STANFORD, Calif. – Left-wing activists hate Walmart not only because it’s the nation’s largest employer – and therefore the embodiment of capitalism – but also because its workforce is nonunionized.

Unfortunately, the left’s small-minded hatred extends beyond just the company to the Walton family that owns it.

The reason?

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Through their private foundation, the Walton family has invested more than $300 million in various education programs – charter schools, voucher programs, etc. – that threaten the government-school monopoly.

By extension, the Walton family is threatening the economic well-being of the nation’s teacher unions.

In a recent column, renowned economist and columnist Thomas Sowell defends the Walton family from the left’s attempts to “demonize” them. He does so by explaining the good the family is doing for some of the nation’s poorest families.

“The Walton Family Foundation gave more than $58 million to the KIPP (charter) schools, which have had spectacular success in raising the test scores of children in ghettos where the other children are far behind in academic performance,” Sowell writes.

He adds that the Waltons have also backed D.C. Prep, a group of high-performing charter schools that are bringing hope to “mostly poor and black” students in the nation’s capital.

Most Americans would find the Waltons’ charitable actions commendable, not condemnable as the unionists would like.

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Since the Waltons can’t be portrayed as uncaring toward the poor, unionists like American Federation of Teachers President Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten try to portray them as un-American.

Weingarten does this by claiming any attempt to bolster an alternative education system is really an attempt to undercut the government school system which “has been the anchor of American democracy.”

Sowell responds:

“If government-monopoly schools, with iron-clad tenure for incompetent teachers, have been an anchor, they have been an anchor around the necks of American students, who consistently score lower on international tests than students from countries that spend half as much money per student, and yet have students who outperform our youngsters, year after year.

“It is not written in the stars that youngsters in ghetto schools have to score miles behind everyone else.”

He also pushes back against the unionists’ lazy assertion that charter schools and other alternative programs have drained money away from government schools.

“Expenditures per pupil in the public schools have risen during the era of the spread of alternative schools,” Sowell writes.

Of course, facts and reason will never persuade the haters on the left that Walton family members are improving the lot of their fellow citizens by giving the neediest among us a chance at a world-class education.

Hopefully Sowell’s column finds a wide audience so fair-thinking Americans can appreciate what the Walton family has done – despite the propaganda from the nation’s teacher unions.