching methods, call it social emotional learning, call it common core, all the different iterations of what they've introduced. It's if you want to be a teacher,

you can't, unless you go into the types of school, you send your kids to a classical Catholic school or a classical Christian school, which has a whole different set of curriculum. See, that's the solution that we point to at the end is we have to unlearn the progressive assumptions that are totally awash in our education system. Things like social studies, which was never a whole series of things that cascade from that. It was all about turning every aspect of education into science. Recognize the worship of science we have today? They used that back then too, turning it into the social sciences. And it wasn't, so what you're doing is you're studying human behavior, believing that you can change human behavior as opposed

to studying history to look at human nature, understand God and human nature so that you avoid the worst tendencies of our own being. And that it all goes back to, it all actually does go back to God. And when you look at our Western project, it's survived for 2000 years because it had that key ingredient and the progressives were obsessed with removing it. And as I look at education now, Pete, it's one thing to say, OK, we want to take God out of education. We want to bind people, you know, by rallying around allegiance to America. But to have a strong country, you still have to have well-educated people. And if I look at what my kids learn in in in public school or what they've learned in college. Rachel and I have talked about this.

It is absolute garbage. They're not learning math and English and science and all the basic things that you think we pay taxes to get our kids well-educated or we pay tuition to the schools to give a great education to our kids. They're not learning those things. What they're learning is all of this radical ideology that won't help unless you're going to be a gender study major, but it doesn't help them as they go out into the world to be successful, productive members of society. And I think what's happening is we have the education system that is not there any longer to educate our kids. They're only focused on indoctrinating

our kids. That's exactly right. Little activists, little Marxists, little Democrats, little protesters to go out and complete the transformation of America into a Marxist society, which for me, that we've let this happen. Rachel and I just crossed the 50 threshold. You're in your forties. How did America, you know, we could have gone back 20 years, 30 years and probably done something about this, but we let this happen under our own noses. We saw it happening and no one stood up and was like fire in the theater. We got a problem. Let's eradicate the Marxist and take the schools back over. We just passively sat by and let them do it, which frustrates the hell out of me. And now it's too far gone.

Weather underground, all those people, Bill Ayers. I mean, they left the domestic terrorism of the 1960s. And where did they go? They went into the university system. Bill Ayers actually started making curriculum for our kids. Well, that's rules for radicals. It says stop bombing buildings and start putting on suits. Why don't you go shave and run for the positions that change things?

And Barack Obama is a perfect example of that. He is a perfect example of that. But back to Sean's point, how did we, I mean, we were all pretty young at the time, but how did we let this, how do you think we got to this point? What is it? Why didn't we see the signs as a movement of a conservative movement? What was what what happened? Is it just that we gave all our money to think tanks and we didn't I don't know what happened. That's a great point. What I think conservatives and Republicans were good at was fighting communists.

And on the battlefield, whether it was the Cold War or Islamists post 9-11 or preserving our free market system. So if you look at, you know, we chose our battles and our battles were military battles and blatant, you know, geopolitical enemies and, you know, stopping the socialist takeover of our economy so that we have a good, robust free market system. Like think tanks were very, if you think about think tanks, an idea, very focused on those ideas. And yet, Ronald Reagan tried to repeal the Department of Education and failed utterly after Jimmy Carter had created it because the first candidate the teachers unions ever endorsed for president was Jimmy Carter. And what did Jimmy Carter do? He turned around and created the Federal Department of Education for them as a gift. And the NEA openly said there would be no education department without the NEA. Now,

the education department is, of course, completely captured by the unions. So we just it was always just a second tier issue. And I think it was because, you know, I went to public school. I went I was in a conservative Christian community, very patriotic. And the assumption was the local school reflects the values of me and my family. It might be a couple of kooky things here or there, but ultimately it's accountable to us. We pay our property taxes and everything's going to be okay. There was that lingering view. I mean, frankly, a lot of it has to do with the World War II generation that came home and said, we're going to give you everything we never had. And then they gave us everything we didn't need and didn't give us the things that they did

have, which is that. So true. Wow. You know, and so we kind of, the prosperity and the boom of the 50s and the 60s, yeah, those radical kids out there, it just blinded the eyes of people who more or less ignored those local institutions. And the left was laser focused on, were laser focused on principles. They're very focused on positions. And they just ran for the positions, as you pointed out. They took over the positions. And slowly but surely, it was easy to say, well, we're going to solve this problem of education through this new bill or this new federal department or more money, more money. And we never created a philosophy. And you also can't, in our research, you can't underestimate the allegiance,

the, what would you put it, the embrace of public school, right? People are proud of the idea that in America, we have these big public school institutions where everyone gets a chance at the American dream. And if you work hard and do your homework, maybe you'll get into a good college. When you get into that good college, maybe you'll get a good job and provide for your family. And that assumption sort of is so baked in even today, even now, I mean, neighbors, friends of mine and yours, you can present all of this information, all of the documentary, all of the books that to come. And they're going to say, well, but not my school. My principal's a good guy. And I, you know, the teachers are, there's a couple of Christian teachers and, you know, we watchdog it really closely. It's that

whole idea, Sean, you're familiar with this. I hate Congress, but I love my congressman. And it's that same idea when it comes to public school. with this. I hate Congress, but I love my congressman. And it's that same idea when it comes to public school. I know it's all corrupt, but I moved to a good school district and the gym is great and they have iPads. And there's so much blocking. You're also, we had to be very careful with this and we're having to be careful with the book. It's hard to indict people on the choices that they've made for the most precious thing that they have in their life, which is their kids. So if you confront with them that their kids are getting a progressive indoctrination, which they are today in our government schools, you're indicting their parenting. And we're very

careful not to do that, to say like, it's not your fault. We all grew up with these assumptions. We lost this terrain. What are you going to do about it? We, like, it's not your fault. We all grew up with these assumptions. We lost this terrain. What are you going to do about it? We're actually in a retreat here. And what I call for ultimately is an insurgency, which is in an educational sense, we actually have to retreat and leave and create our own places where we develop a generation of kids. But we just took our eye completely off the ball. It wasn't a priority. Here's the other reason, Sean, I think to the political part of why conservatives didn't take on education. We've always seen education as a local solution, local control. And so there was never a national approach for, say, educational tax credits or a voucher program or parental

freedom or parental bill of rights or whatever you want to say, because it was always a local issue, rightfully so. Except the left has turned it into a federal issue where the local control almost is non-existent. We'll have more of this conversation after this. It's winter and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. One point and then a question for you, Pete, because in Wisconsin, I was talking about how do we actually put pressure on our university

system to get them to change their methods, change their teaching, change the balance of conservatives and liberals on campus. And the most conservative people I know in Wisconsin, I won't name them, but people who actually work in government were outraged by what I was saying because they went to the University of Wisconsin. They were like, hell no. They were loyal alumni more than we care about this issue. Correct. To your point, I mean, people buy into their alma maters and they don't want to change them and they don't want to believe what's sitting right in front of them to your point but here's what here's what really gets me you're a military guy and you know you talk about you know conservatives are fighting you know communism on you know on the battlefield and around the world

as they just the commies the the marxists just slipped in the back door and took over our school system and i look at this if if i'm in the Pentagon, I'm like, I got a national security threat running rampant through America. They're teaching the next generation to hate America. That is a national security threat. We are going to go, as the government, after the teachers union, change the way our teachers are being taught in government-funded universities, because we can't sustain this country. If this is what our, our, our next generation is being taught in K through 12 or in the, in secondary education. And it seems like they don't see this as a threat. They see this as a beautiful development in America. And I'm like,

who in the hell is running the military to not see that this is a rising threat that we cannot sustain? Amen to everything you said. It is a national security threat. How can you fight to defend yourself if you don't believe in yourself? And the next generation of kids, if we believe America is inherently a sinful and terrible nation, why would you pick up a rifle and defend it against foreign threats? Or why would you not see it as necessary, Rachel, to your point, to pick up a rifle and defend it against foreign threats? Or or why would you not see it as necessary, Rachel, to your point, to pick up a rifle and defend against domestic threats that are trying, you know, which is what we're seeing today. And the generals are political animals there. They're ultimately they did what prerogatives were put in place under the Obama administration. The hardcore warfighters were pushed out, the politically correct guys that wanted to Germany, they actually fled Nazi Germany to avoid Hitler's persecution and landed at Columbia University. At the same time, our boys were landing on the shores of Normandy to fight and defeat Nazi Germany. So it's almost as if we went to go fight on behalf of freedom in the world. The very ideas that are strangling us right now arrived on our shores and we had no idea.

And they exploited the freedom of America to now push. At first, it was the tolerance of America. Of course, the left becomes entirely intolerant because that is their view. In fact, Mercusa wrote a famous essay called Repressive Tolerance. The idea that you can't tolerate things that are intolerable. Well, that's exactly what we see in our schools today. So it went from a project to agenda to propaganda, and now it's all activism, to your point. We're creating little activists who are little Marxist thinkers who believe America is evil and as a

result would never defend it in their classroom or on the battlefield. It's a huge necessary that the whole education of this. These kids won't even defend themselves. I mean, they're so compliant that it's unbelievable. I have friends, you know, who live in Virginia and they've told their kids, you don't have to wear a mask anymore. You know, the governor said you don't have to wear a mask anymore in school. And they're like, no, mom, I'm not. I don't want to cause a kerfuffle. The teachers want us to the kids.

I don't want to be teased by the other kids. I mean, we have created little submissive Chinese kids are not American rebels anymore. And it's just the truth. I want to bring up one point. And then I want to I want us to go very quickly over to the solution, because I think the people listening in our podcast right now, just last night, just this is just an example. a service with so-called trained journalists to weed out all kinds of misinformation from the, the basically anything that their, their teachers and their kids access on the internet.

So you can imagine Randy Weingarten, Pete is going to Randy Weingarten. Fabulous. There's union, right? Yeah. She's the head of the teacher's union. So,

yeah, I mean, this is just, that's just an example and you should look this up. You know, it was reported in Axios. It's a in my Twitter. Yeah. Documents for people to look at. But this is a sign they have not given up your school board meetings, everything that you're doing good on you, America parents. But just so you know, these people are playing for

keeps and they believe they own your children and they believe they own the future. And so that's a great pivot for us to go. Now, what do we do? Because you and I and Sean and Will Kane on the show, on all of our commercial breaks, we have talked incessantly about what is the solution? Because it feels overwhelming. It's just a lot to take on. because it feels overwhelming. It's just a lot to take on. And as I've told you before, Pete, I don't want to spend my weeknights at school board meeting, fighting school boards and Marxist teachers. I want to spend my time with my family. And so tell me what ultimately the conservatives should do on math. Just, you know, Pete, Valentina's here and she's in the background, like encouraging Rachel with the question. I told people that Valentina's here and she's in the background encouraging Rachel with the question.

I told Pete before that Valentina's voice in the background is a feature of the kitchen table. That's fantastic. I love it. Okay. So what is the answer? If you're in a perfect world, Pete, you're in charge of the conservative movement and all these parents who are fighting back and even a lot of independents and even some Democrats who are upset about what's happening. You're the general in the field. You're the general in the field. You're the general in the field. What should we all do? Well, first of all, I quote you in the book, Rachel, exactly what you just said about I don't want to spend my time.

I hope you're OK with that. I attribute it to you as well. I don't want to spend my time protesting against school boards. And that's what we have to realize. At this point, if you're doing that, you're sending your kids to Democrat camp every day and you're trying to deprogram when they come home and it's not going to work. It's just not going to work. The other aspect, as you mentioned, the teachers unions with the internet vetting and all of that, it's only the latest iteration. You talk a lot about Howard Zinn and A People's History of America, which is American history

written from the Soviet perspective. That book is the highest selling textbook in American history. from the Soviet perspective, that book is the highest selling textbook in American history. If it's not taught outright, it is the baseline for the hardcover textbooks that go into our kids' classes. So our kids are already getting an anti-American progressive history of America. By the way, they barely teach any history before America. And then the American history they do teach is through the progressive lens. And you're seeing- 1619 Project. Yeah, 1619. And you're seeing 19 projects. Sixteen.

Now it's on hyperdrive. These new social studies standards that are coming out in states, Minnesota and Colorado, chief amongst them. They're they're erasing Abraham Lincoln. They're not even talking about the origins of World War Two there. But there's 27 mentions of LGBT rights. And I mean, they are they are going full on. This is what progressives do. They erase.

They block. They tell only the current moment telling of history. Okay. So if I'm, if I'm general Pete, which I was never going to be a general and never will be. I mean, the first thing I would do is you, as a parent, you have to stop the bleeding. You have to take your kids out of government schools. I mean, I don't care where you live. I don't care. And I call it a radical reorientation. You have the way we, you know, how much time do we, how much time and money do we spend on where we're going to vacation or what we're going to buy for Christmas or any number of things we do to provide for our kids. Yet we just assume we just, because we pay the property taxes, which is a big hit, especially in New Jersey and elsewhere, we say, well, we got to send them to government schools.

It has to be such a priority for individuals that we we stop that right now. Anybody who's reading it, anybody who's watching it, anybody who's listening, it's the best choice that you can make. And maybe it's homeschooling. Maybe it's a pod. Maybe it's with other parents. it's homeschooling, maybe it's a pod, maybe it's with other parents, maybe it's just a Christian or a Catholic school to start. But what we advocate, and we get into this much more in the book, a full-on two chapters about how we fight this back in a, not just in your immediate way, but overall, you have to move to a school that reflects your values, and then we have to grow those schools. So, actually, the darkest moment in American educational history was the 1970s, because in the 1970s, there was no such thing as Christian or Catholic classical schools.

They did not exist. The traditional form of education that founded our republic was completely buried. There were none of them. There were zero. So the progressives had it. Then a few schools popped up in the 80s and 90s. Now we have over 400 classical Christian schools, classical Catholic schools in 46 of the 50 states. They're in there. You can make the drive. You can find the way. They're very affordable. They're not like elite schools where you're paying $25,000 a year. Yeah, you're going to have to make some sacrifices if you want to. So you start there. Then you have to fight for, in a macro level, true educational

choice. You have to make it issue number one for conservatives and Republicans. You say, we are going to educational tax credits so the dollars follow the parents and the kids wherever they go. And they can choose a public school if they want. They can choose a private school. They can choose a Christian school, wherever they go. That starts to break the monopoly and the stranglehold because most parents would take a choice if they had a choice. They just can't afford it or they don't think they can. If we make that the option, you can start to crack the monopoly, which A, sends a lot of kids to classical Christian school or other Catholic schools. But B, it also forces schools to actually start to rethink and say, like, we have customers here and they have parents and they have to choose our school.

And if we're doing all this radical stuff, they're not really going to choose it. So maybe it has a minor moderating force. Then you've got to go at the unions and defund them and their political activity and their stranglehold. And, you know, forget defund the police. How about defund the unions? And we have to just be as vicious as Democrats have been and in indicting the educational system.

Forget about indoctrination. That's what we're talking about. How about just basic reading and writing? Like kids can't read and write coming out of school. So they're too busy doing all this other stuff. They're doing all the other stuff. Absolutely. So you slowly but surely, it's a, you know, Chairman Mao wrote a lot about insurgency and I studied it when I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan. There are three phases of an insurgency. Right now we're in an early

phase or a middle phase one of what we would need to do to recapture our school system. And we go through the phases of what we need to do to build robust school networks that we send our kids to, and then what we need to do to discredit and delegitimize the government schools. And when you do that, it creates, and then policy has to follow that allows for true educational choice. So it's possible, I mean, man alive, the left will go absolutely nuts, but we're not as far. We're not as in early phase one, like we were in the seventies when we didn't even realize we had a problem. So your case in point. So just, if you remember to our listeners and to Pete in, in 2011, Scott Walker had act 10. And what he did was he, in essence, did right to work for public

employee unions, except for cops and firefighters, which means if you didn't want to join the teacher's union, you didn't have to. And he knew, we know that if you do that, most people will choose not to give their money to the teacher's union. And before 2000- Explain it, because some people, the teachers, it was automatically coming out of their paycheck. What was it, like $1,000? They had to pay union dues if they were a teacher. They were then given the choice to not pay union dues. They protested at the Capitol.

You said they lose their mind when you go after them. They took over the Capitol. There was an insurrection at the Wisconsin Capitol for weeks on end. They took over the Capitol. They were defecating in the Capitol. Spit on end. They took over the Capitol. They were defecating in the Capitol. Spit on lawmakers. Yeah, violence with lawmakers because they knew how important this was. And before 2011 in Wisconsin, the Teachers Union of Wisconsin was the most powerful political entity in the whole state.

Right now, they're not a player at all. So we've changed. They had to let go of 40% of their staff because they lost so much money. We've changed some of their political power, but we haven't changed the teaching within the institution itself. So it was a partial step. The politics of it have been addressed, but not the education of the kids coming out of the university system in Wisconsin that go to our school. And we can't, there's only so much we can do with the police. So that's a massively important example. But it's also an example of what we do as conservatives as we fight the political battles, hoping it's going to change our cultural battles.

And it doesn't. And it doesn't. And so we need a cultural retreat. We need a cultural retreat. And when you talk about schools, just to make a side note on that, I think you're right. We have to get out of public schools. And I think you're right, whether it's homeschooling or pods or a private school. But for our listeners, all private schools are not created equal. Amen. Because there are some private schools that you're going to pay tuition to send them to a private school, and they're going to get the same garbage they would get in the public school. And oftentimes I had one of those schools. I'm like, why am I paying for what I get for free in the public school? Because we said, oh, they had the mass and the Eucharist was true. Jesus was allowed in

the school and that we were grateful for that, but it's, it's not the same. And do your research, right? Do your research. What kind of classical great book? That's why, that's why I, I mean, listen, I'm just a, at this point, I'm just a straight up in the tank advocate for classical Christian, classical Catholic schools. Every other type of school you choose to send your kid to is all predicated on the progressive schooling system. All of it. The tests, the curriculum, the pedagogy, the teachers, the pipeline, everything. So don't pay to because I've done the same thing. At least God is in the school, the pipeline, everything. So don't pay to, because I've done the same thing. At least God is in the school, right? That's where I, that's what I've said when I've transitioned

away from public school, because I didn't have a classical school there for some of our kids. But even there, you look around and you go, it's just, it's still the same muck. And so you have, it has to be a very, we have to radically expand the amount of classical schools in our country because that's where you get free thinking, liberated citizens who can engage with the big ideas, understand their place in human history, their relationship to God, the idea of human nature, because it's not enough to survive progressive schools and then maybe come out of conservative later. We need to create future advocates ourselves, future citizens prepared to be armed with the, you know, the armor of God and go out and, and, and fight for freedom in our country. Absolutely. It is, it is, this is the number one. Well, the fatherless number problem in America is the number one problem, but this is the second biggest problem in America.

We'll have more of this conversation after this. The faster money and data move, the further your business can go to a seamless digital future for Canadians. Let's go faster forward together. In life, interact. I just want to give a personal example because I think, you know, some people may think, oh, here's Rachel, Pete, and Sean, you know, preaching about this. But all three of us have made real changes in our lives based on this. And for Sean and I, as you said, we were in a very mediocre Catholic school back in

Wausau, Wisconsin. I was going in, I was arguing, I was fighting, and then I gave up. I got demoralized and I just said, I can't, I'm just going to focus on deprogramming my kids, right? I can't change the school. And then when I got the job at Fox and Friends, you know, we had to make a huge family decision. You know, it would be more convenient if I was closer to the to the to the studio in New York City. But we love Wisconsin and it was a lot cheaper to live there. There were a lot of reasons for me to stay. But the school was like part of the was was a huge reason. We're like, there's nothing keeping us here.

The public school sucks. The public school sucks. The Catholic school sucks. We need to find another one. And I thought initially when I got here that I moved to a town that was fairly conservative. And I was paying a lot of taxes. And it was really beautiful, well-funded, all the bells and whistles that every parent thinks they want. And I went and we had a meeting with the principal and the principal used a couple

words that set us up. We're raising global citizens here. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Sean asked about CRT. Oh, what did he say? That's a dog whistle. That doesn't happen. That doesn't exist. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And then I saw a very small American flag near the office. And I saw a giant, like the size of a wall LGBTQ flag. And I thought they're uniting kids around the LGBTQ flag more than they are around the American flag. I looked at Sean and I said, we can't be here. And he was like, and believe me, we thought, you know, we thought we're paying these taxes. We want to take advantage of and not have to pay private school. And God put this wonderful school somehow on my radar. Somebody had talked to me about it.

I ended up after that bad experience going to see it. And the second I walked in, none of the bells and whistles, by the way, old building, dangerous stairs that somebody might like sue in a public school over like these steep stairs. It was an old convent, I think probably. And it's like my kids are learning Latin and my kids are studying Plato and my little ones are studying Beowulf and they're getting a full Western civilization philosophy. And I mean, I just was like, oh, my God. And so the reason I tell this story is and I have to, by the way, have to drive much further to get there, which is a huge pain in the butt. But if we don't support these schools, they don't thrive.

And so it's what you just said. You have to support them. And I want people to know that it's worth it. We did it and it's worth it. And you and I have talked, Pete, about find the school and then figure out where you want to live. I wish I'd found that school before I bought my house. I would have moved a lot damn closer to the school. But we have to reorient the way we think. The most important thing is the school, then figure out where you want your house to be. we think. The most important thing is the school, then figure out where you want your house to be. It's exactly right. You just said it. And that's the argument is we have to radically reorient our lives around the education of our kids. And it's not just the church you go to, and it's not just

your denomination. It is what are you pumping into their heads for eight hours a day, nine months out of the year? And there are options today. Thank God there are options because of brave people who started something before there was any knowledge of it whatsoever. And now we benefit from – and you raised a clear point. You walk into a classical school, it looks foreign because you're used to going into splashy public schools with colors all over the wall and phrases and different things. The walls are alive, but the classrooms are dead. And you walk into classical schools and the walls are pretty basic, but the classrooms are alive with joy and learning.

Do you know what's on the walls in my school? I knew classical paintings. They're replicas of classical Western paintings, some religious, some not. Da Vinci and Michelangelo. You saw that and you're like, this is where my kids need to be. They're just ingesting this stuff. I couldn't be happier. By the way, in the

end, it's easier. Sean, do we worry and talk and waste time the way we did worrying about our kids education but can i can i make it another one because i think what's interesting is conservatives are having kids the liberals the wokesters they're not having kids they're they're not producing like uh the duffies and the hexes are producing that's the truth and and I was thinking, well, how do we save America? And again, I was in Congress for nine years. It was really hard to save Congress as one member

of Congress. And I had more power than most people. It was really hard to change things, being a US congressman. I think it's easier to change your school board. It's easier to change your city council or your county board. Those things really matter, your assembly. But the thing we have the most control over is our family. Change your family. Make sure you're raising good, young, patriotic, smart, well-educated kids. And if every conservative did that, every grandparent would help their kids, maybe give a little bit to send those kids to private school, a good Catholic or Christian school. If we all did that, we would save America because there's so many of us. But it's that we're looking to save America in a presidential

election while we're not paying attention to the things that we have the most power and control over, which is the family. And if we do that right, every one of us, all of us do that right, this thing is we have a bright future. We are going to win. If we take our eye off the family and education, we are going to lose. You're exactly right. Sean, while you were talking, Jen walked into the room and her head is nodding violently in agreement. Thank you, Jen. I love you, Jen. and her head is nodding violently in agreement. Thank you, Jen. I love you, Jen. She's in total agreement with you. And I've seen that just with, you've seen it right now.

Everyone's in a, if you're in a blue state, you're like, how do I get out of here? I want to move to Florida somewhere else. And I've had lots of friends hit me up on that. And the first thing I do is I send them a link to the Association of Classical Christian Schools website, classicalchristian.org. And I point to a school and the place where they think they want to move. And I've had multiple friends email me, call me, text me and say, Pete, I looked up these schools and I looked up the curriculum and I looked up the application and I'm almost crying. Like I didn't know. That's how I felt. That's how I felt, Pete. I didn't know there were schools like this that existed in America. And I'm going to send my kids. My three kids are going to go to this school in this community. And I can't believe it because it's the polar opposite of what they get right now.

And these are not political people. These are people that simply look around them and say, I'm not political, but I don't want indoctrination. And that, too, gives me hope. So this film and the book that's coming is all about just raising awareness. I know that's a word of the left, but it is. People have to know that this option is even out there. And I think when they do, then they'll start thinking about that reorientation because right now people feel like they're in a box. Like, I don't know if I want, I don't want to pay, but it's not that much better. There are options that are way better that will expand the minds of your kids. You just have to go look for them.

And I'm pulling this out of the cobwebs of my memory, Pete, but I was at a couple of years ago that you did the Hegseth bootcamp where the kids are going to school with Pete. That was during the pandemic. But you know what? You had them out around the- The pandemic was when we all woke up to all this. You had them out around the flag.

I mean, so obviously you served in a different capacity, but you had this military component to the education of the Hegseth boot camp. And they were saluting the flag and they were taking the flag up and down off your massive flagpole in your front yard, which I'm surprised you haven't been reported to the city council yet. Don't tell anybody. But I mean, that's part of it, too. You look and again, if you pull the video up for Pete doing this, I don't know if it's on Fox or on your social media, but it's, it's an amazing video of parents, not just, you know, going to the schools, but going, there's a role for me too. And I, cause you know, here's what it's the, you inspire people when you,

when you do bold things, when you stand up and you speak out, when I saw the Hegseth bootcamp, I was inspired. What was it called? What did you know? The Hegseth school of higher education. That inspires people to do the same thing. It looks like a bootcamp. Great job, Pete. Maybe I could do a mini Hegseth bootcamp for higher learning or whatever it's called.

I mean, those are the things I think that we all have to share and talk about because and learn from each other and inspire each other. We've all had a wake up call. That's the best. That's the thing that I lead with on this topic. We've all been in the same place. We all were asleep to this for a long time. It's the only silver lining of this pandemic, truly, is that we have woken up to this.

And I think, Pete, you have done a real service, I think, to our country with your series on Fox Nation. If you have not watched this series, if you do not have, if there's any reason to have a Fox Nation. If you have not watched this series, if you do not have if there's any reason to have a Fox Nation subscription, this is the main reason. You'll find other great stuff. Tucker has a lot of great stuff. The miseducation of America is the greatest thing

that's ever been put on Fox Nation, in my opinion. It is absolutely a... I know you served our country in Afghanistan. We saw how that ended, Pete. This one's going to end better. This service is going to end better. This is the greatest thing I think you've ever done in service of your country. And I mean that. I mean that. I appreciate that. I'm so grateful for Fox Nation. Nobody else would put a series like this out. And I'll tell you this, the guy who produced it with me, John Case,

would put a series like this out. And I'll tell you this, the guy who produced it with me, John Case, he's a wonderful producer, great kid, went to NYU film. And I don't know if he'd be okay with me sharing this. I'll share it in general, but putting the series together changed his life. And it was awesome to watch one individual who just like the rest of us didn't know all of this information and didn't realize the assumptions of our progressive system. I mean, and then he put together a beautiful film. He would have done it anyway. But regardless, I mean, when you sort of absorb yourself in it, it's life changing. So I appreciate that very much. I think it's a lot from you guys. Everybody should watch it and get your subscription and watch this series. You'll get all the other fun stuff that comes with Fox station as well. But honestly, this, if nothing else,

I say this sincerely. I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. I think it's the greatest thing that has ever come out of Fox Nation. Because it can change your family. It can change your family. It's going to change the trajectory of your family. And ultimately, I think it could have... I mean, this is a series

that you just can't... We just can't do this on Fox and Friends right even on a longer prime time or Tucker or Laura Ingram segment you just can't get this information and when you understand how absolutely coordinated and and patient the

left has been in this you really want to get your kids out of that system so Pete thank you for that thank you for joining us on this podcast you are such a good friend to us. And, um, I just, I'm so, so blessed to work with you, um, every weekend. Likewise. You, you guys are two of the absolute best dear friends of ours. And, and, uh, you can, you can always be, uh, I need, I'm not general Pete, but if I was, you guys would be, you know, major general, uh, Duffy's.

We can go with president Pete and put Rachel in charge of the Department of Education. You guys, done deal. I'm going to sleep well at night if you guys... You know what I'm going to do with the Department of Education? I'm going to close it. I know. First job. First thing, I'll just shut it down. Well, thank you so much, Pete, for joining us

at the kitchen table. I'm looking forward to having not a virtual, but a real cup of coffee with you in studio. Yes. Coming up very soon here at Fox and friends weekend. So thanks for joining us. Pete's give a big hug to all your family and especially the Jen for us. I will. Likewise.

You guys love you. Thanks Pete. Love you too. We've enjoyed this conversation. And if you did too, let us know subscribe rate and review this podcast at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts. We hope to see you around our kitchen table next week.

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