The once unchallenged moral authority of our nation is at risk. This source of pride and self-assuredness has been an implicit endorsement of policies from arming violent, extremist rebels; to nation-building; to extraordinary rendition; to a financial crisis where people hiding their trillions, and losing our billions, were rewarded with more millions. Those gleaming successes of our great nation have been undermined and called into question with the scapegoating of the public sector for recent destruction caused by insatiable greed and the ownership of public policy by the “free market” and the private sector. Instead of efforts to halt this assault on common sense and reverse continued moral erosion, what followed the economic crash in 2008 was a coordinated effort to drive public schools and their students to serve the same market that economically cripples the majority of the nation’s citizens. If allowed to continue unchecked, misguided education reforms and the absence of accountability for leaders in policy and finance threaten to condemn generations to come to lives of disempowered indentured servitude: not free themselves, but working merely to survive and serve the “free market”. The result would be the loss of the nation’s status as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to the rest of the world.