This post originally appeared at https://wifamilycouncil.org/radio/missile-threats-then-now/

2024 | Week of July 29 | Radio Transcript #1577

Looking back, my childhood was almost idyllic. I spent my first 12 years in Atlanta and the rest of my growing up years in Michigan. I had loving parents who were married to each other. I never knew poverty. I lived in great neighborhoods with lots of kids and everyone knew each other. Mom didn’t work outside the home, but she sure worked hard in it. We ate family meals together more often than not. I went to a Bible-preaching church pretty much anytime the doors were open.

School time came. I went to the local public school; Christian schools and home schooling weren’t available yet. Mom and dad chose where they would live, both in Georgia and Michigan, based on the public school system.  We prayed in our Georgia schools—every morning. We pledged the flag—all of us—no one stayed seated. We even read from the Bible in our Georgia schools—every morning. We were taught a love for America. We were taught America represented freedom, hope, and opportunity for all of us and for those “huddled masses yearning to be free” from all over the world.

For the most part, I loved school and felt very secure there—until the day came in when we had an announcement over the PA telling us we would be having a special drill—in case of a missile attack. “A what? From where?” I wondered as I took cover under my desk.

Mom picked me up from school that day and on the way home talked to me as an elementary student about Cuba, Castro, Kruschev, the Soviet Union, Communism and the Cold War. It was the first time I felt unsafe in my home and my school.  In a sense, some of the innocence of my childhood was gone.

From my perspective back then, nothing could destroy America—especially not a madman on a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea, or some man whose name I couldn’t pronounce living on the other side of the world. And, thankfully, we did avert those external threats and crises.

But what I didn’t know for years was that the philosophy and worldview of the Castros and Kruschevs of the world had taken firm hold in my homeland—and that those ideas, slowly worked into the fabric of our society, would one day destroy us without a missile ever being fired.

We’re on the brink of a new school year here in Wisconsin and around the country.  Hundreds of thousands of innocent children will go to public schools soon where too many of their teachers have been taught well the ideas of those who first struck fear in my young heart with the reality that America was and is vulnerable to attack.

These students will sit hour after hour hearing about tolerance, diversity, multiculturalism. They will learn that America is just a capitalistic, imperialistic bully. They will be taught that government is the answer to everything—that they are dependent on government for everything. Individuality and independence will be suppressed, but a collective, dependent mindset will be fostered. They will be told that earning money and becoming wealthy is evil; that personal wealth is wrong, and that the government should redistribute your money to those who don’t have what you have.

They will hear Planned Parenthood talk about sex outside of marriage, including that between people of the same sex, as normal and natural—and a personal right and just another form of recreation. Starting in Kindergarten, students will be told their biological sex is not important; if they feel like the opposite gender, they can be that—with or without their parents knowing. Biological males are too often allowed into the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms and will maybe even show up on a girls’ sports team.

These students will have reinforced the idea that human life evolved from some primordial muck; that they are just animals higher up the food chain. They will hear mocking and scoffing at the idea of a Creator God. Prayer and any other display of Christianity especially will be forbidden and called a violation of the separation of church and state.

No, this isn’t what my generation experienced; but it is what students in our public schools are experiencing much of the time. It’s today’s “missile threats”—and it’s much more dangerous than the threats I endured. Protecting young people today requires way more than a drill and a dive under a desk. Parents—be aware. Make the right decisions. Exercise your right to make educational choices for your children. Their innocence and America’s future hang in the balance.

This is Julaine Appling for Wisconsin Family Council reminding you that God, through the Prophet Hosea, said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

Learn more at WIFamilyCouncil.org