In an address to an anti-Common Core rally in the early GOP primary state of South Carolina in February, Rafael Cruz warned that the Common Core education standards are a Hitler-like plan for “brainwashing” children.
Cruz’s son, presidential candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, has made “repealing” the academic standards a key plank of his campaign, even though they are adopted by states and not part of any federal statute that can be repealed. The elder Cruz told the group, South Carolina Parents Involved in Education, that “Common Core is not about education, Common Core is about control.”
“In Nazi Germany, Hitler said, ‘Give me the children and I will rule the world.’ That’s what’s behind Common Core,” he said. “It’s brainwashing of our children, it’s changing and destroying the foundations that have made America the greatest country on the face of the earth.”
Later in the speech, Cruz said that Common Core is “molding the minds to adopt a secular worldview which destroys American exceptionalism, which destroys the historical foundations of America, which destroys what has made America a unique place in the world.”
After warning that government “brainwashing” is bringing about the “destruction of our Judeo-Christian foundation” and “our religious liberty,” Cruz blasted “the concept of ‘diversity,’” which he called “totally opposite of what made America great.”
“Diversity is the opposite of the melting pot,” he continued. “It is just trying to divide everybody into a series of little groups that all become something else than Americans, that all are being portrayed as victims of an evil society, and as victims they have no choice but become dependent on almighty government.”
