Michele Bachmann had always associated coloring pages with her toddlers — so she was surprised when her 11th grade foster daughter was assigned to color a poster for “math homework.”
The more Bachmann looked at what her children learned in the public schools, the more concerned she grew. Her children were not only failing to learn essential knowledge and skills, but they were also being steeped in a progressive, anti-American ideology.
Bachmann began researching the history of the U.S. education system. When she began advocating for reform, friends encouraged her to run for office. She was elected first to the Minnesota State Senate and then to Congress, where she worked to return Judeo-Christian values to the classroom, government, and culture.
“I want my children to live in freedom,” Bachmann said. “The people who are embracing totalitarianism … are destroying the lives and the opportunities and chances for the people coming behind them.”
Since leaving elected office, Bachmann has continued to defend Judeo-Christian values in her roles as distinguished professor at large for Regent University, chair of the Family Research Council, and board member at NRB and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
Bachmann recently spoke with NRB about her perspective on the ongoing national conflicts between America’s Judeo-Christian foundations and the progressive, secular, and Islamic ideologies that are threatening to unravel the values that make America exceptional.
The values at stake
A cultural respect for life, liberty, property, and honesty have nurtured a nation prosperous, happy, and free. When culture deviates from these values, the nation becomes impoverished, anxious, and restrictive.
Virtue enables liberty. Selfishness erodes it.
When people give up their pursuit of temporary happiness and terrestrial utopia in favor of an eternal salvation, the motivation for theft, covetousness, and power dwindles as individuals work hard, give generously, and sacrifice freely.
Worldviews that promise utopia, on the other hand, invariably deliver destruction. Bachmann identified two such ideologies in America today: communism and Islam.
To Bachmann, communism is the extension of socialism and the steppingstone to totalitarianism. It is a system in which the state assumes control of private property and individuals lose the motivation to work.
“Ironically, in this 250th year of celebration of the birth of the United States, the issue really is: Are we going to reject freedom and embrace totalitarianism?” Bachmann said.
Islam undermines freedom when its followers seek to establish an Islamic state, reward dishonesty, and hail Sharia law as ultimate. That is not to say all Muslims are threats, but that their worldview encroaches on treasured American values.
Education, communism, and the information war
Last year, a survey by the Cato Institute and YouGov found that 62% of Americans aged 18–29 held a “favorable view” of socialism compared to 43% of the total population, and 34% held a “favorable view” of communism compared to 14% of the total population.
This is not just an issue of economics; it is an issue of worldview. Embracing communist ideals means rejecting the values of liberty and property. It means trading in the reality of freedom for the illusion of security. It means denying human dignity and embracing state control.
“In my parents’ generation, they knew clearly that communism, totalitarianism is wrong,” Bachmann said. “They paid the price in their blood. They fought wars over it.”
Yet today’s youth are more ready to accept lies that fit into the Marxist narrative they have been taught than the truth that confirms the Christian narrative they ought to have inherited from their parents.
Someone is teaching American youth to trust the tried-and-failed communist ideology.
Bachmann attributes the shift to the education system.
The secular worldview promoted in public education today advertises a utopia where individuals receive equitably without working. In contrast, the Judeo-Christian worldview promises only the opportunity to work and claim the fruits of one’s own labor.
When the youth are not taught about the historic failures of communist experiments, it is no wonder that anti-free ideologies seem appealing.
“They want things that they don’t have to work for,” Bachmann said. She pointed to the biblical commandment against covetousness. “It is sinful to desire what someone else has without working for it or paying for it or having a means of exchange.”
Wealth without work sounds too good to be true — because it is.
Reality shatters communism, sending its followers into confusion, dissatisfaction, and despair. Socialistic ideology is just another lie leading to let-down.
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey reported that 42% of high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year. While many causes of this depression, dissatisfaction, and hopelessness pervade, Bachman points to the ideologies that failed to deliver on utopian promises.
“Why are young people so unhappy? They’re being lied to from morning till night,” Bachmann said. “We need to also let them know, ‘Hey, here’s another way. Here’s a better way.’”
Immigration, Islam, and compassion
While communism infiltrates the classroom, Bachmann notes that Islamic values encroach on American culture from another angle. Most Muslims may be pleasant, harmless people, but the core of their religious worldview conflicts with American ideals.
America honors the Constitution; Islam honors Sharia law. America shelters the foreigner; Islam requires assimilation. America protects equality; Islam protects power. America values freedom of religion; Islam opposes all other religions.
Bachmann is primarily concerned with the Muslims and other immigrants who break the law in the name of their religion. Lawbreaking is wrong regardless of spiritual or cultural motivations. Government must uphold the law to protect law-abiding citizens.
“The purpose of government is to punish evildoers and reward those who do good,” Bachmann said.
Americans are not judged based on their religion but based on how their actions conform to or deviate from the Constitution and American law which find their foundations in Judeo-Christian values.
Some studies estimate that over 30% of American Muslims want to see Sharia law instituted nationally and Islam declared the national religion of the United States. For some, this raises alarms — there is a concerted effort to change the structure and values of the nation. For others, it inspires compassion — most American Muslims do not support these measures.
The Constitution protects the religious freedom of Muslims and Christians alike. But as the number of Muslims living in America increases, Bachmann argues that toleration reaches its limit when ideologies undermine liberty.
“It’s not really a religion; it’s more a way of life and political values,” Bachmann said. “It dominates every part of your life.”
While the same could be said of any faith, including Christianity, Islam stands apart as the faith perhaps least compatible with American values. The founders heralded liberty and virtue as cornerstones of prosperity, careful to keep authority limited and checked. Islam has other priorities.
So how should American Christians protect their country while still loving their Muslim neighbors?
“When you protect your country, that’s how you love your neighbor,” Bachmann said. “And when you love your neighbor, that’s how you protect your country.”
Freedom, Christianity, and love
Ignorance fuels communism and Islamic extremism, Bachmann argues. That is why the education system is the priority battle ground for the preservation of a biblical worldview.
As disastrous ideologies replace information in the classroom, graduates lack the knowledge and critical thinking skills necessary to sort through the propaganda flooding their news feeds.
Public education produces Americans prone to accept disinformation.
“They don’t even begin to understand what they believe and what the ramifications are of what they believe,” Bachmann said. “And what’s worse is they don’t understand the biblical worldview narrative and the benefits that that’s given to the world and to America.”
Freedom is only preserved by love and sacrifice. When an individual chooses virtue, supporting ideas that will benefit the country at large rather than merely himself, he is buoyed up by nationwide wellbeing. America was constructed for a selfless population to prosper.
When selfishness dominates culture, liberty declines. Americans find themselves submitting to tyrannous authorities, believing compelling lies, and neglecting fundamental responsibilities.
The gifts of opportunity and liberty have been given; this generation simply needs to receive and protect their inheritance by submitting to the God who endowed them with inalienable rights.
“We need to be men and women under authority — God’s authority of who He is and of His Word,” Bachmann said. “And when we reject that, then society’s in trouble and individuals are in trouble.”
The Judeo-Christian worldview is the only one that can deliver on promises of salvation.
“I wish young people knew that you can have the greatest compass for living in your life,” Bachmann said. “You can have direction, you can have guidance, when you have the Lord God Himself.”
To preserve freedom, Americans must consider not only their own interests and the interests of their contemporaries, but also the interests of their children and grandchildren.
“Every other American generation sacrificed and saved so that the next generation could live better than they did,” Bachmann said. “If you make the right decisions out of good habits, you build up. But if you don’t, it doesn’t take very long to destroy.”
The values of Congress and culture follow the teachings in the classroom. The next generation is looking for stability in a shifting world. The next generation is intrigued by false ideologies and true religion.
Christian communicators have the responsibility to offer youth the better way of Christianity. Not only will lives be changed today, but liberty will be preserved for the Americans of tomorrow.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams