The U.S. Department of Education quoted mass-murdering dictator Mao Zedong on its website. Mao, the longtime Marxist dictator of China, killed up to 60 million people through executions, torture, and the government-created famines of the abortive “Great Leap Forward.”
As George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley observed,
In one of the truly moronic acts from a government official, the Department of Education posted a mangled quote of Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong on its website as the saying of the day for children. It is clear that whoever approved it had no idea who Mao was or the atrocities that he committed, particularly during the Cultural Revolution when intellectuals were massacred. . . The quote appeared on the “Kids’ Zone” website of the National Center for Education Statistics. The quote stated “Our attitude towards ourselves should be ‘to be satiable [sic] in learning’ and towards others ‘to be tireless in teaching.’” That was the webpage’s “Quote of the Day” section. . . It is highly unnerving that a DOE employee clearly had no idea who Mao was. I consider the quote to be akin to a Hitler quote on the need for living space to achieve true happiness. Mao destroyed the intellectual and academic community in China in the cultural revolution and spoke of reeducation to mouth the Communist dogma of the time. It is not reeducation that is needed at the Education Department but simple education on history.
The quote was later removed from the Education Department’s web site after it evoked widespread ridicule.
Earlier, the Environmental Protection Agency glorified Che Guevara as part of Hispanic Heritage Month, even though Guevara was a torturer and child-killer who called himself “Stalin II” and killed many Hispanics (Guevara also helped install the brutal Castro regime in Cuba, which resulted in Cuba being poorer, more backward and eventually less healthy).
Under the Obama Administration, the Education Department has shown contempt for civil liberties like due process and free speech. It has pressured school districts to use racial quotas in school discipline, which violates the Constitution. Political appointees in the Education Department have illegally ordered colleges to reduce due process safeguards and alter the burden of proof in certain categories of disciplinary proceedings.
