The idea, “go woke, go broke” is one we are seeing more frequently

August 20, 2024

The current mentality that is gaining acceptance considers so much of our culture and history as false or troublesome and in need of replacement, and is succeeding to a dangerous degree. 

Commonly known as being “woke,” the beliefs it supports are things like white people are automatically and always oppressors and non-white people are always oppressed, that historical things and people that are viewed as bad by the “woke” should be removed or destroyed, that what has been traditionally taught as American History is false, and so on.

In trying to calm things down, people frequently join the parade in removing and changing things so that they are less upsetting to those who find them offensive. In some cases, this might be acceptable.

This movement has caused a lot of confusion and emotional distress. And there is at least one area where this is very dangerous and must be stopped. That is in the military forces of the United States of America.

Those who are or have been in our military, or are otherwise familiar with it and its nature, understand how dangerous this is. Even so, some in higher positions have been infected with this idea to the degree that they are imposing changes to how our military operates in order to smooth things out.

However, in smoothing things out, they are making the military less well equipped and weaker to the point that it is less able to do the only thing it exists to do: Defend the country and its interests, protect us from threats and invaders, and eliminate anyone who seeks to harm the USA.

In 2015 a Marine Corps study showed that gender-integrated combat formations — those with both men and women in combat — did not move as quickly or shoot as accurately as men-only units, and that women were twice as likely to suffer combat injuries. The Secretary of the Navy at the time, Ray Maybus, rejected the study because it did not meet the Obama/Biden administration’s political agenda.

However, that same year Defense Secretary Ashton Carter imposed “gender-neutral” operational standards so that female service members could meet the qualifications for combat positions. When it turned out that women were scoring lower than men, the standards were abandoned, and despite their lower performance on qualifying tests, women were, and presumably still are, allowed to be in combat units.

In 2016 Maybus ordered a change in Navy job titles, doing away with titles like “corpsman” and replacing them with gender-neutral titles. However, the enlisted sailors strongly objected, preferring the historic titles from previous decades, and the Navy reversed that change. As “wokeness” continues to infect the military, this change may be, and perhaps has been, reinstituted.

In 2021, the Navy began using a training video explaining the importance of using the correct pronouns. In order to not upset some sailors, inclusive language is now required, such as saying “hey everybody” rather than “hey guys.”

Outside of the military and in the country generally has been promotion of the idea that America is actually a country where racism and white privilege abound. This flawed concept has crept into the military, where men and women service personnel are required to sit through indoctrination programs. These sessions push the Marxist-based idea of critical race theory, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), and other similar ideas.

However, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the House Armed Services Committee: “We do not teach critical race theory, we don’t embrace critical theory, and I think that’s a spurious conversation.”

Others in the Pentagon argue that critical race theory actually is being taught, and that charge is supported by abundant evidence.

Even if CRT was a valid aspect of America, taking up the time of military members with these indoctrination sessions is at odds with the duties and responsibilities of our military services. And the reported billions of dollars of costs associated with these new ideas is a dangerous use of military funds, which should be used for national security and military readiness purposes only.

As the late conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh frequently said, the role of the military is to “kill people and break things” in defense of our country. It is precisely the most improper place to indulge in promoting social issues.

Whether our military forces are all white, black, Asian, or Hispanic, or all male or female or some mixture of all of those, it must be the absolute best equipped, most highly trained, and most efficient military possible.

You might expect that, of all people, those in leadership of the Defense Department would understand that. However, many of those in top positions have apparently abandoned their sworn duty and common sense. Fortunately, the rank and file personnel under their leadership — the ones that put their lives on the line and live or die from their policies — do understand the true purpose they must fulfill.

We must quit playing games and focus only on the mission of the nation’s military forces. With the existing threats to our national security, we cannot allow our service personnel to be required to worry about using the proper pronouns, and other idiotic ideas that weaken our security.

The value of public education is under attack, and sinking

January 24, 2023

Between 2000 and 2019 the student population in America’s public schools increased by 7.6 percent. The number of teachers increased by 8.7 percent. However, the population of district administrators nearly doubled, increasing by 87.6 percent.

This is a fundamental change in the public education system, a foundational change. When the foundation changes, what sits on that foundation also changes. This is certainly happening in public education.

Among these changes is a challenge to the age-old idea that the responsibility for and the raising of children belongs to the parents. They are the ones that created the child; paid for her/his food, clothing, and living quarters for years; and began the long, slow process of helping them grow and mature.

But now, in this age of administrative growth, the idea is that those involved in the process of teaching subjects like language, science, history, math, the arts, and other things, are really the ones who should teach kids everything, including those things that for centuries had been the domain of parents. This attitude is the basis for many of the problems of public education today.

And this attitude exists in spite of the fact that the taxes of citizens — most of whom have been, now are, or someday will be parents of school children — pay for the bulk of public education.

As parents have become aware that the education bureaucracy — which includes state agencies, school boards, administrators and teachers — is slowly and secretly controlling what is being presented to their children in school, they are correctly concerned and justifiably upset.

In Virginia, where much controversy exists over public education, it was recently discovered that administrators in three counties and 17 high schools had failed to notify their students that they qualified as National Merit scholars. 

The National Merit Scholarship Program, administered by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, “is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955. Approximately 1.5 million high school students enter the program each year,” according to the organization’s Website.

Those who receive this honor have applied for it, and worked hard to earn the award. They set this high goal, and they achieved it. Those who receive the Merit award stand at the top of the student learning pyramid. 

Yet, some Virginia education administrators, and likely some in other states, as well, decided not to notify these students in a timely manner. This in many cases denied the recipients the ability to include this information in their applications to the colleges where they hope to go to further their education, and cost them scholarship support. 

And what is the reason for this unacceptable decision? The education authorities did not want to hurt the feelings of those students who did not earn the award, whether or not they even tried for it.

This is one example of what the dubious goal of creating “equity” in outcomes requires. The new “rule” is that a student may have out-performed all other students in the senior class, but it is not fair to the others for him or her to be recognized for that.

There are other unacceptable activities taking place in some American schools. There is strong evidence that some schools and school systems, such as in Chicago, Illinois, and Virginia are teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT). A simplified definition of CRT is that it classifies one race as oppressors and other races as oppressed, increasing division among races rather than continuing to bring all races together.

Gender fluidity is being taught in some schools in New York state. This encourages youngsters to question their gender and perhaps attempt to change it. Other topics regarding sexual activity are also being presented which, out of regard for using appropriate language, will not be named or described here. 

The latter two topics are being presented to very young students, in elementary and middle school. These children are not old enough or mature enough to be presented these topics, or to make decisions about changing their gender. Furthermore, none of these topics are officially part of the approved curricula; they are being added under the table.

Writing in Hillsdale College’s publication, Imprimis, Hillsdale President Larry Arnn explains what he sees as the origin and purpose of these changes. “The process is dominated by ‘stakeholders’ — mostly people who have a financial or political interest in what is taught. They are mostly not teachers or scholars, but advocates. And so we adopt our textbooks, our lesson plans, and our state standardized tests with a view to future political outcomes once the kids grow up.”

Arnn blames these changes on the administrative state. Nationwide, he said, the administrative state has more than 20 million employees, most of whom are at the state level. They are in many areas of government, education among them. They make direct and indirect decisions on the economy, and those decisions affect everything, including educational direction.

The growth of administrative positions in public education was noted earlier. While teachers sometimes are active participants in these under-handed activities, the primary culprits are in administrative positions.

This has to be stopped.

America is being torn apart from within by bad politics, leftist policies

Watching America collapse or, more accurately, be torn apart from within, is very disturbing. The country has had challenges before. Some of us remember the turbulence of the sixties. The Vietnam War, the hippies and the Civil Rights Movement all had things stirred up. But the country settled down after a while.

Today, the large number of “Americans” who do not know why our system of government is superior to the others, because they were not taught about it, did not learn about it when they were taught, or who just don’t accept it, is truly troublesome.

Barack Obama’s pledge to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” if elected should have started a revolution against that concept. Instead, due to the large number who disagree with and/or don’t understand our nation’s founding principles, it fired up a lot of people who agreed with that idea. Today we are seeing where that mindset has led us.

Our country is divided more than it has been since the Civil War. One political faction wants to change many things, frequently because “times have changed.” Things like doing away with the Electoral College that protects minority interests and getting rid of the Senate filibuster that helps discourage the introduction of highly partisan legislation, and makes it easier to pass one-sided legislation. 

It has also discussed packing the Supreme Court with liberal activists to make laws rather than to correctly interpret laws. This will strengthen and maintain leftist power in Washington for a long time.

And even though Joe Biden won the 2020 election with 81.3 million votes — the most ever — and with the highest voter turnout percentage since 1900, it wants to change election laws to “increase voter turnout.”

The other side, however, wants to protect and defend the brilliant concepts of the Founders that made America superior to every other governmental form yet conceived.

This conservative faction understands that the principles of the U.S. Constitution do not change with the winds of time, or the preferences of political parties. And it understands why they should not change. 

The “conservative” justices on the Supreme Court and other courts work to maintain founding principles, and to save the republic from the suicidal tendencies of the socialist/communist radical left.

Laws that protect people must be followed and protected. And people that cannot or will not live and act in compliance with those laws must be punished. The safety of the populace is of utmost importance in the workings of a good government.

Fortunately, the disastrous results of defund the police, no bail/low bail, and not punishing some crimes are being seen for the irrational blunders they are. Yet millions among us still want to change direction from that which brought us a strong nation, and they are having negative effects on our country.

Education, which has been made far less effective because of the fear surrounding the Covid virus, now is home to a movement, mostly in secret, to improperly change the history curriculum. Some of this occurs at the school board level, some at the school level, and some at the instructor level. And it has spread into other subject areas.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been sneaked into classrooms, and rather than teach children that each of them is a valuable individual, it classifies them as either an oppressed person, or an oppressor. The distinction depends not on individual character, but on skin color. 

Instead of encouraging kids to understand and get along with each other, CRT pits groups of kids against each other, further intensifying the discord we see.

Some school boards deny parents their right to express concerns at meetings, and deny them requested materials. Some board members tell parents “I don’t work for you.” Teachers unions resist the importance of getting back into the classroom, and restoring the learning environment.

Reactions to the Covid variants have had devastating effects on the country, and much of the world. Combined with the other issues, things are truly upside-down.

Advice from the scientists has been all over the board. Some of that is a normal part of learning to deal with a new disease. But two years in, there is beginning to be resistance to the control mechanisms put into effect to protect us. 

Governments and businesses mandate vaccinations. Vaccines are designed to keep people from getting a disease. Vaccines in the past have done that. The Polio, Tetanus and Measles vaccines, for example, prevent contracting those diseases. 

Some people use those vaccines to justify forcing Covid vaccinations. But there is a big difference. Covid vaccines do not prevent catching or transmitting Covid. They reportedly reduce the effects of the virus, but do not prevent catching or transmitting it.

And then there is the selective censorship by social media platforms that impede the free exchange of important ideas. It is aimed primarily at conservative politics, and the “approved” Covid messages.

Comments contrary to the approved message were taken down, labeled as “false information” by the self-appointed media judges. Much of that information, however, proved to be correct.

Free speech is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Without the free expression of ideas — good and bad ideas — we are doomed.

Virginia’s red wave fueled by parents fighting for their children

The Nov. 2 state elections were certainly noteworthy, with Republicans making inroads into Democrat strongholds in several states. A very tight race for governor in New Jersey was an unexpected too-close-to-call situation throughout Tuesday night’s election coverage. Incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy ultimately defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli by a very narrow margin.

The Virginia election also stands out, since the controversy surrounding the Loudoun County school system and the actions by its school board that angered parents had gotten so much attention, along with similar situations elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

Former Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe, the party’s candidate for a second term as governor, was defeated by a non-politician running his first race for political office. Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race, Republican candidate Winsome Sears defeated Democrat candidate Hala Ayala in the Lieutenant Governor’s race, and Republican candidate Jason Miyares defeated incumbent Democrat Mark R. Herring for Attorney General.

After post-election counting of mail-in and absentee ballots late Friday night, Republicans officially won control of the House of Delegates by a slim 51-49 margin. One more seat could go Republican when the winner is determined in a Virginia Beach district.

What in the world is going on? Both New Jersey and Virginia gleamed bright blue after the 2020 election. But Virginia turned a bright red last week, and New Jersey had a red election glow, until the next day.

The situation in Virginia is no mystery. Democrat candidates suffered losses due to unpopular positions taken by many candidates and particularly by McAuliffe, who further fired up voters by saying that parents have no role in the education of their children. This comment came after the Loudoun County school board treated parents as intruders in the school system’s operation. In another incident, a father whose daughter was sexually assaulted in a girl’s bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt challenged the school board that had hidden that fact.

Parents have also been upset by the mandate to wear masks in school. Children wearing masks for hours has been shown as harmful to them. And they object to the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Virginia schools. Opposition to both of these issues drew harsh reactions from some school officials, and others.

McAuliffe denies that CRT is being taught, and claims that it has "never been taught in Virginia," and accused those concerned about CRT of promoting a divisive "dog-whistle." And liberal news sources CNN and MSNBC joined in the chorus of those denying that CRT is being taught.

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said during the network’s Election Night coverage that critical race theory "isn’t real," and criticized Republican candidate Youngkin for his positions.

Last week John King, CNN Inside Politics host, took the side of Democrat strategist Paul Begala, agreeing that Republican criticisms of CRT were just racist dog whistles for “suburbanites who don't like diversity.” 

But the lies and/or ignorance of these naysayers has been proven by other news sources, such as The Fairfax County Times, National Review, Fox News, The Federalist, and ABC 13 WSET-TV, Lynchburg, Va.

WSET reported, “As part of the program's ‘Culturally-Responsive Teaching and Learning Principles,’ public schools were encouraged to ‘embrace critical race theory,’ and ‘engage in race-conscious teaching and learning,’ according to [a] leaked presentation first reported by investigative journalist Christopher Rufo.”

The report continued, “In addition, Va. Superintendent of Public Instruction James F. Lane sent a memo to all school districts in 2019 encouraging school leaders to read a book that calls critical race theory ‘an important analytic tool’ for addressing ‘power and privilege.’”

What is Critical Race Theory? According to Britannica online, “Critical race theory is an intellectual movement and a framework of legal analysis according to which (1) race is a culturally invented category used to oppress people of colour and (2) the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, political, and economic inequalities between white and nonwhite people.”

CRT represents a vastly different look at America’s past. And, more importantly, it is a perspective that is being sneaked into classrooms without having been publicly offered and properly approved as a modification of the traditional curriculum that has been taught for more than a century.

Why would school officials want to underhandedly implement such a drastic change to the history curriculum? And why would news agencies and “journalists” support this clandestine action by openly attacking those who oppose it?

The obvious answer is that they fear that the public would not accept CRT if it was handled honestly and openly.

CRT has its roots in “Critical Theory,” a doctrine of Karl Marx. Many or most people may not know that connection. What they do know is that they don’t like CRT, and other things that are being done to their children against their wishes. These parents are fighting for their children. 

Last week, enough people in Virginia expressed a different opinion at the polls than those in liberal northern Virginia and the other population centers that put the Democrats in power. This is also happening in other parts of the country, and it’s a good thing.

Wildly exaggerating things is a cheap, repulsive political tactic

Lately, we have seen two occasions where certain parties have exaggerated descriptions of some events to make them seem more serious than they actually were. Two immediately come to mind: The January 6th “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol; and the “domestic terrorism” at some local school board meetings.

Let’s take a look at these terms and allegations.

Insurrection: What it is: a violent armed uprising by a group or movement acting for the specific purpose of overthrowing the constituted government and seizing its powers.

What it isn’t: Insurrection is not a lot of people, nearly all of whom were unarmed, who illegally entered a government building, even if they were intent upon interrupting the work of those who occupy that building. The January 6th event at the U.S. Capitol Building was illegal and wrong — perhaps even an actual riot — but it was not an insurrection.

This common-sense evaluation was confirmed by the FBI, which Reuters reported “has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.”

When parents attend their children’s school board meeting and issue complaints against activities, and criticism of the school or the school system, even if they are angry and accusatory, they are not “domestic terrorists.” And if there were threats made against those associated with the school system, they may be minor crimes, but not “domestic terrorism.” This allegation and misuse of the term is irrational and disgraceful.

As reported by The Daily Signal, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the FBI and federal prosecutors to meet with federal, state, and local leaders to look into a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” allegedly being made against “school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” 

Garland’s directive followed soon after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) requested President Joe Biden to assist in looking into behavior it absurdly classified as “domestic terrorism.”

And even if there is unlawful behavior at local school board meetings, it is the responsibility and clearly the purview of local law enforcement to deal with it. The federal government has no business or authority to involve itself in local and state affairs such as the goings-on at local meetings.

However, the actions favored by the NSBA, if granted, are likely to inhibit the ability of voters and parents to make their opinions known to the board. Even the foolish mischaracterization of these events is enough to inhibit some from exercising their constitutional rights and responsibilities in speaking out against what their children’s schools are doing.

This is yet one more episode where the federal government is improperly imposing its will over the guaranteed freedoms of the people.

This increasing misapplication of terrifying terms to make things seem far worse than they are is not the proper way to do things in America. It is a cheap political ploy designed to arouse false negative feelings, and to stifle opposition to unpopular policies. This is especially true when these preposterous over-reaches are done by public servants and/or elected representatives.

Most local school boards are elected by voters, and are therefore accountable to those voters and the parents of school children. They do not have the luxury of ignoring complaints and appeals for change. 

They also do not have the luxury of stifling the free speech of those voters and parents simply because they disagree with their complaints. They are elected servants of the people, not the rulers of the people.

This school board hoopla has spurred the idea of finding alternatives to government schools. This authoritarian behavior is the biggest boost to that idea that has come along lately.

An unresponsive school board runs the risk of parents saying they are finished with the arrogant attitude of the board, and will remove their child or children from the public school to one of the alternatives: charter schools, so long as they retain their independence; private or religious schools; or home schooling.

To what are these parents objecting? In what is likely the most reported of these conflicts, Loudoun County, Virginia, the Democrat-controlled board of supervisors and school board are trying to promote Critical Race Theory (CRT), and silence the opposition, as reported by Real Clear Politics (RCP).

“Supporters of [CRT] claim white racism is embedded in American institutions, and some go so far as to blame whites for poverty and crime in black communities,” RCP wrote. “Opponents claim [CRT] is inherently racist, teaching people to judge by skin color: all whites are oppressors, all blacks are victims.”

Much of the thousands of tax dollars related to CRT has gone to “the ‘Equity Collaborative,’ a group that seeks to expose and eliminate ‘the dominant (male, White, heterosexual) ideology’ and teaches tenets like ‘Whiteness as property’ and “Permanence of racism,’” RCP wrote.

Such a radical change in the history curriculum, without even notifying parents, let alone asking their opinion, does not sit well with true Americans, who expect — and deserve — transparency from their elected public servants.

We must not allow public education to become indoctrination.

The debate between educators and parents over CRT heats up!

Critical Race Theory (CRT), which has Marxist origins, is a version of America’s beginnings that is strongly at odds with the history of our country as it has been taught in public schools for more than a hundred years. The nation’s two largest teacher unions — the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — support this version.

There are charges that CRT has sneaked into public education in recent years, that some teachers are teaching it, and that some school systems are preparing to start. AFT president Randi Weingarten, who calls CRT the “honest history” of America, denies that CRT is being taught below the college level, but said her union is prepared to defend any teacher accused of teaching it.

There are teachers, administrators and school boards that agree that CRT should be taught in schools now. But many parents and many other Americans strongly oppose it, believing that CRT pits people against each other and destroys the view of their country that generations of Americans have been taught and believe.

Questions arise: Is it appropriate for one or a few teachers, or a school faculty, or a school’s administration, or even a county school board to unilaterally make such a dramatic change in the history curriculum in public schools that are supported by taxpayers without first gaining broad support of the public?

At what stage of the education process should a new and radically different view of the nation’s history be implemented? 

It seems that CRT and other new ideas are right now considered more important than other aspects of education.

As some school teachers, administrators, board members and politicians push hard to justify CRT for children as young as the early grades, the U.S. continues to falter among the world’s nations in successfully educating students in important subjects.

For example, the U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science, and did worse in math, ranking 30th, according to the Program for International Student Assessment tests of 15-year-old students around the world, administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2018.

The U.S. scored below the OECD average in math of 489 with a score of 478. Asian nations placed 1st through 5th: Singapore - 569, Macao - 555, Hong Kong - 551, Taiwan - 531, and Japan - 527. Since only four of China’s provinces participated in the assessment, it was not included in this ranking.

The United States scored a 502 in science, above the OECD average. However, the top five scoring countries were: Singapore - 551, Macao - 544, Estonia - 530, Japan - 529, and Finland - 522.

Pearson.com, in its latest assessment, shows that the United States has a “cognitive skills and educational attainment” score of 0.39, fourteenth out of forty countries that it ranked. The top ten countries and their scores are: South Korea - 1.30, Japan - 1.03, Singapore - 0.99, Hong Kong - 0.96, Finland - 0.92, United Kingdom - 0.67, Canada - 0.60, Netherlands - 0.58, Ireland - 0.51, and Poland - 0.50.

What does it mean when our education system finishes so far down in the rankings of nations? Poor performance in languages means many or some will not be able to communicate effectively. The poor performance in math and science indicates that U.S. students are not prepared for high-tech jobs in an increasingly high-tech world.

Silicon Valley has achieved great success in the high-tech industry. That success is due to excellent software engineers. But many of them are foreign-born. If Americans are unable to perform well in these important, high-paying jobs, those jobs will instead go to people from other countries who work here, or worse, to companies in other countries.

It seems that the primary function of helping our children learn the basics of language, mathematics, science, social studies and the arts is suffering, and needs immediate attention. That is far more important than suddenly, and in some alleged cases, secretly trying to overturn the long-standing historical account of the United States, in favor of a highly disputed version of how the nation came to be.

Based upon America’s low rating in international educational performance, it seems U.S. educators have plenty of work to do to get our performance level up where it belongs, and where it once was, before they turn the system upside-down with a radical transformation of our history.

Stuffing controversial ideas — Marxist CRT, transgenderism, diversity, and other such things disguised as harmless ideas — down the throats of the children of the numerous parents who disagree with those ideas is a very divisive thing. Those parents will surely want, need and deserve better choices of schooling for their children. 

And since state and local taxes pay for much of public education, there should be a mechanism to financially assist those parents, who will likely have to pay for an alternative to public schools in order to have their children educated as they choose.

Not all teachers, administrators, schools or school systems are adopting this destructive belief system. But far too many of them are, and many people believe they are a threat to this country.

What’s happening to our country? The United States of Anti-America

Those Americans who have been around for a while may be wondering what is happening to their country. While there have been periods of disruption before, such as the anti-war/peace movement of the 60s, the magnitude of what is going on today surpasses previous challenges. America is under attack from within.

Merely being a member of the largest subgroup of people in the country — the primary group which founded and developed the country: white people — has each of them being regarded as a “supremacist,” a “racist,” and “privileged.” These people had no say in who their parents were or where they were born and grew up, yet they are now persona non-grata in the country their ancestors created.

This comes from a concept known as Critical Race Theory (CRT). It has the support of the woke among us, and seeks to persuade everyone that in America there are only two classes of people: oppressors and their victims. And white people are the oppressors.

CRT evolved from the Critical Theory attributed to socialist Karl Marx, author of “The Communist Manifesto.” CRT differs in that it includes racism as a fundamental factor. It focuses on cancelling the traditional American values such as family, democracy, honesty and truth. And traditional practices like hard work, learning, rational thinking and obeying time schedules are not sound practices leading to success, but racist values imposed by white supremacists.

Through the years, CRT has been sneaking into classrooms, and is now being touted by President Joe Biden’s administration to be part of the K-12 curriculum to replace what’s left of traditional civics instruction and history that taught hundreds of millions of Americans through the decades the truth about their country, its founding and how it operates. 

Instead, CRT will teach young students to focus on skin color and power, revising history to tell the story of a nation founded on white oppression. The goal of CRT is teaching white kids to hate themselves and their families, and teaching other kids to hate their country.

A tool used in this “progressive” destruction of America is “The 1619 Project.”

“The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

That is the opening of the New York Times Magazine’s (NYTM) description of “The 1619 Project.” A different organization, calling itself Project 1619, has the following statement about the NYTM’s mission: “Project 1619 Inc. was not consulted or involved in their production … [and] does not support or endorse their opinions.”

The NYTM’s 1619 Project suffers from both conceptual and data errors. First, it attempts to shift the beginning of America from its actual formal beginning in 1776 to a time when only one of the 13 colonies that formed the United States of America existed: Virginia, the English settlement established in 1607. At that time, and extending to 1619 and for many more years there was no drive to form a new nation.

Second, the first slaves were brought to the North American continent roughly 50 years before 1619 and many years before the Virginia Colony was established.

Surely, the story of the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans can be effectively told without revising history to increase the negative impact of the story, and unjustifiably dishonor the nation. 

The 1776 Commission was started by former President Donald Trump on November 2, 2020, by Executive Order 13958. Trump took this step to counter attacks on America’s founding. The EO cites “our country's valiant and successful effort to shake off the curse of slavery and to use the lessons of that struggle to guide our work toward equal rights for all citizens in the present.”

It continues: “Viewing America as an irredeemably and systemically racist country cannot account for the extraordinary role of the great heroes of the American movement against slavery and for civil rights — a great moral endeavor that, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr., was marked by religious fellowship, good will, generosity of heart, an emphasis on our shared principles, and an inclusive vision for the future.

Section 2. (a) of the EO states: “Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education shall establish in the Department of Education the President's Advisory 1776 Commission ("the 1776 Commission") to better enable a rising generation to understand the history and 4 principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.”

This effort to counter the vile, anti-American aims of CRT was cancelled by President Biden on his first day in office.

America was not perfect on its first day of existence 240-plus years ago, and it is not perfect today. No nation is or ever was perfect. Our country will not be made more perfect by indoctrinating generations of young people with misinformation such as this. In fact, indoctrination goes against the founding principles of America.

Democrats are working overtime to change our nation for the worse

The rule of thumb of the Joe Biden presidency must be to undo what Donald Trump did. That is essentially what has been happening since January 20.

Is it simply the idea that Trump was so horrible a person and president that everything he did must be undone? Or, is it that Biden’s carefully hidden leftist philosophy demands moving us away from the successful capitalist nation that we are?

The “it’s not a crisis” catastrophe on the southern border that has allowed tens of thousands of migrants to enter the country, heads the list. Many thousands of them are overwhelming the facilities for housing them, and thousands more of uncertain origin and motive just walked across the border and disappeared into the country. What else is on the list of equally poor decisions from this president?

The Club for Growth recently highlighted several proposals and their predicted negative results. These include Biden’s proposed hiking of the corporate tax rate by one-third, from 21 percent to 28 percent, and predicting that as many as one million jobs could be killed, that GDP would fall by 0.8 percent, and worker’s wages will fall by 0.7 percent or, on average, $2,500 per year.

Biden’s executive order ending construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has already put about a thousand people out of work and is expected to kill another 10,000 jobs, which represent $1.6 billion in gross wages lost to the workforce. Another executive order halted drilling on federal lands, and that is said to eliminate as many as 60,000 jobs.

The proposed hike in the capital gains tax may go as high as 43.4 percent. And the planned minimum wage hike to $15 per hour is predicted to put 1.3 million workers out of work by 2025. 

And last, but hardly least, two climate-related proposals are predicted to kill even more jobs. Ending the use of fossil fuels will take out more than a million jobs, and rejoining the catastrophic Paris Climate Accords could cost the U.S. $3 trillion and eliminate 6.5 million jobs by 2040.

Another of Biden’s executive orders, this one on his first day in office, rescinded the prohibition of critical race theory (CRT) training for federal agencies and federal contractors that Trump put in place.

Calling that “a sad reversal for Americans committed to colorblindness in public life,” the New York Post said of CRT: “Critical race theory understands the world by viewing everything — society, economics, education, family, science — through the lens of ‘whiteness’ and white racism. White people, according to CRT, drift in a kind of amniotic fluid of privilege and unearned gifts based on the brutal ideology of ‘white supremacy.’”

CRT considers long-standing American values like hard work, objectivity, deferred gratification, family and respect for the written word as intrinsically racist, and strongly suggests that these values relentlessly suppress “black achievement while boosting white mediocrity into advancement,” the Post article said.

Where will America end up if qualities that have been so important to the nation’s development and success — such as the family, learning, working hard to achieve success, and being the best you can be — somehow become viewed as racist?

We now are hearing cries to abandon the sensible concept that the most qualified, most talented people are the ones who should be selected to fill jobs, hold positions, or get access to some things — a merit-based system. Instead, the idea is to fill jobs or award things based on equity of race, ethnicity, gender/gender identity.

If the subject is the allotment of public housing or similar things, the result won’t be terrible if this new concept is put in force. However, this concept is not a prescription for the most efficient, highest performing companies, teams, organizations, or whatever, and it will weaken the United States in every area to which equity mania is applied. It is especially dangerous if applied to the military services.

Most people are far less concerned with the gender/gender identity, race or ethnicity of their doctor, lawyer, teacher, mechanic, home improvement worker, care taker, etc., than with that person’s knowledge and ability to do the job ably and professionally. That’s what really matters. If quality is assured and social quotas are also met, great. 

But equity among the different groups must not be the primary consideration when selecting the people who will do critical, important work. Quality is essential.

Why is the American Left so bent on changing everything that has served the nation so well for its entire history? Obviously, these folks do not like being part of the most successful, free, and unique nation ever. They seem compelled to change those important elements that made America great, and move it into the group of failed socialistic nations that limit freedom, and insist that everyone share equally in the misery.

Tens of thousands of people from other countries want to come here. And few if any want to leave here. Why? Because it is the bright light of the world.

And yet Congressional Democrats are working overtime to change it into something much less than it is now. Why?