A vote at the crossroads

What makes the special election vote in Georgia historic is not just the specific issues or the specific candidates for the Senate who are on the ballot. As a nation, we are at a crossroads in the history of America. And if we take the wrong road, we may never get back again.

If Georgia voters send two Democrats to the closely divided U.S. Senate, that will give the Democrats control of both houses of Congress, as well as the White House.

Senate Democrats' leader, Senator Charles Schumer, has already announced what he has in store, if the Democrats get a majority in the Senate. So has President-elect Joe Biden. And it goes way beyond specific policies. It includes institutional changes that can be permanent, and almost guarantee one-party rule in this country, as far out as the eye can see.

If more than 10 million people who are in this country illegally are given the right to vote -- and most of those votes are almost certain to go to Democrats -- that is a major new political reality that will be with us for generations.

In a democracy, a majority of the voters can change the government. But, by giving millions of illegal immigrants a vote, the government can create enough voters to get a majority. That is the opposite of democracy.

More important, it is irreversible. Nor is that the only irreversible institutional change the Democrats have on their agenda.

The Democrats' agenda, if they get a majority in the Senate, includes turning a city -- Washington -- into a state, with two Senators. It is no coincidence that Washington voters have been voting overwhelmingly for Democrats for decades. If the city of Washington gets the same power in the Senate as the state of Georgia or Texas, that is another major institutional change that is irreversible.

Among the groups likely to be hurt most by Democrats' dominance of both houses of Congress and the White House is the Black population that has been the most loyal to the Democrats for many generations.

In some fields, loyalty brings rewards. But, in politics, any group whose votes can be taken for granted by one party may not have their interests taken seriously by either party. One party doesn't have to work for their vote and the other party sees little chance of getting it.

There is no more vital interest of Black Americans than the education of Black children. The whole future of the race depends on the quality of that education, more than on any other single factor.

In many public schools in low-income minority neighborhoods, most of the students cannot pass tests in mathematics or English. In some ghetto schools, nobody passed either test.

But data from New York and Washington show that most of the students in charter schools in these very same neighborhoods pass these tests -- often at a rate several times that in the local public schools.

You can get the data for New York City from the Internet web site of the New York State Education Department. Parents and others who care about the education of black children should check out how they do in regular public schools compared to how they do in charter schools.

When charter schools succeed where traditional public schools fail, that is welcome news to everyone to whom Black education matters. But it is bad news to failing public school bureaucrats and to teachers unions, since charter schools attract students from unionized public schools.

There are more than 50,000 public school students on waiting lists to get into charter schools, in New York City alone. The education establishment is using every dirty trick in the book to keep those students from actually transferring into charter schools.

It is the same story in other cities across the country.

Another tactic is that, instead of trying to bring the other schools up to the charter school level, many politicians -- seeking teachers union support -- have been imposing laws and policies to bring charter schools down to the other schools' levels.

These politicians are almost all Democrats. President-elect Biden has already assured teachers unions that there will be no more federal money for charter schools. The Trump administration gave more than $9 million to a charter school network in New York's ghettos. Do not look for that to happen in a Biden administration.

Georgia voters have a lot of responsibility, not just for Georgia but for America, and not just for now but for future generations.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.