Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist, Dr. Carol Swain, to the studio.
During the second hour, Swain discussed her concern for students entering colleges and universities in America have become indoctrination centers. She added that most kids may be coming into their freshman year with traditional values and then are destroyed. Leahy later urged parents to take a good look at where they are sending their future graduates.
Leahy: It is Thursday, October 22. Big debate tonight here in town at Belmont. Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And also 12 days until the election. but the big news today joining us, back with us in the studio, our good friend, all-star panelist, former Vanderbilt Professor, renowned author, and former mayoral candidate, Carol Swain. Good morning Carol.
Swain: Good morning, And it is a delight to be back. I’ve missed everyone.
Leahy: We’ve missed you, Carol. People call in, where’s Carol? I said she’s out saving the country. But you know, she will be back. I promise you I just don’t know exactly when but you are here in person.
Swain: What do you mean saving the country? I’m saving the world.
Leahy: (Laughs) A small point. But yes. Well, first our listeners are always very interested in your activities. I guess it’s been three weeks since you’ve been here, hasn’t it?
Swain: And I have a friend who advises me not to tell people what I’m doing until it’s done. (Chuckles)
Leahy: Okay, so tell me what have you done in these three weeks?
Swain: All right. I went to Omaha, Nebraska and I spoke for Hillsdale College about the state of the Black family.
Leahy: In Omaha.
Swain: Yeah.
Leahy: Did you stop by and say hello to Warren Buffett?
Swain: No, I didn’t have time to do that.
Leahy: The oracle of Omaha.
Swain: My first time participating in a Hillsdale event.
Leahy: Tell us about that. I love those guys.
Swain: I met a lot of great people and  I was very honored and you know to have that opportunity.
Leahy: Let me tell you something about Hillsdale College. They don’t take federal money. They are a bastion of educational excellence. We have writers. Two Hillsdale College graduates write for us Jordan Pair up in The Ohio Star and also The Michigan Star. And Corinne here writing for The Tennessee Star. And she’s so good that we’ve added her to The Virginia Star. Her name is Corinne Murdock. They are fantastic people.
Swain: I need to make a retraction.
Leahy: You’re retracting? What are you retracting?
Swain: Well, I mean I spoke at the big, you know free enterprise event. But I’ve spoken at Hillsdale before for Young America’s Foundation.
Leahy: Okay.
Swain: And one of the things I learned is that they have students there among, you know, the conservatives that would like for the college not to be Christian in any way because they see themselves as fiscal conservatives. And so it’s interesting to me how students would go to a college and try to change the things about it that it’s known for. Now it’s a battle among students.
Leahy: That’s interesting, and it’s not surprising to me because you see, you know, it’s generally in the population. You see that happening, right? Let’s just say students are not fully informed about American history. Well at the beginning would come in and want to change things.
Swain: I mean, it’s students also go to places with an agenda sometimes to change the identity. And so you look at Belmont University and how it has been taken over by the radical left. I remember Union University a few years ago there were students pushing for them to have a football team. They had made a decision not to have one, but they wanted a football team. And so I think that when adults throw up their hands and allow the youth, you know to change institutions, they’re being very foolish because part of growing older is to have wisdom and knowledge, that you impart to a younger generation. You don’t allow them to impart knowledge to you.
Leahy: Well, it’s sort of at the extreme. It’s sort of a Lord of the Flies situation that we have writ big for the entire country. Just because you have a point of view that’s based upon some snippets of facts when you’re younger doesn’t mean that there’s truth in those things.
Swain: And you know, you can learn from young people. So I don’t mean to say that they don’t have the knowledge to impart. Sometimes you can learn from a five-year-old. But when it comes to colleges and universities, they’re no longer marketplaces of ideas.
Leahy: Not at all.
Swain: They’ve become places of indoctrination, but sadly the people who are doing the indoctrination other people that, I don’t want to call them losers at some stage in their lives, but they’re people that use the young people to push ideas that most of us mainstream people wouldn’t agree with.
Leahy: Yeah. I think you’re right about that. I think you’re right about that. Now, it’s interesting. You said something I think is quite important. You know, we focus so much on the current election. You know, everybody’s focus on the next 12 days as we should be. Because it’s going to be a defining election in American history whether or not in my view we continue as a constitutional republic or we slide into something that’s not a constitutional republic. I think it’s a very great danger if Joe Biden were to become elected president.
Swain: We’ve already moved in that direction. I mean things that I’ve always taken for granted about America, I see it up for debate. Even something as simple as the rule of law which has always distinguished us from other nations out there that are more barbaric. We see in America a lot of times that the criminals and the lawbreakers have more authority than law-abiding people.
Leahy: Yeah. What’s wrong with that picture?
Swain: It’s something very very wrong with that picture. And I was watching the news of a few days ago and there was a story about this man that you know, he was a cop killer and he was being released from prison early. And so many criminals have been turned out on the streets. And you think about COVID, boy, I mean, it has changed our way of life, but it has been you know, I don’t know world changer for criminals. You get to look like a bandit. All of us look like bandits.
Leahy: With the masks.
Swain: Yes and with this mask it removes safety because if you see a person on the street or you encounter a person in the store, you can read their body language a lot of times. And so if they say they smile, their face that’s part of giving you information. That’s very helpful. And once you can only see the eyes it changes. It’s a game-changer.
Leahy: Yeah, no question about. That and you said something I think quite profound.
Swain: I’m always profound. (Laughter)
Leahy: This is one that penetrated into my mind when you said universities now are not marketplaces of ideas, but they are indoctrination centers. Now that has been something people have said for some time. But now if you really looked at that and ask this question, and this is for parents now. Let’s say you’ve got a 12th grader and you’re thinking of sending them to college and my question to you Carol is, of all the potential 3,000 colleges that you could send a kid to now, what percentage of them are full out indoctrination centers today for the left?
Swain: Probably 98 percent.
Leahy: That is exactly the number I was going to say,
Swain: I mean, it’s a horrible situation. I love people and I love this audience and I know that most parents, you know, know, they are very proud when their kid gets into Ivy League school or top tier university.
Leahy: Tier one university. They’re proud.
Swain: They’re very proud. Very excited.
Leahy: Except what are they missing?
Swain: They’re missing the fact that that child in many cases will be destroyed. That unless that child, you know has been raised in such a way that they realize that they’re going into a place, I mean, it depends on the values of the child and I guess the parents. But in a lot of cases, you know, if they’re Christian and they believe in America and traditional values, the university’s indoctrination system goes after that during orientation.
Leahy: And right after it hard.
Swain: Yes. I mean they make it very clear on day one. And they also are very adept at manipulating the innocent young freshmen.
Leahy: As Rush calls them young, brains full of mush, right?
Swain: Well, no, I mean the kids don’t know. Sometimes they don’t know what they’re getting into.
Leahy: They don’t know and they’ve got all this peer pressure in the institution and they want to succeed.
Swain: And sometimes for the Christian kids that have been you know raised and he’s traditional families and the first thing that some universities would do is for orientation, one of the orientation leaders will be a transgender female. And that person you know is going to march out and then they are really going to push that whatever you were taught at home. You know about marriage and about family and about I’ve and sanctity of life. That’s not the institutional values.
Leahy: So let me just stop here. This is a very important conversation. If you’re a parent of a child in 12th grade right now and you’re trying to send them to a college you’ve got to stop and think about this. Because as Carol says if you send them to these indoctrination centers which are 98 percent of colleges and we can go down the list are that right now. You are sending your child into a bit of personal destruction. Think about that. Is that the right thing to do? We’ll talk about that more with Carol Swain after this.
Listen to the full second hour:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.Â
