Book Review: ‘Battle for the American Mind’ by Pete Hegseth with David Goodwin

Joe Biden and George Soros

This past week, Not the Bee posted a resurfaced 1989 clip of George Soros and Joe Biden talking about the “de-nationalization” and “radical reorganization” of economies. The two were specifically addressing Poland after the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism – at least predicated on the Soviet expression of it.

It’s surreal to see a much younger Soros – who in our day is probably the nearest thing to a real-life Lex Luthor supervillain, funding a slew of Progressive, Globalist, Socialist politicians and radical initiatives in the U.S. and around the world – smiling and talking casually when I was 2 or 3 years old about how to reorganize the economies of entire nations opportunistically with a future President of the United States of America.

It is also surreal to see a younger Joe Biden – who needs no introduction, except perhaps to remind himself who he is and what he’s doing here anyway – sitting down with the Hungarian-American billionaire and being very deferential toward him.

BCE or BC

In other news, Dictionary.com asks whether we should use BCE instead of BC to talk about years. A brief overview of how AD and BC came to be contains nestled in its questions certain insinuations about whether we can know what year Christ was born. And that is frankly silly, given that we’re told a certain Roman census was ordered then, whatever the controversy among biblical scholars and skeptics regarding Quirinius. 

The important thing I would draw your attention to is how the author of the article at Dictionary.com admits that we’re still measuring to and from Jesus Christ even if the terms CE and BCE are chosen over AD and BC. Yet CE and BCE are preferable to some because they are either not Christians themselves, or else they are trying overly hard not to offend non-Christians.

This brings us to ‘Battle for the American Mind’ by Pete Hegseth with David Goodwin. 

Battle for the American Mind

Corey A. DeAngelis tweeted out on August 19th that nearly 2 million fewer students have enrolled in public schools, with the short caption “Mass exodus.” I cheered to see it second-hand – being still locked out of my Twitter account, after all, since March of this year.

But what we have been getting from mainstream political commentators and outlets for too many years has been a whiny list of complaints and exposés without much more of a prescription for change besides appeals to Progressive authorities within systems which have been contrived to control our opposition to them. When school boards, teachers, and politicians refuse to listen, we need a more muscular and comprehensive response.

In sum, all these parents DeAngelis was tweeting about, and more besides, need a viable and substantive alternative to the public schools and their vision. This has become clear to so many of them at the confluence of Common Core, COVID lockdowns, Critical Race Theory, and the promotion of radical Gender Theory alongside declining academic performance and increasing rates of substance abuse and suicide among our youth.

I know this well, having written ‘And This Is Why We Homeschool,’ and self-publishing it December 31st, 2020. In my book, I dedicated the second of four sections to the history of American public education because I felt it was important that we know how this all came to be the circumstance, that the public schools are so out-of-control and parents have been largely helpless to alter their radical course. But we did not just get here overnight, or in the past few years, or in the last Democrat administration or two in the White House.

Exceeding Low Expectations

Admittedly, I had low expectations for this book as soon as I knew a Fox News personality had written it. This was not because I am against conservatives, but because I am a conservative myself, and accordingly see what Fox News has done in recent years as a kind of soft bigotry of low expectations for Red State Americans, as well as a fulfillment in some measure of the warnings of Neil Postman. Political commentary as patronizing entertainment has just not been cutting it.

‘Battle for the American Mind’ was, however, an excellent read, and it far exceeded the limitations of my biases. Moreover, I dare say that if this could ever be the kind of fare we come to expect from the most popular conservative commentators and largest conservative media outlets, I would cheer it, and we would all be much the better for it.

But I think no small part of why I feel this way is because Hegseth and Goodwin have written a book here which took the themes of my work in its second section and expanded them into a sturdy stand-alone work that is robust, well-researched, and of the utmost importance for us to read and understand. In short, they have written the book I should have liked to have written with more time and resources to dedicate to explaining how the American public education system was developed historically and philosophically, and how we got to now.

While not necessarily promoting homeschooling so especially, the prescription in ‘Battle for the American Mind’ is nevertheless a return to the foundation of Western Civilization – Classical Christian Education. Its case is well-argued and needful, and we all need to hear it.

Taking note that this is why we homeschool, check out their excellent book. You won’t be sorry you did.

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