Giving New Heart to the Wounded

/in , , , , , , , /by

Note: The following text is a slightly edited version of remarks that the author gave recently at the Catholic Information Center in Washington D.C. to mark the publication of her book Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited, with an introduction by the late Cardinal George Pell. – Robert Royal

Mary Eberstadt: As pressure mounts on the Church to capitulate to the sexual revolution, evidence shows it would cripple the Church, as it has crippled every other church that’s tried it. 

Adam and Eve after the Pill, Revisited, closes a body of work that’s occupied a lot of my attention for the past fifteen years. I don’t mean that the last word has been said – far from it. New voices are emerging, including from non-religious circles, that are also newly skeptical of the post-1960s status quo. I mean instead that an idea that started percolating fifteen years ago has now received the systematic treatment first envisioned for it.

For six decades, a secularizing Western society has been telling itself a falsely happy story about the outcomes of the sexual revolution. To counter that story, we’ve needed an account of its fallout closer to the truth. That account falls into two parts: one examining post-revolutionary reality among individuals; and the other examining its effects on the wider world.

In 2008, the then-editor of First Things, Joseph Bottum, invited me to write an essay about Humanae Vitae to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the encyclical. At the time, this seemed like a fine opportunity for an exercise in spirited contrarianism. After all, Humanae Vitae may be the most universally mocked and reviled religious statements of the past century. How, many millions have asked, could the Church possibly defend the teaching against artificial contraception? Didn’t it want to join the modern world? Etc.

Before I could try to shock the bourgeoisie with a rousing defense of Humanae Vitae, I actually had to read the thing for the first time. It’s hard to get across just how transformative that reading became. Humanae Vitae makes several predictions about what the world would look like once the sexual revolution really took hold.  The reason these predictions amazed me was simple, yet profound.

As a researcher who had studied and written about various aspects of American society over the years, I knew from different forms of evidence, popular as well as expert, that these predictions weren’t just predictions – they had actually all come true. Confirmation abounded, especially in the social sciences. In fact, Humanae Vitae has been vindicated as few attempts to spy the future ever are: including by information that did not exist when the document was written, and by scholars and other experts with no interest whatever in its teaching.

What struck me most forcefully here was that Church teaching was being vindicated by secular sources – again, secular social science, assembled by mostly secular social scientists, and appearing in secular journals. It was not theology that was demonstrating the downside of separating procreation and recreation – though no doubt theology can. Instead, it was scholarship about subjects like broken homes, interrupted relations between the sexes, rising rates of mental illness and addiction, and lots of other interrelated facts. And though the myriad authors of that research across the decades wouldn’t have dreamed of it, their work, understood in full, had gone to show, in effect, that Humanae Vitae and related Church teaching were right.

That perception – that aha! moment – led to the two Adam and Eve books, and their contrarian readings of the legacy of the sexual revolution. The first, Adam and Eve after the Pill, examined what might be called the microcosmic fallout of humanity’s embrace of contraception: the effects on individual men, women, and children, and on the radically changed social mores of the postrevolutionary order.

The second, new book widens the aperture to cover the macrocosmic fallout. It dissects the effects of the revolution on society, politics, and the Church. Needless to add, the Foreword by the late, great Cardinal George Pell, with whom I discussed some of these arguments, is the honor of a lifetime. This book, like the earlier one, revolves around the same general theme: the most unpopular Church teaching is being vindicated inadvertently, but really, by the accumulation of postrevolutionary evidence.

Much of what we do in life feels accidental at the time. This body of work is no exception. The late Fr. Arne Panula was a great believer in Providence. At times I feel he’s laughing at me for not having shared his certainty about the workings of that capital-P word. The idea that I’d spend years committing these arguments to paper, and sometimes to public appearances, would have seemed unlikely, even absurd to me in 2008; and certainly unwanted. But unexpected or not, the work commenced, and its unfolding changed me.

Before, I thought of myself as a writer who happened to be Catholic. Afterwards, I became a Catholic writer. What does that mean? It means that even if I hadn’t been a Catholic in the first place, the assembling of the evidence in the Adam and Eve books would have forced me to become one.

That’s because, if the argument of those books is true, then Church teaching is true. And if Church teaching is true, and one is privileged to witness a proof of that truth, however unanticipated, one can’t move on, and pretend there’s nothing to see here. One is stuck. And that’s how I turned from an accidental Catholic into an intentional one.

A thought that permeates both books that takes us straight to the present: We are all witnesses, here and now, to a great irony that encompasses not only the Catholics of America, but those of the entire West.

After all, Western Christianity spends most of its time these days in a defensive crouch, squabbling internally. Yet all the while, evidence from outside the Church continues to point toward something that many inside the Church seem not to know. The Church, practically alone among all institutions, has been harboring profound truths for two thousand years – most notably, in this case, the truth that living by that big, bad rule book is actually better for human beings than discarding it.

The irony is extraordinary. Pressure has been mounting for a long time now for the Catholic Church to do what most Protestant churches have done – abandon the teachings that prompt the most complaining from the pews – i.e., put down the Catechism, and pick up the cool-kid flag. Yet even as the call for capitulation grows louder, transforming and deforming Catholic discussion, the evidence thrown out by the world itself points in the opposite direction: caving to the sexual revolution would cripple the Church – exactly as it has crippled every other church that’s tried it.

And beyond that institutional point lies another that is surpassingly important. This kind of remedial labor, this insistence that postrevolutionary reality is other than what the dominant culture says it is, is not done for no reason. The revolution continues to claim many, many victims. To honor their witness is not some kind of reactionary indulgence, as boosters of the revolution claim. No: it is humanitarian work. There needs to be more of it. And there will be.

Meanwhile, it’s my modest hope that the facts assembled during these past 15 years will persuade some believers and unbelievers alike, and above all, give new heart to the wounded and those who tend them.

You may also enjoy:

Anthony Esolen’s Let’s Really Read the Signs of the Times

Michael Pakaluk’s The Wreck of Vatican II

AUTHOR

Mary Eberstadt

Mary Eberstadt is a Senior Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute and holds the Panula Chair at the Catholic Information Center. Her most recent book is Adam and Eve after the Pill, Revisited, with a Foreword by Cardinal George Pell.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. © 2023 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

The ATF Expansion of the Gun Registry Turns Law-Abiding Gun Owners into Felons

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Despite decades of warnings from crime prevention and law experts, the Biden administration has taken a page out of FDR’s book to crack down on legal gun owners.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has followed through on their plan to turn millions of lawful gun owners into felons in the name of “public safety” by reclassifying pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, effectively expanding the unconstitutional national gun registry.

Stabilizing braces are devices that can be attached to pistols to aid the user in balancing their arm. Originally created to help people with disabilities, the accessory is now more popular amongst mainstream shooters who use them to adapt pistols into guns that can be shot from the shoulder, which has been legal to do in the past. Now, there’s a big hoop to jump through if you don’t want to be hit with fines and/or jail time.

As the Department of Justice first proposed on June 7, 2021 and put into practice on January 13, 2023, those who wish to add stabilizers to their pistols “must comply with the heightened regulations on those dangerous and easily concealable weapons.”

Under the new rules, any pistol modified with such a brace is now considered to be a short-barreled rifle. As the DOJ explained themselves, the National Firearms Act (NFA) has, since the 1930s, “imposed requirements on short-barreled rifles because they are more easily concealable than long-barreled rifles but have more destructive power than traditional handguns.”

“Beyond background checks and serial numbers, those heightened requirements include taxation and registration requirements that include background checks for all transfers including private transfers,” the statement reads. The tax required for anyone making or buying a short-barreled rifle is $200.

The Biden administration has generously granted all of the impacted manufacturers, dealers, and individuals a 120-day period to comply—by registering the firearm, removing the brace, surrendering the firearm to ATF, or destroying it.

Attorney General Merrick Garland “directed” the ATF to “address the issue of stabilizing braces” within 60 days at an April 2021 event with President Joe Biden, prompting the swift action taken by the DOJ in announcing the proposed rule the next month.

Biden had also previously selected former Obama advisor Steven Dettelbach to serve as the head of the ATF, who helped the administration reach their goal of passing yet another gun control law.

While the bureau claims the new rule won’t impact stabilizing braces “that are objectively designed and intended as a ‘stabilizing brace’ for use by individuals with disabilities, and not for shouldering the weapon as a rifle,” there is no “objective” standard listed for what disabled people are allowed to carry, or what is “intended” as an aid.

The history of tyrannical politicians attempting to force every gun owner to register their weapons with the government is long. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered implementing a ban on fully-automatic firearms, but was faced with pushback from the DOJ, which argued that it would violate the Second Amendment.

To compromise, the administration instead pushed for legislation to require the registration of fully-automatic firearms, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and firearm sound suppressors. This idea became law in the form of the National Firearms Act of 1934, which is what the current-day DOJ and ATF have used to justify their expansion of the national gun registry for law-abiding citizens.

Roosevelt was set on creating a national firearm registry for every gun, demonstrated by his appointment of Homer Cummings to the position of Attorney General, who helped draft the NFA.

“Show me the man who doesn’t want his gun registered and I will show you a man who shouldn’t have a gun,” Cummings wrote in 1938, the year he pushed for separate handgun registration legislation.

Fast forward by approximately 50 years, and then-President Ronald Reagan signs the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, which federally prohibits national gun registries. Though Reagan faltered on the Second Amendment at times (see: the Mulford Act), this was a good policy that was unfortunately ignored by anti-gun politicians.

Experts have been warning about the dystopian consequences of criminalizing stabilizing braces, which are used by disabled and able-bodied individuals alike to increase balance and accuracy.

Dr. John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, wrote for Real Clear Politics: “Few seem to realize that stabilizing braces for pistols were originally designed to allow wounded and disabled veterans who may have lost the use of part of their hand to hold handguns. They are essentially a strap attached to the gun. Disabled individuals are often viewed as easy targets by criminals, and stabilizers make it easier to defend themselves.”

He cites Rick Cicero, a disabled veteran who lost his right arm and leg in an explosion while serving in Afghanistan 13 years ago.

“If they take this away, they’re violating their own law because this is designed and employed for people like me,” Cicero told Spectrum News 9 after the DOJ proposed the rule in 2021.

Cicero, who teaches fellow injured veterans on how to shoot again, added that “the most important thing to me about this brace, this whole aspect, is another avenue of getting injured veterans out of the house.”

According to Dr. Lott, the two instances that Biden cited to garner support for the new ATF policy weren’t even valid examples of braces being used to better commit a crime.

“All this started after President Biden cited a crime in 2021 in Colorado – where a shooter used a pistol stabilizing brace when attacking shoppers in a grocery store – to justify calling for classifying such brace-affixed pistols as machine guns,” Lott wrote. “Ahmed Al Alwi murdered 10 people at close range in a Boulder, Colo. grocery store. A previous shooting in 2019 by Connor Betts, in Dayton, Ohio, also involved a pistol brace. These are the only two cases of their kind and, more importantly, neither of them had any difficulty holding their guns and all their shots were fired at a short distance. There is no evidence that the brace made any difference in their ability to carry out the attacks. And there has been no surge in crime by the disabled or others using these braces.”

This all stems back to the inherent right that Americans have to self-protection through gun ownership. As FEE’s Brett Cooper wrote at the time of the rule proposal, James Madison condemned a governmental structure in which overarching entities can rewrite the law as they see fit.

In Federalist No. 48, the founding father warned that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

“This is exactly what is happening today,” Cooper wrote. “This stealth power grab should concern all Americans, even if they are outside the immediately-impacted gun community.”

AUTHOR

Olivia Rondeau

Olivia is a 21-year-old political commentator, strategist, and journalist hailing from the Washington, DC area, and currently based in Los Angeles.

RELATED VIDEO: Will Gun Control Make Us Any Safer?

Related Articles

How the James-Younger Gang’s Historic Defeat Showed the Importance of a Well-Armed and Responsible Citizenry by Lawrence Reed

The Federal Government’s Own Study Concluded Its Ban on ‘Assault Weapons’ Didn’t Reduce Gun Violence by Jon Miltimore

Gun Control Comes from a Place of Privilege by Patrick Carroll

Texas Is Now an “Open Carry” State, Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing by Hannah Cox

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

How Entrepreneurs Are Expanding Education Options For Families in Texas

/in , , , , , , /by

“Parents are the best advocates of their children and ultimately know what type of schooling is best from an academic, social and moral perspective,” said Braveheart founder Chrystal Bernard.

In early 2020, Chrystal and Joshua Bernard decided that they would begin homeschooling their four young children at the start of the following school year. Their two oldest children were completing first grade and pre-kindergarten, respectively, at a traditional private school in the greater Fort Worth, Texas area, but the Bernards were drawn to homeschooling’s more personalized, family-centered educational approach.

The school shutdowns later that year accelerated their homeschooling plans, and the Bernards became increasingly convinced that more learner-centered education was the path forward—both for their own children as well as for others in their local community. “Homeschooling enabled us to connect more as a family and helped our two eldest children skyrocket in their academics, drawing other people to our method of schooling,” said Chrystal, who taught high school mathematics in Texas public schools before launching her own CPA firm.

During the 2020/2021 school year, the Bernards heard from a growing number of parents who wanted a more personalized, accessible, faith-based educational option. “As pastors of our local church, we saw the desires of people in our community who wanted a Christian education with low student-teacher ratios without the hefty tuition prices of the local private schools,” said Chrystal. “Additionally, with the rise of virtual learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw how some students were falling through the cracks.”

In the fall of 2021, the couple founded Braveheart Christian Academy, a pre-kindergarten to 7th grade microschool in Arlington, Texas that emphasizes individualized, mastery-based learning with a focus on character development. Some of Braveheart’s teachers taught in the local public schools but were attracted to the new school’s smaller, more holistic learning environment. “Instead of placing students in a box, education is brought to their level,” said Chrystal, who uses assessment tests to evaluate each child’s skill level upon enrollment and then adapts the curriculum accordingly. “We had one child who entered school as a fourth grader by age but who performed at a first grade level. Now, after a school-year-and-a-half with us, that student has nearly caught up academically to his fifth grade peers,” she told me during my recent visit to Braveheart.

With an annual tuition of about $7,000, Braveheart is significantly lower in cost than most traditional private schools in the area, but it is still financially out of reach for many families. “Cost is the major barrier,” said Chrystal, who hears often from parents who wish to enroll their children but can’t afford it.

The Bernards do what they can to lower the tuition burden. They received a microgrant from the VELA Education Fund, a national philanthropic non-profit that provides small amounts of funding to education entrepreneurs who are creating individualized, out-of-system learning models. One local VELA partner, The Miles Foundation, recently dedicated $1 million to support the rising number of founders in Tarrant County. “By investing in everyday education entrepreneurs, we can create real change in the education system,” said Grant Coates, president of The Miles Foundation.

In addition to philanthropy, the Bernards also rely on personal fundraising efforts to reduce costs to parents, but Braveheart is still financially inaccessible to many who want it. “One parent was actually weighing whether she should pay her rent or the school tuition,” said Chrystal, acknowledging that providing a quality education for their children is a top priority for many families.

Last week, Texas became the latest in a string of states to introduce school choice legislation that would enable education funding to follow students to whichever school their parents choose. The bill would provide an annual education savings account up to $8,000 for each Texas student to use toward tuition, books and supplies. This amount would more than cover the cost of Braveheart and similar schools across the state, including the new ones that have been quickly emerging over the past three years of education disruption.

Chrystal is a strong supporter of these school choice initiatives. “Every Texas family should be afforded the opportunity to attend their school of choice, including private schools,” she said. “For many families, the sole barrier is the financial requirement needed to do so. Parents are the best advocates of their children and ultimately know what type of schooling is best from an academic, social and moral perspective.”

The Bernards will continue their efforts to make Braveheart more accessible to the families that want it, but Chrystal believes that statewide education choice policies will be most empowering. “The Texas school choice bill would give more freedom and leverage to parents to make the best schooling decision for their children,” she said.

This article was originally published at Forbes.com. It has been reprinted with permission.

AUTHOR

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and host of the weekly LiberatED podcast. She is also the author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019), an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, education policy fellow at State Policy Network, and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly email newsletter here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

More Than One Million Students Left District Schools. How Do We Know They’re Learning?

New York City’s Not-So-Secret World of Low-Cost Private Schools

Why Can’t This Retired US Navy Officer and Engineer Open a Private School in Nevada?

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s Approval Plummets as Americans Fear Economic Downfall

/in , , , , , , , , /by

President Biden is without question the worst POTUS of any of our lifetimes. God knows how much damage he will cause in the next 20 months. #Trump2024!

That he has any support at all is made possible by a corrupt and lying press.

BIDEN’S APPROVAL PLUMMETS AS AMERICANS FEAR ECONOMIC DOWNFALL

By Real News Now, March 23, 2023

Since Biden has became our President, there has been a slew of issues he has created as well as failed to address in a time sensitive manner. It’s becoming to the point where America has begun to wonder if he actively is destroying the country on purpose or if he is just simply the wrong man for the job.

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, has released a poll on the approval ratings for the current president. In February, Biden was looking at an approval rating of 45%. Today we find out that number has dropped significantly to almost matching an all time low at a staggering 38%.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Geller Report Staff

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden’s Budget Proposes $4.7 TRILLION in New Taxes

Ford Burns Through Billions, Expects to Lose $12 Billion on Electric Vehicle Line

Hunter Biden Used FBI Mole Named “One-Eye” To Tip Him Off to China Probes: Whistleblower

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Congresswoman demands answers over D.C. children’s hospital Youth Pride Clinic’s ‘life-altering gender procedures’

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

It’s about time. There’s much work to do to start protecting children from a dangerous element of the trans community that has mutated into a cult, and is now inflicting grooming and mutilation upon children, allegedly without parental consent.

Such potentially criminal actions need to be subjected to immediate investigations everywhere, for the protection of children. House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx’s (R-NC) investigation is a significant step in the right direction. Children’s National Hospital has already responded. Its tweet, whether true or not, parrots the same tired talking points of the woke, using words such as “welcoming” and “inclusive.”

Four months ago, Virginia Foxx (along with other Congressional Republicans) reiterated her commitment to “oversight” and “lawsuits” amid Biden’s reckless policies and orders. Further investigations, prosecutions and jail time for these egregious assaults upon and mutilation of children would be appropriate for medical practitioners if they are found guilty after due process.

Virginia Foxx demands answers from DC children’s hospital over gender procedures

by Jeremiah Poff, Washington Examiner, March 21, 2023:

EXCLUSIVE — House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) is demanding a Washington children’s hospital detail its protocols and policies related to the administering of cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children.

In a letter to Children’s National Hospital President and CEO Kurt Newman that was shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner, Foxx expressed concern that the hospital’s “Youth Pride Clinic” did not once mention the role of parental consent in the prescription of “life-altering surgeries and other medical interventions” for children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

“The website for the Clinic states that your primary and specialty care teams provide, among other things, ‘[h]ormone replacement therapy,’” Foxx wrote. “There is no mention of any parental consent requirement for such therapy or for other medical services provided to youth who have not reached the age of majority.”

In August, the hospital drew scrutiny after the popular Twitter account Libs of TikTok released a recording of a call with a hospital staff member who admitted the hospital had performed hysterectomies on children younger than 16. The hospital later denied that it provided gender transition surgeries to minors and scrubbed its website of language that said such procedures were available to patients aged 0-21.

The letter from Foxx seeks answers from the hospital on whether or not it has provided “medical interventions for a minor diagnosed with gender dysphoria” without the consent of both parents, including such procedures as facial reconstruction, chest reconstruction, or genital modifications such as vaginoplasty or phalloplasty.

The letter also seeks records of “reports or inquiries” that hospital staff members have made to child protective services if a parent objected to “medical interventions that would hormonally or surgically transition his or her child” and asks the hospital to reveal the number of children who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by the clinic, as well as those who have received hormonal or surgical treatment.

“I am concerned about the use of life-altering, irreversible medical interventions on children with healthy bodies,” Foxx wrote. “Parents are a key part of any medical decisions for their children: parents have the right and responsibility to make medical decisions for their children, and they should be free to do so without undue pressure or interference from medical establishments.”

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Children’s National Hospital said it is “committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment for all and to serving our LGBTQ+ patients and families in the full spectrum of their care.”….

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

RELATED ARTICLES:

Pentagon Doctors Claim 7-Year-Olds Can Consent to Puberty Blockers

World Athletics Bans Trans Biological Males from Competing in Female Track and Field Competitions

Trans Biological Male Wins Female Cycling Event in NYC, CRUSHES Competition

Tennessee ethics lawyer wins new chance to seek damages after being fired for tweets about Islam

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘The Ministry Of Inclusion Has Decreed That These Books Must Be Excluded’

/in , , , , , , , /by

Inclusion is the virtue of our time and all literature making the path to inclusion a bumpy one must be bulldozed.

In the last month, three news stories out of Britain have seized the attention of book lovers. First, with the approval of the Roald Dahl Story Company, holder of the rights to the late author’s works, the publisher Puffin Books (a Penguin Random House imprint) announced that Dahl’s celebrated children’s books would henceforth be published in revised editions reflecting the changes recommended by “sensitivity readers.”

The result would be to eliminate references “to fatness, craziness, ugliness, whiteness (even of bedsheets), blackness (even of tractors) and the great Rudyard Kipling,” among other changes, as Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Christopher Scalia added in the Washington Examiner that “this compulsion not to offend is especially strange regarding Dahl, whose work is distinctively unsettling. His publishers were once proud of that.”

Subsequent reports informed us that purchasers of eBook copies of Dahl’s children’s stories would see these changes made in the copies they had previously bought but that were stored on vendors’ servers—yet another reason to own paper copies of books. Puffin later announced that “classic” editions of Dahl’s books—with unchanged texts—would continue to be available for future purchase. But the bowdlerized editions have not been withdrawn, as they should be.

The second story, which did not get much attention in the United States, was that a similar “sensitivity revision” has been performed on the James Bond books of the late Ian Fleming. The sexism of Agent 007, and his retrograde racial views, were gone over with a fine-tooth comb, with the approval of Ian Fleming Publications. Henceforth James Bond, of all people, will try hard not to disturb the prejudices of a typical humanities professor of 2023. It’s a wonder he’s still licensed to kill.

The third story, which I did not see any US media outlet notice, was that the Research Information and Communications Unit, part of Prevent, itself an arm of the UK’s Home Office charged with enforcing the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, had identified certain books, films, and television shows that were on favored “reading lists” of right-wing terror groups the unit was keeping tabs on.

The list included works by Tolkien, Conrad, Kipling (again!), Tennyson, Chesterton, Huxley, Orwell, Milton, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, as well as films such as The Great Escape, Zulu, and The Bridge on the River Kwai, and the Kenneth Clark art history series “Civilisation”. Suffice it to say one could begin to build a pretty good education on the foundation laid by works the British government is concerned about.

Orwell and Huxley would have understood perfectly what’s going on in these stories. Orwell’s Winston Smith, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, works in the Ministry of Truth, which busily rewrites history from day to day, in accordance with what the Party needs people to believe, regardless of whether it is true. Huxley’s Brave New World doesn’t need a daily rewriting of history. Unlike Orwell’s Oceania, Huxley’s World State has no external enemies, and has achieved a complete break with humanity’s distant past. The few remaining copies of “obsolete” and otherwise forgotten books such as the Bible and the works of Shakespeare are locked away in the possession of the elite World Controllers. And in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, books of every kind are simply forbidden, and are immediately burned by the government’s firemen wherever they are found.

These dystopias all feature one form or another of a war on knowledge and truth by those in power. Their victory in that war can only come if the works of the past are revised to suit present needs, or rendered irrelevant and forgotten, or simply banned altogether. It is alarming that the impulse to treat the past as the enemy of the present, rather than as a precious inheritance, is rising to a commanding position at the heights of our culture.

I don’t mean to suggest that the deeply stupid revisions of the works of minor authors such as Dahl and Fleming represent the advent of a dystopian tyranny. In these cases they will only succeed in making the original works more valuable to preserve, while the insipid revisions will not attract the new readers whose “sensitivities” are being catered to. It is the spirit of the revisionists that is repellent and tyrannical, however.

It is the same spirit identified by George Packer in his recent Atlantic article “The Moral Case Against Equity Language,” where he describes the top-down, flattening, and stultifying dictates of various “inclusive” language guides, crafted by busybodies with no appreciation for plain speaking and no ear for metaphor. It’s the spirit of the “new Roundheads” critiqued by Jonathan Sumption, who simultaneously—and without any apparent discomfort caused by holding two incompatible ideas in their heads—believe both that “knowledge and truth are mere social constructs” and that they know their own countries’ histories are a dreary tale of unrelieved evil.

The impulse to censor—to revise the history and literature we inherit, to ban what we think the worst of it, to banish certain ideas—is as natural to human beings as any of the seven deadly sins. In fact, properly understood, censorship is an essential element of education. There are ideas and books that are fit for children, and others fit for adults. Parents, who have the primary and direct responsibility for the rearing of their children, are right to take an interest in what is assigned to them to read, and what is available to them in the school library.

The publisher’s revisions of Dahl’s books might be well intended, with the best interests of children in mind. But they do both the author and responsible parents an injustice—the former by converting a talented author’s genius into mush, and the latter by usurping their role of controlling what their children should read. Should children be prepared for a robust, open-minded adulthood, or should certain windows in their minds be permanently obscured by blackout curtains?

The first work in western philosophy to take up the matter of education in the formation of a political community was Plato’s Republic. No sooner does Socrates begin to sketch the education of the “guardians” who defend and rule his perfectly just “city in speech” than he finds it necessary to demand the revision or banishment of much of Greek culture’s poetic inheritance, because it depicts the gods as variously warlike, vicious, and deceitful. The guardians of the best city must be paragons of virtue, and so poetry that might harm the development of their virtue must go. Finally, at the end of the work, returning to this subject, Socrates argues that the great poets—above all, Homer—make false claims to knowledge of the virtues, in contrast to the philosophers, who are the poets’ great rivals. Homer must go; he and his ilk are to be banished for the sake of justice.

My own view of the Republic, which I have taught on and off for four decades, is that Plato is ironically highlighting the impossibility of perfect justice, because it requires (among other absurdities explored in the dialogue) an iron grip on the dissemination of ideas, a grip that no one but omnicompetent authorities could maintain. Plato can no more banish Homer from Greek culture than we can banish Shakespeare; these poets have put an indelible stamp on their civilizations. To say they merit our study and engagement is to state the obvious; to say they loom so large we have no choice but to reckon with them would be more accurate.

Yet the attempt to control thought can do incalculable damage, however doomed it is ultimately. And just as Plato’s guardians are to be kept on the path to virtue by the elimination of all examples of vice, so the self-appointed guardians of contemporary culture have decided that “inclusion” is the virtue of our time, and all literature that might make the path to inclusion a bumpy one must be flattened, bulldozed, paved over. No fat or ugly people in the children’s books of Roald Dahl; no Asian stereotypes in the mind of Ian Fleming’s 007. Readers of Kipling are suspect; Kenneth Clark’s exaltation of Chartres has a whiff of chauvinism about it.

A much-noticed piece in The New Yorker recently concerned “The End of the English Major.” Nathan Heller’s lengthy and depressing overview of the decline of student interest in the humanities, literature in particular, only once or twice barely touched upon what may be the most important cause of the malady it richly described. Students’ interest in the humanities has waned for multiple reasons: careerism in a tough economy (but without a corresponding rebound, as in the past, when conditions improve); the impact of the smartphone on reading habits and attention spans; an increasing emphasis by universities themselves on STEM education (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).

But the humanities have neglected the age-old maxim “know thyself.” At one point Heller quotes a Harvard dean and English professor saying, “Young people are very, very concerned about the ethics of representation, of cultural interaction—all these kinds of things that, actually, we think about a lot!” There speaks, not a student mind genuinely curious about literature, but a young drone—with that “ethics of representation” bushwa—already thoroughly schooled by the Ministry of Inclusion. That is, if anyone is actually saying that to the dean at all, which may be doubted.

Later in the article, for just a moment, other voices “suggest that the humanities’ loss of cultural capital has been hastened by the path of humanities scholarship itself.” But it is not simply that it has become too specialized and obscure, as these voices say. It is the relentless drumbeat, in countless English and other humanities departments, for “representation,” and “inclusion,” and the “interrogation” of literature through a “critical,” ideologically focused lens.

No one becomes a scholar of the humanities—of literature, language, philosophy, history—without first becoming a lover of books. And this passion is fed, not by “representation” and “inclusion” of the reader, or by hacking off the sharp corners of square-pegged works of art to fit them into the round holes of our ideological commitments. It is fed by strangeness—by the encounter with worlds hitherto unknown to us, where we begin by feeling disoriented, groping for a sense of direction, and finally getting our “book legs” under us by patient reading and study.

To acquaint students with works great, good, or merely instructive, it is incumbent on teachers not to flatter them with promises of their “inclusion” in the world of ideas, or to assure them that their ideological priors will be built up and reinforced. It is necessary instead to emphasize to them how they will benefit from being taken out of themselves into places where they do not feel at all included or represented, but where by dint of effort they can come to feel they belong after all.

As in the encounter with Roald Dahl’s grotesques, who have simultaneously repelled and fascinated children for sixty years, the future students and scholars of literature must leave behind the comfy confines constructed by the Ministry of Inclusion and begin again with the experience of strangeness.

This article has been republished with permission from The Public Discourse.

AUTHOR

Matthew J. Franck

Matthew J. Franck is Contributing Editor of Public Discourse. He is also Associate Director of the James Madison Program and Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University, Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon… More by Matthew J. Franck.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Don’t let women speak, especially not Moira Deeming

Australia has a problem with neo-fascists because it has a problem with liberals

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Military Under Attack – From Within!

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Air Force Academy Pushes Critical Race Theory Training on Cadets.

With Russia and China making belligerent noises almost daily, it is not comforting to watch our military headed down the dark alley of anti-American wokeism. Yet it is happening, and we now have a clear picture of it at the Air Force Academy.

We received 167 pages of records from the U.S. Department of Defense which show that the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) has made race and gender instruction a top priority in the training of cadets.

The records include recommendations that the USAFA considers “Behavioral Science 362, ‘Class, Race, Gender, and Sexuality’ as a core class,” that all curriculum be reviewed for “D&I” (diversity and inclusion) topics, and that all cadets and staff be educated in “specific D&I concepts and skills in order to decrease incidents of microaggressions, unconscious bias, etc.”

We obtained the records in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, Inc. (STARRS) against the U.S. Department of Defense for Air Force Academy records regarding “systemic racism,” as well as records of critical race theory at the Academy (Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, Inc. v U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:22-cv–02894)).

In the introduction to the September 21, 2020, “U.S. Air Force Academy Internal Racial Disparity Review,” Superintendent Lt. General Jay Silveria writes:

Systemic racism exists in our society. Identity groups, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or disability, have all experienced less-than-equal treatment in our nation, both historically and persisting in the present day. Ongoing events across our nation and around the world are a stark reminder that racism and social injustice continue to afflict our society. We must acknowledge that at USAFA we are not immune to these issues. What happens outside our gates also happens across our installation, and throughout the Cadet Wing. We would be naive to think otherwise, and negligent to ignore the impact of racism and injustice on our cadets, our permanent party and their families and our entire USAFA community.

Our military superiority relies on an incredibly diverse force of innovative individuals who must work cohesively as a team. There is no place in our words or actions for discrimination or racial bias of any kind, nor can we allow these behaviors to persist in the culture of our institution. A disregard for dignity and respect is corrosive to mission success, and will not be tolerated. To address these issues we must each, and as a cohesive team, look inward to continually examine ourselves and our institution for the prevalence of racism, discrimination, and injustice.

To that end, I directed what I hope will be an enduring, lasting effort to promote racial
understanding and diversity in the context of leadership. These actions included the
establishment of a Critical Conversations Working Group (CCWG), led by the Center for Character Development (CCLD), to facilitate recurring USAFA-wide critical conversations for cadets and permanent party. In addition, my Director of Staff and the Director of Equal Opportunity co-chaired an internal assessment and review for biases within our policies, processes, practices, curriculum, and artifacts. The objective of the assessment was to identify racial disparities unique to USAFA.

Under a heading “Limitations” in the “Purpose and Context” section the review states:

We must continually work to build future leaders and reinforce the principles that underpin our “Leader of Character” framework- living honorably, lifting others, and elevating performance- in the context of equal opportunity, diversity and inclusion, and respect for others. As an institution that develops officers to lead a diverse force, USAFA must instill these principles in those we teach and lead. These young men and women will ultimately shape the future culture of our military, and in turn influence the larger American society. As such, there is no place in our words and actions for discrimination or racial bias of any kind at USAFA, or in our Air and Space Forces.

Within the section titled “Diversity and Inclusion at USAFA [U.S. Air Force Academy],” under the heading “Additional Data Sources,” the review cites a 2020 Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) survey of cadets in the Class of 2024:

The survey collected information on student’s opinions on racial understanding, racial discrimination, preferential treatment (based on race/ethnicity), and other D&I (diversity & inclusion) related topics. Cursory analysis of the CL24 responses indicates:

  • 16% of our incoming cadets find that helping to promote racial understanding is not
    important (17% of Caucasian cadets, 15% of Minority cadets). The remainder of the
    cadets responded that it was somewhat important (38%), very important (28%), or
    essential (18 %).
  • 24% of our incoming cadets agreed that racial discrimination is no longer a major
    problem in America. The remainder of the cadets disagreed with that statement.
  • 75% of our incoming cadets rated themselves as average or above average when
    comparing themselves to the average person their own age in terms of their
    understanding of others.
  • One question asked whether the student agrees/disagrees whether individuals from
    disadvantaged social backgrounds should be given preferential treatment in college
    65% of the Caucasian and 45% of the Minority cadets disagreed while 35%
    of the Caucasian and 55% of the Minority cadets agreed with that statement.

Later in that section, under the heading “Equal Opportunity (USAF/EO,” the Air Force Academy’s Equal Opportunity office recommends the Academy:

Consider implementing Behavioral Science 362, ‘Class, Race, Gender, and Sexuality’ as a core class or pulling the content into shorter transition-week training opportunities spread across a cadet’s USAFA career. The material is highly regarded by cadets and graduates, and the information could be implemented on a larger scale (to include training for basics and sessions for each year group) to help cadets mature into D&I professionals for the Air Force.

In the section titled “The Way Forward,” the review introduces a “Triple Threat Group,” which was established in June 2020 “after national conversations surrounding police brutality, release of news articles addressing racial disparities in the AF discipline system, and the height of racial tension.” The review continues: “Triple Threat’s ongoing efforts align theory and considerations on how USAFA could address racial tension and unrest using a 3-tiered, ‘triple threat’ approach of Acknowledgment, Action, and Advocacy. In clarifying the need to address this issue, as well as to demonstrate the importance of these efforts, Triple Threat solicited shared stories from current cadets and graduates from the past year that captured realities and perceptions that bring awareness to the ‘Black experience” at USAFA [U.S. Air Force Academy].”

Also in that section of the review is a heading titled “Recommendations” that includes:

  • Ensure Diversity and Inclusion is incorporated into USAFA [U.S. Air Force Academy] guidance and policy. [Academy’s] Diversity and Inclusion plan must be updated as a strategic document guiding D&I [diversity and inclusion] efforts across the institution.
  • Expand the DF-led [dean of faculty] curriculum review to ensure all [Academy] curriculum, as identified under the Course of Instruction, is reviewed for D&I [diversity and inclusion] topics.
  • Educate and train cadets and staff on more specific D&I [diversity and inclusion] concepts and skills in order to decrease incidents of microaggressions, unconscious bias, etc., and enhance retention/inclusion. In addition, we must train our leaders across the institution on how to facilitate critical conversations on racial issues within their workplaces, so all Airmen can bring their full selves to work and leaders can create more inclusive spaces. Correlated to this effort is the need to develop a more robust racial bias incident reporting system with associated accountability and rehabilitation processes to restore relationships in the event biases or microaggressions are experienced.

In the “Triple Threat Proposal,” appendix, the review calls for “Cultural Immersion Movie Nights:”

Cultural Immersion Movie Nights is an initiative we propose to be held at Arnold Hall throughout the academic semesters. This initiative will allow cadets and permanent party to learn about racism, racial discrimination and the several historical events and policies that have impacted minorities through cinema. The goal is to help inform all members at this institution of the cultural history of other races and thus bring greater unity and understanding of other groups within the Cadet Wing.

The recently obtained documents also include an August 17, 2021, email, in which the sender and recipients are redacted, that discusses required textbook readings on “prejudice and discrimination,” which includes:

Identify examples of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination.

Describe how explicit and implicit prejudice differ.

Describe some of the social, emotional, and cognitive roots of prejudice.

The email goes on to state that Academy cadets were “asked to watch a video of the well-known ‘Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes’ demonstration.”

According to STARRS President and CEO Dr. Ronald J. Scott, Jr., Colonel, USAF, Retired, USAFA ’73: “Diversity, equity, and inclusion training stems from Marxist-inspired ideology known as critical race theory. While attractive to those who believe in justice and equal opportunity, it empowers those who hold positions of authority or influence to coerce others into compliance. This phenomenon is what C.S. Lewis wrote about when he grouped people into ‘the conditioners’ and ‘the conditioned’ in his 1940s book ‘The Abolition of Man.’”

These documents show our military and its rising leadership are under attack from within. The documents confirm U.S. Air Force Academy leadership is obsessed with anti-American critical race theory and seeks to punish and smear cadets through leftist indoctrination programs.

Our lawsuits and FOIA requests on critical race theory and other leftist extremism are extensive:

In November 2022, we separately sued the Air Force Academy for training material records on critical race theory.

In July 2022, we sued the Department of Defense for records related to the United States Naval Academy (USNA) implementing critical race theory (CRT) in the training of naval recruits.

In August, our client David Flynn, who was removed from his position as head football coach after exercising his right as a parent-citizen to raise concerns about critical race theory and Black Lives Matter propaganda in his daughter’s seventh-grade history class, settled his civil rights lawsuit against his former employers at Dedham Public Schools. As part of the settlement, the Superintendent of Dedham Public Schools, Michael Welch, acknowledged “the important and valid issues” raised by Flynn and specific changes in school policies because of Flynn’s complaint, including banning teachers from promoting Black Lives Matter to students online.

Also in August, we sued on behalf of a Minneapolis taxpayer over a teachers’ contract that provides discriminatory job protections to certain racial minorities. The lawsuit was filed against the superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, the Minneapolis Public Schools, and the Minneapolis Board of Education for violating the Equal Protection Guarantee of the Minnesota Constitution.

In June, we received records revealing critical race theory instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. One training slide contains a graphic titled “MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN THE USA.” [Emphasis in original]

Records produced in April 2022 from the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) show the government agency responsible for regulating credit unions required “inclusion and unconscious bias training” for the agency’s employees and contractors and offered advice on how to recognize and address alleged “microaggressions” in the workplace.

Records produced in February 2022 from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) included a PowerPoint presentation titled “Race and gender based microaggressions” that was used for training at the organization.

Two sets of records we obtained in November 2021 related to the teaching of critical race theory in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), Maryland’s largest school system, included a training course with information about a book titled “Antiracist Baby” that introduces the youngest readers to “the concept and power of antiracism,” and says it’s the “perfect gift” for “ages baby to age 3.”

Records from Loudoun County, VA, obtained in October 2021 revealed a coordinated effort to advance critical race theory initiatives in Loudoun County public schools despite widespread public opposition.

A training document provided to us in October 2021 by a whistleblower in the Westerly School District of Rhode Island, details how its schools are using teachers to push critical race theory in classrooms. The training course was assembled by the left-leaning Highlander Institute and cites quotes from Bettina Love, from whom the Biden administration distanced itself publicly after her statements equating “whiteness” to oppression.

Records produced in June 2021 by Wellesley Public Schools in Massachusetts confirmed the use of “affinity spaces” that divide students and staff based on race as a priority and objective of the school district’s “diversity, equity and inclusion” plan. The school district also admitted that between September 1, 2020, and May 17, 2021, it created “five distinct” segregated spaces.

Heavily redacted records we obtained in May 2021from Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland included documents related to their $454,000 “Anti-racist system audit” and critical race theory classes. Students were taught that the phrase “Make America Great Again” was an example of “covert white supremacy.”

You can see that your Judicial Watch is second to none in trying to expose and stop the CRT menace to the American way. Thank you for your support of this essential work, as we couldn’t do it without you!

College Gets Millions to Develop Journalist Tool to Combat “Misinformation”

The Biden administration (and the Deep State under Trump) has become obsessed with censoring our speech and using our tax dollars to abuse our First Amendment rights. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the latest.

The public university that recently got more than half a million dollars from the U.S. government to combat science misinformation in black communities is also receiving a chunk of change from American taxpayers to develop a “precision tool providing journalists with guidance against misinformation.” The fact-checking engine is called Course Correct and the academics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who are creating it assert it will help journalists identify trending misinformation on social media, strategically correct false claims and test the effectiveness of corrections in real time. “Challenges of misinformation are not restricted to elections and COVID or to a particular community,” according to one of the professors working on the project. “Countering misinformation will require vigilance and adaptation.” And apparently a lot of money from the government.

Public funding will flow through the National Science Foundation (NSF), the federal agency established by Congress in 1950 to promote the progress of science, advance national health and secure national defense. In two separate grants the NSF is awarding the University of Wisconsin-Madison north of $5.7 million to develop Course Correct. The first grant, for $750,000, focuses on delivering an innovative, three-step method to identify, test, and correct real-world instances of online disinformation by using computational means such as language processing, machine learning, social network analysis and computer vision to identify posts and accounts susceptible to misinformation. “Democracy and public health in the United States rely on trust in institutions,” the grant announcement states. “Skepticism regarding the integrity of U.S. elections and hesitancy related to COVID-19 vaccines are two consequences of a decline in confidence in basic political processes and core medical institutions. Social media serve as a major source of delegitimizing information about elections and vaccines, with networks of users actively sowing doubts about election integrity and vaccine efficacy, fueling the spread of misinformation.”

The initial NSF investment will support and empower efforts by journalists, developers, and citizens to fact-check information, the grant document says. They urgently need tools that can enable testing of fact-checking stories on topics such as elections and vaccines across social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook, according to the science agency. In short, the project is motivated by a desire to understand and help address what the Biden administration calls “two democratic and public health crises facing the U.S.” They are described as skepticism regarding the integrity of U.S. elections and hesitancy related to COVID-19 vaccines. “Both of these crises are fueled by online misinformation,” the NSF writes in the grant document.

The bigger chunk of money—up to $5 million—will pay for professors to test and refine the new, publicly funded Course Correct, which is being promoted as a Precision Guidance Against Misinformation. Creators of the digital dashboard will partner with local, state, national and international news and fact-checking organizations to create misinformation networks and test how effective the new mechanism is in helping journalists detect and correct misinformation. The focus will be on diffusers rather than producers of misinformation and to embed the experimental program into newsrooms worldwide. “By the end of Phase II, Course Correct intends to have further developed the digital dashboard in ways that could ultimately be adopted by other end users such as public health organizations, election administration officials, and commercial outlets,” according to the NHS.

The generous allocations for the costly endeavor come on the heels of another government-funded project at the same school to meet the Biden administration’s mission of combating disinformation. Just a few months ago University of Wisconsin-Madison professors received $576,061 to fight science-related misinformation and misperceptions in black communities. The goal of that initiative is to counter inequity and mistrust in scientific information and understand science misinformation in black communities, according to the NSF. “Black American experiences can pose particular challenges for effective communication on issues related to science and medicine, and recent misinformation campaigns have increasingly sought to capitalize on beliefs underlying mistrust within Black communities to spread misinformation,” according to that grant document. The professors who received the money assert that “Black Americans continue to face oppression and medical racism.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: How the Communists Take Down Freedom

/in , , , , , , , /by

Did you know that in every country taken over by communism, all the isms always follow the same plan? Cuba, at one time, was a very wealthy country and was the role model for a successful communist country.

First, they network into an organization. Then they lie, cheat, and steal about something or someone to create distrust, chaos, and riots. They always blame others for the things they do. They have no empathy and use children as their slaves.

Everything is connected. Nothing is random. Everyone follows the same plan. ALL PLANS ARE BASED ON LIES.

They only care about MONEY, POWER, and CONTROL

JOIN US as we talk about RINOs and how the communists take over a country.

GUESTS

CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT

Chris Wright is an independent liberty activist who travels in Tea Party and libertarian circles. Anticommunism is one of his main areas of focus. He started the Anticommunism Action Team (ACAT) in 2013 to counter communist influence here and abroad. ACAT’s Speakers Bureau has presented at the Heritage Foundation and Leadership Institute and has been on Breitbart and LevinTV. ACAT speakers (survivors of communism and subject matter experts) are available free of charge anywhere in the world through videoconferencing. Free newsletter – your contact information is never sold or shared. His website is the home of the Anticommunism Action Team. Website: www.Spider-and-the-Fly.com.

DR. ORLANDO GUIÈRREZ-BORONAT

Dr. Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat is an award-winning author, co-founder, and spokesperson for the Cuban Democratic Directorate, an NGO seeking human rights and democratic change in Cuba funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. He launched Radio República, which reaches Cubans on the island every day with uncensored news and information through shortwave radio. He was instrumental in the creation of the Justice Cuba Commission, which investigates the crimes against humanity of the Cuban regime. An invited lecturer at Georgetown University and a community leader, Dr. Gutiérrez-Boronat holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy of International Studies from the University of Miami.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

EDITORS NOTE: This The Prism of America’s Education podcast is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

House Passes Legislation To Give Parents More Say In Their Kids’ Education

/in , , , , , , , /by

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a piece of legislation on Friday aimed at giving parents more of a say in school curriculum and more control over their children’s education.

In a 213 – 208 vote, the House approved the Parents Bill of Rights, which would require school districts to annually post their curriculum online, allowing parents to review the materials. The bill, considered the “Politics over Parents Act” by Democratic politicians, moves to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it is unlikely to pass.

“My colleagues and I are committed to ensuring that parents always have a seat at the table when it comes to their child’s upbringing and education,” Republican Michigan Rep. Tim Walberg said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Today, we kept a key promise made in the Commitment to America by passing the Parents Bill of Rights. This is a crucial step in fighting to increase transparency and defend the rights of parents.”

Under the legislation, school districts must notify parents of any violence that occurs on campus. School districts are also required to provide parents with a list of materials students can access at the library, the bill stated.

The bill mandates that school districts take parents’ input into consideration when drafting policies, requiring that school boards respect the First Amendment rights of those who voice their concerns at meetings. Teachers must host two in person teacher-parent meetings per year, under the legislation.

An approved amendment to the bill, sponsored by Republican Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, requires school districts to alert parents if their child is sharing a bathroom, locker room or sports team with a student of the opposite biological sex.

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the bill “facist” and said the legislation would out members of the LGBT community “before they were ready,” the New York Post reported.

“When we talk about progressive values, I can say what my progressive value is, and that is freedom over fascism,” Ocasio-Cortez said according to the New York Post.

“The administration does not support H.R. 5 in its current form because the bill does not actually help parents support their children at school,” the White House said in a statement to NBC News. “Moreover, instead of making LGBTQI+ students feel included in their school community, it puts them at higher risk. The administration strongly supports actions that empower parents to engage with their children’s teachers and schools, like enabling parents to take time off to attend school meetings. Legislation should not politicize our children’s education.”

Around the country, parents are pushing back against school boards to have a say in what materials are available in schools; a group of Maine parents created a database of 82 sexually explicit books found in the school district’s libraries. In California, several parents compiled a database of age-inappropriate content in the district libraries.

“As a mom of two and a former educator, I believe for children to succeed, they need families and schools to work together as partners throughout the learning process,” Republican Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow, the bill’s sponsor, said in a statement to the DCNF. “After spending nearly a year and a half working to pass this bill, I’m grateful that we’re finally able to advance this critical legislation.”

AUTHOR

REAGAN REESE

Contributor.

RELATED VIDEO: AOC Says That The Republican Parents Rights Bill Is “Fascism”

RELATED ARTICLES:

Teacher Calls For ‘Getting Rid Of Girls And Boys’ To Break Gender Binary

‘Have Our Voices Heard’: House Republicans Gather Florida Parents’ Input Ahead Of Education Bill Vote

‘Intimidating Parents Into Silence’: Garland’s FBI Order On School Meetings Had ‘Chilling’ Effect, Attorney Testifies

‘I Didn’t Think It Would Be This Quick’: Another Florida School Terminates Its Chief Diversity Official

Dem Rep Claims Parental Rights In Education Bill Will Lead To ‘Hate, Bigotry’ And ‘Death’

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Islam: From the Delusional to the Dangerous

/in , , , , , , /by

“We are our beliefs,” it is said. Beliefs steer people in life. Some beliefs are harmless, some are the motive force for good, and yet others are delusional, misguided, and even outright dangerous. Every version of the belief called “Islam” ranges from the delusional to the dangerous.

Islam is a Grand Delusion, birthed by Muhammad’s hallucination he relayed to his first wife and employer, Khadija. Greatly frightened, he told Khadija that he was visited by a jinn (devil) in the Hira cave. Khadija comforted the distraught man by assuring him that the episode was Allah’s way of choosing him as his messenger. Muhammad believed his rich wife-employer who was 15 years his senior and the delusion became a belief—Islam.

Remarkably enough, under the early tutelage of Khadija, Muhammad succeeded in attracting a number of influential followers. Before long, the movement gathered more and more power through violent campaigns, and the faith was taken to new people and alien lands. This grand delusion, Islam, presently has in its stranglehold over a billion humans, posing an existential threat to all non-Muslims.

Islam is rooted in the primitive tribal mentality of “We against Them,” “We the righteous against the heathens,” and “We the servants submissive of the Great Allah against the rebellious enemies of Allah.” Islam is a polarizer. Islam is an enemy-maker. To Islam, a non-Muslim is a combatant against Allah and he is fair game to be subjugated and killed.

When some billion and a half adhere to the pathological belief of Islam and use it as their marching order of life, the rest of humanity can ignore the threat only at its own peril.

Once again, a resurgent Islam is on a campaign of conquest throughout the world. Hordes of life-in-hand foot-solider fanatical Muslims are striving to kill and get killed. All they want is the opportunity to discharge their homicidal-suicidal impulse, on their way to Allah’s promised glorious paradise. And in the background granting the foot soldiers wishes are their handlers, the puppeteers, who pull the strings and detonate these human bombs. Those who cherish life must recognize these emissaries of death, what makes them, what motivates them, and how best to defend against them.

The campaign of death waged by the Islamist jihadist, be he a puppet or a puppeteer, is energized by the belief in delectable rewards that await the faithful implementer of Allah’s dictates. Through highly effective indoctrination, the jihadist has come to believe firmly in Islam’s grand delusion. He believes that Allah is the one and only supreme creator of earth and heavens; that it is his duty and privilege to abide by Allah’s will and carry out his plans at all costs; he believes firmly in a gloriously wonderful immortal afterlife in paradise, for which a martyr’s death is the surest quickest admission. Although the dominating theme of the delusion is quasi-spiritual, the promised rewards of the afterlife awaiting the martyr are sensual and material. All the things and activities that the jihadist desires and cannot attain or practice, and rejects in his earthly life will be purified and proffered to him in the paradise of the next life. Thus goes the delusion.

It is important to understand that the human mind is not a perfect discerner of objective reality. In actuality, the reality is in the mind of the beholder. The outside world only supplies bits and pieces of raw material that the mind puts together to form its reality. Depending on the type and amount of bits and pieces that a given mind receives, its reality can be very different from that of another mind.

The more prescribed and homogeneous a group, the greater the group’s consensual reality, since the members share much in common experiential input and reinforce each other’s mindset. Thus, members of a given religious order, for instance, tend to think much more similar to one another than to members of other groups with different experiential histories.

Various approximations of the objective reality, therefore, rule the mind. The degree to which these approximations deviate from the larger group’s consensual reality determines their delusional extent and severity.

A cocaine mainliner, for instance, under the influence of the drug, may become convinced that a bug is burrowing under his skin. In his absolute, although clearly false, a certitude of the reality of his perception, cocaine users are known to take a knife to their own body to dig the burrowing bug out before it has penetrated too deeply.

A methamphetamine user’s reality is often distorted in a different way. Under the influence of the drug, intense paranoia overtakes him. His reality is dominated by the belief that one or more people are lurking about to harm or kill him. He may wield a deadly weapon, going from room to room, from closet to closet, in search of the assailants.

If you believe that a bug is camping deeply inside your body, then you might go ahead and try to dig the non-existent bug out. If you believe that people are lurking around the house to harm or kill you, you go after them before they get you. If you believe that all the troubles of the world are due to the evil-doings of the non-Muslims who war against Allah, then you do all you can to fight and kill them, particularly since Allah tells you to do so in the Quran.

The drug-induced delusions are hallucinations. They are dramatic and usually transitory, while religiously-based implantation of ideas programs the mind with lasting delusions.

Delusions, even when they are at great variance from the objective reality, can rule the mind without the need for drugs, or as a result of neurological dysfunctions or other factors. The young and the less educated are most vulnerable to believing the claims of charlatans, con artists, and cunning clerics, as truth and reality.

A tragic example of the young’s susceptibility to induced delusion is the case of thousands of Iranian children who were used as human minesweepers in the last Iran-Iraq war. The mullahs issued made-in-China plastic keys for paradise to children as an enticement to go forward and clear the minefield with their bodies ahead of the military’s armored vehicles. The children believed the murderers and rushed to their death, thinking that they were headed for Islam’s glorious paradise.

The repeated intense indoctrination of the children even changed the perception of some of the charlatan mullahs so that they, themselves, believed their own lies, took their own keys to Allah’s paradise, and rushed to their death clinging to the plastic trinkets. Hence, some of the puppeteers, in this instance, became puppets themselves. Such are the follies and fallibilities of the human mind.

It is, therefore, understandable that many of the higher-up Islamic puppeteers, who are usually brainwashed from early childhood, devote their fortunes and persons to the implementation of their deeply engrained delusions.

Deluded by the threats and promises of Islam, Muslims, poor or rich, vie with one another in furthering the violent cause of Allah.

Many non-Muslims are also victims of a different, yet just as deadly, delusion. They believe that Islam is a religion of peace, that only a small minority of Muslims are jihadists, and that Muslims can be reasoned to abandon the Quran-mandated elimination of non-believers. These well-meaning simpletons are just as deluded as the fanatic jihadists by refusing to acknowledge the fact that one cannot be a Muslim and not abide by the dictates of the Quran.

©Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

Government Officials are Conspiring Against We the People? Time to Expose and Punish Them All!

/in , , , , , , , , /by

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” ― Frederick Douglass, American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman. 

“The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. 

Conspiring against we the people is illegal.

We are witnessing multiple conspiracies since the inauguration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. and his administration.

Among these conspiracies are: The January 6th rally in Washington, D.C.  was an “insurrection”, parents who speak out about what their children are learning and reading in public schools are “domestic terrorists”, if you are white you are a “racist”, if you believe there are only two genders (male XX and female XY) you are “racist and homophobic”, if you are a patriot who believes in the U.S. Constitution you are a “racist and enemy of the state”, if you believe that the 2020 election was stolen you are a “threat to democracy”, if you believe that mankind cannot control the climate you are “anti-science”, if you believe that America’s borders must be protected at all cost you are “racist”, if you believe that Islam is not the religion of peace you are “Islamophobic”, if you are unvaccinated you are a “threat to others”,  if you speak truth to power you are the “enemy of the regime.”

These and other conspiracies have cause we the people to be: censored, ostracized, fired, humiliated, investigated, spied on, arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed.

Punishment for those who Conspire to take our Rights

America is a nation of laws. Without laws and a moral people to enforce them, we are lost as a nation.

All laws derive from the U.S. Constitution. If a law violates the Constitution then that law is null and void.

Those whom we elect are expected to follow Constitutionally valid laws, or if need be, change the laws to better protect our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

So what if our public officials at every level violate their oaths of office and conspire against we the people? We the people must then invoke the law and hold these conspirators to task.

QUESTION: What law deals with conspiracy?

ANSWER: 18 U.S. Code § 241 – Conspiracy against rights

18 U.S. Code § 241 – Conspiracy against rights states:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—

They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

The Bottom Line

Since the Republicans took the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives Americans are learning about more and more persons in the federal government who have been conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate we the people.

It is time to expose these conspirators and traitors. It is time to hold them to the letter of the law.

If found guilty of conspiracy then it is time to punish them to the fullest extent of the law.

If they prevent or hinder our free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured then the must pay for their transgressions.

If we the people don’t do not defend ourselves against these conspirators then our Constitutional Republic will be lost.

President Abraham Lincoln wrote, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Let us live through all time a free men and women.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED DOCUMENTARY: Unacceptable Views

AZ Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Kari Lake In Election Case

/in , , , , , , , , /by

The Arizona Supreme Court rules in favor of Kari Lake, forces lower court to look at signature verification issues.

This is a fight that must be waged. Without free and fair elections, nothing else matters. We’re done.

Kari Lake Gets Update From Supreme Court on Her Arizona Election Lawsuit

By: Katherine Fung, Newsweek, March 22, 2023:

The Arizona Supreme Court breathed new life into the election lawsuit of former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake but dismissed most of the Republican’s arguments as insufficient.

On Wednesday, justices on the state’s high court accepted Lake’s argument that lower courts erroneously dismissed her challenge to the application of the signature verification process in the 2022 midterm election. However, the court sided against Lake in six of her seven claims in the suit.

Lake, who’s become a prominent voice in the Republican Party, maintains that voting irregularities and misconduct potentially cost her the election. Her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, had won by more than 17,000 votes and has been in office since January……

Read more

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

INNOCENT: President Trump Did NOT Reimburse Michael Cohen for Money Paid to Stormy Daniels, Soros DA Hid Evidence From Grand Jury

/in , , , , , , , , /by

There is no case. There never was a case. It doesn’t matter.

In a Feb 2018 document just uncovered, Michael Cohen’s own attorney, in a letter to the Federal Election Commission, says that “the payment in question does NOT constitute a campaign contribution.”

The key witness is lying to the Grand Jury. This letter is in direct conflict with Cohen’s sworn testimony to Congress.

The letter is in direct conflict with Cohen’s sworn testimony to Congress.

Chaos at court as Trump Grand Jury Hearing Cancelled, Bragg concerned about indictment and ADAS are ‘shaking their heads’

Letter from Michael Cohen claiming Donald Trump did NOT reimburse him for hush money paid to Stormy Daniels appears to fly in the face of the star witness’s grand jury testimony

  • Bombshell document, exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com, could cripple prosecutors’ pursuit of criminal charges against Trump
  • Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, is the star witness in the case over which Trump reportedly faces imminent arrest for campaign finance violations
  • But in a February 2018 letter Cohen’s attorney wrote that ‘Mr. Cohen used his own personal funds’ and that ‘neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign reimbursed Mr. Cohen’

By Josh Boshwell for Daily Mail,  23 March 2023:

Michael Cohen claimed he was not reimbursed by Donald Trump or his organization for hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in a 2018 letter to federal authorities, contradicting his recent grand jury testimony,

The bombshell document, exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com, could throw a wrench in the works of prosecutors pursuing criminal charges against Trump over the payments.

Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and the star witness in the case over which Trump reportedly faces imminent arrest, claims that Trump got him to pay $130,000 to Daniels to keep her quiet about her alleged affair with the real estate mogul, just days before the 2016 presidential election.

He says Trump reimbursed him with personal funds, and later pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law over the hush money.

After canceling today’s session, the grand jury has been asked to return at noon Thursday, when prosecutors ‘may present one more witness,’ a court official told DailyMail.com.

The letter appears to be in direct conflict with Cohen’s sworn testimony to Congress given a year later.

Cohen said under oath that Trump ‘asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair,’ and that ‘Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign.’

But in a February 8, 2018 letter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Cohen’s attorney Stephen Ryan wrote: ‘Mr. Cohen used his own personal funds’, and that ‘Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly.’

The letter was written in response to an FEC probe launched after complaints of campaign finance violations, lodged by Paul Ryan and the organization Common Cause.

‘In a private transaction in 2016, before the U.S. presidential election, Mr. Cohen used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford,’ Cohen’s lawyer, who worked at McDermott Will & Emery, wrote.

‘Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Totally Exculpatory’: Trump Reveals Cohen Attorney Letter He Says Will Undercut Manhattan DA’s Case

Soros DA Alvin Bragg POSTPONES Today’s Noon Trump Indictment Hearing Again

Hunter Biden Used FBI Mole Named “One-Eye” To Tip Him Off to China Probes: Whistleblower

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Environmental Protection Shouldn’t Mean Economic Suicide

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

When I was in college in southern California many years ago, the smog could be overwhelming. Visibility was low and the sense of being closed-in by a layer of brownish-grey was ongoing. Then, one day it rained. The sky was actually blue and, to my great surprise, you could see the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance.

In the ensuing 40-plus years, the United States has made great progress in its war against all manner of pollution. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, since the enactment of the Clean Air Act in 1970 through 2019, “the combined emissions of the six common pollutants (PM2.5 and PM10, SO2, NOx, VOCs, CO and Pb) dropped by 77 percent.” This has occurred even as energy consumption has remained at an almost constant level — despite growth in the population by about 100 million people.

The EPA also reports that “Compared to 1970 vehicle models, new cars, SUVs and pickup trucks are roughly 99 percent cleaner for common pollutants (hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particle emissions).” Additionally, the U.S. is increasingly using renewable energy sources. One example: From 2000 through 2018, the use of coal as an energy source fell from about 23% percent of our total energy portfolio to about 13 percent. Similarly, clean natural gas went from accounting for about 24% percent of our energy consumption to about 31%. Other renewable energy sources (nuclear, solar, etc.) are also increasing. And, generally, the industrialized nations of Europe are also making notable progress.

But America still needs oil. A lot of oil. We will continue to need oil for decades to come. That is, unless we want to commit economic suicide.

That seems not to concern people on the environmental Left, who are outraged that President Biden opened up a relatively small sliver of Alaska for drilling. ConocoPhillips will drill 199 wells at three sites in the Willow Project area, employing 3,500 people outright and, over the longer term, several hundred in permanent jobs.

Here’s the irony: While America once again engages in national agony over a modest oil drilling plan, China is laughing up its sleeve at our tortured efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Just last year, China opened roughly two new coal plants a week. As recent report explains, in 2022 China’s construction of coal power plants was “six times as large as that in all of the rest of the world combined.”

India is in much the same boat. “From 2001 to 2021, India installed 168 gigawatts of coal-fired generation, nearly double what it added in solar and wind power combined,” according to one study. While the subcontinental nation is making strides toward clean energy use, the reality is that “its electricity demand will grow up to 6% every year for the next decade.”

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that America abandon its commitment to cleaner sources of energy. Rather, we have to simply be honest: If we tie ourselves to extreme environmental standards while much of the rest of the world keeps employing fossil fuels at record rates, we will only hurt our ability to foster job creation here at home and our capacity to compete successfully in the global economy.

Economic transitions can be hard. Carriage makers were no doubt unhappy with the advent of the automobile. The issue before us is how rapidly we should move toward a “carbon-neutral” economy. Under the Biden administration, even American agriculture is a target. In a biting analysis, Heritage Foundation scholar Daren Bakst reports that at last year’s White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, the administration advocated for policies that would “centrally plan how farmers produce food, what food farmers produce, and what food people eat.” The Biden plan “also appears far more concerned with environmental outcomes than efficiency, productivity, and affordability.”

As America moves toward “clean” energy, we should not do so to appease activists at the cost of jobs, prosperity, sound mining and farming policies, and our continued leadership in international markets. Our country does not exist in pristine isolation any more than the wind stops at our borders.

The only way we get a clean environment is if we have the resources to obtain it. The only way we have those resources is if we have a strong economy. And the only way we have a strong economy is if our laws and regulations make sense.

I love the memory of seeing mountains in the far distance. But I also like filling up my car’s gas tank affordably. We can have both economic growth and environmental health, but only if we also have a strong dose of national common sense.

AUTHOR

Rob Schwarzwalder

Rob Schwarzwalder is Senior Lecturer in Regent University’s Honors College.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘A Lie’: Experts Denounce Biden Veto Preserving ESG Rule

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Extensive Collusion’: House Committee Report Confirms DOJ Targeting of Parents

/in , , , , , , , /by

The Department of Justice “extensively colluded” with a special interest group to “manufacture” a supposedly sweeping threat against school personnel posed by parents, a House Subcommittee interim staff report has found. Experts say the findings further confirm what DOJ officials have denied — that the government worked behind the scenes to undermine a grassroots movement of outspoken parents concerned about their children being exposed to controversial racial and gender theories and mask mandates at school.

On Tuesday, the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released its findings regarding the controversial memo issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland in October 2021 to “federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement,” in which he ordered the FBI to coordinate investigations of parents due to an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”

The subcommittee report reveals that the National School Boards Association (NSBA) “collaborated with the Biden White House to develop the language of the NSBA’s September 29, 2021 letter to President Biden urging the use of federal law enforcement and counterterrorism tools, including the Patriot Act, against parents.” The NSBA letter suggested that parents should be investigated for “domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” which it later apologized for.

Five days after the NSBA letter was sent to Biden, Garland issued the contentious memo. Two weeks later, the FBI’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions announced the creation of a new threat tag for the investigation — “EDUOFFICIALS.” One related investigation by an FBI field office targeted “a dad opposed to mask mandates” who “fit the profile of an insurrectionist.” When the FBI interviewed the complainant who reported the dad, they admitted they had “no specific information or observations of . . . any crimes or threats.”

As a direct result of Garland’s memo, the report found that federal law enforcement used “counterterrorism resources to investigate protected First Amendment activity.” The FBI later revealed that it had “opened 25 ‘Guardian assessments’ with the EDUOFFICIALS threat tag.” Of these 25 investigations, “the FBI determined that only one warranted opening a ‘Full Investigation,’ and referred the majority of the remaining cases to state and local authorities. There have still been no federal prosecutions.”

The report went on to note that “[t]he overwhelming majority of judicial districts reported not having heard of any instances of threats or violence being levied at school board officials. One U.S. Attorney reported that threats against school officials was ‘described by some as a manufactured issue.’” It also observed that local law enforcement officials around the country “warned of ‘misapplied’ federal law-enforcement priorities, and local officials generally opposed federal intervention at local school board meetings.”

The subcommittee report concluded that the DOJ failed to perform “any due diligence prior to the issuance of the Attorney General’s memorandum.” If the department had done this, the report asserts, “it would have understood clearly and forcefully that federal intervention was unwarranted.” As a result, the report noted, “parents around the country had FBI ‘assessments’ opened into them.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill like Congressman Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) are conveying relief at the prospect Garland’s potential exit in 2025.

“I think this demonstrates to people across our country how fortunate we are that Merrick Garland is not sitting on the Supreme Court bench right now, because that was what was proposed under the Obama administration,” he observed on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Wednesday. “And then he would be making these decisions for life right now. As problematic as this is, at least we can assume that as soon as the Biden administration term has ended, that Merrick Garland’s term also will end.”

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, expressed alarm at the report’s findings while also encouraging resolve on the part of parents.

“This report confirms all our worst suspicions,” she told The Washington Stand. “The degree to which the government has been used to attack parents at the behest of education bureaucrats who are supposed to serve children and families cannot be overstated. Parents knew this by instinct — that the powerful were working together to advance their own interests instead of working for the good of children and families. And they have no problem exercising Gestapo-like tactics on parents, while advancing progressive policies inside schools that amount to lawless chaos for children and teachers.”

“Christians must engage — we must not allow ourselves to be intimidated by these tactics,” Kilgannon concluded.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden, DOJ Worked Together to Brand Parents as Terrorists

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.