A few years ago, a substitute teacher wrote in the Washington Post about the depressing experience he had while teaching three advanced government classes in a suburban Virginia school. He decided to poll his students on the basic question of whether the American system of government was morally superior to that of the Soviet Union? Fifty-one of the 53 high school seniors he asked—the brightest high school seniors in one of the best school systems in the country—saw no difference between the two.

These children could not morally distinguish between their own nation built on the basis of each individual having God-given rights, and another nation that has operated for over 70 years on the assumption that man is a mere creature of the state. Not coincidentally, the two children who did comprehend a difference were Vietnamese boat children. They had received a valuable education in reality when they experienced the collapse of their homeland into the darkness of totalitarianism.

Children at Risk, J. Dobson & G. Bauer, Word, 1990, p. 180