Published Monday, October 6, 2025 | | SEND THIS NEWSLETTER TO A FRIEND HERE. | | | CHRISTIAN BOOKS, EDUCATION, and NATIONAL ASCENT | | Ideas are written down in books which are then used in our educational institutions to develop young minds who will become the next layer of society. Those ideas provide citizens with a sense of purpose both personal and national. The trajectory of those ideas, books, and institutions determine if we are a society in either ascent or descent.
When American philosopher and historian, Will Durant, wrote the closing pages of his 1932 book On the Meaning of Life, he concluded that unless the individual is connected to a greater whole, life has no meaning. | | English novelist & philosopher John Cowper Powys noted that with the evaporation of the supernatural from the soul of man, society becomes a hollow collection of individuals with no guidepost to which anyone may look, hence all must turn inward.
For Russian novelist Turgeniev, our turn to Godless materialism has eviscerated the soul of man and made him no more significant that a flea.
French writer, Andre Maurois agreed and likened society to great streams of ants for whom there is furious activity but no great purpose, meaning or value.
Dr. Charles Mayo of Mayo clinic likened us, for these same reasons, to human insects. | | Academia’s evisceration of God from the planet truncates mankind’s ability to form political unions, societies, and nations with a unifying vision. Political union requires an understanding of ultimate ideals from which the governments are formed. Only Christendom provides a foundation for a just and orderly functioning of society.
For Western Civilization, the reigning ultimate ideals were drawn from the Scriptures.
Those men who founded the American Colonies were in agreement that those thirteen colonies would each promote Christian ideals. From the formation of the federal government connecting the political union of these thirteen colonies in 1787 until the 1960s, the link to our political union and Christianity was considered by all Americans to be so foundational to our national unity that the Bible and daily prayer were fixtures in the American classroom.
Saturday morning, I had breakfast with Governor Frank Keating. During the conversation, the Governor spoke of his visits to Ireland, Scottland, and England. He remembered the English theologian, academic, philosopher, and profoundly important writer, John Henry Newman. Newman’s life spanned all but ten years of the 19th century (1801-1890). He was known to Russell Kirk as “the master of philosophical conservatism of the Victorian age.” | | I found the Governor’s reference to Newman interesting, as I had read Newman’s book, The Idea of a University, several years ago. Russell Kirk features Newman in his The Conservative Mind.
Newman wrote that theology is so profoundly important to the nature of mankind that to withdraw it from the public schools is to:
Impair and invalidate the trustworthiness of all that is taught in them. To blot out Religious Truth unravels the web of University Teaching. | | The 18th century Irishman, Edmund Burke, is the intellectual founder of conservatism. Like Newman who would be born into the next century, he understood that the laws that govern the nations of mankind must be tethered to divine ideals and divine law.
Russell Kirk summarizes the thought of Edmund Burke as follows:
He knew that pride, ambition, avarice, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, disorderly appetites are the vices which cause the storms of life. The human heart is the fountain of evil. | Perhaps no one spoke more clearly of the need for a Christian society than American novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne. (1804-1864) | | Hawthorne considered sin as the most fundamental aspect of humanity and the greatest challenge to the development of societal order. Like Edmund Burke before him, he maintained that reform must begin and end with the human heart because sin is the greatest force that agitates society.
Only Scripture and those books which articulate Christianity’s theological foundations are a suitable context for the education of any people who would seek to build a politically just and free society. A society which accommodates our individual quest for meaning and purpose.
I must stop here to allow you a few moments to read what Dr. Everett Piper has to say below about American education. | | The Chesapeake Event Center at the Oklahoma History Museum was well attended again on October 1 as we provided a packed group of speakers. For those of you not in attendance, we have video segments of each of the speakers at the bottom of this newsletter. | | DR. EVERETT PIPER Sunday, October 5, 2025
Democrats Know If They Can Control the Textbooks, They Can Control the State. | | In his dystopian classic, 1984, George Orwell commented on the power of education by saying:
[He] who controls the past controls the future; [and he] who controls the present controls the past.
Joseph Stalin added:
Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed. | | Adolf Hitler chimed in:
The youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow... And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.
Over and over again, all the despots of history, from Maximilian Robespierre to Mao Zedong, demonstrated that they understood the power of education and that, to control a nation's people, they first needed to control that nation's schools. | | If you ever thought that today's Democrats don't understand that the front-line battle for the future of America is in America's schools, look no further than this week's headlines for proof that they, in fact, do.
In California, for example, Gavin Newsom just announced that he will withhold billions of dollars in funding from any California school that complies with the Trump administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence." | | [I] will not bankroll schools that sell out their students... and surrender their academic freedom, declared Newsom, as he publicly demanded that his state's schools surrender their academic liberty to his Orwellian will. And what about the President's "Compact for Academic Excellence" caused such apoplexy for the self-appointed god of the Golden State? What did Donald Trump's reprehensible imperial edict actually say? | | Well, here's the story in a nutshell.
On or about October 2, 2025, the Trump Administration sent a letter to nine of our nation's most selective universities. The recipients included Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University, and the University of Virginia. | | The letter in question (otherwise called the Compact for Academic Excellence) was really quite simple.
First, President Trump called for schools to eschew all racism on their campuses and to comply with all nondiscrimination laws by agreeing not to hire or fire faculty on the basis of the color of their skin or to consider a student's race or ethnicity in admissions decisions.
Second, the Trump administration requested that all undergraduate applicants be evaluated based on merit and their corresponding performance on standardized tests, such as the SAT or the ACT. | | Third, in an effort to make education more affordable for American students from less financially privileged backgrounds, the letter called for a five-year tuition freeze for all U.S. students.
Fourth, the President requested that universities with endowments of a minimum of $2 million per undergraduate (which generates approximately $50,000 per student per year at a modest 5 percent annual return) offer free tuition to all students majoring in the "hard sciences," regardless of race or sex.
Fifth, in an effort to assure that American taxes are spent on American schools that serve American citizens, the Compact called for limiting international undergraduate enrollment to 15% of the total student body, with no more than 5% from any one country. | | Sixth, to ensure true academic freedom and avoid viewpoint discrimination, the Compact asked schools to commit to "institutional neutrality" by promoting a "vibrant marketplace of ideas" on their campuses that does not stifle divergent viewpoints. It also required that teachers refrain from political bias in their official capacity.
Seventh, the Compact called for schools to create and enforce policies that prevent disruptions or protests that impede normal campus activities or encourage harassment of individuals based on ideology, religion, or personal or political views.
Eighth, the Trump administration specified that schools must not discriminate against women and that they must adhere to Title IX. This, by definition, means that men are not permitted in female spaces such as bathrooms or locker rooms, nor are they allowed to participate in women's sports. | | Finally, the Trump Administration called for monitoring compliance with all the above as a pretext for receiving money from American taxpayers.
So, there you have it. That's it. That's what the Compact for Academic Excellence calls for. That's what it says.
Donald Trump just told these universities that if they want your tax dollars and mine, they are required to respect academic freedom, stop discriminating against people based on the color of their skin, prohibit men from disrespecting women, and that they should focus American dollars on American citizens, and Gavin Newsom immediately resorts to parroting the lies of Oceania. | If that doesn't prove that Democrats understand full well the dictatorial axiom that "if you can control the textbooks, you can control the state," I don't know what does. | J.D. Vance spoke of the truth of Scripture and the unshakeable truth of the Gospel. | | ________________
Find more Everett Piper here: Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host.
He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery).
He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
Copyright © 2025 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. | | Go to the link here to find this week's article. Don't forget to watch his podcast!
Before you go about your day be sure to sign up for Dr. Piper's free podcast here. It takes only a moment of time. __________
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