Written by Larry Sand

The fixation on equity is a loser for all concerned.

At the same time that the indoctrination of American students continues to work its way through the schools, its evil twin “equity” is advancing right along with it. As the race-obsessed Ibram X. Kendi explains, equity exists when “two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing.” In other words, if 10 percent of white kids are in a school’s gifted program, equity demands that 10 percent of black kids are also included. Kendi also claims, “There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy.” The terms “equality” and “quality” are nowhere to be found in the equity playbook.

The gaslighting here is palpable. What Kendi is apparently saying is that we must discriminate to put an end to (alleged) discrimination. But, insane or not, this is what is happening throughout much of the country. In reliably woke San Francisco, the top-rated Lowell High School will no longer admit students based on their academic performance. Instead, the school will use a lottery to admit its students. This will, of course, discriminate against Asian students who make up 50.6 percent of its student body.

Similarly, in New York City, the gifted and talented program has been deemed unfair. Mayor Bill de Blasio and his equally reprehensible schools chancellor Richard Carranza insist that the testing program is unjust because the students who wind up in the program “don’t reflect the diversity of the city’s population.”

In Fairfax County, VA, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science, a school for the gifted, was ranked America’s No. 1 high school last year by U.S. News and World Report. But the school board recently decided to eliminate the race-blind, merit-based admissions tests to the largely Asian school, arguing that high test performance was a “barrier” to black and Hispanic students.

As dedicated followers of Critical Race Theory, the equity mob also finds a racial angle in areas unimagined until recently. In Oregon, those in charge with running – and now ruining – public education have decided that focusing on finding the right answer in math “and showing your work” is a symbol of white supremacy. Teachers are also urged to adapt homework policies to fit the needs of students of color and “challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.”

Just last week Fox News reported that William Shakespeare is on his way to cancellation. A bunch of equity-obsessed English literature teachers told the School Library Journal that the Bard of Avon has promoted “misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir (discrimination against black women)” in his writing. Jeffrey Austin, head of a Michigan high school’s English literature department, insists that teachers should “challenge the whiteness” of the assumption that Shakespeare’s works are “universal.” Washington state public school teacher Claire Bruncke has banished the Bard from her classroom in order to “stray from centering the narrative of white, cisgender, heterosexual men.”

Additionally, equity punishes the very people it claims to help.

As law professor Gail Heriot writes, one consequence of race-preferential policies is that minority students tend to enroll in colleges and universities where their academic credentials put them near the bottom of the class. “While academically gifted under-represented minority students are hardly rare, there are not enough to satisfy the demand of top schools. When the most prestigious schools relax their admissions policies in order to admit more minority students, they start a chain reaction, resulting in a substantial credentials gap at nearly all selective schools.”

In 1996, California passed Prop. 209, an initiative amending the state constitution to bar state schools from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. All the usual suspects were in a frenzy. Accusations that Berkeley was now “lily-white” were commonplace. But as researcher Elizabeth Slattery writes, while minority students did drop from 58.6 percent of the student body to 48.7 percent at Berkeley, the others didn’t drop out. They went to institutions like UC-San Diego, UC-Riverside, and UC-Santa Cruz. These schools are all part of the University of California system, attended by only the top 12.5 percent of California high school graduates.

Slattery notes, “At UC-Riverside, the results were impressive: African-American and Hispanic student admissions skyrocketed by 42 percent and 31 percent, respectively. Failure rates collapsed, and grades improved.”

Ultimately, the equity fanatics are leading us to a world of stupid. Woke students may feel very good about themselves, but as adults, when they discover they can’t balance a checkbook, figure out the square footage of their house or know how many ounces in a pound, they will realize they have been shortchanged.

No human I know picks a doctor, lawyer or plumber based on skin color. Instead, we choose the best person to get a particular job done. If the equity crowd prevails, your freedom to do that will be stifled, and the worst sort of groupthink and tribalism will be the norm.

This article was originally published by the California Policy Center.

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.

Written by Robert Spencer

As far back as September 22, 2011, Linda Sorsour tweeted: “shariah law is reasonable and once u read into the details it makes a lot of sense. People just know the basics.” Her position didn’t change over time. On May 12, 2015, she tweeted:

If you are still paying interest than Sharia Law hasn’t taken over America. #justsaying.

And on April 10, 2016, Sarsour tweeted about Sharia again:

Sharia Law is misunderstood & has been pushed as some evil Muslim agenda.

Sarsour tweeted on March 8, 2011:

Brigitte Gabriel = Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She’s asking 4 an a$$ whippin’. I wish I could take their vaginas away – they don’t deserve to be women.

This call for physical violence against someone she hates received no notice among her sycophants on the Left. Linda Sarsour is also an energetic purveyor of the “Islamophobia” myth and has hysterically claimed that “Muslim kids” are being “executed” in the United States. She was instrumental in prevailing upon New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to end legal and necessary surveillance in Muslim communities in New York. She was also a frequent visitor to the Obama White House, and even claimed that the jihad underwear bomber was a CIA agent — part of what she claims is a U.S. war against Islam.

Sarsour is a practiced exploiter of the “hate” smear against foes of jihad terror and Islamic supremacism and has never apologized for using the Islamic honor murder of Shaima Alawadi to spread lies about the prevalence of hate crimes against Muslims in America. She is also an enthusiastic supporter of the “Palestinian” jihad against Israel and has even claimed that feminists cannot and must not support Israel.

But this is the Left today. Sarsour’s anti-Semitism, her embrace of Sharia, her paranoid “Islamophobia” conspiracy-mongering – all that is the mainstream Left now.

BLM Founder Fawns Over Linda Sarsour, Calls Her ‘Excellent… Badass… Friend,’
by Natalie Winters, National Pulse, September 11, 2020:

Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza has repeatedly praised far-left activist Linda Sarsour,
calling her a “badass,” “excellent,” and “resilient,” while helping Sarsour promote a new book.

Garza’s remarks came during an April 22nd virtual interview hosted by the Commonwealth Club of California.

The hour-long exchange between Garza and Sarsour served to promote Sarsour’s new book, We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance.

Throughout the event, Garza repeatedly fawned over the controversial activist, known for leading the 2017 Women’s March, being openly hostile to Jews, and affiliating with virulent anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Even the CEO of the far-left Anti-Defamation League has accused her of “fomenting” anti-Semitism.

Despite this, Garza fawned over Sarsour, who she labeled her “badass friend”:

Garza lauded Sarsour again, asking how she went from “dope homegirl” to leading “incredible movements”:

“How did you go from dope homegirl to leading all these incredible movements that have literally changed the landscape of this country?”

“I am so so excited to be in conversation today with my sister Linda Sarsour,” she continued, unable to contain her excitement over the prospect of interviewing Sarsour.

Garza also inquired about “the resilience [Sarsour’s] been able to generate that makes [her] a badass leader,” signaling admiration for her “unabashedness”:

“How did you find the power inside of yourself and in your community to be resilient and even more unabashed in the face of those really really terrible attacks?”

“You are literally unstoppable. Look at you, building like the largest civic engagement organization in the country, mobilizing, activating, and engaging Muslim communities in democracy. You’re also, you know, out here just like making things happen,” she opined.

While Sarsour’s past comments provide no shortage of controversy, even leading Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden to rebuke her appearance at the Democratic National Convention, her remarks during the interview were equally striking.

Declaring “I’m radical, and I’m proud of it,” Sarsour insisted “you’re never too young to be radicalized” before telling viewers she was writing a version of her book oriented for a younger audience of “fourth, fiffth grade through maybe seventh grade” along with a picture book.

Sarsour also insisted that she is so deeply committed to her activism she is “not afraid to die”:

One of the things that has kept me going and it’s something that I tell people and that scares people when I say this because they want to know how did I get here. I’m actually not afraid to die. I really am not and because of that I continue to go back out, back out, back out, and continue to do the work. And if a consequence means I’m going to lose my life for it, I have come to terms with that.

When Garza asked Sarsour to surmise a “60-second idea to change the world,” Sarsour responded that she’d make “every mayor, every governor, and the White House black women.”

As Black Lives Matter continues to attract attention in light of its role in riots plaguing the U.S., unearthed links continue to reveal the group’s affiliation with Marxist and anti-Semitic elements on the left.

This article was originally published by JihadWatch.org.

Written by Jeremy Dys
Special Counsel for Litigation and Communications, First Liberty

We did not suddenly arrive to the moment where riot police arrest CNN journalists. Though the issues may be complex, recent history suggests that the suppression of civil rights—even for a pandemic—leads inexorably to the abuse of other core freedoms by the government.

Until recently, several states—including Minnesota—declared that it was unlawful to engage in the free exercise of religion in groups of ten or more. When churches dared pursue legal recourse to correct that issue, politicians, pundits and journalists offered criticism.

As one of the attorneys on the receiving end of that criticism on more than one occasion, it left me perplexed. “What’s the big deal?” they might say, “Why can’t churches just worship online?!

The answer should be obvious to any with a passing appreciation for the First Amendment. Our U.S. Constitution guarantees the “free exercise of religion” and the “right of the people peaceably to assemble.” In other words, those with a divine mandate to meet together in worship—regardless of the religion in which they participate—should not require the permission of the state to do so, nor may those rights be treated as lesser rights to visiting retail, restaurants or hardware stores. There is no pandemic exception to the U.S. Constitution.

Because we have (for now) survived the political left’s vision for the lesser “freedom to worship,” we ought to appreciate the free exercise of religion all the more. State officials are not immune from brutal and corrupt behavior. Indeed, the very reason we have a First Amendment is to guard against the natural aggression of power toward that which challenges a state’s authority.

The last three months reveal that too many state and local officials often resist that limitation on their power. The truth serum embedded in the coronavirus appears to be that it reveals the lust for power dormant in many public officials. They believe it within their power to, like a light switch, turn civil rights on or off as they see fit.

If that is the view of some state officials, as we have seen in New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and others, then there can be no surprise whatsoever that other state officials would place journalists—also unequivocally protected by the First Amendment—under arrest.

Of course, this fundamentally disagrees with the central message of our Bill of Rights: The rights articulated therein belong to, and remain with, the people by virtue of their humanity. The limited rights of government—what the people empower government to do—are articulated in the body of the U.S. Constitution. The Bill of Rights make plain what the people refused to permit the government to govern. Together, this works to restrain government and ensure freedom.

If you have been inclined to roll your eyes over citizens insisting upon their religious liberty just to sit in a car at a drive-in church service, remember that part of what they seek to prevent is what we now see in the detention of four CNN journalists. Religious people, lately held in contempt by some for simply wishing to exercise their religion at a safe social distance, are actually doing their part to preserve everyone’s freedom.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey should understand this by now. When the threat of litigation by the Roman Catholic Church and Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod forced Governor Tim Walz to recognize that churches could safely meet in-person at a bare 25 percent capacity, Mayor Frey declared the idea to be, “a recipe in Minneapolis for a public health disaster.” Frey went on to suggest to CNN that religious people may be less capable of social distancing than shoppers at the Mall of America. They should stay in their virtual worship services, you see, for their own good lest these religious people infect us all.

Four days later and Mayor Frey’s office is handing out free face masks to those engaged in a form of free speech (and worse)—in groups quite larger than ten—while the police take members of the free press into custody.

Being “all in this together” means that, whether we agree or disagree, we each do our part to insist that our civil rights are secured—even in the midst of a pandemic or panic. Without that commitment, the erosion of our civil rights—and our very freedom—is where it leads.

This article was originally published online on Newsweek on June 1, 2020.

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

The stories have become so commonplace that they’ve almost lost their shock value.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio singles out churches and synagogues, threatening to seize their property and shut them down “permanently” if they dare defy his orders.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, (working through her city’s director of public health), declares a Romanian church a “public nuisance.” “We will shut you down, we will cite you, and if we need to, we will arrest you, and we will take you to jail,” she tells this small group of former Soviet bloc Christians who refuse to bow to her power.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas issues a stay-at-home “order” that includes a “request” that all churches which choose to exercise their First Amendment rights must provide a “record of attendees” to the city and to the state.

Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s governor, warns that any state residents attending any church services will be “forced” to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Vanita, Oklahoma, Mayor Chuck Hoskin issues a municipal order saying that anyone engaging in any church activity inside or outside, will be subject to a $500 fine and 30 days in jail.

Police in Lakewood, New Jersey, arrest 15 congregants of a local synagogue for attending an Orthodox Jewish funeral.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy responds by saying that any knowledge of the religious freedom guaranteed to these Jews by the Bill of Rights is “above his pay grade.”

Mayor after mayor and governor after governor across America have declared churches to be “non-essential” and ordered them closed under penalty of law. And yet, those who’ve haranged us for decades about the “separation of church and state” now sit in sleepy silence.

Why?

George Santayana once said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” With this as context, perhaps a bit of a history lesson is in order.

In 1791, James Madison wrote the First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Madison, thus, argued that it is an “essential” right of every church and not that of a “king.”

Madison’s premise was very easy to understand. No government official should ever presume to define the matters of the church. No politician or unelected bureaucrat ever has the power to “establish”, dictate, contradict or contravene religious belief or practice. This is not the government’s business. It is the church’s and the church’s alone. It is not the prerogative of our Congress or the courts to tell the church what to do or not to do.

Eleven years later, Thomas Jefferson found it necessary to reassure a small group of nervous Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, that they did not have to fear any government intrusion into the affairs of their denomination’s polity or practice.

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that … [the] legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

It is from Jefferson’s assurance of non-intrusion that we get our present language of separation of church and state.

Read in context, the words of Jefferson and Madison are crystal clear. In America, unlike any other nation, the church is protected from the government. There is a “wall” that provides that protection, and it serves as a fortress, not a prison. It is built to guard the church, not to confine it. This wall is no more intended to restrain religion than the walls around your personal home are intended to restrain you. As a house has a door whereby you come and go, likewise, our Constitution has a door whereby the church is always free to enter society as it chooses, but also to lock that door and keep the government out when it sees fit.

The key here is that the church holds the key, not your power-hungry governor, or your strutting little local mayor. The door is locked from the inside, not the outside. The wall is built for your benefit, not theirs.

John F. Kennedy once said that “in times of turbulence … it is more true than ever that knowledge is power.”

The COVID-19 turbulence has exposed the radical ignorance of the left. They know nothing of our history and care little for your freedom.

Remember this in November.

You have knowledge. You have power. You hold the key. It’s time to use it.

Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).

This article was originally published at The Washington Times.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is urging New Yorkers not to eat at Chick-fil-A because owner Dan Cathy believes that homoerotic acts are not moral and has donated money to organizations that share that belief. Although Mr. Cathy has donated money to charitable organizations that espouse the view that homoerotic acts are immoral and that marriage is an intrinsically male-female union, his beliefs affect neither whom Chick-fil-A franchises hire nor whom they serve.

In de Blasio’s perverse world, people who believe homosexual acts are immoral necessarily hate those who engage in them. Of course that’s an absurd and pernicious charge, but Leftists hurl it often and everywhere. I wonder if de Blasio applies that principle consistently. I wonder if de Blasio hates everyone who engages in acts that he believes are immoral.

Mr. Cathy’s beliefs on the moral status of homoerotic activity and the nature of marriage derive from his Christian faith. Both the Old and New Testaments teach clearly that homoerotic acts are immoral and that marriage is a male-female union, as does, by the way, the Quran. Therefore, it’s not just Mr. Cathy who holds those beliefs. It’s all theologically orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims.

Does de Blasio seek to shut down every business in America whose owners are theologically orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims? If so, would this goal comport with the free exercise of religion? Are these groups allowed to freely exercise their religion so long as they don’t own businesses?

Maybe de Blasio can tell all people of faith which religious beliefs they must abandon in order to own a business in America. May people of faith believe that consensual adult incest is immoral and still own a business in America? What about bestiality, adultery, fornication, polygamy, drunkenness, covetousness, pride, blasphemy, or idolatry?

What if a Christian believes that the only path to eternal life is through Jesus Christ? That would mean Christians think non-believers are destined for eternal damnation. Many Leftists erroneously think such a belief represents the desires of Christians. As a Leftist, de Blasio may think this Christian belief about salvation is downright hateful. Should those who believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life be allowed to own a business in America?

Do tell, Mayor de Blasio, which religious beliefs may people of faith hold and still own a business in America?

If you would like to send a message to the New York City mayor, fill out the webform on this website.  And above all, please vote with your wallets and continue to patronize Chick-fil-A restaurants.