It should have been a happy Memorial Day as a nation takes time to express gratitude for the freedoms our U.S. military personnel died in battle to preserve.

For their sacrifice, we honor and mourn them.  We are only one generation from losing every freedom.  There are scores of countries around the world that are living examples of that.

To commemorate the day, we watched a couple of war movies: Midway and To End All Wars.  Ask young people what the Battle of Midway was.  Odds are they can't tell you.  Why not?

You may not recognize To End All Wars. The screenwriter is Christian author Brian Godawa.  You should see it, to keep the celebration over Midway in perspective.

I'd like to share two reminders of what is at stake if we let the deaths of those courageous men and women in uniform be in vain.

First, I never served in our armed forces, but my father did, as did his father.  And my father's brother, Gene, was killed fighting communists at Inchon in Korea when I was a toddler.  In the last letter my grandmother received from him, Gene said he had met a Korean girl and fallen in love.  He wanted his mother to meet her.  The next letter my grandmother got was from the War Department saying Gene was presumed dead, missing in action.

Thanks for your service, Uncle Gene.  He and countless others paid for our freedom with their lives, lest we forget.

Second, there are increasingly people in our land who no longer consider the USA to be exceptional, or even good.  Indeed, these people insist that our nation has been evil from its inception, racist, misogynist, and criminally corrupt, exploiting many to benefit a few.

You find these people in all segments of society and government.  They mean to "fundamentally transform" America to correct what they consider to be evils.  I'll single out just one faction today: public schools.

In 1948, the year I was born, the National Education Association "locked in the anti-authoritarian theme as well as the spirit of revolutionary Marxism in American election circles," according to B.K. Eakman in her book, Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education.

The NEA declared nationalism outdated and a hindrance to "progress" and world peace.  To achieve this illusive nirvana, the public-school teachers' union called for teachers to advocate in U.S. classrooms for a one-world government.

"Enduring peace cannot be achieved until the nation-states surrender to a world organization the exercise of jurisdiction over those problems with which they have found themselves unable to deal," the NEA proclaimed.

The NEA said loyalty to a nation, adoption of patriotic songs, setting aside national holidays, "teaching the greatness of the nation's heritage," "use of uniform language," "and establishment of schools where youth are taught patriotism and their duties to their native land" all constitute "a threat to world peace."

Does that help you understand why so few young people even know in what century the Battle of Midway took place?

The NEA is the nation's largest labor union.  It represents public school teachers; support personnel; faculty and staffers at colleges and universities; and, perhaps most important, "college students preparing to become teachers."

It is the intention of the government-school panacea concocted in the 1800s by Horace Mann, accelerated by John Dewey and their latter-day progeny, to fundamentally transform our schools into factories to create one-world citizens.  It is intentionally a godless system.

The first problem is that a one-world government necessarily will be a hodgepodge of compromises to accommodate countless conflicting desires, not a government dedicated to protecting absolute God-given rights as ours has been for almost two and a half centuries.  Your rights won't be God-given or guaranteed.  They will be at the mercy of a popular vote and last only as long as the vote majority.

More likely, and even worse, a one-world government will exist strictly to serve those in charge, as all tyrannies have from Rome to Nazi Germany to the Marxist USSR.  God is not welcome in such places.  We have a good preview of that already in the U.S., where prayer, God, and even speaking about Jesus are aggressively discouraged in public government schools.

Is it any surprise young people today can't tell you that the Battle of Midway was the turning point of World War II's war in the Pacific?  Do they even know who the two sides were at Midway?

How many Americans groomed in government schools will enlist, like my uncle Gene, to defend a godless, one-world, pagan government at the risk of life and limb?

More likely, armies of mercenaries will be needed to keep transformed public-school graduates in line as one segment after another realizes they are being denied God-given rights.

As Christian Pastor Douglas Wilson puts it:

Given what we have seen to this point, there is no good reason for Christian parents to entrust their children to the government school system. … they have not yet realized that the fruit we are seeing is directly related to the nature of the tree. Christian reformers of the government school system labor on, trying to get this crabapple tree to grow oranges. But despite all our advances in genetic engineering, our Lord's words remain—a tree is still known by its fruit."

Mark Landsbaum is a Christian retired journalist, former investigative reporter, editorial writer, and columnist.  He also is a husband, father, grandfather, and Dodgers fan.  He can be reached at mark.landsbaum@gmail.com.

Image: Pashi via Pixabay, Pixabay License.