Stella Morabito of the Federalist highlights the impact of poor education offered to American rioters.

I suspect many members of today’s street mobs have a secret in common: At some deep level, they know they are awash in ignorance of core knowledge. Claiming to be “woke” is cover for the ignorance educrats have systematically instilled in them.

For decades, leftist academics have attacked the study of history and real humanities, and now an Illinois legislator has openly called to abolish the study of history. Recent episodes of Bible burning in the streets of Portland indicate the trashing of America’s cultural memory is well past the boiling point.

Our educational institutions have committed intellectual grand theft. They have withheld critical knowledge from students and replaced it with the poison of identity politics and political correctness. This makes it difficult for students to express independent thoughts, or even to think them. Where does that leave the victims who have been forcibly injected with this ignorance?

They can’t really articulate what has been stolen from them, but they seem to sense the loss deeply. How else can one explain their primal screams and street theater, in which they both accuse and confess “systemic racism?” After educrats and media hounded them for years with the talking point that Western culture is just tales of “dead white males,” how can they even be openly curious about it without the threat of being smeared?

It’s no wonder they can’t, since the rabbit hole into which they’ve been thrown is very deep. Imagine being trained to “think” only with your emotions. The consequence is unbridled passions and confusion, like that of someone who can’t read but pretends to. The resulting impulse undergirds the perverse toppling of a statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, or the burning and vandalizing of a beloved elk statue in Portland while “protesting” for justice.