Deranged Democrats Outraged as Respected Historian Blisters 1619 Project

Nothing outrages the Democrats more than truth and accuracy. Hellzapoppin.

Left Upset as Respected Historian Blisters 1619 Project

Daybreak Insider, September 21, 2021:

Princeton historian Sean Wilentz wrote in his lengthy piece regarding the take on the American Revolution

“If it were a high school history paper, that discussion alone would have been grounds for failure. It’s rare, after all, to read a student get every single stated fact perfectly wrong, in support of a proposition for which there is no other evidence cited, on two of the most important topics in all of U.S. history, indeed, all of modern history, the causes of the American Revolution and the origins of antislavery. But this wasn’t a high school paper, it was the New York Times Magazine, and the author was, according to her contributor’s biography, a highly acclaimed journalist. The essay may have been historically fallacious, but it was also inflammatory and attention-getting (Historica).

From Dan McLaughlin:

Wilentz has fired another salvo against the 1619 Project, its editor and lead essayist Nikole Hannah-Jones, Times Magazine editor in chief Jake Silverstein, and more broadly, the intellectual climate of “anti-racist” politics that produce warped history while intimidating serious scholars into silence (National Review).

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

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FLORIDA: School Board Insanity – Ignoring Their Own Rules And Shutting Down Public Comment [Video]

As you probably have heard by now, the Liberal Majority on the Sarasota County School Board is on a rampage.

In addition to forcing masks on young children, the Liberal School Board Members are blocking citizens from criticizing individual board members during public comment and have now been caught ignoring their own mask mandate while on campus.

Thankfully, my wife and Conservative School Board Member – Bridget Ziegler – is speaking up and fighting back. She recently appeared on Ben Shapiro to discuss the erosion of parental rights in our schools and the importance of school board elections:

Reminder: THREE OF THE FIVE SEATS on the Sarasota School Board election will be decided during the Primary Election on AUGUST 23, 2022.

SCHOOL BOARD CHAIRMAN SHIRLEY BROWN PUSHING MASK MANDATES ON CHILDREN – AT ALL TIMES ON CAMPUS, INCLUDING INDOOR AND OUTDOORS – VIOLATES HER OWN RULES WHILE ATTENDING A FOOTBALL GAME ON A SCHOOL CAMPUS

“I think people at football games are adults, and they can make their own decisions,” [School Board Member Shirley] Brown said. “I complied with the freaking policy even though I probably didn’t have to.”

Read more.

LIBERALS ON THE SARASOTA COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD SHUTS DOWN CRITICISM FROM PUBLIC DURING PUBLIC COMMENT AT PUBLIC MEETINGS

“On Tuesday evening, board Vice Chairwoman Jane Goodwin cut off the microphone, threatened to kick citizens out and directed the School District police force to escort citizens out of School Board chambers who criticized specific elected officials during the public comment period.”

Read more.

©Christian Ziegler. All rights reserved.

Schooling Mark Milley: A General Idea of Critical Race Theory for the Chair of the Joint Chiefs

Bill Whittle takes on schooling Gen. Mark Milley, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the general idea of critical race theory, and other critical subjects.

Moving Back to America is a production of the Members at https://BillWhittle.com.

©Bill Whittle. All rights reserved.

WATCH: Entire Army Football Team Runs Onto Field Carrying American Flags

Breathtaking! Brought a tear to my eye….. Gd bless America.

WATCH: Entire Army Football Team Runs Onto Field Carrying American Flags

By Daily Wire, September 12, 2021

The entire football team of the Army Black Knights football team carried American flags as they ran onto the field on Saturday, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks, in their game against the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers.

WATCH:

On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airplanes to carry out suicide attacks against the U.S. Two of the planes were flown into the two main World Trade Center towers in New York City, one was flown into the Pentagon, and the fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought the terrorists and prevented the plane from being flown into a building.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed during the attacks and thousands more died in subsequent years from a variety of health issues stemming from that day and on the battlefield in what became a multi-trillion dollar Global War on Terrorism.

“The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were a national tragedy that resulted in a staggering loss of life and a significant change in American culture,” NASA said in a press release that included pictures of the attacks from space. “Each year, we pause and never forget. Beyond remembering and honoring the Americans who died that day, NASA also assisted FEMA in New York in the days afterward, and remembered the victims by providing flags flown aboard the Space Shuttle to their families.”

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

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

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Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.

Arizona Elementary School District Hit by Same Covid Vaccine Madness Afflicting the NFL

Keeping kids safe is the number-one priority for any elementary school in America, right? But then there is the Cartwright School District in Phoenix, where selectively enforcing a Covid vaccination policy tops taking care of the kids.

How do we know this? Consider the case of one William Bishop, the now-former director for buildings and operations, who was recently demoted to substitute teacher by Cartwright Superintendent Dr. Lee-Ann Aguilar-Lawlor.

Why was Bishop demoted? Because his faith precludes his submitting to the Covid vaccination shot. The demotion came after he requested a religious accommodation, a request to which school officials never responded, except to bust him way down the pay chart.

Bishop is represented by the First Liberty Institute, the Plano, Texas-based public interest law firm that specializes in First Amendment litigation, especially when issues of religious freedom are involved.

Cartwright’s conduct is shot through with disrespect for constitutional liberties, to say nothing of common sense. Consider the description cited by First Liberty Counsel Rebecca Dummermuth in a September 9 letter to Aguilar-Lawlor:

“Cartwright’s actions are particularly indefensible because: (1) it already granted at least one nonreligious exemption from the mandate; (2) its demotion of Mr. Bishop will bring him into far more contact with students and other staff, thus contradicting the district’s presumed rationale for refusing to grant his accommodation request; (3) it chose not to impose its mandate on teachers, those most in contact with students and staff; (4) 21 percent of district employees remain unvaccinated; and (5) Mr. Bishop has natural immunity and his doctor advises against receiving the vaccine.

“These circumstances leave Cartwright with no tenable argument that a religious accommodation would impose undue hardship on it or that it has a compelling interest in imposing its mandate on Mr. Bishop but not many other employees (including those whose duties involve far more contact with students and staff).

“Therefore, the district is plainly in violation of the laws set forth above. To be clear, Mr. Bishop has no objection to a reasonable accommodation that could serve the District’s presumed health concerns. But he cannot accept the unlawful, second-class treatment to which the district has subjected him.”

Bishop’s objections are deeply rooted in his Christian faith, according to Dummermuth, who told Aquilar-Lawlor in the letter that:

“Mr. Bishop’s sincerely held religious beliefs prevent him from complying with the mandate to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. As a Christian, he believes that his body is a temple of God (I Corinthians. 3:16-17, 6:19), and therefore he has a God-given responsibility to protect the physical integrity of his body and not to defile it (I Corinthians. 8:7; II Corinthians. 7:1).

“Additionally, he believes that human life begins at conception, and he staunchly opposes abortion. Therefore, receiving a vaccine that has been developed using aborted fetal cell lines would violate his conscience.”

The district continues to pay Bishop his old salary, but the contract that specified the amount expires in the near future. Replacing it with a new contract based on a substitute teacher’s compensation will represent a 50 percent pay cut for Bishop.

*****

Continue reading this article, published September 10, 2021 at  PJ Media.

 

TikTok Still Exposing Kids to Sexual Content

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is urging TikTok to improve content moderation to better protect children on the platform. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that minors can be exposed to videos featuring sexual content.

“While we have commended TikTok for making significant safety improvements over the last year, it is clear that TikTok needs to do much more to protect minors from exposure to sexual content and pornographic websites. We have been pressing on TikTok to proactively moderate content because even our own research confirms what the Wall Street Journal found: under an account we created as a 13-year-old, we were easily able to find videos promoting OnlyFans, as well as other pornography and prostitution sites despite the fact that this type of material is against TikTok’s Community Guidelines,” said Lina Nealon, director of corporate and strategic initiatives for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.

“If a social media company like TikTok is not sufficiently and proactively moderating content through AI and human review, kids will continue to be exposed to sexual or pornographic material no matter how many safety controls are in place. TikTok and all social media companies must be accountable for the environments they create, especially when their insufficient policies and practices leave so much room for exploitation, abuse, and harm,” Nealon said.

After being named to NCOSE’s 2020 Dirty Dozen List and meeting with NCOSE, TikTok implemented several of NCOSE’s recommendations to significantly improve their safety features for minors, such as disabling direct messaging for those under 16 and allowing parents to lock controls with a pin code. TikTok was named to NCOSE’s 2021 Dirty Dozen “Watch List,” given the significant improvements it had made to the platform, though NCOSE continued to urge TikTok to default “restricted mode” for minors and improve content moderation. The Dirty Dozen List highlights mainstream contributors to sexual exploitation.

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

Surge in Antisemitism Linked to Spread of Critical Race Theory

There’s a strong connection between critical social justice ideology, including critical race theory, and a rising tide of antisemitism around the globe, according to a new report from the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values.

As more businesses and governments adopt initiatives based on critical social justice ideology, antisemitic and other forms of bigotry are flourishing.

“When you hold an ideology that there are really only two kinds of people in the world, those that are oppressed and those that are oppressors, you’re going to end up empowering ideas of antisemitism,” says David Bernstein, a longtime Jewish advocate as well as the founder and CEO of the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Jewish Institute for Liberal Values.

He joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss his organization’s new report, as well as the implications for continued global acceptance of critical social justice ideologies.

Doug Blair: Our guest today is David Bernstein, a longtime Jewish advocate and founder and CEO of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values. David, thank you so much for joining us.

David Bernstein: Great to be with you.

Blair: Great. Your organization just released a white paper on how critical social justice ideology has led to an increase in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment. Before we get into the white paper, would you be able to start by defining for our listeners what exactly critical social justice ideology is?

Bernstein: Sure. Critical social justice ideology is an umbrella term for critical race theory and other critical ideologies that we’re seeing—critical gender ideology, for example. It basically holds that bias and oppression are not just a matter of individual attitudes, as we’ve traditionally thought about them, but are embedded in the systems and structures of society. It also holds, problematic, in my view, that only those who are adversely affected by those systems, only the system’s victims, have standing to define racism or prejudice or bigotry for the rest of society.

That’s what we’re talking about here, is that ideology, which has taken hold in so many institutions in American life in the past several years, and particularly in the past year is producing antisemitism, among other problems, of course.

Blair: Where is this located? Are we finding critical social justice ideology in schools and certain political viewpoints? Where do we find this ideology present in our culture?

Bernstein: Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty much everywhere, or almost everywhere. You’re seeing it in newsrooms now, as you’ve seen it in The New York Times recently. You’re seeing it in health care institutions, in medicine, in scientific institutions quite ominously. Can you imagine how that’s going to corrupt scientific research over time? We’re seeing it in K-12 schools, obviously in universities and schools of education. We’re seeing it in the nonprofit world.

It’s pretty much everywhere. It’s in major corporations that are doing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that are quite liberal in nature. We’re seeing it really take hold in a vast array of institutions in American life.

Blair: All right. Now, we have a definition of what this ideology is, what critical social justice ideology is. We can dive into your report. Let’s start with the top line. What relationship did your research find between critical social justice ideology and antisemitism?

Bernstein: When you hold an ideology that there are really only two kinds of people in the world, those that are oppressed and those that are oppressors, you’re going to end up empowering ideas of antisemitism. For example, this idea of Jewish privilege, which is an offshoot of white privilege.

When you say that there’s only oppressors and oppressed, then Jews who have succeeded largely in American society are going to be viewed as the oppressor class, and Israel, which has succeeded largely in the Middle East, is going to be viewed as the oppressor country. That, in the most simple form, is the problem, but it gets more complicated and sometimes more ominous as you look into it more.

I mean, the idea, for example, of intersectionality, which I’m sure your listeners are familiar with, this idea that all forms of oppression are related. That’s a multiplier of this idea of Jewish privilege, and makes it very hard for people to identify with Jews or anybody who’s perceived to be part of the privileged classes.

We can go into some of the other findings as well, but let me just add one more before we do that: equity. This idea that Ibram X. Kendi, a professor at Boston University, has popularized, that all disparities are a function of racism and discrimination.

If there are certain groups that are being discriminated against, and that’s what accounts for all their disparities—not just some of their disparities, but all of the disparities—then there must be people who succeed who are complicit in the system that brought the others down, and that’s Jews, that’s Asians, and other successful groups. It can be weaponized and has been weaponized against Jews in a way that’s increasing the level of antisemitism in society.

Blair: Right. You’ve mentioned intersectionality amongst other concepts that exist in a critical social justice ideology. You define in your report intersectionality as the theory that various identities interact in ways that create compounded discrimination or disadvantage constituting an intersecting system of oppression. In the sort of base level of this, where do Jews fit into the system to somebody who believes in this critical social justice ideology? What do Jews have to do in this system?

Bernstein: It’s very hard for people who buy into this ideology to look at American Jews who have been largely successful or are in their eyes white, and they’ve defined us as white, to say that we’re not part of the oppressor class. We must be, because we’re successful and you can only succeed in this worldview by holding other people down, by getting a bigger slice of the pie for yourself.

No matter how hard Jews tried—and we have tried. I tried, by the way, that’s part of what I would try to do in engaging other communities, engaging progressive spaces in my previous work, was to position Jews as being a marginalized group. We’re marginalized, like your groups are marginalized. And we should have our voice in the intersectional club, but that doesn’t work. It didn’t work. They just do not see it that way.

You also have sort of the intersection, if you will, with the Israeli-Palestinian cause. People insisting that Palestinians are the oppressed group and Israel is the oppressor. Then they look at the American Jewish community that is largely but not entirely supportive of Israel and they say, “OK, you must be part of the oppressor class,” and that’s how we’ve been marked.

Blair: One of the things that I’ve kind of been considering as I was reading this paper is it feels like a lot of the time when incidents of antisemitism come up, we’re reacting to a specific incident. It’s reactionary politics as opposed to a sort of ongoing discussion about where this comes from.

For example, when Black Lives Matter or an activist said something that’s pretty blatantly antisemitic, it seems like we’ll focus more on the specific thing that was said as opposed to the root ideology that leads activists to believe the antisemitic thing that they just said. Do you feel that this is sort of a true assessment of what’s going on? Why or why not?

Bernstein: Yeah. If there’s one finding in this paper that represents a wholesale departure from the traditional Jewish community approach to fighting antisemitism, it’s that we believe that the current ideological environment is like fighting antisemitism in a game of whack-a-mole.

The ideology is going to continue to produce incidents of antisemitism. If we continue to go and condemn this person and condemn that person, which we could do and should do, I guess, but without recognizing that the root cause ideology, the wellspring from which this comes is critical social justice ideology, we’re not really fighting the root problem.

There, I would say that we’ve got to take a massive strategic shift in how we think about fighting antisemitism. It doesn’t work to just fight antisemitism. You have to fight the underlying ideology. You have to start challenging people who claim that they have a monopoly on the truth when it comes to racism and race.

You have to say, “No, I’m sorry. We have the right to speak as well.” You’ve got to stick up for liberalism, because if liberalism starts to slip, and liberalism, by the way, I mean small “L” liberalism, and that is the free expression of ideas in society, if that starts to slip and give way to wokeism, then we’re not going to fare well. Jews are not going to fare well, other minorities won’t fare well either.

So we’ve got to start fighting that fundamental underlying ideology that’s giving rise to antisemitism and not just the antisemitic expressions of it.

Blair: One of the things that I’ve also been considering a lot as we were talking about concepts like intersectionality and this sort of focus on race, like in critical race theory, that both in America and worldwide, Jews are ethnically a minority. We’ve talked about the successes of the Jewish people, but how has it become so ingrained in both conspiracy theories and in critical social justice ideology that Jews are oppressors?

Bernstein: Yeah. Jews have always occupied a very strange space in societies where they lived. Jews have a very resilient culture and have been able to largely succeed in almost any society that they’ve been in. They’re perceived as sort of being intermediary. They are, in the eyes of, let’s say, white supremacists in this country, they’re viewed as the people that are bringing in other minorities to pollute the white dominant culture. Right? …

When you hear people with tiki torches say that Jews will not replace us, that’s what they mean. The Jews will have been the intermediaries that have allowed more Mexicans and other people to come in and replace us white people. That occupies a very special place in their imagination.

I think in the intersectional worldview, also, Jews are really confounding, in a way. We claim to have been discriminated against. We had this thing called the Holocaust that happened to us, we’ve been discriminated against, they see the hate crime statistics, and yet we’re white and successful. In a way, we’re a standing contradiction to that worldview and they have to shove us into one of those two boxes, which leads to sort of the erasure of our identity.

Blair: I do think it’s very interesting that Jews kind of occupy this space of simultaneously the oppressor, but like, historically speaking, you can acknowledge that the Jews have been persecuted on a world scale.

Speaking of a world scale, I would like to talk to you a little bit about the upcoming world conference on racism that is set to take place this month. Rather famously, the U.S. has previously boycotted these types of U.N.-backed conferences because they have a very strong anti-Israel bias. These conferences will regularly refer to Israel as an apartheid state and discuss how evil the country is on a variety of levels. With that in mind, is there a difference between antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment? On that note, is it possible to be critical of the state of Israel without wading into antisemitism?

Bernstein: I mean, absolutely. I mean, there’s nobody more critical of Israel than Israelis. You see that every day in any Israeli newspaper you might look at in English or Hebrew.

Many American Jews, myself included … we care about Israel. We love Israel. We might define ourselves as Zionists, people who believe in the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. And yet, we are critical of specific Israeli acts, policies that we think might be counterproductive. Many of us will say so publicly. We’ll say, “We think that’s wrong,” and, “Israel should do ‘X’ instead of ‘Y.’” That is entirely consistent with seeing Israel as a normal country or even caring about the Jewish state.

What’s not normal is when people start to deny the very right of the Jewish people to have a state, which is what you see in places like the World Conference on Racism, or you demonize Israelis as Nazis and judge it by a standard that you would judge no other nation.

That’s where you start to get suspicious and wonder, “Well, maybe there’s something much more sinister behind this than just criticism of a country or its policies.” What you’re really seeing are people who hate the Jewish people and are using that as a kind of a cudgel against the state of the Jewish people, which is the state of Israel.

Blair: It sounds like what you’re saying is that … anti-Israel rhetoric … is being used to disguise antisemitism in a way.

Bernstein: Yeah. By anti-Israel rhetoric, I mean, I would mean not just criticism of Israel, but really vicious criticism of Israel that’s completely out of proportion and irrational. And yeah, I think it disguises it.

I’m not going to say that there aren’t people who are opposed to Zionism that aren’t antisemitic. I think that there probably are. There are ultra-Orthodox Jews who, for a variety of reasons, theological reasons, don’t think there should be a state of Israel. I’m not going to call them antisemites. I think what you can say is that the phenomena of anti-Zionism is a category of antisemitism, even if there are exceptions to the rule.

Blair: OK. Other than this conference, and I’m sure there are other examples, would you be able to list some other things that are international manifestations of antisemitism and anti-Zionism?

Bernstein: Yeah. I mean, we’ve seen over the years, especially in the wake of like a war with Gaza, conflict of Gaza, these massive, very often violent protests.

I remember in Malmo, Sweden, I think it must’ve been around 2006, there were these massive protests against the Jewish community, major threats to synagogues and others. You had the mayor of Malmo blame it on the Jews for their support for Israel.

You see that in some European countries and you see, as we recently saw in the United States, by the way, in LA and New York, during the last Gaza round in May, you saw people beaten on the streets. I mean, literally like stopped and beaten at restaurants. These are manifestations of violent antisemitism that really comes from the left side of the political spectrum.

Blair: You’ve spoken a little bit on the implications for the sort of other oppressed classes. I think you’ve talked a little bit about Asians and other racial groups. Are there larger implications in our American society for the proliferation of critical social justice ideology beyond Judaism and antisemitism?

Bernstein: Absolutely. I would even say my primary critique of critical social justice or the imposition of critical justice is the fact that it’s fundamentally illiberal. It’s meant to try to stifle conversation. It stifles science. It stifles the free exchange of ideas.

It makes it harder to solve problems because how can you solve a problem if you’re not allowed to try to define it? In other words, if the only permissible explanation for disparity in the world is systemic racism, and if you proffer any other possible explanation for it, you’ll be deemed a racist, how are you going to actually solve that problem? Because racism doesn’t account for why there’s disparity in many cases.

I think it is fundamentally illiberal and it will create bad social outcomes and it will prevent people from talking to each other. It will be bad for race relations. I think it has many, many bad outcomes besides just the antisemitism and anti-Asian sentiment and the like.

Blair: Given that we can acknowledge that, obviously, antisemitism is a problem, what advice do you have for our listeners who want to push back against the rising tide of antisemitism and anti-Zionism around the globe today?

Bernstein: Yeah, I think it’s time that they recognize that there is this ideology at its root cause and that we have to start supporting liberalism. There, I’m really advocating for a new coalition.

I think the Jewish community has been very focused on sort of engaging the left and the far left of the American political system so that we can stop it from becoming too anti-Israel or too antisemitic. I don’t think that’s working well.

I think the lion’s share of our resources, our energies have to be to building a new coalition, groups with Asian Americans, and black heterodox thinkers, and Latino business leaders, and the like. A new centrist coalition that, on both sides of the political aisle, stands up for the liberal proposition of a society where people can express ideas and think out loud together.

I think that’s the kind of society we want to live in, and that’s the coalition we ought to create. That means that we have to create new institutions that fight for liberalism, and we have to create new institutions that aren’t captured in some cases by woke ideology that are right now making it hard for these institutions to function effectively.

Blair: Given that, do we have any examples of a positive success story that we can point to and say, “Hey, this is working. This is helping out”?

Bernstein: This is a very new phenomenon. I think, obviously, we’ve been watching critical social justice take over in certain institutions for quite a few years and certainly in the academy, but it was really after George Floyd’s murder that we saw … this racial reckoning really start to take effect. A lot of institutions started implementing new racial justice plans and committees and the like. It’s really been in the last year where you’ve seen this incursion at this level, which has provoked a backlash.

Many of us now are, I mean, we founded our organization only four months ago. There are very few existing institutions in American life, nonprofit advocacy organizations and the like, that were already actively fighting against the incursion of critical social justice ideology.

We’re learning as we go along. We’re making some headway in certain places. There are examples of us being able to get more and more people out of the woodwork and fighting against it. We’ve seen some institutions back off from their previous woke pronouncements and the like. But we’re just getting going and we’re going to have to find what works over time.

Blair: Glad to hear that things are going positively. David, we are running a little bit low on time, but I wanted to give the last word to you. Where can our listeners go to learn more about your organization and the work you’re doing to fight antisemitism?

Bernstein: Sure. We are JILV.org, Jewish Institute for Liberal Values … They can find us on Twitter at @JILVORG. They can also look into a new organization called the Institute for Liberal Values—which is an umbrella of groups, not just Jewish groups, but education groups and the like—and that’s ilvalues.org, and it’s coming into existence as we speak. Check us all out.

Blair: Great. Well, thank you so much. That was David Bernstein, founder and CEO of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values as well as a longtime Jewish advocate. David, thanks again for joining us.

Bernstein: Great to be with you. Thank you.

*****

This article was published on September 3, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from The Daily Signal.

PODCAST: Teaching Racism in the Classroom

We have had suspicions about what academia is teaching our youth for some time now. For example, are they espousing liberal dogma as opposed to math, science, languages, literature, or even physical fitness? Recently, I came across some rather hard proof of their intentions in an 80 page PDF document titled, “Racial Justice in Education,” as produced by the NEA (National Education Administration), the largest labor union representing public school teachers. It is widely known the union is very liberal and actively supports the Democrats. To illustrate, according to OpenSecrets.org the NEA donated $20 million in 2016 to Democrat campaigns. One of its members is Jill Biden, First Lady of the United States.

The NEA booklet is touted as supporting “racial equality.” It states, “Our mission is to advocate for education professionals and unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education, to break down the barriers to racial equity, and to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world.” Sounds noble, right? The reality though is the booklet is to be used by educators to teach students about racism from a liberal perspective.

The booklet makes some rather interesting observations:

“Systemic racism is so deeply rooted in our history, culture and institutions that there’s no escaping it. Visible or not, its impacts are ever-present.” (page 12)

  • This sounds more like an obsession as opposed to a true problem. I do not believe for a moment that Whites live simply to repress other racial groups. This smacks of paranoia.

“Racism is perpetuated by silence, and silence is complicity. Being ‘colorblind’ often serves as a pretense to downplay the significance of race, deny the existence of racism, and erase the experience of students of color.” (page 15)

  • Translation: You must publicly state you are not a racist every 30 minutes but still beg for forgiveness.

“If you are white, you may be used to the privilege of not having to think or talk about race, especially your own.” (page 15)
“White people are racially privileged, even when they are economically underprivileged. Privilege and oppression go hand-in-hand:” (page 34)

  • Does this mean Whites are privileged simply because of their race? Hardly. My family, for example, came up the hard way. My grandparents immigrated to the United States after World War I, legally I might add, and worked hard to move up in the world. We never looked down our noses at someone’s station in life, but we did expect people to work professionally and productively, assume responsibility for their actions, and behave morally. So, I fail to see how this is privileged. Neither did we consider ourselves “oppressed,” we were just happy to have the opportunity to prove ourselves through the American free enterprise system.

“Minority/minorities (definition) – A term that has historically referred to non-white racial groups, indicating that they were numerically smaller than the dominant white majority. Defining people of color as ‘minorities’ is not recommended because of changing demographics and the ways in which it reinforces ideas of inferiority and marginalization of a group of people. Defining people by how they self-identify is often preferable and more respectful.” (page 33)

  • This is pure political correctness. For example, if your candidate loses an election, you are in the “minority” and the “majority” won. The use of the term is about numbers, not race, and I bitterly resent their insinuation.
  • “Illegals (definition) – Many outlets have changed their style guides to stop using ‘illegal’ as it applies to immigrants…”
  • Another attempt to impose political correctness on the masses. In this situation, did the person try to enter our country lawfully? If not, it is an “illegal” attempt to gain access to the United States. As such, it is a perfectly legitimate word. Check any dictionary.

“Racism (definition) – Historically rooted system of power hierarchies based on race – infused in our institutions, policies and culture – that benefits white people and hurts people of color.” (page 35).

  • This again implies only Whites can be racist, which simply isn’t true. I have traveled the world extensively, visited many cultures, and found racists just about everywhere. To suggest Whites have a monopoly over this is ludicrous. In reality, this is an attempt to make Whites feel guilty about being White. Sorry, but I simply do not buy it.

“Talking about racism is just a start. Taking action is the biggest driver of change. Create opportunities and strategies to move from awareness and analysis to action and impact. You and your students can go beyond the classroom by advocating for equity in your school and school district. Speak up and speak out. Be intentional about supporting more voices and leadership of people of color. And be proactive by proposing bold and concrete solutions that embody the values and vision of equity and inclusion for all.” (page 20)

  • Shucks, and here I thought the purpose of public school was to teach math, science, languages, etc. I never realized it was intended to train students to become revolutionaries. Such discussions belong at home around the dinner table, not in schools.

The DEA booklet goes on to promote left-wing policies, such as:

  • Eliminate police from schools. (page 52)
  • Join state comprehensive immigration reform campaigns. (page 58)
  • Support Black Lives Matter events and efforts to remove public symbols of racism and white supremacy. (page 63)
  • Start or support a campaign to remove statues or change school names that celebrate white supremacy or demean people of color. (page 63) – (by who’s definition I would ask.)
  • Fight voter suppression, voting ID requirements. (page 75)

The NEA booklet is strictly political dogma of the left and has nothing to do with teaching a normal curriculum which is what the taxpayers pay for. Instead, it is an instructional manual to teach students how to become liberal fighters.

I certainly do not deny the existence of racism, but it is certainly not limited to the United States, nor is it applied by a single race, but by all races.

It is apparent to me that whoever actually wrote the NEA paper hates Whites and possesses some rather intense anger issues. It is far from “fair and balanced.” Instead of trying to transform our youth into revolutionaries, I would much rather see a curriculum teaching them their Constitutional rights which expresses their individual liberties and equality, but that is not what the NEA is interested in. Instead, they are more interested in inflaming racism for political gain.

At least, we now know of one source where this type of nonsense is coming from, the NEA. Here, at last, is tangible proof, in black and white, on how the left is trying to mislead our youth. Parents should now try to find out who is using the document in the classroom. School boards should be asked this point blank.

For more background, see, “NEA ‘Racial Justice’ Guide Backs Left-Wing Priorities Like Defunding Police, Banning Voter ID,” by Maxford Nelsen.

A tip of the hat to old friend Rick Trader of Conservative Commandos radio show for the lead.

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – For a listing of my books, click HERE.

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right podcast is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

Introducing “Taking The Mask Off”

It’s far past time for the COVID regime to end.

In March 2020, our public health officials embarked on a major public relations effort. The novel coronavirus had arrived in the U.S. from China, and a fearful American public scrambled to stock up for the apocalypse: toilet paper, canned goods, bottled water, and face masks.

So U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams took to the media to get an urgent message out. “Americans get scared when they feel like they’ve lost control,” Adams said then on Fox & Friends, “There are things people can do to stay safe… [but] one of the things they shouldn’t be doing, the general public, is going out and buying masks. It actually does not help, and it has not been proven to be effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus amongst the general public.”

Times have changed.

Now, almost 18 months later, these face coverings have become ubiquitous. After a temporary reprieve over the summer months, when vaccine optimism reigned, mask mandates are back across the country. Children are starting another school year with faces covered. Younger grades may not know a time when seeing classmates’ smiles was allowed. The mask has superseded its [dubious] medical benefits, and is now a potent symbol of right-thinking.

Our public health “experts” seem determined to extend their power to vaccine mandates as well. With the FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine, Big Business—and the government of at least one of our major cities—has moved quickly to force employees and patrons to get the jab. “My body, my choice,” was always a cynical platitude. They never meant it.

We must remember that this was all a choice. No, not the arrival of a deadly disease from China, but the concerted effort to radically alter daily life in response. It’s a choice driven by fear, by a failure to come to terms with our own mortality. And all the while, the goal posts shift, from “15 days to stop the spread,” to “flatten the curve,” to vaccines, COVID-zero, and on and on and on.

Enough. It’s far past time for this insanity to end.

So I’m proud to introduce “Taking the Mask Off,” a new series from The American Conservative. We will call out the hypocrisy of our public health regime. We will highlight the toll lockdown measures and mask mandates have taken on our families and communities. We will urge Americans not to accept a “new normal”. And we will actually “follow the science”, offering alternatives for what a balanced public health policy might look like.

We will, quite literally, take the mask off the COVID regime.

COVID-19 is here to stay, joining the countless other maladies that affect our fallen human condition. The loss of life at the hands of this deadly disease is tragic. Far more tragic would be a society in which living is lost, in which we are unable to pursue that which makes life worthwhile.

We at TAC hope to play a small part in preventing this greater tragedy.

*****

This article was published on August 29, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from The American Conservative.

Parents Sue Georgia’s Largest School District Over Mask Requirement

Parents in Georgia’s largest school district are suing the superintendent and school system over its mask mandate, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Four parents are seeking an injunction against the mask mandate at Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS), which serves around 180,000 students, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reported. The requirement was implemented at the end of July when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended indoor masking for schools amid the rise of the delta variant.

The lawsuit claims that GCPS’ mask requirement violates Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s July executive order , which stripped public school districts’ ability to mandate masks for students and employees, the AJC reported. In May, an earlier executive order said schools were not allowed to use the state’s COVID-19 emergency declaration as a pretense for requiring masks, though it didn’t completely ban requirements.

The lawsuit cited a study from the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology that found “Prolonged use of N95 and surgical masks by healthcare professionals during COVID-19 has caused adverse effects such as headaches, rash, acne, skin breakdown, and impaired cognition in the majority of those surveyed,” the AJC reported. The lawsuit also claims the mask mandate violates free speech, which is protected by a provision in the state’s constitution.

“The School District intends the Mask Mandate to coercively convey an affiliation with a particular political party,” the suit says, the AJC reported.

Parents of the Gwinnett district started pushing back against masks in the spring, The AJC reported. In July, around 300 anti-mask protestors congregated outside a school board meeting during Superintendent Calvin Watts’ confirmation.

The lawyer for this lawsuit, Mitch Skandalakis, also represented the Cobb County parents who legally challenged mask requirements in the county’s school district last year, the AJC reported.

“The school district will defend its authority and obligation to follow public health guidance to protect our students and staff,” school district spokeswoman Sloan Roach told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

COLUMN BY

KENDALL TIETZ

Contributor.

RELATED  ARTICLE: DeSantis Moves To Block School Board Pay Over Mask Mandates Despite Judge’s Ruling

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

VIDEO: Outraged Parents BLAST Natomas Unified School Board

As you know, earlier this week Project Veritas released bombshell undercover recordings of Sacramento Antifa member and Inderkum High School AP Government teacher Gabriel Gipe bragging about indoctrinating students with his radical agenda.

Parents within the district were rightfully outraged and they went to air out their concerns in an explosive school board meeting.

Veritas will continue to expose more teachers like Gipe.

If you have any information about a teacher in your school district you think we should investigate, email us today at VeritasTips@protonmail.com.

EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Politics of College Loan Relief are Baffling

For someone like myself who has been involved with and analyzed the political arena, one can almost always conclude as to why an elected official has taken a political position. Most of the time it is to serve their perceived constituency for the purpose of maintaining the elected official’s lifespan in office. Supporting college loan relief makes no sense for nearly all elected officials. Yet many are pushing it anyway.

There are three discernible voter groups that have an interest in this issue’s outcome:

People who never attended college nor have their children. That is about 51% of Americans. They have zero interest in paying for the college loans of the other 49%. Let’s say there are about 210 million Americans over the age of 18 years old. That means 107 million in that category.

The other 49% have either a community college or four-year degree. Of that 43 million have student debt as of now.

That means the remainder is a group of 64 million Americans. These people either paid off their loan, paid their way through college or had it paid for. I fall into two categories. I paid my way through college and ponied up for my two children to obtain college degrees. There may be a few people here who like the idea of loan relief. From my experience, most say No Way Jose.

Why would we pay for the debt of others who made the choice to incur it, while we managed to avoid? (Note: I had a $1,500 student loan that I paid off.)

By my calculations that is 81% of Americans (voters) who have little or no interest in relieving college loans just on pure economic terms. Even if you believe my numbers are off, or you believe that some of the people who have no interest in loan relief on economic terms but have sympathy for the issue, we can reasonably say that 75% of American voters don’t want this done.

I can point to the rationale for one elected official—Senator Elizabeth Warren. Warren worked as a college professor virtually her entire career until becoming a U.S. senator. Her last gig was Harvard. Harvard has an endowment that could and should cover the college tuition of every one of their attendees. Only 56% of students receive any kind of financial aid. Apparently, 49% receive a free ride. But, as I said, the endowment could and should cover 100%.

Working where she worked there were many colleges nestled in a small area. It is a major constituency of Ms. Warren’s. Also, to my perception, Ms. Warren has never met a government-paid program she didn’t want.

Certainly, there are many members of the Democrat caucus in both the House and the Senate who have political interests akin to Ms. Warren’s. Uncle Bernie in the Senate comes to mind. The Squad in the House would be other politicians who are ideologically inclined to support handing out free money. Some people reading this column would say a lot of members of Congress these days are inclined to hand out free money. But most of those giveaways went to a much broader base of the population.

Another bafflement of student loan relief comes from the fact that the constituency is populated with high earners or people on their way to becoming high earners. The earning for someone with a bachelor’s degree is twice that of someone with a high school diploma.

Then why would Uncle Joe even be contemplating this? He says he is a moderate and that he is a supporter of the working man. Student loan relief does not fit the bill in either regard. President Biden has stayed away from any loan relief, but it is still being floated. Biden extended the nonpayment rule for another six months, making the extension for loan payment deferral to two years. No one asked if any of the debtors were out of work or unable to pay at this point. The economy is back at the level it was before the pandemic, and you can bet almost all the student loan debtors are perfectly capable of making their monthly payments.

The 81% of Americans who have no vested interest student loan relief need to make their thoughts loud and clear to their elected officials and our President that loan relief is not an option. It is bad public policy on so many levels. But, as defined here, it makes no political sense either.

*****

This article was published at Flash Report on August 29, 2021 and is reproduced with permission by the author.

 

Federal Judge HALTS Western Michigan University’s FORCED VACCINE POLICY

The vaccine mandates should scare the life out of every freedom loving human. It’s Hitlerian.

Federal judge halts Western Michigan University’s forced vaccine policy after the school denied students an exemption based on their religious beliefs.

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

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

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VIDEO: Pro-Antifa High School Teacher in California Admits Communist Indoctrination of Students

Pro-Antifa High School Teacher in California Admits Communist Indoctrination of Students … ‘I Have 180 Days to Turn Them into Revolutionaries’ … Other Teachers ‘on the Same Page’ … ‘There is a Reason Why These Kids are Becoming Further Left’

Gabriel Gipe, AP Government Teacher, Inderkum High School in California:

“I have 180 days to turn them [students] into revolutionaries…Scare the f*ck out of them.”

Gipe:

“I’m probably as far left as you can go.”

One of Project Veritas’ journalists caught up with Gabriel on the street, and he wasn’t very happy when he realized he’d been exposed. Gabriel even had the audacity to claim he was being harassed by our journalist:

Stay tuned. There will be a livestream of the school board meeting TOMORROW in Sacramento, California that I expect will be discussing our investigation.

In the meantime, I need the Veritas Army to DEMAND a response from the school.

You can reach out to the following people:

©Conservative Commandoes Radio. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEOS:

Unhinged teacher caught on video going on left-wing political rant.

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Who Will Pay the Price? Who Should Pay the Price?

As American citizens confront a foreign policy disaster of this magnitude, we must begin with an inventory of injured parties.

First, unquestionably, are the American men and women in our armed forces who have been killed and injured in this grievous failure. Very much like the Vietnam War, it is the grunts as we called them, who always pay the price for the Ivy League ‘best and the brightest’ who haunt the U.S. State Department and to an increasing degree, the U.S. Department of Defense.

There is nothing like a visit to a military cemetery, such as the one pictured above, to get a sense of the human cost.

It is difficult to feel sufficient empathy for the families who are dealing with the loss or long-term disability of their sons and daughters, when the effort for which such a dire price was paid now seems so meaningless. But we must try. What they must be going through is truly awful and painful without end. They deserve our profound respect and sympathy. It did not have to be this way.

Right behind them are the American civilians abandoned by the Commander-in-Chief.  U.S. civilians have been left behind before in conflicts such as  the Philippines in the early days of WWII after Japan’s rout of U.S. forces after Pearl Harbor. But that was because we did not have the means to save them. The Afghanistan debacle is so different. This is a self-inflicted defeat and humiliation of the United States, a country that had the means to get all of its American citizens out of country. Our leaders pulled out the means (its military assets) first and deliberately abandoned Americans. I cannot think of any act of cowardice and treachery in American history that compares with this.

The Afghanis will suffer greatly, women in particular but also many men who helped the U.S. cause. They are not just cruelly killing their opponents. They are doing so in a way to humiliate the United States. These are the people with whom the Biden Administration has entrusted the survival of our men and women left behind.

The network of alliances from NATO to SEATO will suffer because Biden and his advisors did not consult adequately with them, even though they had more troops in theatre than did the U.S..

The special relationship with Great Britain has been critically damaged as we have seen the unprecedented step of the British Parliament  condemning an American President.

The policy blunders coupled with clear and progressive signs of President Biden’s cognitive decline will embolden our enemies and give pause to all of our friends from Israel to Taiwan and around the globe. Perhaps worse than the senility of one man, is the utter stupidity of Biden’s coterie of advisors. What is their excuse? At least Biden might blame an aneurysm or senile dementia.

President Trump brought several Arab states, Israel and the U.S. closer together with the Abraham accords and other initiatives. This progress may well be reversed or lost if they believe the U.S. is a fickle and undependable partner.  Gee, I wonder where they might get that idea.

This is a terrible setback in the War on Terror.  We have demonstrated that we don’t understand radical Islam and how to deal with it longer term. Likely it will spread even more with training bases and support well beyond the geography of Afghanistan. With this disgusting failure of our President and his circle, militant Islam has shown it can defeat and humiliate the West. This will embolden them to attack us and our allies in the future. The Arab street respects power and Biden has shown the U.S. is currently run by incompetent weaklings and cowards.

There is a school of thought that says our reaction to radical Islam is what has made it metastasize. We have always found this school of thought wanting, as Mr. Qtub of Muslim Brotherhood founding fame was documenting and broadcasting his hate about the West based on his experience with American infidels during the innocent period of the late 1940s in rural Colorado. We can only imagine what he would think of modern day California and New York.

The American people will suffer for all of this. This will be unjust but the world will not care. A fair number of our countrymen would rather vote for a doddering old fool and a bunch of warmed over Marxist ideas than a strong-willed man who came from outside of the political club and sent far too many offensive tweets.

Say what you will about President Trump. At least he was in charge of his White House rather than the White House being in charge of him. He did not run from reporters but in fact engaged them, argued with them, belittled them, and yes, denigrated them. But he did not run and he faced his critics. For this combat, a sizable chunk of the public thought he was at fault for aggravating the press.

Well, now with the benefit of hindsight, we wonder how many voters would like to go back and change their ballots?

Who will suffer and who should suffer are, of course, two different groups.

Likely who will not suffer are the Democrat operatives who pull the strings behind Joe Biden, the puppet president. As one observer accurately put it, they put the man up to win, not to govern. The  machinery of the Democrat Party has a great deal to answer for. This includes this latest foreign policy disaster, the uncontrolled illegal alien invasion on the southern border, inflation, budget madness, declining race relations, soaring crime, turning the national security apparatus on political opponents, and the contradictory and idiotic policies related to Covid.

This is an unparalleled list of serious offenses for a President in the first seven months of his first year of governance.

Our fervent hope is that voters will see these offenses for what they are and give them such an electoral thrashing in 2022 that today’s radical Marxist Democrats become a footnote in history.

Then there is the main stream media who hid the incompetence of this man from the American public and viciously and intentionally distorted the views and record of his opponent. They deserve professional and economic destruction.

Where do these poorly informed and prepared advisers to this demented President come from? Where do the sycophants in the media come from?

This is a dangerous failure of America’s ruling class and its foot soldiers that largely comes out of our colleges and universities and then burrows into our increasingly ineffective institutions.

We now have a working list of who has been hurt by this botched job. Now we need to complete a list of who should be held responsible for this tragedy. We need to start with the Democrat Party and not stop until they are swept from the White House to the mayors’ mansions in every blue city. Then, we need to get to work and reform our universities and the many institutions that have been so damaged by the graduates of the failed public school system and higher education system in America.

Teachers Union: ‘It’s OK’ That Kids Don’t Know Math. ‘They Know The Words Insurrection and Coup’

This is the very definition of ‘insurrection’ and ‘coup’. The teachers unions are a grave threat to pour children. The union must be dismantled.

Teachers Union: ‘It’s OK’ That Kids Don’t Know Math, ‘They Know The Words Insurrection and Coup’

By Luke Rosiak • Daily Wire Aug 30, 2021 •

The head of the Los Angeles teachers union said “there is no such thing as learning loss,” despite evidence of massive educational declines due to a year of remote learning.

Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, told LA Magazine that “It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.”

When schools shut down in early 2020 due to coronavirus, the union demanded that teachers not have to teach remotely for more than four hours a day, despite receiving pay for a full day. Teachers often simply posted assignments that students were expected to download and complete on their own.

Nearly two-thirds of students largely ignored this version of school, and almost none of the district’s 229,000 elementary school students logged on at all, LA Magazine reported.

Staying at home has also made children fat, which is one of the main risk factors for coronavirus.

In calling for schools to be closed completely last school year, the union focused more on far-left politics, writing that “The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States underscores the deep equity and justice challenges arising from our profoundly racist, intensely unequal society.”

They demanded to “defund police,” make housing a human right, and institute a moratorium on charter schools, which are popular with racial minorities but which the union said could “drain resources” from the union members’ employer.

The superintendent, Austin Beutner, quit on June 30, writing in his resignation letter that “UTLA leadership were asked to consider all the different ways to [return to classrooms] with full pay… They would not agree to any of these.”

Parents filed lawsuits (one alleged that “UTLA and its president Cecily Myart-Cruz have held the current well-being and future prospects of LAUSD students hostage”) and demanded the recall of school board members.

But Myart-Cruz gloated: “You can recall the Governor. You can recall the school board. But how are you going to recall me?”

As students languished, Myart-Cruz pushed for a property tax hike, which was rejected by voters. When Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom offered $2 billion in extra funding for schools that opened by April 2021 — which presumably would address the same funding needs underlying a property tax hike — Myart-Cruz rejected the offer, saying too much of the money would go to “white and wealthier schools.”

As remote learning widened the racial gap when it came to academic performance, Myart-Cruz insisted that calls to provide school to children were racist.

She claimed she was being “stalked by wealthy, white, Middle Eastern parents.” A UTLA staff member contacted one parent, Maryam Qudrat, who wanted her child to at least receive more hours of Zoom classes, asking “pointed questions about her racial background,” LA Magazine reported.

For the school year beginning this month — the third school year affected by coronavirus — the union insisted on a virtual option for those who want it, which experts believe will be used largely by blacks and Latinos and which clearly leads to worse academic results than in-person learning.

Even within the union, Myart-Cruz’s claim to a mandate is thin: only 16 percent of the union’s 33,000 members voted in its 2020 officers election.

Yet the teachers union is astonishingly powerful. Its electoral efforts in ordinarily low-turnout races make politicians afraid to cross it. Voters have elected union officials as school board members, including Myart-Cruz’s romantic partner, who is an Oakland school board member.

In the first quarter of this year, the California Teachers Association, the UTLA’s statewide affiliate, spent $2.85 million on lobbying, more than twice as much as the second- and third-biggest special interests, which were both oil companies.

The magazine quoted a former school official who refused to give his name because he was “scared” of the union. “UTLA is not a normal union,” he said.

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

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

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Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.

Virginia Public Schools to Focus on Muslims—As Victims—in Teaching About 9/11 On Attacks’ 20th Anniversary

My latest in PJ Media:

On Thursday, the Virginia Department of Education published a video entitled, “Culturally Responsive and Inclusive 9/11 Commemoration,” detailing how Virginia public school teachers should handle the upcoming twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 jihad terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. The emphasis on that day and thereafter must not be on the ideology of the attackers or the ongoing jihad terror threat; rather, the focus is entirely on acknowledging and eradicating what the video calls “anti-Muslim racism.”

The video is narrated by a hijab-wearing woman, Amaarah DeCuir, who describes herself as “Professorial Lecturer, School of Education, American University & Paragon Education Consulting, President.” One would think that with all her expertise, Ms. DeCuir would know the elementary fact that Islam is not a race, and that there are Muslims, and Islamic jihadis, of all races. And of course she does know that, but she is operating in this video on the basis of the Leftist contention that opposition to jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women really stems from an irrational animus against Muslims as a people, and hence is a “racialized” form of “hatred.”

Yes, it’s toxic nonsense, but that’s the Left for you. In any case, Virginia public schools that implement DeCuir’s recommendations (and since the Virginia Department of Education published her video, it would appear that the department wants that to be all of them) will give students a presentation on the twentieth anniversary of the worst attacks ever on American soil that will portray Muslims as the primary victims of those attacks, and make herculean efforts to deflect attention away from the extremely inconvenient fact that the attacks were perpetrated in the name of Islam and in accord with its teachings.

If you doubt that fact, note that in March 2009, five masterminds of the 9/11 plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin As-Shibh, Walid bin ‘Attash, Mustafa Ahmed AI-Hawsawi, and ‘Ali ‘abd Al-’Aziz ‘Ali – styling themselves as the “9/11 Shura Council” – wrote a lengthy communiqué titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations.” In it, they called the 9/11 attacks an “act of Jihad,” and explained: “The Jihad in god’s [sic] cause is a great duty in our religion.” They quoted numerous Qur’an verses, including the notorious “Verse of the Sword”: “Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, and besiege them and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush” (9:5) and another enjoining Muslims to “strike terror into the heart of the enemies of Allah” (8:60).

Attorney and columnist Marina Medvin, who broke the story of this video, notes that the 9/11 Commission Report “mentions ‘Islam’ over 1,000 times and the word ‘Muslim’ over 1,000 times,” for obvious reasons. But Virginia students will learn nothing about any of that. Instead, they’ll be taught about “phobias stemming from 9/11,” “anti-Muslim racism spikes,” and the evils of the fictional “Muslim Ban.” DeCuir offers as an example of “harmful teaching” any “teaching about Islam and/or Muslims” in connection with 9/11, except, evidently, insofar as Muslims were victims of the American response to the attacks.

There is more. Read the rest here.

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

NEA Head Demands More Lockdowns and Masks, Defends Anti-Vaccine Teachers

When Becky Pringle, the president of America’s largest teachers union, sat down for an interview with The Atlantic, a left-progressive magazine owned by liberal mega-donor she surely expected softball cover from her fellow arch-liberals. However, as the president of the United States discovered when he sat down with a Clinton administration flack-turned-ostensible-journalist this week, even the most committed partisan outlets cannot defend a leftist defending a completely indefensible position. For Pringle and the National Education Association, that position is simple: no vaccine mandates for us, but mask mandates and school lockdowns for your children.

For Your Children, Lockdowns and Masks

The Atlantic’s Emma Green asked Pringle a simple question: “Do you believe that every school in the United States should be open for full-time, in-person instruction in the fall of 2021?” Pringle’s response was not “Yes,” but the same hostage taking that teachers unionists have employed since the first identification of COVID-19:

We have been working the whole year to try to ensure that every single school has the big R: resources. . . . For that to be true, the community has to work with schools to ensure that they follow the science, listen to the infectious-disease experts, and then make decisions that will keep their students safe.

On masks, Pringle demands more mandates on your kids. For all Pringle’s citation of “the science” in defending these unprecedented measures, note well that European countries, which have often employed much harsher general lockdowns, have typically not forced elementary school children to wear masks for eight hours per day because European health officials have seen no scientific evidence that any benefits of such mandates exceed their costs.

For Us, Not Even the Fee for the Gaming License

But Pringle and the NEA think one intervention goes too far: vaccination mandates for school staff, who are often NEA members. While children cannot see each other’s smiles at NEA demand, Pringle cautions about “complexities of vaccinations” and asks that her members receive “accommodations that need to be made.” She did deign to acknowledge that unvaccinated teachers should regularly be tested for COVID.

Put simply, the ruling class of which Pringle is a member is to suffer no imposition comparable to that imposed on children and parents. In The Godfather Part II, Michael Corleone told the senator, “My offer is this: Nothing; not even the fee for the gaming license.” In exchange for demanding a previously unthinkable imposition on children, Pringle offers next to nothing.

Strictly Business

Green also pressed Pringle on a “perception” we have noted is well founded but liberals often prefer to ignore: Teachers unions appear responsible for most of the school lockdowns. And Pringle, following her AFT counterpart Randi Weingarten, responded like the politician she is, denying that she put her members ahead of children in an act of supreme gaslighting.

The COVID-19 response has made clear that teachers unions’ principal loyalty is to their political agendas and the interest of their most radical activist members. One cannot blame Pringle or Weingarten for putting the people who pay their salaries ($285,365 and $417,968, respectively) first. As Corleone would say, “It’s not personal . . . it’s strictly business.”

*****

This article was published on August 20, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from Capital Research.

Texas Parents Seeking To Home School Increases Five-Fold From 2020 Record

The number of Texas families pulling their children out of public schools and pursuing home-schooling in one week this month is five times greater than the same time period last year, the Texas Homeschool Coalition reports.

“We are literally inundated with calls and emails from thousands upon thousands of families asking how they can begin homeschooling this fall,” Tim Lambert, president of the Texas Home School Coalition, said in a statement.

“In the fall of 2020, the number of homeschooling families in Texas had nearly tripled from 4.5 percent in the spring to 12.3 percent by October, according to the U.S. Census Bureau,” the coalition reports. A conservative estimate put the number of students being home-schooled in Texas in 2020 at roughly 750,000, a state record.

Last year, the coalition saw a 400% increase in requests from parents to help them process withdrawal requests from public schools. Prior to the state shutdown, between 22,000 and 25,000 Texas students had already been withdrawn from the public school system.

But then as children returned to school through virtual learning and parents observed what they were being taught or not being taught and increased failing grades were being reported, more parents withdrew their children from public schools. The coalition then published an online map reporting data related to the withdrawal of children from public schools in grades 7 through 12 based on Texas Education Agency data, which includes only those grade levels.

But 2021 numbers are “now crushing” the 2020 records, Lambert says.

The weekly call and email volume the coalition received last week set a new record, with more than five times more parents contacting them then during the same week last year, Lambert says. The call volume exploded after school districts imposed mask mandates and other restrictions, defying Gov. Greg Abbott’s order preventing them from doing so.

“Our call volume and contact volume doubled last week. We went from 300 to 500 calls to 1,000,” Lambert said.

Many parents hoping to have their children return to school in person with fewer restrictions than last year said they don’t want to have anything to do with school districts’ retaliatory policies for noncompliance or ongoing school district mandates.

Lambert told ABC affiliate KTRK TV, “We are hearing parents who are saying, ‘You know, I am real uncomfortable with the situation in the schools’, ‘I do not want my kids to wear a mask’, ‘I do want my kids to wear a mask.'”

Of the parents the coalition has spoken with, 72% said they were going to continue home-schooling as they did last year; 19% said they were going to try to return to in-person instruction and 9% said they were undecided.”

According to a survey last year by RealClear Opinion Research, 40% of registered voters polled said they were more likely to home-school after their state’s respective lockdowns ended, meaning in the Fall 2021 term.

John Schilling, president of the American Federation of Children, said at the time, “Every single family with kids in school has been incredibly disrupted by the lockdowns. With 55 million students no longer in their normal educational setting, families are clearly considering new options and many are seeing the benefits of homeschooling and virtual schooling.

“Policymakers owe it to the taxpayers who are footing the $800 billion K-12 education bill to maximize their investment by ensuring every child has access to a quality education and outcomes are improved across the board.”

Texas lawmakers took note, and passed two home-school-related bills during the regular legislative session. Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bills into law, The University Interscholastic League Equal Access Bill, House Bill 547, and the Learning Pod Protection Act, Senate Bill 1955, which become effective Sept. 1.

HB 547 will allow public school district students whose parents pay taxes to school districts to participate in University Interscholastic League sponsored activities. SB 1955 exempts learning pods from local government regulatory burdens.

*****

This article was published on August 21, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from The Center Square.

Educrats Are Panicking As Their Extremism Alienates More Families

These events at the beginning of a new school year indicate one thing: the educational establishment in this country is losing its grip on power and running scared.

The optics on unconditional surrender are terrible, which is why Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon avoided fanfare when she signed Senate Bill 744, a law that suspends high school graduation requirements for reading, writing, and math. Her reasons: to combat systemic racism and boost graduation numbers for minorities.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS), already feeling the heat for advancing critical race theory, has doubled down by greenlighting Policy 8040, which provides exceptions for transgendered students at the expense of the rest of the student body and the faculty. The approval came a few days after LCPS showed its contempt for parents and community members by restricting their ability to attend board meetings and voice their concerns there.

Up in Rhode Island, the state branch of the National Education Association (NEA) is suing to block the public records request of a kindergartener’s mother who has dared to question the wisdom of teaching critical race theory to five-year-olds.

On the national scene, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, has threatened another year of school closures if students (vaccinated or not) don’t wear masks, a demand that is utterly unsupported by the science she claims to be following. This shakedown comes after emails revealed in May that the AFT had been instrumental in convincing the Biden administration’s Centers for Disease Control to delay reopening schools in early 2021.

Taken together, these events at the beginning of a new school year indicate one thing: the educational establishment in this country is losing its grip on power and running scared.

A Regime in Crisis

When in peril, authoritarian regimes react in predictable ways. They try to deflect attention from the glaring problems they created and often flat-out lie about how things are going. If need be, they will crack down on those who oppose them. Most important of all, they try to increase their subjects’ reliance on them.

All of these actions are signs that those who run these regimes are facing a serious threat in the form of a burgeoning revolution. The American education establishment is confronting just such a revolution.

Discontent with American schooling has been growing for decades, but the ruling junta has been able to contain the damage in large part through a massive disinformation campaign demonizing the various forces arrayed against them. Until recently, the power of the teachers’ unions and their political allies seemed all but invincible.

Then COVID-19 hit, and the game changed. Suddenly, parents saw just what their children were being taught, and they were not pleased. What’s more, they saw the ineffectiveness of remote learning and the hubris of those who foisted it upon their children. Now the smoldering embers have become a fire and the regime is scrambling to reassert control.

Assaulted on Several Fronts

Homeschooling is the most direct beneficiary of parents’ new revolutionary fervor. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) reports a major surge in homeschooling using U.S. Census Data.

Even when compensating for remote learning by “[labeling] students as homeschoolers only if they were not simultaneously enrolled in public or private schools,” the data shows that three times as many homeschooled students in the spring of 2021 than there were a year before. While the HSDLA cites fears of COVID as one reason to expect the homeschooling boom to continue, it also notes that safety issues unrelated to COVID, such as bullying, and curriculum concerns are other major factors.

Recent information for the other two education options, charter schools and private schools, is more sparse. However, charter school creation and enrollment have been steadily increasing over the past decade and the movement will most likely benefit from the anti-teachers’ union sentiment engendered by lockdowns and curriculum shifts.

As for private schools, a report from the Cato Institute notes the economic turmoil of the last year and a half has forced some to shut their doors and reduced overall enrollment. However, because of their independence from school districts, private schools were far more likely to resume full-time in-person learning by the end of 2020, an important point to consider should public schools initiate lockdowns and remote learning in the future. Also, private school parents “reported fewer negative effects—academic, emotional, physical—on their children from the pandemic than traditional public school parents,” which testifies to the superior COVID responsiveness of the private sector.

The true measure of the cultural shift taking place, however, is in the increase in support for school choice. A RealClear Opinion poll conducted this past June indicated an increase in this support across the board, including for parents being able to direct how to spend some or all of COVID money set aside for K-12 education. Most surprising is the fact that in just over a year, support for school choice from registered Democrats increased from 59 percent to 70 percent, which bodes ill for the decades-old alliance between the party and the teachers’ unions.

The educational establishment’s spate of saber-rattling reveals the weakness of its commitment to the families it supposedly serves. Although it still possesses incredible resources, it fears real competition like never before. It is high time that American parents treat the educrats like the paper tigers they are and declare their independence by embracing the other educational options available in a free society.

*****

This article was published on August 23, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from The Federalist.

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