“What constitutes a family?”

That’s one of the “Sample Guiding Questions” for Kindergarten to 2nd-grade students in the project called the Educating for American Democracy Roadmap (pdf). The Roadmap is a well-funded, amply sponsored initiative to boost civics learning in primary and secondary education, which everyone agrees is in poor condition. The goal is to get the Roadmap adopted in one way or another in school districts across the country, and it looks like the initiative has good odds of succeeding.

I have written about the Roadmap in City Journal and on RealClearPolicy, and I debated the project leader, professor Danielle Allen, in a webinar moderated by the Fordham Institute, each time arguing that the Roadmap is an ideological endeavor that will inject progressivist ideas into the classroom in a seemingly neutral way.

I won’t rehearse all those points here. But just consider the question above. The Roadmap advises teachers to bring it into class presentations and encourage discussion, which might raise immediate questions about the civic goal of the exercise. To be sure, the Roadmap contains many traditional topics such as the content of the Constitution and historical takes on immigration, expansion, voting rights, and political parties. But this query about the family doesn’t quite fit. Why would civics sessions with 7-year-olds turn on the definition of something many would regard as both irrelevant to civics learning and inappropriate to children of that age?

After all, the family is a contentious subject. The traditional conception of it—father, mother, married and with children, all in the same home—has been one of the left’s prime targets in the 50-year Culture War that continues today. That nuclear model is accused of being sexist, heteronormative, homophobic, reactionary, and denigrating to all those households that don’t have a traditional mother-father set-up. It is said to put down single mothers and same-sex couples. The controversies have been heated, as we saw in the 2008 passage of Proposition 8 in California. The current mandates against the nuclear preference, in fact, will prevent you from getting a job in certain fields if you don’t reject the old-school notion as the best family formation (jobs in academia, for instance, require of applicants a “diversity-equity-inclusion” statement in which you better not signal anything but a liberal attitude toward social issues).

Why bring those tensions to children who haven’t the equipment to understand them? For the obvious reason: This is good old-fashioned proselytizing. It follows a standard leftist tactic: get ‘em while they’re young. For let’s not be callow enough to believe that “What constitutes a family?” is a genuine question. Imagine what would happen if a student were a fundamentalist Christian, an Orthodox Jew, or a devout Muslim. That student would rise and state a definition of the family that runs squarely against the liberal one, and the teacher wouldn’t let that stand. The ideology of the social studies profession and of the schools in general wouldn’t allow it. A refutation would begin; it would have to in a world that has embraced diversity and tolerance as binding norms. The adoption of critical race theory (CRT) in public schools (and many private ones) tells you where all the momentum is going, notwithstanding scattered incidents of parents fighting back. This traditionalist child will have to be disabused and re-educated. The teacher will lead the process and lots of fellow students will join in. No diversity on this one, no pluralism.

We know that’s what will happen because we’ve seen it a thousand times before. More than any other site in our country, for the last half-century the classroom has been the place where traditional conceptions of family, men and women, God and country, marriage and parenting have begun to slip and fall. When guests on CNN speak of Western Civilization as white supremacy, they may believe that they are cutting-edge commentators, but in truth they are parroting ideas that had become academic dogma (and cliché) by 1995. When young, energetically left-wing members of Congress opine about imperialism, they say nothing you couldn’t find in every average “studies” class in the 1980s.

For a long time, with a few exceptions such as William Bennett, prominent Republicans paid little attention to the advance of political correctness in the classroom. Or, rather, while all of them realized the bias going on, they did nothing about it. Either they didn’t fully understand how it was happening, or they didn’t know what to do to counter it, or they didn’t want to take action and face the inevitable smears of the media and activists.

And so the leftist colonization of the classroom inched forward, sometimes in dramatic ways, such as the widespread adoption of the 1619 Project, but more often, however, in small incursions such as this little family question in the Roadmap. It will move ahead, I’m sure, as progressivism has so triumphantly done in the education sphere, and we will see more of this indoctrination of schoolchildren into the new dispensation. Republican politicians have shown that they can’t stop it. They don’t want to fight this battle. It’s now quite clear that what happens in classrooms comes to happen in the public square 20 years later, but Republican leaders are too old or too poorly equipped to think in “long march” terms (as the left does). Besides that, their corporate donors have signaled their compliance with progressivism on social matters, and they don’t want their politicians to cross lines of political correctness. If the leftist momentum is to be stopped, it will have to be the people who do it.

That means getting them to recognize the tendentiousness, the tactical character, of small gestures such as “What constitutes a family?” We have people going to school board meetings and denouncing overt CRT exercises, which are easy to recognize as abominations. It’s not so easy to see the small ones as likewise dangerous. But they are. I can hear the leftist educator scoffing at the worry, claiming that the family question is just a discussion prompt about an important topic. Relax—lighten up!

But in cases such as this one, we have two renditions, one ideal and one actual. The ideal one, which progressives offer the public, is benign and non-partisan and open-ended. “We’re just talking about important things—that’s all,” we’re told. And then there’s the truth, what really goes on in real situations. There, the direction of righteousness is clear, and it’s always to the left. The curt query, “What constitutes a family” signifies one thing in the abstract—in the Roadmap document, for instance. It signifies a whole other thing in a classroom with a left-leaning teacher at the front and a captive group of 7-year-olds looking to her for guidance.

Do not believe the promises of the educators—they have broken their promises too many times in the past. Progressives regard the schools as an opportunity to spread the word, their word. Most liberals don’t see the classroom that way, but they have decided to let progressives call the shots when it comes to the social contents of the curriculum. The Woke Revolution is the result of decades of this leftist push in higher and lower education. Conservatives, then, must accept themselves as counter-revolutionaries. No more compromises, no more benefits of the doubt. Flood those school board meetings, yes, and tell the authorities that you don’t trust them and you don’t like them—and you’re going to stop them.

Progressive Classrooms, Subtler Than You Think (theepochtimes.com)

Progressivism makes inroads into public health’s lingua franca

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a set of “guiding principles for inclusive communication” on Aug. 24. The word salad included statements like “health equity is intersectional” and described “diabetics” and “the homeless” as “dehumanizing language.” Public health communications, the guide said, “should reflect and speak to the needs of” a wide range of identities.

To that end, the guide compiles a list of “preferred terms for select population groups,” as well as a list of proscribed terms deemed insufficiently inclusive. “Assigned male/female at birth” is preferable to “biologically male/female,” “people with undocumented status” is preferable to “illegal immigrants,” and “people who are incarcerated” is preferable to “inmates,” according to the guide—which also stresses that public health officials should “avoid jargon and use straightforward, easy to understand language.”

It might seem odd for the CDC to be ironing out the finer points of woke vernacular while COVID-19 is killing over a thousand Americans each day. But the agency wasn’t starting from scratch. Rather, its guidance drew on a network of nonprofits that are institutionalizing progressivism as public health’s lingua franca.

The guide’s preferred terms for gender, for example, come straight from the LGBT activist group GLAAD, whose “Media Reference Guide” says phrases like “biologically male” are “problematic” and “reductive.” And the CDC’s “health equity lens” takes inspiration from a report by the Racial Equity Institute, which is listed at the end of the guide as an “explanation about the root causes of racism and racial inequity.” The report urges policymakers to “confront the reality that all our systems, institutions, and outcomes emanate from the racial hierarchy, on which the United States was built,” and denies that any inequalities are caused by “people’s culture or behavior.”

Reached for comment, the CDC said that its link to the report did not “constitute an endorsement.”

The guide is the latest illustration of how progressive nonprofits capture public health agencies through a kind of technocratic activism, burrowing their ideology into medical language by framing social controversies as settled scientific fact. Government officials, like those at the CDC, then cite those activists alongside professional health associations, many of which have gone woke themselves. That boosts the activists’ credibility while undermining the government’s own: The CDC may be insulated from certain kinds of political pressure, but it is hardly immune to the ideological contagion of medical nonprofits.

Further eroding that immunity is the revolving door between those nonprofits and the CDC. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for example, appears three times in the guide’s list of “resources and references.” Its CEO, Richard Besser, was the acting CDC director at the start of Barack Obama’s first term. When Americans are told to “follow the science,” they aren’t just being told to socially distance; they’re being told to adopt the values of an activist class and the Democratic donors who power it.

The GLAAD guide offers a case study in this sleight of hand. Since terms like biologically male and female “overly-simplify a very complex subject,” the guide suggests, retiring them will help readers “form their own conclusions based on factual information”—the implication being that talk of scientific realities is itself anti-science.

Professional medical associations have largely blessed this marriage of evangelism and expertise. The CDC’s list of links includes the American Heart Association’s “Racial Equity in Public Policy Message Guide,” which offers “research-based messages” to “dismantle structural racism,” and the American Public Health Association’s “health equity fact sheets,” which cover “environmental justice” and “COVID-19’s impact on housing instability.” The housing sheet calls on federal authorities to “expand, extend, and enforce eviction and rent moratoriums”—exactly what the CDC was doing until the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in August.

“Nothing in the guiding principles is prescriptive,” the CDC told the Washington Free Beacon. That might come as news to whoever wrote the first sentence of the guide: “To build a healthier America for all, we must confront the systems and policies that have resulted in the generational injustice that has given rise to health inequities.”

These sorts of buzzwords permeate the guide’s listed resources. The idea that “racism exists only in individuals crowds out any consideration of systemic solutions,” according to the FrameWorks Institute. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation warns that health equity is imperiled by “institutional discrimination,” which is “not necessarily conscious, intentional or personal.” Several resources also make reference to the “social determinants of health,” a concept to which the CDC devotes an entire section of its website.

This focus on so-called systemic forces explains the guide’s preference for terms that avoid attributions of personal responsibility. “People who refuse vaccination” become “people who have yet to receive [the vaccine],” while “the obese” become “people with obesity,” a term favored by the Obesity Action Coalition. That coalition, which aims “to eliminate the negative stigma associated with obesity,” is the guide’s only recommended resource on issues of “weight bias.”

The CDC’s use of such euphemisms is likely good news for the nonprofits that peddle them. It is likely bad news for public health.

That’s because many medical conditions are in fact under the control of individuals. The risk of severe COVID-19, for instance, drops dramatically with vaccination, a free, two-minute procedure that is now available at almost every pharmacy in the country. And while obesity is sometimes due to thyroid problems or genetic predispositions, it is “generally caused by eating too much and moving too little,” according to the British National Health Service—meaning the best treatments for obesity are “a healthy, balanced diet and regular physical activity.”

The obesity rate for adults in Britain is 28 percent. In the United States, it’s 42 percent—the highest in the developed world. With woke nonprofits at the helm of America’s public health bureaucracy, it is likely to stay that way.

Patriots are mobilizing all over the country to defeat Joe Biden and reverse his failed policies. As America’s Sheriff, I’m supporting Create Change Now’s nationwide effort to stop the oncoming socialism train in its tracks by educating, motivating, and mobilizing American conservative patriots. There’s too much at stake in 2022 and beyond for us to leave anything to chance. The professional progressive left spends millions of dollars organizing, training, and mobilizing their socialist foot soldiers, and we must beat them at their own game. I’m proud to support Create Change Now as I travel the country firing up American patriots. So join me by making your immediate, direct investment of $25, $50, $100, or even $1,000 toward their work today! The integrity of our elections is in question. Radical leftist politicians are loosening reasonable voter protections, and unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats are changing the rules of elections while voters are casting ballots. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have blown open the gates at our Southern Border as waves of unvetted illegal aliens stream into our country. And Joe Biden’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan further destabilizes the Middle East and sends a poor message to our allies while emboldening our enemies. A little more than a week before the 20th Anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. All while far-left politicians are demoralizing and defunding law enforcement in Congress and State Capitols across the nation. Failed progressive “leadership” is an absolute nightmare! Create Change Now is slamming the brakes on the far-left’s radical agenda by empowering and equipping patriots like you and me with the tools to fight and win. The radical left has an army of Saul Alinsky-inspired professional activists who mobilize voters in their communities. All too often, that organizational capacity gives them an edge over patriots like you and me. While we don’t have an army of paid, professional agitators to get out the votes of the Silent Majority, we do have an influential organization called Create Change Now that’s working overtime to stem the tide of progressivism on our shores. To save the greatest nation in the history of mankind from the clutches of radical progressives, we must organize millions of patriots and stop the left at the ballot box. I support Create Change Now’s mission, and I hope you’ll join me with your generous investment of $25, $50, $100, or even $1,000. Anything you can give would be a shot in the arm for Create Change Now’s mission to train, organize, and mobilize millions of patriots and stop socialism in its tracks. You and I have a lot of work to do between now and November 2022, and it starts with supporting my friends at Create Change Now. Join me by supporting Create Change Now before Joe Biden and the radical left drives our country off the cliff! Thank you. In Liberty, Sheriff David Clarke, Jr. American Patriot FIGHT THE RADICAL LEFT

PAID FOR BY CREATE CHANGE NOW. NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEE.

Contributions or gifts to Create Change Now PAC are not deductible as charitable contributions for Federal income tax purposes and will be used in connection with federal elections. Contributions from foreign nationals or entities are prohibited. The use of the name and/or likeness of any candidate, officeholder, or other individual is for the purpose of CCN’s political communication only and does not indicate any authorization by, affiliation with, direction from, or endorsement by that person.

Thank you for your support of 1776Coalition.com.
© 2021 1776 Coalition
8 The Green, Suite 7217 | Dover, DE 19901

The Thomas More Society filed the lawsuit on September 3 on behalf of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation — the organization that fought against California’s affirmative action bill — and taxpayers at large. 

On August 26, the Thomas More Society penned a letter demanding that the State Superintendent of Public Instruction remove the Aztec prayer from the state’s curriculum. After no response, the organization submitted its lawsuit. 

The lawsuit alleges that the curriculum is illegal to teach in taxpayer-funded institutions as government aid of religion is “prohibited” in California. 

Paul Jonna, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, said that children should not be forced or pressured to partake in Aztec prayer, especially if their parents have religious and civic objections. 

“Our clients have both a religious and civic objection to the Aztec prayer, and they do not want their children chanting it, being asked or pressured to do so, or risking ostracism if they refuse,” Jonna said. “Under both the California and the United States Constitutions, they have the right to expect all branches of the state government, including the State Board of Education and the Department of Education, to respect this choice. Furthermore, all Californians have the right to expect that tax-supported public schools will not aid or promote this religion.”

California introduced a new “ethnic studies” curriculum in March 2021. The curriculum was promoted by a man who believes that one way to rectify colonialism is to support a “counter-genocide” of “white Christians.” Part of the model curriculum calls on students to “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, imperialist/colonial beliefs and practices on multiple levels.”

The curriculum also has a chant that worships the Aztec gods Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, among others. 

The chant reads in part:

In order to be warriors of love, of love, for our gente, representin’ justice, justice, local to global, global to local, global to local, ecological and social, social, justice, justice. 

Not just thinkin’ and takin’ but makin’ things happen, with agency resiliency, and a revolutionary spirit. 

Transformation, liberation, education, emancipation, imagination, revitalization, liberation, transformation, decolonization, liberation, education emancipation.

Frank Xu, the President of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, claims that the chants signify the state’s “unlawful government preference” towards the Aztec religion. 

“The curriculum’s unequivocal promotion of five Aztec gods or deities through repetitive chanting and affirmation of their symbolic principles constitutes an unlawful government preference toward a particular religious practice,” Xu said. “This public endorsement of the Aztec religion fundamentally erodes equal education rights and irresponsibly glorifies anthropomorphic, male deities whose religious rituals involved gruesome human sacrifice and human dismemberment.” 

Related: California’s Proposed ‘Ethnic Studies’ Curriculum Calls For Stronger Connection To Social Justice Movements 

California Education Board Faces Legal Challenges To New ‘Ethnic Curriculum,’ Aztec Gods Chant | The Daily Wire

T

he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a guide last week for “Inclusive Communication,” cautioning against using words like prisoner, smoker, illegal immigrant, disabled or homeless, which the agency says could imply blame or stigma.

The guide’s opening line says, “We must confront the systems and policies that have resulted in the generational injustice that has given rise to health inequities.” The CDC is now about fighting injustice, not disease.

The agency says instead of gender-specific pronouns like him or her, use “they,” even when referring to one person. And talk about “parents” or “expectant parents” instead of mothers or fathers.

After making the hundreds of language changes the CDC recommends, who has time to defeat COVID-19?

The CDC’s got mission confusion. With parts of the U.S. considering more COVID lockdowns, Americans don’t need language lessons on political correctness. They need scientific information on how to reduce the risk of being infected by this virus indoors. That’s key to reopening workplaces and returning to normal.

Numerous new technologies are said to destroy airborne viruses, including ionization, dry hydrogen peroxide, far UV light and others. But school administrators and office building managers don’t have a clue which ones actually work. They’re flying blind.

The CDC’s thousands of scientists could provide guidance. Not that they should endorse specific brands, but they can assess competing technologies. The CDC flatly refuses. Instead, it cautions against using them because they lack “an established body of peer-reviewed evidence.”

What planet is the CDC on? Peer-reviewed evidence can take years. Here’s the process: An academic journal sends a submitted article to scientists around the world for review and suggested changes. Once that input is received and the article is approved, the wait goes on because many of these journals only publish four times a year.

Glacial slowness doesn’t work in a pandemic. That’s why former President Donald Trump designed Operation Warp Speed for vaccines. The CDC’s timetable isn’t warp speed. It’s warped. The CDC’s tacit premise that yesterday’s technology is good enough will doom us to failure.

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told the Washington Post last week that the CDC has the wrong mentality to respond to a crisis. “Their mind set is we should polish it, vet it, peer-review it.”

The result is the CDC offering 50-year-old information: Open windows, space desks apart and use HEPA filters where possible. HEPA filters were devised for gas masks during World War II, and commercialized for buildings in the 1950s.

Tried and true methods are not necessarily wrong. But the public deserves the latest science, too.

Eighteen months into the pandemic, giant employers like Apple and Amazon again are delaying reopening workplaces. They need help. Only 33% of U.S. office workers are back, according to Kastle Systems. New York City is far worse off, with only 22% back. That kills retail stores, coffee shops and restaurants that serve workers.

If it were possible to get back to normal without technological breakthroughs, it would have happened already. Eric Adams, the city’s likely next mayor, needs scientific information on how to reduce aerosolized COVID-19 virus in transportation hubs, public buildings, offices and schools.

Citing the importance of speed in a pandemic, Gottlieb has been urging the FDA to establish a fast-track way of determining what works and what doesn’t. The CDC should be doing the same using its own scientists.

As for schools, the medical journal Lancet’s COVID task force has chastised the CDC for focusing on masking and social distancing instead of air quality.

A CDC study of 169 Georgia K-5 schools found COVID cases were reduced more by improving air quality than any other intervention. Mandating masks for students produced no statistically significant improvement.

A Kaiser Health News headline in June read: “More than 100 Missouri Schools Have Bought ‘Often Unproven’ Air Cleaning Technology.” The words “often unproven” come from CDC guidance. If school districts are rushing in desperation to buy equipment without enough information, blame the CDC, not the school administrators.

A spokesperson for the company that sold ionization equipment to Missouri schools explained that peer-reviewed research on its equipment doesn’t exist yet. That is why CDC scientists should get to work assessing new technologies themselves instead of writing speech manuals.

If the CDC wants to be politically correct, it can call its new air quality guidance “Indoor Environmentalism.” That almost sounds green.

CDC’s Mission Confusion :: Right & Free (rightandfree.com)

Or what I call, “The True White Supremacists” [US Patriot]

For years now, the left has demonized President Donald Trump as a right-wing authoritarian who’s dragging America down into a dark pit of tyranny and oppression. Democrats and the media continue to push this narrative, even with him out of office. Yet, Trump champions free-market enterprise and individual liberty—in other words, freedom, the opposite of authoritarianism. In reality, the true authoritarian threat to America comes from the left.

The great irony is that so many on the left used their argument that Trump is an authoritarian to justify acting as authoritarians themselves. For starters, look at the mainstream media.

For years, the media was biased, slanting its coverage in favor of Democrats and left-wing positions. But at least journalists were doing their basic jobs of reporting the news. Today, however, they’re openly partisan liberals with press credentials.

The political rise of Trump caused members of the media to see themselves as the guardians of democracy, protecting us all from the predations of Trump the dictator. Because Trump was so terrible and the stakes were so high, journalists believed their job was to advocate a cause, not to report the news.

As a result, the media has published a torrent of misleading if not outright false stories about Republicans and conservatives, deceiving the public in order to paint the right as evil. This is a classic authoritarian tactic: pushing misinformation to undermine and demonize one’s political opponents.

Of course, the media isn’t alone. Corporations are now reflecting the whims of the woke mob, adopting causes such as Black Lives Matter and the left’s push to federalize elections. Corporate executives are imposing a far-left ideology not because they believe in critical race theory or universal mail-in voting, but because they’re cowardly and succumbing to the pressure and bullying from the mob. Here is another example of leftists overtaking a key institution.

This leftist onslaught is compounded by Big Tech, which is clearly waging a war to silence conservatives and snuff out dissent. Indeed, the oligarchs running the likes of Google, Twitter, and Facebook claim they’re merely targeting misinformation, but this has consistently manifested as a political witch hunt against one side. “Misinformation” is a catch-all phrase that allows the titans of tech to censor anything they don’t like in a way that doesn’t look like blatant suppression. Of course, much of this began in 2016 with Donald Trump’s tweeting.

To make matters worse, Democrats are effectively pressuring social media companies to ramp up the censoring of this right-wing material, saying they’ll remove Big Tech’s liability protections if Silicon Valley doesn’t take down “misinformation.” This is authoritarianism in the most classic sense: the government using its power to violate individual rights.

The list of left-wing authoritarianism threatening American freedom is long and unending, from COVID-19 lockdowns run amok to the growing imposition of cradle-to-grave socialist government. I discuss it all with Ben Shapiro on this week’s episode of my podcast, “Newt’s World.” Shapiro, the editor in chief of the Daily Wire and host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” just wrote an important book on this topic titled, “The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.”

As Shapiro explains, the left, led by the woke mob, specializes in bullying to get what it wants. One recent example is Major League Baseball moving its annual All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado because of the former’s voting law, which sparked leftist outrage and calls to boycott the state. Yet, these same leftists have the audacity to cry victim and claim they’re the victims of right-wing bulling.

To the left, everything is both personal and political. There’s no compromise, no middle ground. That’s why Parler gets banned and teachers get fired for opposing critical race theory. Leftists want submission and conformity, not debate. They want diversity of appearance but not diversity of thought. In short, the left seeks raw power to impose a radical, divisive vision on the country.

There are certainly authoritarians on the right, but they live in obscurity, on the fringe, without any institutional control. But the authoritarians on the left control our society’s most powerful institutions—and they’re ascendant in the Democratic Party. They are the authoritarians truly threatening America.

From Gingrich360.com.

The Real Authoritarians Threatening America (theepochtimes.com)

California schools are deliberately keeping parents in the dark about inclusion policies that allow children to change genders without their consent, says a teacher and former school board member in Orange County.

Brenda Lebsack, a teacher in Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) and former Orange Unified School District (OUSD) school board member, recently sent an email to the California School Boards Association (CSBA) demanding that it clearly define the meaning of “nonbinary” to school board members and parents.

In the Aug. 26 email, Lebsack alleges CSBA knowingly withheld from school boards across the state the definition of the term “nonbinary” which is now a choice on student data forms. She claims “nonbinary” means “unlimited gender choices.”

Calling “nonbinary” a third gender “is like calling Baskin Robbins an ice cream flavor,” Lebsack wrote.

If unlimited gender choices are allowed, students could theoretically identify themselves as having both genders, no gender or list their preferred pronouns as “tree,” for example, Lebsack told the Epoch Times.

“We have books that tell them that starting in preschool,” she said.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) glossary states that “gender identity is viewed by current science as fluid and expansive.”

Troy Flint, CSBA Chief Information Officer, denied that CSBA has deliberately held back information but admitted that CSBA has not actually “spelled out” in detail what the term nonbinary means.

“I guess I just don’t understand how it’s complicated. I mean, binary is a pretty basic English word. Why is that hard to figure?” Nonbinary, he said, means “not limited or restricted to two categories.”

Flint told The Epoch Times in a phone interview that Lebsack has been on a three-year-long “crusade” criticizing state policies on gender identity and sex education.

“She’s not even a trustee. She’s formerly a trustee in one district out of a thousand in California, and I don’t think that her critique carries any particular authority on this issue as an individual,” he said.

“Why does Ms. Lebsack get to determine exactly what terms need to be defined explicitly?” he asked.

In a written statement, Flint said: “CSBA categorically refutes the claim that we have failed to inform members about the gender choice option on student data forms. This is the latest allegation in Ms. Lebsack’s long-running crusade to cast a cloud over and obstruct any effort at updating board policies related to sexual orientation and gender identity, merely because these policies conflict with her personal views.”

“Fortunately, CSBA’s actions and model policies are not determined by the outlook of any individual school trustee, instead they are designed to ensure that local education agencies can effectively serve their students and comply with state and federal laws and regulations,” Flint said in the statement.

Students’ Needs Unclear

OUSD school board member Rick Ledesma told The Epoch Times that school board members need a full and clear explanation of what “nonbinary” means in order to properly do their jobs, especially if nonbinary does mean “unlimited gender choices.”

“If they say it’s going to be unlimited gender categories, then explain to me as a board member, how I’m going to direct my school district from a curriculum standpoint and from a psychological services standpoint. I don’t even know if this is going to necessitate psychological services or health services, right? Define what I’m supposed to operationally be prepared for,” he said.

“How do you prepare for unlimited gender choices? How do we fund it?” he asked.

Ledesma has made his own inquiries to CSBA but hasn’t received a response.

“If it’s so easy to define nonbinary … then tell me what it means,” he said. “We need to know it, because we have to have some level of educational services provided for tree or guppy or whatever the case may be.”

Ledesma suggested CSBA’s attempt to “discredit” Lebsack is designed to prevent her from getting media attention.

“It’s a political tactic,” he said.

He supports Lebsack’s efforts to bring the gender inclusion discussion to the table so that parents know what’s going on. “She’s brought it to my attention, and I get it now,” Ledesma said.

The state is not only trampling on parental rights but “even to a certain extent the maturation and psychological makeup of a child,” Ledesma said.

“Does that mean all rights go to the state and up from there in terms of the gender aspect? That’s what we’re being told right now: all rights for gender designation, the state gets to dictate. They dictate by saying the kid gets to dictate.”

In her email, Lebsack states “nonbinary is an ‘umbrella term’ to encompass unlimited genders that are ever-expanding and ever-evolving according to CDE’s Health Framework passed in May 2019 by the State Board of Education.”

She alleges that CSBA has not told California school trustees that school personnel and mental health workers can change a student’s gender in the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) solely based on a student’s request without parental consent or specifying the child’s age.

Withholding this information from school boards prevents trustees from properly doing their job to inform parents and is “absolute deception,” Lebsack wrote. She blasted the CSBA for failing to properly do its job.

Lebsack pointed out that the California Department of Education (CDE) refers to “nonbinary” as a third gender and then lists several other genders.

California Senate Bill 179, passed in 2017, recognizes three genders—female, male, and nonbinary—and allows individuals to amend their gender designation on state-issued identification documents. The Gender Recognition Act describes nonbinary as “an umbrella term for people with gender identities that fall somewhere outside of the traditional conceptions of strictly either female or male.”

It also states: “People with nonbinary gender identities may or may not identify as transgender, may or may not have been born with intersex traits, may or may not use gender-neutral pronouns, and may or may not use more specific terms to describe their genders, such as agender, genderqueer, gender fluid, Two Spirit, bigender, pangender, gender nonconforming, or gender variant.”

In her email to CSBA, Lebsack cites a 2018 press release announcing Tom Torlakson, former California Superintendent of Public Instruction, partnered with the top education officials from Oregon and Washington to send a letter opposing “federal attempts to redefine the concept of sex and gender government-wide, making that definition purely biological.”

“The assumption underlying California policy is that gender is a spectrum that is not necessarily linked to biological sex. State legislation allows all individuals, including students, to self-certify to their chosen gender category of male, female, or nonbinary—starting on January 1, 2019,” the release states.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) verifies this assumption by defining “gender nonbinary” as “gender creative,” which means “students can create or make up their own genders” Lebsack said.

The CDC calls these other genders, “gender minorities,” that, based on critical race theory (CRT), “may be considered marginalized and oppressed, while biological male and female genders may be considered privileged oppressors,” Lebsack told the CSBA.

By failing to fully define what nonbinary means, the CSBA has caused school trustees and districts to violate state education laws which obligates districts to inform parents, she alleged.

California Education Code 51101, states “parents and guardians of pupils enrolled in public schools have the right and should have the opportunity, as mutually supportive and respectful partners in the education of their children within the public schools, to be informed by the school, and to participate in the education of their children,” she pointed out.

Lebsack said parents deserve to be respected and informed, and she urged the CSBA to immediately “right this wrong” so they can better participate in their children’s education.

Lebsack sent the email to CSBA’s top executives including CEO and Executive Director Vernon Billy and Keith Bray, General Counsel and Chief of Staff, as well as more than 100 executives and staff.

Flint reiterated that CSBA has updated its policy in newsletters and other communications materials but did not cite a specific of a full definition of “nonbinary.”

“I do refute her accusation that we have not informed members about this. We updated the policy. Perhaps Ms. Lebsack feels that that we should have sent some sort of separate communication parsing the exact language because this is an issue of concern to her, but the fact remains that we did provide policy updates which were responsive to the law that she mentioned,” he said.

“Maybe she feels, we should have done it differently. That’s not surprising, because she’s striving for a particular outcome.”

When asked if the CSBA also had a particular outcome in mind, Flint replied, “Yes, we do have a certain outcome. Our outcome is to follow the law. Everything we have put out is in alignment with state and federal law.”

“What we are trying to do is give board members the information they need to uphold the law, and the policy updates that we have provided members allow them to do that,” he said.

“And as far as the word ‘nonbinary’ goes, people can have a debate about this, but I think nonbinary quite literally means not limited or restricted to two categories. So, I think one can extrapolate from that there are multiple options. And importantly, the policy updates we provide guide trustees in what’s required of them.”

Gender and Critical Race Theory

In her email to CSBA, Lebsack attached an image of a Black Lives Matter (BLM) coloring sheet, which she said is designed to teach elementary students gender concepts. It depicts a bearded, bespectacled man with flowers on his T-shirt and a bow in his hair partially blocking the words “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in large capital letters behind him.

There are two versions of the BLM coloring sheets, which The Epoch Times has obtained.

One reads: “Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose for them.”

The other reads: “We make space for transgender people to participate and lead. We know that cisgender (not transgender or gender nonconforming) people in our society have privilege, and we want to uplift transpeople, especially black trans women who often experience violence.”

Flint said it’s up to each school district to decide if they want to use BLM materials in their lessons.

“The state is not prescriptive about whether an individual teacher or a district would have incorporated Black Lives Matter into their curriculum. It certainly doesn’t advocate for specific position on that. I mean, the state law obviously encourages a certain diversity of curriculum but as for targeting Black Lives Matter or any other groups specifically, no. These are decisions that are made at the local level,” he said.

Lebsack contends that “gender inclusion” is more aptly gender “confusion and delusion,” and could have lifelong consequences, such as such as sterility for students. “Public schools are intentionally confusing kids about their gender and encouraging the use of puberty blockers which lead to infertility,” she states on her website, Brenda4Kids.com.

She is fighting against what she sees as “extremist ideologies and unethical medical practices” being promoted in the education system.

Lebsack has accused the state government and its agencies of child abuse and psychological exploitation. In a six-minute video, Lebsack shows examples of gender inclusion ideology that many schools have embraced and claims parental rights are rapidly eroding in California. She also advocates for school choice to be put on the 2022 election ballot.

Lebsack’s video shows a short clip of a cartoon used to teach students about gender inclusion in San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) and other districts that use the Advocates RRR, or 3Rs, (Rights, Respect, Responsibility) curriculum endorsed by the CDE.

“These elementary cartoons also glorify non-biological genders and stigmatize biological male and female genders,” Lebsack says in her video.

The cartoon “compares gender to a tossed salad,” Lebsack says in the video. “Biological males and females are considered old school like a boring rock hard wedge of Iceberg lettuce and a stinky old dried up tomato, while other nonbinary genders are compared to exciting salad ingredients,” she says.

The salad used to represent nonbinary genders is described as “a romaine and kale salad with avocado, cucumber, shishito peppers, and four kinds of cheese sprinkled in balsamic straight from Italy.”

Define Nonbinary, Teacher Tells California School Boards Association (theepochtimes.com)

How does a leader decide what to do?

The most logical response is: “Cui bono?”—”Who benefits?”—from the decision.

If some policy benefits your country most, you should, within moral bounds, pursue it.

If your enemies benefit most, you should avoid it.

I’d be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan—conservative or liberal—would give to the question, “Cui bono?”

I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly it benefits America.

“Twenty years is too long,” or its variant, “we have to end these endless wars,” the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.

It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.

The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members’ lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.

The number of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan per year from 2015 to 2020 is respectively 22, 9, 14, 14, 21, and 11. No one can seriously argue that we are leaving Afghanistan because of high American casualties.

So, while America doesn’t benefit at all from leaving Afghanistan, it does get hurt.

The damage to the reputation of America—as an ally and as a strong country—is not easily overstated.

The damage done to NATO, whose members President Joe Biden didn’t bother to consult, is greater than any damage former President Donald Trump—whom the left-wing mainstream media constantly attacked for damaging NATO—was alleged to have done.

On the other hand, “Cui bono?” has some very clear answers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every Islamic terror group in the world and every other anti-American regime and movement.

In the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro compiled a list of recent Western weakness in the face of tyrants and the commensurate strengthening of those tyrants:

“The West’s abandonment of Hong Kong in the face of Chinese aggression last year.

“The West’s continuing desire for a rapprochement with the Iranian mullahcracy.

“The West’s routine appeasement of Russia.

“All speak to the unwillingness of the West—and the West’s leader, the United States—to stand up for allies anywhere on earth.

“Afghanistan is simply the latest, and by far the most stunning, example of abandonment of an American ally …

“China’s Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, chortled, ‘From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and U.S. military won’t come to help. As a result (Taiwan) will quickly surrender.’

“Indeed, given the window presented by the Biden administration, it would be somewhat of a surprise if China didn’t attempt some sort of action against Taiwan in the next few years …

“Foreign policy abhors vacuums, and the United States has now created one. That means that erstwhile American allies will begin to play footsie with countries like Russia and China, believing that American commitments mean little. They have reason for such suspicions, obviously.”

The effects on Americans’ perceptions of the military constitute another terrible price paid by leaving Afghanistan. More and more Americans see the military as more concerned with fighting white supremacy in America and transphobia in the military than with fighting for the supremacy of freedom on earth. This is new. And it will have a devastating effect on both America and the military. One obvious consequence: Who will want to enlist in a woke military? (Perhaps that’s the goal.)

It seems that every generation has to relearn the basic laws of life, such as this one: There are many bad people and many bad countries in the world, and only a fear of good countries prevents them from conquering other countries.

There is less fear of good countries in the world today than at any time since World War II. And that is especially so because the good countries are preoccupied with their own alleged evils rather than with the world’s real evils.

Cui Bono? Who Benefits From the Afghanistan Withdrawal? (theepochtimes.com)

“Abracadabra!” “Alakazam!” “Presto-chango!” These common refrains are employed by magicians to signal the climax of their seemingly supernatural trick. As a child, I was fascinated by masters of deception. Among other magician’s tricks, the “sleight of hand” was my obsession. Equally stunning and perplexing, I was left puzzled time and again by the clever illusion. Try as I might, I could not manage to figure it out.

With study, I discovered the mastery behind the sleight-of-hand ploy: deception. The phrase refers to a clever act designed for two purposes—entertainment and manipulation of the onlooker. Drawing the spectator in by an intimate and captivating movement of the hands, the spectator never captures the moment they are duped into thinking they were not tricked. The bottom line is that, if you do not closely observe the magician’s hands, you will be fooled into looking in the wrong direction. Ultimately, you will believe what the magician wants you to think—that magic made the trick happen.

Today, I am often reminded of the sleight of hand when I feel drawn into false narratives perpetuated by our state and nation’s elected officials. Among our nation’s leaders, Governor Gavin Newsom has claimed center stage in attempting to deceive California residents that the Sept. 14 Gubernatorial Recall Election is nothing more than a “Republican” brainchild.

You will note that every ballot mailed to California voters is accompanied by a voter’s guide that describes the recall as the result of machinations at the national level by the Republican Party and supporters of former President Donald Trump. More precisely, the guide includes a statement from Governor Newsom asserting that this election is happening because the Republican National Committee (RNC) is determined to seize power in California.

This kind of talk is nothing new. Back in March, Newsom was quoted as saying the push for the vote was a “Republican recall backed by the RNC, anti-mask and anti-vax extremists, and pro-Trump forces who want to overturn the last election and have opposed much of what we have done to fight the pandemic.”

Again, this was hardly an isolated incident. Newsom has consistently described the upcoming election in speeches, public statements, and social media posts as a “Republican-led recall.” He’s also made regular digs at the national Republican Party, linking his own political fortunes to developments in other parts of the country. On Aug. 16, for example, he wrote in a Twitter post: “Republicans want to drive CA off the same cliff as FL and TX.”

Under these circumstances, it’s no wonder that Orrin Heatlie and Mike Netter, the leading proponents of the recall campaign, took to the courts recently.

In early August, Heatlie and Netter sued Secretary of State Shirley Weber over the language of the voter’s guide. They argued in their initial petition that Newsom ought to be ordered to revise the text of his statement in the guide to remove claims that the recall election was being spearheaded on a national level by the Republican Party and by Trump supporters. They called those claims “at best misleading, at worst flat-out false, and in all events a hyperbolic outrage,” and they requested that the court instruct the governor to remove text that accuses Republicans of abusing California’s recall laws in a bid to grasp power in the state.

Instead of holding Newsom’s false narratives accountable, Presiding Judge Laurie Earl issued a tentative ruling approving of Newsom’s false propaganda. As a result of Judge Earl’s ruling, households across California are receiving false and deceptive information about the movement behind the recall election.

What those households will not read about is the fact that many of the 46 candidates named as possible alternatives to Newsom in the second section of the recall ballot are not Republicans.

They will not read about the fact that neither the RNC nor the California Republican Party has endorsed any candidate in the recall election.

They will not read about the fact that the Democratic Party has taken up Newsom’s cause on a national level, with top-level politicians such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) making public statements urging voters in California to support the governor.

They will not read about the small business owners who resent Newsom’s embrace of restrictive public health measures that leave them struggling to keep their doors open and keep their employees on the roster.

They will not read about the parents who are worried about their kids’ ability to make up for all the learning they missed while Newsom closed the doors to public schools, all the while sending his own children to private school.

They will not read about the many individual voters—Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and others—who have been willing to go on record urging that Newsom be recalled.

Of course, they will be able to read what proponents of the recall say in their own statement. (After all, the voter’s guide gives space to both sides.) But they will also be presented with Newsom’s narrow and distorted assertions about the nature of the recall campaign.

That’s a shame. The governor should not downplay the numerous and imminent reasons California voters of all stripes have found to vote him out of office.

We ought to remember that California residents elect its governor to invoke truth, promote accountability and transparency, regardless of where their party loyalties lie. The governor should not deceptively control narratives behind elections and ignore the obvious plight of so many in the Golden State. With an unprecedented homelessness crisis, rising unemployment, and a broken education system, Newsom is in no position to suggest that a recall election was conceived only by members of the Republican Party.

The bottom line is that, like the sleight-of-hand trick, Governor Newsom wants you to blindly buy into his “Republican power grab” recall narrative while distracting you from the truth many of us already know: Californians across the political spectrum are collectively calling for a change in leadership.

Governor Newsom’s ‘Sleight of Hand’ (theepochtimes.com)

A reconfigured global elite are shaping up around a new kind of vision for transforming our world. They’ve called their neo-socialist and multilateral vision the Green New Deal.

Joe Biden’s White House team are core players in this vision, as they seek to reinvent Roosevelt’s original 1930s New Deal into a contemporary twenty-first century Democratic Party platform.

But there are also other important players pushing this neo-socialist dream.

One has been the European Union’s large and well-organised green lobby. Another has been Klaus Schwab (economist and founder of the World Economic Forum), who has used Davos to push his vision of a “Great Reset” of the global economy.

Those getting on board with the Green New Deal are the usual advocates of state interventionism, big government, and multilateral globalism. But surprisingly this new elite is a mix of left-liberals, socialists, Greens, bureaucrats, and university researchers/experts. More surprising is that sections of the business elite are also climbing on board what they believe will be a gravy train.

It appears business is motivated by two factors. First, they are afraid of activist pressure. Second, their marketing departments are telling them there are great public relations kudos to be had in signing up to the now fashionable narratives of saving victims, saving the planet, and distancing themselves from left-leaning stereotypes of greedy uncaring capitalists.

So now we have woke businesses greenwashing their brands plus learning to make profits out of the Green New Deal’s neo-socialist strategy to tear up our old infrastructure and replace them with new ones at great expense to the taxpayer. Who knew socialism could be profitable.

But one of the most fascinating features of this trend is how enthralled legacy media journalists are with the green narratives underpinning this emergent global elite.

Journalists who would normally ask questions about self-interest, crooked narratives, and obvious propaganda now meekly buy into the trendy narratives. Indeed journalists are now being told that applying the journalistic principle of balance is a bad thing when reporting on issues like climate change.

Instead, journalists are being taught that it is fine to advocate for green climate change messages. We even have global media like the BBC instructing their journalists not to be balanced on climate change.

In a climate when green activism is now normalised in media newsrooms, it is hardly surprising that we see journalists treating green experts as media darlings, and as a result, those same green experts are no longer challenged by probing journalistic questions.

Instead, what emerges is a de facto partnership between the media, climate change scientists, and activists wherein journalists start to construct pro-green (propaganda-like) stories.

One way of explaining this partnership is to see it as part of the phenomenon of an emergent global elite for whom left-wing “progressivism” has become a kind of secularised religion, built around saving the many kinds of victims we apparently have today.

These victims can be those conventionally beloved by socialists—the poor. They can also be the new victims beloved by identity politics—LGBTQI, Indigenous or ethnic minorities. Or victims beloved by feminists—women persecuted by the patriarchy. Or the victims can now even be non-human—whales, polar bears, coral reefs, nature, or the planet.

What binds all these victims is that they need to be saved by a self-selecting elite of people who have married elements of the narratives of left-liberalism and neo-Marxism.

This elite first emerged in the United States and then spread to the rest of the western world. And now, like a virus, it is also spreading to places like the European Union (EU).

It is an elite who have proven highly susceptible to catching the green virus. Significantly, enormous progress has been made in capturing western universities, the global media, the education system, and the many bureaucracies across the Anglo world and EU.

The result has been the growth of an alliance between left-liberal, progressive politicians; academics; journalists; and bureaucrats.

Once the universities were captured by this progressive-left, universities were used to teach a new “way of seeing” and a “new way of speaking about” the world.

Thus, universities become the source of what is termed ‘woke’ and green narratives; while the media and internet are used to disseminate their tales. In addition, as universities produced more of these progressive and Green “experts,” journalists rely on them to justify their own work—creating an ongoing cycle.

Importantly, since universities teach journalism, public relations and marketing the communication industries are filled with those taught the woke discourses beloved by the globalised elite.

Not surprisingly, the resultant spread of progressivism within the communications industry means progressives are also becoming well placed—and more skilled—at spreading their own ideologies, while shutting down opposing views.

Indeed the Left are so successful that much of the world in the Biden era is starting to feel a bit like a mixture of the hard authoritarianism of George Orwell’s 1984 and the soft authoritarianism of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

The proliferation of both discourse around the Green New Deal, and the expanding power of a medical autocracy calling the shots over COVID-19, are two indicators of the way the global elite are becoming successful at promoting only their views while undercutting all others.

The universities have also given birth to “experts” who believe that secular science can fix everything thereby removing the need for religion or traditional knowledge.

At a deeper level, German existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw this rot beginning when Western thinkers “killed God” in the 19th century, and from that wrong turn has evolved the secularist, social engineers of today.

But at a more institutional level, I think American conservative philosopher Paul Gottfried was correct that the problem lies in today’s overly interventionist governments imposing social therapy measures upon their citizens.

His argument was that this began during the post-second World War era in the United States—specifically with Paul Lazarsfeld’s Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University in the 1940s to 1950—and in the growth of the 1960s U.S. government-led social engineering policies (for example, affirmative action new migration laws).

And today, we see the modern manifestation of such a long-running trend in state-run welfare systems, the Green New Deal, and the COVID-19 medical autocracy.

Significantly, Lazarsfeld’s behavioural science was built on the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School’s idea of an “Authoritarian Personality”—a personality type that is submissive and obedient to authority—as well as the notion that experts should learn to manage and control the population better (using psychology, behavioural sciences, public opinion research, public relations, and spin-doctoring). This, in turn, can help stop the re-emergence of “bad ideas” like nationalism or traditionalism.

Lazarsfeld founded an American tradition of academic thinking about how the media could be used to promote “good” (progressive) ideas and shut down “bad” ideas.

Lazarsfeld’s centre employed many Frankfurt School members and so opened the door to the merging of left-liberal and neo-Marxist ideas, which has further contributed to the growth of the progressive elite.

With Biden in office, this elite now has a great base to work from to disseminate their preferred ideological narratives including the virtues of big government, green activism, and multilateral interventionism to save its so-called “victims.”

And because the 2000 anti-Trump crusade helped cement the alliance between left-leaning politicians, activists, mainstream liberal media journalists, U.S.-owned tech giants; and the university sector, we can now expect to see a period of intensified dissemination of “progressive” narratives plus simultaneous attempts at discourse closure aimed at closing-down and disrupting narratives that the Left loves to hate.

Global Elite Latches Onto Neo-Socialist Vision: The Green New Deal (theepochtimes.com)

Democrats have several major crises hurting the country spinning out of control at the same time.

But what are they concerned with? Spending trillions of dollars we don’t have, and taxing Americans into oblivion.

The border is a mess, inflation is out of control, the Biden just handed Afghanistan to the Taliban on a silver platter, plus $85 billion of our military equipment.

Yet Democrats instead want to expand socialism in America. They’re even admitting that their big spending push will transform the American economy.

But they have a big problem. In order to push their radical spending, they need to raise the debt ceiling.

Obviously, taxes can’t pay for all the crazy stuff Pelosi wants. But she doesn’t want the blame for our massive national debt.

She’s pressuring Republicans to own the debt. But they are firing back, “You’re on your own.”

From Fox News:

More than 100 House Republicans signed a letter Monday promising not to vote to increase the debt ceiling under any circumstances…

“In order for this spending to occur, our nation’s debt limit will have to be increased significantly. Because Democrats are responsible for the spending, they need to take responsibility for increasing the debt ceiling.”

Republicans in the House were bypassed by Pelosi when she approved Biden’s radical $3.5 trillion expansion of the welfare state.

Not one Republican voted for this radical spending bill. Now, they are telling Pelosi they will not vote to increase the debt ceiling to make this spending possible.

It’s no secret Democrats seem to love spending other people’s money. But Biden’s radical socialist agenda is just too expensive.

Even with all the tax increases he’s planning, he can’t pay for it all.

So, Pelosi and her cohorts have to approve raising our nation’s debt ceiling. Meaning, of course, we will be spending even more money we don’t have.

The nation will have to borrow that money from global lenders, to avoid more inflation and other problems.

What happens when our credit runs dry? What if China (our biggest lender) demands we pay them back?

Democrats are running out the clock by expanding our debt, getting more Americans hooked on welfare while importing more workers from over the border.

Pelosi doesn’t seem to care. Rumors suggest she’s bailing after 2022, anyway. She did her damage to the country and will probably retire to Martha’s Vineyard or something.

The rest of us? We’ll have to live with all the damage she’s caused.

Key Takeaways:

• Over 100 House Republicans are refusing to support Pelosi’s raised debt ceiling.
• The nation’s debt ceiling must be raised to push Biden’s socialist agenda.
• Democrats wanted to share the blame with Republican lawmakers.

Nancy Pelosi Just Ran Into 100-Strong GOP Brick Wall – House Republicans Sign Letter Refusing To Raise Her Debt Ceiling (thepatriotjournal.com)

In Washington, things have gone off the rails in a hurry. Many blame an invigorated unthinking progressive agenda for broken government. And they are correct. Think about it.

How else would you characterize the utterly failed “Let’s get out of Afghanistan overnight” move by a president who seemingly had little interest in the advice of his generals or diplomats?

Speaking of which, who made the call to shut down the contractors who maintained American-made Afghan air assets?

You do not have to be a West Point graduate to question why we would give away our dominant advantage (air power) and leave the critical airbase at Bagram on a battlefield populated by seventh-century religious warriors. Or why we would leave so many military assets (vehicles, weapons, helicopters, night-vision goggles, etc.) to the Taliban. Or why our soldiers were ordered to abandon the country before every last U.S. citizen was accounted for and safe.

This last question is, of course, the most important and the most baffling.

Today, the president’s press flack won’t even admit Americans are “stranded,” but the anguished calls for help by trapped Americans and our Afghan allies in and around the Kabul airport (and Thursday’s horrific bomb attacks) speak to a terribly broken policy.

How else would one characterize the chaos at our southern border as an estimated two million people will have migrated by the end of the year?

To make matters worse, an understaffed Border Patrol and a declawed ICE are in no position to stop the tons of fentanyl, COVID-positive migrants and sex traffickers that are the tangible results of a broken policy.

Note that the person allegedly in charge of border security has been on her second foreign junket to Southeast Asia.

How else would you characterize the historic level of violence in cities that have indulged the ludicrous crime-producing “defund the police” movement?

A glance at murder and other violent crime statistics from any of these progressive cities reminds us that the suspension of enforcement against so-called minor crimes and the pro-offender mindset of so many big-city (Soros-sponsored) prosecutors has made life significantly worse off for the good and law-abiding people living in deteriorating marginal neighborhoods.

Whatever did happen to that “let’s replace the police with social workers” initiative?

How else would you characterize a president who just last week begged OPEC to increase its (fossil fuel) oil production in the face of rapidly spiking gasoline prices and increasing world demand?

This pitiful picture is juxtaposed against the greatest accomplishment of the Trump administration: an American natural gas revolution. America’s vast supply of natural gas and modern drilling techniques helped achieve independence (production of more domestic energy than we consume) by Trump’s third year in office. And all during a time greenhouse gas emissions continue to decline.Related:Dennis Prager: Who Benefits from Biden Deserting Afghanistan? America’s Enemies, That’s Who

How else would you characterize school systems that no longer care to teach the three “Rs” and no longer engage in objective measures of academic performance?

You can blame social justice warriors (and their compatriots in the teachers unions) who have infiltrated our local public school boards in order to indoctrinate our kids (as young as kindergarten age) with their unique curriculum of sex- and race-based instruction.

That their campaign is playing out against a backdrop of consistently underperforming (what used to be called “failing”) public schools in our most marginal neighborhoods is not lost on the commonsense majority.

Hence, a newly invigorated parent-teacher resistance to the woke mob’s agenda is born, as well as a new front in America’s culture wars.

How else would you characterize voting “reforms” that eliminate photo identification, scrubbing of voter rolls, signature matches on the inside and outside of mail-in ballots, and vote-counting transparency requirements?

Mistrust of our voting processes ran high among Democrats in 2016 and even higher among Republicans in 2020. Why in the world would either the states or the federal government want to further complicate the way we cast and count votes in our country?

How else would you characterize our out-of-control federal spending and the sudden re-emergence of inflation — that terrible debilitating tax on our nation’s poor that so many in Washington are soft-peddling?

There is a method to the madness, however, as today’s spiking inflation numbers bring back memories of the bad ‘ol days of the 1970s.

A bottom line emerges: What had been working during the Trump era had to be broken (such was the principle and all-consuming commitment of Biden 2020) regardless of consequence.

Indeed, from an incremental, secure withdrawal in Afghanistan to “Stay in Mexico” at the border to re-funding the police in our cities to real American energy independence from the gas fields to school choice in our classrooms, America was heading in the right direction. And then there was a worldwide pandemic — and an election. And now there are predictable short and long-term consequences.

Today, the breaking of Trump-era initiatives proceeds apace. This is what happens under single-party government. It is not a pretty sight. Broken never is.

Bob Ehrlich: We’re Suffering Because Biden Had to Reverse Every Trump Decision, Especially the Successful Ones (westernjournal.com)

Tanner Cross refused to call students by pronouns divergent from their biological sex

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of an elementary school teacher who was suspended for criticizing the district’s proposed transgender policies.

The commonwealth’s highest court on Monday rejected Loudoun County Public Schools’ appeal to suspend Tanner Cross, a physical education teacher who was placed on administrative leave in May for criticizing the district’s proposed policies for transgender students. Cross won a temporary injunction in the state’s 12th circuit court in June and subsequently was allowed to return to the classroom.

The district did not make an adequate case for reversing the lower court’s June decision, reaffirming Cross’s win, the Virginia Supreme Court said Monday.

In its appeal, Loudoun County Public Schools claimed that Cross’s religious and speech protections are secondary to students’ rights to comfort.

“While LCPS respects the rights of public-school employees to free speech and free exercise of religion, those rights do not outweigh the rights of students to be educated in a supportive and nurturing environment,” the district claimed.

Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D.) last year approved a measure requiring public schools to create and implement protections for transgender students by the 2021-2022 school year. Pursuant to that law, Loudoun school officials proposed updated guidelines that would allow transgender students to access traditionally sex-discriminated spaces like restrooms and sports teams.

The updated policies, which the school board approved on Aug. 11, also require teachers to call students by selected names and pronouns that align with their “gender identity.” Cross spoke out against that provision in a May 25 school board meeting, days before he was suspended.

“I love all of my students, but I would never lie to them regardless of the consequences,” Cross said. “I’m a teacher, but I serve God first and I will not affirm a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion, it’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.”

District officials claimed Cross’s statement had a “disruptive impact” on the school community.

Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal nonprofit that defended Cross, says teachers should not be forced to comply with such policies.

“Teachers shouldn’t be forced to promote ideologies that are harmful to their students and that their beliefs are false, nor should they be silenced for commentating at a public meeting,” senior counsel Tyson Langhofer said in a statement on Monday.

Langhofer said Alliance Defending Freedom amended its lawsuit after the district updated its policies for transgender students.

Students in Loudoun County Public Schools, one of the wealthiest districts in the country, returned to the classroom on Aug. 26.

Virginia Supreme Court Backs Teacher Ousted for Rejecting Trans Policies (freebeacon.com)

This is a strange thing to have to tell someone, but here’s some advice that could have saved Kristin Pitzen’s some problems: Social media reaches beyond California.

Given that’s the whole point of social media, it seems like an odd bit of knowledge to relay. Even when you have your account on Twitter or Facebook set to private, if you post something particularly cretinous, if it rubs one of your friends wrong and you’re in a position of authority, there’s a good chance that it’s going to go wide, with decided swiftness.

In this case, Pitzen apparently didn’t even try to hide it. When the teacher in Southern California’s Newport-Mesa Unified School District posted about what she thinks of the American flag in her classroom on TikTok (there isn’t one), it was entirely public.

While she didn’t identify herself on her account, it didn’t take long for her identity to be sussed out. Her opinion might play well in Southern California. It probably doesn’t do so well when exported outside of the Golden State, however.

Here’s a brief summary about what she said regarding Ol’ Glory: She doesn’t have it in her classroom because she “lost” it, but if her students want to say the Pledge of Allegiance they can say it to the LGBT rainbow flag.Trending:US Special Forces Vets Go Rogue in Middle of Night, Rescue Afghan Allies That Biden Won’t

According to the U.K. Daily Mail, the school district is now investigating Pitzen after the high school English teacher’s clip about the Pledge of Allegiance got attention this week.

“OK, so during third period, we have announcements and they do the Pledge of Allegiance,” Pitzen said at the beginning of the video.

“I always tell my class, stand if you feel like it, don’t stand if you feel like it, say the words if you want, you don’t have to say the words.”

“So my class decided to stand but not say the words — totally fine,” she said. “Except for the fact that my room does not have a flag.”Do you think this teacher should be fired?Yes No
 Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

“It used to be there,” she said, pointing and laughing. She said that while the school was closed for the pandemic, she took it down — adding, in a stage whisper, that she did it “because it made me uncomfortable.”

“And I packed it away, and I don’t know where, and I haven’t found it yet,” she added, laughing in a way that indicated she wasn’t exactly looking for it — if, indeed, she had “lost” it in the first place.

When one of her students said it was “kinda weird that we stand and then we say it (the Pledge of Allegiance) to nothing. And I’m like, ‘Oh, well, I’ve got to find it, I’m working on it, I got you.’”

At this point, a laughing Pitzen makes it clear she had not intention of looking for the flag.

“In the meantime, I tell this kid, ‘We do have a flag in the class that you can pledge your allegiance to.’ And he like, looks around and goes, ‘Oh, that one?’”Related:Listen: Hot Mic Catches Democrats Making Fun of Pledge of Allegiance

She then points to the LGBT pride flag.

Teacher mocks the American Flag and suggests to students they can say the Pledge of Allegiance to the pride flag: pic.twitter.com/1QTS5xjPln

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) August 27, 2021

In a separate video, she showed off all of the flags she had collected and put around her classroom for Pride Month back in June, putting her hand over her heart and saying, “I pledge allegiance to the queers.”

She shows off all the pride flags in her classroom and says “I pledge allegiance to the queers” pic.twitter.com/eQXe1OfPoW

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) August 27, 2021

Even in the People’s Republic of California, this is a bit iffy — particularly given she teaches in Orange County, not known for being the bluest part of the state. But the social part of social media means people who don’t live in Pitzen’s bubble got to see it. Shocker of shockers, they thought the disrespect for the flag — as well as coercing a student to pledge allegiance to the LGBT flag — was appalling.

What’s so disturbing is that these people post this thinking no one will care — like she’s not doing something wrong.

Well, now the district is investigating her.

Parents: remember to have conversations with your kids about their teachers, what they teach and how they teach it. https://t.co/3wN1kppBGe

— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) August 29, 2021

She should move to Afghanistan and strictly adhere to Sharia law. https://t.co/jvWz0yB71F

— Matthew Kolken (@mkolken) August 28, 2021

I’ve been reading about our fallen heroes all day, and then to see this…it made me weep. https://t.co/TaARsaWGHm

— Patricia Heaton (@PatriciaHeaton) August 28, 2021

Even in inside California, conservatives — notably Richard Grenell, former President Donald Trump’s acting director of national intelligence — were outraged at the video.

What kind of parent would allow their child to be taught by this wacko?

Why are parents turning their kids over to someone they don’t know?

I’d like to talk to people who think this is good?!? https://t.co/VnNxeBWLjA

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) August 28, 2021

“What kind of parent would allow their child to be taught by this wacko? Why are parents turning their kids over to someone they don’t know? I’d like to talk to people who think this is good?!?” Grenell tweeted.

Apparently, the school district is talking to people, too.

“We are aware of this incident and are investigating,” Annette Franco, public relations officer for the district, told Fox News.

“While we do not discuss employee related matters, we can tell you that showing respect and honor for our nation’s flag is a value that we instill in our students and an expectation of our employees. We take matters like this seriously and will be taking action to address it.”

That doesn’t exactly sound like they were pledging allegiance to the queers.

From the early stage of the fallout, it seems like even Pitzen might be getting the idea that the video wasn’t such a great idea.

“The original TikTok has since been taken down – along with all of Pitzen’s social media accounts – but has been viewed on Twitter more than 1.2 million times,” the Daily Mail reported.

I know this might come as a surprise to some in California, but yes, many millions of Americans still do respect the American flag. Possibly not knowing anyone who feels like that, Pitzen decided to tell the world her feelings, and how she manipulates her students.

To her, itt was all a great big laugh — particularly the part where she had a student pledge allegiance to the LGBT flag. LOL, amirite?

Perhaps — if you’re a liberal social media influencer and not a teacher. Pitzen isn’t getting paid to have yuks with the American flag or coerce the students in her charge to pledge allegiance to her pet cause. Hopefully, once the investigation is complete, she won’t be getting paid with public money at all.

Teacher Brags She Has No American Flag in Class, Here’s What She Tells Students to Pledge Allegiance To (westernjournal.com)