With the possible exception of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists (Nazis), socialists and communists throughout the past century have all insisted that planetary socialism is needed.

They all agreed, too, on the chief weapon in their arsenal: government indoctrination posing as “education.” From the tyrants in Moscow and Beijing to the infamous Socialist International, the goal of planetary slavery in the form of a global socialist government has long been at the forefront of collectivist thinking. And schools have long been the means.

As the tyrants of the world have discovered by experience over more than a century, subduing people under collectivist rule for any length of time can be difficult—especially if the people can read and think, and if they know their history. But if the children can be brainwashed into collectivism early on in government schools, the process becomes much easier.

And so, socialists and communists from around the world joined forces after World War II to create the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to advance that agenda.

The primary goal of this new body was simple: control education around the world, weaponizing it to advance socialism, globalism, collectivism, and other dangerous “-isms” that threaten individual freedom and self-government.

It was obvious from the beginning, and remains obvious still today, that the views of UNESCO’s leaders are entirely incompatible with a free society. Unfortunately, UNESCO now plays a dominant role in public education worldwide.

Formed in 1945 under the guise of ending war by building “defenses of peace” in “the minds of men” through education, UNESCO worked to hijack control over public schools from the very start. Where no government schools existed yet, UNESCO used American and European taxpayer money to establish them, or to bribe governments to do it. And at every step in the process, these emerging indoctrination centers marketed as “educational” institutions worked fiendishly to brainwash children into collectivism and globalism.

The historical record on this global “education” organization is clear. In fact, it was so obviously dominated by communists, socialists, crackpots, totalitarians, and subversives that President Ronald Reagan ordered a U.S. government withdrawal from UNESCO in 1983. Britain left, too, for the same reason. After some alleged “reforms,” the U.S. government rejoined in 2002. But the Trump administration once again pulled out, along with Israel, in 2018.

When announcing the U.S. exit, the Reagan administration was blunt about the problems. Speaking at a press conference, State Department spokesman Alan Romberg said UNESCO exhibited “hostility toward the basic institutions of a free society, especially a free market and a free press.”

Indeed, it was promoting communism, humanism, and even a global “licensing” regime for journalists. Romberg also noted that the outfit “politicized virtually every subject it deals with.” But that was no surprise to anyone who had been paying attention.

Founded by Globalist-Collectivist Fanatics

The very first director-general of UNESCO, Julian Huxley, who also served as executive secretary of its Preparatory Commission, was a collectivist in every sense of the term. Like John Dewey, previously exposed in detail in this series and almost universally regarded as the architect of America’s public-education system, Huxley was also a “humanist.” So devoted was he, that he even served as the first president of the British Humanist Association, working to advance these ideas with Dewey, whose Humanist Manifesto was basically socialism and communism masquerading as a religion.

Huxley was also quick to fill the ranks of UNESCO with communists and socialists, as documented extensively in the book “Freedom On the Altar: The UN’s Crusade Against God & Family” by William Norman Grigg. For instance, the chief of the Soviet “Education Ministry” served as director of UNESCO’s department of secondary education. That trend continues to the present day, with myriad card-carrying members of the Communist Party and Socialist Party literally running the powerful global agency.

Even many of the Americans who worked under Huxley at UNESCO were communists. According to testimony by Chairman Pierce Gerety of the U.S. International Organizations Employees Loyalty Board, charged with preventing communist infiltration of U.S. delegations, UNESCO had a “clique” of Americans working in it “who placed the interests of the Communists and Communist ideology … above their own country.”

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee concluded in 1956 that UNESCO was “by far the worst,” from the standpoint of “disloyal” and “subversive” (communist) Americans in global organizations. That’s because communists recognized the importance of weaponizing education.

Like Hitler and his National Socialist barbarians, Huxley was also a fervent advocate of eugenics, the idea of improving humanity by removing “undesirables” from the racial gene pool. So passionate was Huxley about breeding genetically “superior” human beings and removing “degenerates”—something he compared on numerous occasions to improving the quality of livestock—that he actually led the British Eugenics Society. Prior to founding UNESCO, he served as vice president of the eugenics group. After his term at UNESCO, he became president of the eugenics organization.

UNESCO was one of the ways in which he hoped to promote eugenics. In his infamous 1946 policy document “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Philosophy,” written during preparatory negotiations, Huxley said one of the key tasks for the organization would actually be to promote “radical” eugenics.

“Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable,” he said, explaining why UNESCO’s leadership has been so obsessed with breaking down children’s moral values.

Huxley was also open about the fact that UNESCO was working to brainwash children into accepting a socialistic world government. A fervent believer in Darwin’s theory of evolution, Huxley declared in “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Philosophy” that “political unification in some sort of world government” would even be “required” for humanity to “evolve” to the next level. “The world is in the process of becoming one,” Huxley said in the document. “A major aim of UNESCO must be to help in the speedy and satisfactory realization of this process.”

Just a few years after its founding, UNESCO was already pumping out propaganda aimed at undermining individual liberty, the family, and the nation-state in the minds of children. In a 10-part series of pamphlets headlined “Toward World Understanding,” for instance, the UN “education” agency called for using schools to promote the concept of “world citizenship.” As part of that, schools would have to “combat family attitudes” on everything from “nationalism” (patriotism) to religious beliefs on the nature of sin and reality.

When reading through UNESCO documents and the writings of its leading operatives, it becomes clear that the goals went beyond even just brainwashing children into dangerous ideologies. In fact, Huxley and his cohorts envisioned creating an entirely new system of secular morality divorced from all the major religions of the world.

Then the plan was to use government schools, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, behavior modification and conditioning, values clarification, indoctrination, and propaganda to replace the old values and systems of morality with the new. It was audacious and extreme. But it’s working.

Before and After Huxley, More Extremism

By the early 1960s, UNESCO had decided that traditional values on sexuality needed to be replaced too. And UNESCO-guided government schools around the world were to be the primary tool to bring about the sought-after change. This would help break down the nuclear family—crucial to any free and civilized society—by promoting promiscuity and the breakdown of sexual morality.

And so, in 1964, UNESCO sponsored a conference in Germany claiming that “sex education should begin at an early age.” Since then, UNESCO has been relentless in sexualizing children, a topic that will be addressed in an upcoming piece of this series.

The trends toward socialism and communism within UNESCO only got more and more extreme. In 1970, for instance, UNESCO hosted a symposium on mass-murdering Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin in Finland.

“Lenin was a man with a mind of great clarity and incisiveness,” declared then-UN boss U Thant at the event. “His ideals of peace and peaceful coexistence among states are in line with the aims of the U.N. Charter.” Apparently nobody at the summit objected to the idea that Lenin, one of the cruelest mass murderers to ever walk the planet, shared the same values as the UN and its “education” arm.

UNESCO’s affinity for socialist and communist leaders continues to this day. Right now, French Socialist Party member Audrey Azoulay, who boasted that she “grew up in a radical left-wing family,” is leading the outfit. Before that, she served as “culture minister” in the government of former French President François Hollande. Of course, Hollande was also a member of the French Socialist Party, which is itself a member of the Socialist International, the leading global alliance of Marxist, socialist, and communist parties, including many with the blood of countless innocents on their hands.

Before Azoulay, UNESCO was run by Irina Bokova, who has a long background and pedigree with the savage Bulgarian Communist Party. Trained in the Soviet regime’s KGB-controlled State Institute of International Relations, Bokova proudly served the mass-murdering communist Bulgarian regime before she and her party reinvented themselves as “socialists.”

She hoped to have communist Chinese operative Qian Tang take over her post after leaving, but was thwarted amid an avalanche of bad publicity in Western nations.

None of this should be a surprise, considering the history of UNESCO. In fact, socialists and subversives in America were instrumental in creating the global agency. As this series explained in part 8 last week, the National Education Association (NEA) was critical. Indeed, the NEA, which has been dominated by socialists and collectivists for at least a century, was openly promoting the creation of a planetary “board of education” in its publications, with the goal of creating what they described as a “world government.”

“World organization may have four branches which in practice have proved indispensable: The legislature, the judicial, the executive, and the educational,” wrote NEA “Journal” chief Joy Elmer Morgan in a December 1942 editorial headlined “The United Peoples of the World.” “To keep the peace and insure justice and opportunity we need certain agencies of world administration such as: A police force; a board of education,” and much more.

Morgan also called for the global government to have a world currency, a new calendar to replace the Christian calendar, a “basic” language, a “board of health,” a “planning board,” a “radio-television commission,” a board to oversee “economic matters,” and much more. If that sounds like a recipe for communism and totalitarian rule, that’s because it is.

For the next three years, the NEA Journal was filled with propaganda supporting a global board of education. And just a few short years after Morgan’s call for such an institution, with powerful support from the NEA and its international allies, UNESCO was born to serve precisely that purpose out of the ashes of the failed League of Nations.

“The organized teaching profession may well take hope and satisfaction from the achievements it has already made toward world government in its support of the United Nations and UNESCO,” gushed Morgan in December of 1946 in the NEA Journal, celebrating the union’s success. “It is ours to hold ever before the people the ideals and principles of world government until the practice can catch up with those ideals.”

UNESCO was literally created to facilitate the emergence of a collectivist global system, and its own leaders spoke openly about it.

Trump’s decision to leave UNESCO was helpful, but as this series will show in the weeks ahead, the danger from this subversive agency and the U.N. itself remain significant—especially when it comes to education. Its tentacles can now be found entangled in schools across the United States and the world. If freedom is going to survive, it’s imperative that Americans become educated on the dangerous agenda of this supposed U.N. “education” agency.

This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.

We learned this week that the love of money is the root of all evil. Well, we learned that in Scripture. This week purportedly conservative Christian governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson just reminded us of it when he sold out children to corporate interests.

For those still basking blithely in the afterglow of America’s once shining light or are socially distancing under a rock, the Arkansas legislature sent a bill to Hutchinson that would 1. prohibit doctors from the risky and experimental use of puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones—some of the effects of which are permanent—for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, 2. prohibit surgeons from performing mutilating, irreversible cosmetic procedures on minors. and 3. prohibit the use of public funds, including Medicaid, for any of those barbaric, snake oil “treatments.”

The purportedly conservative, purportedly Christian Hutchinson vetoed this commonsense bill to protect children from procedures that are devastating young healthy bodies.

Hutchinson might reflect for a moment on who exactly is cheering his decision. Hint: It’s not conservatives. Oh, no, it’s the “trans”-cult; the “entertainment” industry; the medical industrial complex; the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party (i.e., CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NYTimes, and Washington Post); soulless corporate America; BLM; the ACLU; and the Human Rights Campaign.

Word to Hutchinson: If all the good guys are criticizing you and all the bad guys are cheering you, maybe you made a disastrous decision.

On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, Hutchinson defended his decision by appealing to conservative small government commitments—the last refuge of conservative scoundrels who want to embrace “progressive” positions on “social issues.” He also said, the bill “goes too far” because it would stop minors who are already being experimented on from continuing with dangerous “treatments” to conceal their biological sex.

Of course, small or limited government doesn’t mean no government. Nor does it mean abandoning children to the “trans”-cult and the godless profiteers who line their pockets with the lucre gained by chemically sterilizing children and lopping off parts of their sexual anatomy.

Many people, stunned by Hutchinson’s decision and not duped by his small government rationalization, look to corporate pressure as the real reason for Hutchinson’s alignment with the dark side.

In March Hutchinson appeared on another Fox News show and was asked about corporate “pushback” against legislation that promotes sexual sanity. Hutchinson responded,

We’re the home of some major global corporations here in Arkansas, they’re certainly worried about the image of our state.

Immediately after Hutchinson’s veto, left-leaning Tom Walton, whose family owns Walmart, issued this public pat-on-the-back to Hutchinson:

We are alarmed by the string of policy targeting LGBTQ people in Arkansas. This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state. We support Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s recent veto of discriminatory policy and implore government, business and community leaders to consider the impact of existing and future policy that limits basic freedoms and does not promote inclusiveness in our communities and economy.

Our Founding Fathers would be surprised to learn that our “basic freedoms” include the freedom of children to stop puberty, take cross-sex hormones, and have healthy body parts cut off.

According to the Institute of Southern Studies,

Steuart Walton has been a generous donor to the Arkansas Republican Party as well as to Hutchinson’s campaign.

And Tucker Carlson reported that he “spoke with a source” who said that when the term-limited Hutchinson leaves office in 2022, “he would very much like a board seat” at Walmart.

There are some curious omissions in Hutchinson’s public statements on Fox News about the bill he vetoed.

For example, Hutchinson pointed to the depression and high rates of suicide among gender dysphoric minors. He implied that depression arises from gender dysphoria and can be alleviated by cross-sex hormone-doping. He didn’t seem to know that both depression and gender dysphoria could be symptoms of some other underlying problem. And he didn’t address studies showing that cross-sex hormone-doping can increase suicidal ideation or that suicidal ideation increases after “gender confirmation” butchery.

Hutchinson didn’t address the shocking increase in the number of adolescent girls now identifying as boys. Before the “trans”-cult stopped its slow titration of their ideological poison into the body politic, gender dysphoria affected a minuscule portion of the population and affected mostly boys, beginning between the ages of 3-5. Upwards of 80 percent of those boys eventually desisted from identifying as girls.

Now with the secular world promoting opposite-sex impersonation, particularly via social media, there is an explosion in the number of adolescent girls and young women suddenly identifying as male. As psychologists and sociologists know, girls are much more vulnerable to social contagions, like anorexia, bulimia, cutting, and now cross-sex identification.

Hutchinson didn’t mention the politicization of the professional medical and mental health communities. For example, while “trans”-cultists and their ideological allies like to tout the American Academy of Pediatrics’ endorsement of the medical “transing” of children, they don’t like to mention that the pro-“transing” policy was created and voted on by fewer than 50 members of the now-67,000-member academy.

Hutchinson didn’t mention the increasing number of young women who “detransition” and deeply regret having taken testosterone and/or having had their healthy breasts cut off. These young women with permanently male voices and scarred chests that will never nurse a baby feel betrayed by the medical and mental health communities.

Hutchinson didn’t talk about the health risks from the experimental use of puberty blockers and hormones never tested for long-term cross-sex use, risks that include infertility; liver dysfunction; coronary artery disease; cancer; strokes; osteoporosis; and the development of gallstones, blood clots, hypertension, and pituitary gland tumors.

Hutchinson never talked about the ethics of turning healthy children into lifelong medical patients (You know who likes that? Endocrinologists and pharmaceutical companies, that’s who).

Someone should ask Hutchinson whether his limited government principles would lead him to oppose bans on limb amputations for those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder—a condition in which the sufferer experiences a mismatch between his bodily wholeness and his internal sense of himself as an amputee.

And what about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which was banned by the Stop FGM Act of 2020 and signed into law by former President Donald Trump? Would small government Hutchinson oppose a ban on the excision of female genitalia from a 14-year-old girl who, for religious or cultural reasons, wants her genitalia mutilated?

While leftists, practiced at the art of deception and the skill of Newspeak, describe the slicing off of female genitalia as “mutilation,” they describe the slicing off of breasts as “gender affirmation care.”

Since girls as young as 13 are having double mastectomies, a 2015 article by Derrick Diaz and published in the DePaul University Journal of Healthcare Law about cosmetic surgery for minors may offer some helpful insights:

Minors should not have access to cosmetic surgery unless found by a court to be medically necessary. … [I]f medical necessity has not been shown, then the service should be prohibited the same as any regulated service or product prohibited to minors.

…

[A] medical necessity determination can be made through a four-pronged analysis. First, does the impairment hinder a minor’s normal physical function; and, is the proposed surgery intended to treat a present or future clinically verifiable disease, deformity, or injury? Second, is the physical anomaly (1) objectively tangible, and (2) unusual or relatively common? Third, what is the state of the minor applicant’s psychological health? Fourth, would a reasonable minor in the applicant’s position be hindered from normal functioning by the condition (e.g., avoiding normal childhood/adolescent activities)?

…

[R]egardless of whether continued [legislative] noninterference is sound policy generally speaking, it is absolutely not so with regard to minors, as states have statutory mandates to protect their health and welfare. When it comes to cosmetic surgery on minors, states must have an intervening hand in preventing the potentially harmful effects of caveat emptor.

“Trans”-cultists and their allies try to get around this position by arguing that amputating the healthy, natural breasts of gender-dysphoric minor girls is “medically necessary.” But it’s not, and leftists have no conclusive, researched-based proof that it is.

On March 30, just days before his surprising veto, Hutchinson met with two “trans”-cultists—both men who pretend to be women, including “Evelyn” Rios Stafford, a justice of the peace in Arkansas, who pleaded with Hutchinson to veto the bill.

Did Hutchinson talk to any parents of teen daughters who suddenly started identifying as boys?

Did he talk to any young “detransitioned” women who grieve over their damaged bodies and the betrayal of adults who didn’t stop them?

Did he talk to any of the members of the American College of Pediatricians who oppose experimentation on the healthy bodies of children?

Did he consult with Abigail Shrier, the Wall Street Journal writer who wrote the book Irreversible Damage about the harm being done to adolescent girls?

Has he read any of the articles by historically leftist Jennifer Bilek who has been exposing the “money behind the rapidly growing juggernaut of transgenderism in American culture and beyond,” which she argues, “all leads back to the pharmaceutical and tech giants that now interface with LGBT NGOs which are driving the normalization of a biology-denying ideology.”

There is some good news emerging from Arkansas. The Arkansas legislature overrode Hutchinson’s unconscionable veto.

If Hutchinson’s relationship with God and truth are his first priorities—which they should be—then he should publicly confess his sinful decision and repent. Something tells me, however, that confession and repentance aren’t on his agenda.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Gov. Hutchinson via his official webpage. You can also call the governor’s office during normal business hours to give him and his administration feedback: (501) 682-2345

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Asa-Hutchinson-Sells-Out-Gender-Dysphoric-Children.mp3

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Understanding that future generations are the key to building political power and lasting change, socialists and totalitarians of all varieties have gravitated toward government-controlled education since before the system was even founded.

The communist “Frankfurt School” was no exception in its affinity for “educating” the youth.

Almost 100 years ago, a group of socialist and communist “thinkers” led by Marxist law professor Carl Grünberg established the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. From there, they would move to the United States. And from their new home in New York City, the subversive ideas they espoused would eventually infect the entire planet like a deadly cancer—mostly through the education system.

A Cultural Revolution

The group actually had its genesis in Moscow before officially being founded in 1923. By the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks—as Antonio Gramsci would later conclude from his Italian prison cell—realized a change in tactics was needed. The much-anticipated violent revolution of the proletariat predicted by Karl Marx to bring about communism, it turned out, would be much more difficult in Western Europe and the United States than previously anticipated. In fact, it wouldn’t be possible at all without first breaking down the cultural barriers to collectivism, they reasoned.

As such, the Communist Internationale and mass-murdering Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin’s minion Karl Radek arranged a meeting at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. Among the participants, according to historical records, were Soviet secret police boss Felix Djerzhinski, Hungarian Bolshevik “cultural commissar” Gyorgy Lukacs, and Communist Internationale (Comintern) bigwig Willi Muenzenberg.

At the Moscow meeting, the conspirators decided that what was needed was a more gradual “cultural revolution,” or what eventually came to be known as “cultural Marxism,” in the West and beyond. To advance that program, the subversives agreed on a sinister but brilliant plan. This would involve the destruction of traditional religion and the Christian culture it produced, the collapse of sexual morality and the deliberate undermining of the family, and a wrecking ball to infiltrate and demolish the existing institutions.

Some of these men had experience. For instance, Lukacs, who served as “minister of education and culture” in the Bolshevik Hungarian regime of Bela Kun, had introduced all manner of perversion and grotesque “sex education” in public schools, starting in elementary school. It was part of a campaign to destroy “bourgeois” Christian morality and sexual ethics among the youth. The objective was to eventually de-Christianize Hungary, thereby facilitating a total communist restructuring of the human mind and all of society.

Moving to America

A key tool of these conspirators in Moscow would come to be known as the Frankfurt School. From the Institute in Frankfurt, and later in New York, these cultural revolutionaries would promote feminism, communism, atheism, mass migration, globalism, humanism, multiculturalism, nihilism, hedonism, environmentalism, and all sorts of other “isms” that tended to undermine individual liberty, traditional culture, and morality. Rampant morality-free sexuality and Freudian pseudo-psychology were central to the agenda.

To anyone who has studied America’s public education system today, which spends far more time peddling these “isms” to captive children than providing actual education, the stench of the Frankfurt School’s machinations is unmistakable. In fact, the whole system reeks.

Despite some differences, the group maintained close ties with the Soviet Union. Ironically, though, analysts have long argued that the work of the institute peddling Nietzsche and others helped lay the foundation for the National Socialist takeover of Germany. As the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler gradually parted ways with the more internationally minded socialist tyranny of the butchers in Moscow, the civilization destroyers at the ISR fled to the United States.

There, with crucial assistance from socialist and humanist “education reformer” John Dewey and his disciples, these characters attached themselves to Columbia University’s important Teachers College in 1934. Dewey had been a leading “philosopher” and “educator” at Columbia, retiring just a few years before the Frankfurt School influx was in full swing. Others settled at Berkeley, Princeton, and Brandeis.

With Rockefeller money, Dewey would play a key role in helping the Frankfurt School’s operatives put down roots in America. More on the role of the major foundations in subverting American education will be detailed in an upcoming piece of this series.

The importation of Frankfurt School luminaries was a match made in totalitarian heaven, as Dewey and his disciples had much in common with the cultural Marxist social revolutionaries.

As previously recounted in this series on education, for instance, Dewey was a devoted fan of the Soviet model. In fact, he wrote glowing reports about the supposed successes of Soviet communism in the “New Republic” magazine. Dewey was especially infatuated with the indoctrination centers masquerading as schools—and particularly how they were instilling a “collectivistic mentality” in the children. Dewey’s collectivist, anti-Christian “religious humanism” also appealed to the Frankfurt operatives.

Once the institute’s minions set up shop at Columbia and other prestigious U.S. academic institutions, the Frankfurt School’s rhetoric had to change, at least superficially, as Americans were still ardently devoted to God, country, family, and individual liberty. And so, instead of speaking openly of Marxism and communism, Frankfurt School subversives spoke of “dialectical materialism.” Instead of attacking the family, they attacked “patriarchy.” But the agenda remained the same.

Fighting ‘Fascism’

Almost as soon as they arrived, they began plotting the destruction of America’s traditional values, religion, and form of government under the guise of fighting “fascism.”

Indeed, the luminaries of the Frankfurt School, who represented a wide variety of disciplines, used “education” as a crucial tool for advancing their totalitarian, civilization-destroying philosophies. But they infected much more than just the education system, with their sick ideas spreading out like a poison throughout the intellectual veins of America: the social sciences, entertainment, politics, and beyond.

One of the ways in which Frankfurt School operatives and academics advanced their desired social changes via education was through so-called critical theory. In his 1937 work “Traditional and Critical Theory,” ISR Director Max Horkheimer argued that critical theory—a neo-Marxist tool used to demonize the market system, Christianity, and Western civilization—was aimed at bringing about social change and exposing the alleged oppression of people by capitalism.

Another useful tool for undermining freedom and traditional society was the 1950 work by key Frankfurt School theorists known as “The Authoritarian Personality.” These social “researchers” claimed to discover that the traditional American male and father was actually “authoritarian” because, among other reasons, he held traditional values. Thus, the “patriarchy” and the traditional family—among the most important barriers to tyranny—came under relentless attack as a precursor to “fascism.” Public schools were viewed as tools to combat this alleged problem, and they did so vigorously.

Influence

To understand just how central Teachers College (infected by Frankfurt School and Dewey ideas) would become to the public education in the United States, consider that, by 1950, estimates suggest that a third of principals and superintendents of large school districts were being trained there. Many of these left the college with radical ideas about reality, government, society, family, and economy that came straight from Dewey and the Frankfurt School.

Of course, the damage to America from anti-God, anti-freedom German “intellectuals” began even before the Frankfurt School migrated to Columbia. In fact, Dewey was trained by G. Stanley Hall, who was among the many Americans to study under professor Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig University.

Among other notable highlights, Wundt pioneered the idea of the human being as a soulless animal. Essentially, he viewed people as biological stimulus-response mechanisms that could, and should, be trained in a manner similar to circus animals. This Darwinian, materialist view of the human being reigns supreme today in the education system but has been catastrophic.

Fringe left-wing extremists who support the Frankfurt School’s anti-American agenda have dishonestly attempted to paint criticism of the relevant institutions, academics, and their ideas as “anti-Semitic.” But in reality, the dangerous ideas pose a major threat to Judaism, too, and so countless patriotic and liberty-minded Jews have also joined the fight against the Frankfurt School’s poison.

The threat of these subversives and their cultural Marxism has been recognized at the highest levels of the U.S. government, even recently. Former National Security Council Director of Policy and Planning Richard Higgins, for instance, blasted it in his now-notorious 2017 “Higgins Memo” to President Donald Trump about the ongoing war against the administration and the United States.

The wars against Trump and America “cannot be separated from the cultural Marxist narratives that drive them,” warned Higgins, saying cultural Marxism was most directly tied to the Frankfurt School. “The Frankfurt strategy deconstructs societies through attacks on culture by imposing a dialectic that forces unresolvable contradictions under the rubric of critical theory,” he warned. Higgins then quotes Herbert Marcuse, a leading Frankfurt thinker, on how to crush the political and cultural right through persecution and phony “tolerance.”

To this day, reflecting the ISR influx of the early 1930s, Teachers College remains a leading purveyor of socialist poison masquerading as “education.” Its recently released book list includes titles by Bill Ayers, the communist terrorist whose terror group Weather Underground, working with communist Cuban intelligence, bombed the State Department, the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, police stations, and more. The Teachers College Press fall selection also includes endless nonsense on “social justice,” racialism, multiculturalism, and other “isms” with roots in Marxism and Frankfurt School strategies.

With society and civilization becoming increasingly unstable as the final vestiges of traditional education are destroyed, the Frankfurt School and its American allies such as Dewey would be pleased with their handiwork. After all, cultural Marxists including Gramsci and ISR thinkers believed that once the old order was destroyed via a “long march” through society’s institutions, Marxism could eventually triumph. On the education front, they now appear largely victorious.

But their overall victory is hardly assured. What comes next depends on whether Americans can be roused from their slumber in time to restore civilization. As the socialists and totalitarians understood well, education will be the key either way.

This article was originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.

Following the January 6th lawlessness at the Capitol in Washington D.C., Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account and thousands of other conservative users began reporting their accounts were suspended or they had lost large numbers of followers. The migration that had already begun to an upstart competitor, Parler, gained tremendous speed until Amazon dropped the new platform from its server. The big tech censorship of conservative voices supporting Trump was underway.

Mainstream media went from calling the events on January 6th a riot, to an insurrection. Any person or platform who disagreed with their version of what took place or were too “far right” were removed from the public square. In all, Twitter is reported to have banned more than 70,000 accounts since then.

As the days went on, one of President Trump’s most vocal supporters, My Pillow CEO, Mike Lindell, became the latest target. Wayfair, Kohl’s, and Bed Bath & Beyond announced they would no longer sell his company’s products. Twitter has also banned Lindell’s account for “sharing the misinformation” that President Trump won the 2020 election and other “repeated violations.”

In interviews, Lindell often shares his testimony of being a former cocaine addict before becoming a Christian. Lindell has said the idea for My Pillow came to him in a dream that was given to him by God. He is very vocal about his Christian faith, living it daily. He encourages Bible studies at work and has hired former convicts and drug addicts, giving them a second change like Jesus gave him.

Kohl’s and Bed Bath & Beyond have claimed to numerous media outlets their decisions to drop the brand are based on low sales. But one can’t help but wonder if the timing is more than a coincidence. Wayfair has not commented publicly on its decision.

Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, is calling for the 74 million people who voted for Trump to stop supporting big tech and the businesses that are attempting to silence the voices of their fellow Americans with whom they disagree.

“It started with big tech’s Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and even Pinterest shutting down the voice of the President of the United States,” she wrote in a recent op-ed. “So of course, namby-pamby, lily-livered, scaredy-cat companies decided to align themselves with big tech.”

Gardner pointed out something that many cancel culture advocates are ignoring, “America has always been the greatest protector of free of speech. We all have a right to our own thoughts and opinions.”

She called the censorship “an attack on the one thing that certainly makes America the greatest and strongest nation in the world.”

A few days before she had purchased a rug from Wayfair that had just arrived. That was when Gardner found out about Wayfair, Kohls, and Bed Bath & Beyond decisions to quit selling Mike Lindell’s products.

Gardner shared the conversation she had with Wayfair:

I called Wayfair and told them COME GET YOUR RUG!!

They asked if I want to exchange.

ME: Nope.

THEM: We could give you a discount.

ME: No thanks!

THEM: Would you like a credit for future purchase, or refund.

ME: Full refund! Come get your rug!

She also added:

“Oh and delete my account, permanently.” I am sick of these companies trying to silence us.

Now she’s boycotting all three companies. “We have to draw a line in the sand somewhere,” she said.

The silencing of conservatives and Christians hasn’t ended with the inauguration of President Joe Biden and it shows no signs of slowing down. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey himself has said so. According to Gardner, Dorsey stated in a video meeting published by Project Veritas last Thursday:

“We are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the next few weeks, and go on beyond the inauguration.”

Gardner isn’t letting the big tech’s censorship get in her way. They can’t ban her. She’s banning them. “Twitter has suspended me here and there over the years, but I want everyone to know as of today I have BANNED TWITTER from my life,” Gardner defiantly declared. “Buh-bye Twitter! Poof, you’re gone!

“Who’s next, c’mon, step across the line…dare me!”

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Some IFI readers may remember attorney and evangelical Christian, David French, former writer for National Review whom many conservatives formerly admired. Not so much anymore. He spent much of the last four years trying to ensure that Donald Trump did not win a second term. Apparently French plans to spend 2021 defending his own honor and urging Christians to repent of their sin of voting for a corrupt man—no, you silly people, not the corrupt Biden. In French’s view, voting for the morally corrupt, cognitively impaired, Chinese Communist colluder Joe Biden is a justifiable act for Christians.

French tweeted this on January 22, 2021:

Regarding Biden’s [Executive Orders], two things are true: 1. You can oppose the worst [EOs] (including through litigation, when appropriate), yet… 2. A handful of bad EOs do not mean it was better to support a deranged liar who’d incite the sacking of the Capitol to hold onto power.

“A handful of bad EOs”? The sexual integration of children’s private spaces is merely a “bad EO”? Allowing boatloads of American money to go to slaughter humans in other countries is merely a “bad EO”? What kind of Christ-follower says that?

And remember, Biden has just gotten started. Let’s see what the morally deranged Biden has done to speech rights, religious liberty, parental rights, abortion-funding, and the further corruption of public schools by the end of the cultural nightmare we’ve just entered.

Question for French: When Hillary Clinton repeatedly said the 2016 election was stolen, was she attempting to “incite the sacking of the Capitol”?

At dawn’s early light on Sunday, French posted an article in which he 1. calls for evangelicals who supported Trump to apologize and support impeachment, and 2. vigorously defends himself as a man of courage.

He spends nearly 400 words defending his honor and describing the despicable abuse he and his family have endured, presumably the work of evangelical Christians. I’m not sure what evangelical crowd French hangs with, but no evangelical Protestants or Catholics I know would execute “angry attacks on” the employers of those with whom they disagree, or call for their employment “termination,” or “mock” their spouses,  or damage their front doors while “trying to enter” their houses, or suspiciously case their homes, or contact “drug rehab and porn addiction centers around the country” posing as their ideological foes and “saying” they “need help,” or dox them, or text them “racial slurs,” or leave “voicemail messages” that sound like “recordings of people screaming.”

I believe those things happened to French and his family because those types of things have been happening to conservatives for years. Sadly, despicable abuse knows no political or ideological boundaries, but in my experience, theologically orthodox, Bible-believing committed Christ-followers do not do such things.

And herein lies the problem. French appears to lump all evangelicals together into an unseemly ball of corruption. He makes no distinctions between those who have defended or dismissed Trump’s corrupt behavior and done indefensible things to French’s family and those who have never defended Trump’s corrupt behavior or done anything to French’s family.

In French’s view, voting for a corrupt man is equivalent to endorsing corruption and undermining one’s Christian witness. It’s so much easier to anathematize one’s ideological foes by associating them with awful behavior of fringe nasties as French has done than to engage with their substantive claims.

But if voting for a man who has proven himself morally compromised is an unmitigated evil requiring public penance, what does it mean to vote for or facilitate the election of an inveterate liar and venal politician who has been accused of digitally raping a subordinate and of having an affair during his first marriage with the woman he married after his first wife’s death?

What does it mean for a Christ-follower to vote for a man who supports the legal right to exterminate babies in their mothers’ wombs, who supports taxpayer-funding of human slaughter, who supports and celebrates types of unions God detests, and who praised the sexual integration of children’s private spaces?

What does it mean to support a corrupt politician who seeks to undermine religious free exercise protections via the Equality Act, and who seeks to use the power of the government and taxpayers’ hard-earned money to promote the divisive and destructive Critical Race Theory?

French writes,

Christian Trumpism turned morality and reality upside-down.

What exactly is “Christian Trumpism,” and how does voting for the ethically imperfect Trump turn morality upside-down but voting for the ethically imperfect Biden does not?

How does voting for Trump turn “reality upside-down” but voting for a man who believes men can be women does not turn reality upside-down?

Are those who opposed Trump’s re-election guilty of Christian Bidenism? Does David French owe anyone an apology for his support of a man who lied to the American people when he said he knew nothing about his son’s corrupt business dealings? Does such a whopper say nothing about Biden’s character? Setting aside the fact that Biden has been credibly accused of sexual improprieties, on what biblical basis did French ground his belief that Trump’s sexual past is more sinful than Biden’s current lies, eager endorsement of homoeroticism and sexual impersonation, and belief that women have a moral right to order the slaughter of their children?

A sound argument can be made that no Christian should vote for any candidate or facilitate the strengthening of any party that seeks to cancel the expression of ideas it hates; that supports  firing employees who oppose same-sex faux-marriage; or who support the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of minors; that doesn’t recognized the right of Christian business owners to refuse to provide abortifacients to employees or photograph same-sex anti-weddings; or that wants to deprogram, deradicalize, re-educate and “uncover religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists” and “even libertarians.”

French has a solution to the grievous sin of voting for Trump over Hillary and Trump over Biden. First, those Christians who voted the wrong way must apologize, and then Never Trumpers must forgive. Phew.

In addition to public apologies, he wants impeachment:

But there’s more. Christian Trump supporters can no longer say, “We won’t tolerate serious wrongs.” That ship has sailed. They can, however, say “Enough. No more.” And it’s vital that they do. Only they can impose true accountability on Trump. Without them there simply isn’t sufficient support to bar Trump from public office and limit his malign influence on American life.

Biden and Harris, evidently, are going to have solely a beneficent, salubrious influence on American life.

If, or rather when, the left establishes policies so malign and oppressive—policies that rob parents of their parental rights; rob conservatives of the right to speak, assemble, and exercise their religion freely; rob scholars of the freedom to teach and publish; rob Americans of the ability to earn a living; rob citizens of the right to bear arms; and rob those deemed unfit for life of their lives—who or what will be culpable for the revolution that eventually comes? Will it be the rhetoric of those leading the revolution, or will it be the words and deeds of the oppressors?

As to French’s defense of his own honor: Facing adversity in the service of electing a corrupt man who will promote the malign policies Biden has openly committed to promoting is no honor.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/David-Frenchs-Marching-Orders-for-Christians-in-America_audio.mp3

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Some IFI readers may remember attorney and evangelical Christian, David French, former writer for National Review whom many conservatives formerly admired. Not so much anymore. He spent much of the last four years trying to ensure that Donald Trump did not win a second term. Apparently, French plans to spend 2021 defending his own honor and urging Christians to repent of their sin of voting for a corrupt man—no, you silly people, not the corrupt Biden. In French’s view, voting for the morally corrupt, cognitively impaired, Chinese Communist colluder Joe Biden is a justifiable act for Christians.

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Good job, David French, Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today, Lincoln Project, and other assorted Never-Trumpers. The senile, morally corrupt President-Elect of the once great United States of America just nominated a delusional man with a cross-dressing fetish to be the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now decent people won’t be able to teach their young children about our president’s Cabinet. With Dr. Richard “Rachel” Levine‘s appointment will come Big Brother’s prohibition of “misgendering” Levine. In other words, Big Brother and his minions will command all Americans to mis-sex the burly Dr. Levine. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.

Oh, but that’s not all.

Biden has a plan to spread the leftist sexuality ideology within the United States and export it to infinity and beyond. Biden—the self-identifying Catholic—chooses to offend the God he claims to serve rather than offend the gods of homosexuality and “trans”-cultism he actually serves. In terrifying rebellion against God, Biden calls theologically orthodox biblical beliefs about homosexual acts “hatred,” specifically identifying Mike Pence’s beliefs as such.

Further, Biden says, “defeating” those beliefs “is an essential first step” in achieving the leftist goal of full societal approval of homosexuality, which he fallaciously calls “equality.”

Biden has committed to passing the Equality Act, which has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with eradicating First Amendment protections of religious free exercise. Biden has said that through the Equality Act, he will force women’s shelters to house biological men who pretend to be women. Those places where abused women and their children take refuge, often from abusive men, will under Biden, house men.

Biden has committed to reversing the ban on sexual passing in the military. In other words, female soldiers will be forced to bunk and shower with men who pretend to be women, and U.S. taxpayers will be forced to subsidize elective cosmetic procedures and ongoing cross-sex hormone-doping for delusional soldiers.

Biden has committed to forcing Christian adoption and foster care agencies to place children in the homes of homosexuals or lose access to all government funds. In other words, Biden will discriminate based on religion when funding adoption agencies.

Biden has promised that on his first day in office he will require all public schools to allow “trans”-identifying students to have full access to the restrooms, locker rooms, and sports of opposite-sex students. I’m sure that will go over well with Muslim parents.

We can’t forget that Biden has promised to restore funding to America’s abattoirs, Planned Parenthood. With Biden ensconced in the Oval Office, Christians from sea to shining sea will be forced to fund human slaughter. But at least now that the uncouth, boorish Trump is gone, Never-Trumpers will be able to sleep at night.

And this is just the tip of the cold, dark iceberg, Biden and Never-Trumpers kept hidden during the campaign.

Never-Trumpers, besotted with dreams of Downton Abbey’s Lord Grantham (without the white skin, biological sex, or elitist title, of course) running for president, couldn’t abide the coarse, abrasive, pugilistic Trump winning a second term, so they colluded with leftists to kneecap him.

Never mind that Joe Biden is an inveterate liar and plagiarist. Never mind that he inappropriately touches women. Never mind that he has been accused by Jill Biden’s first husband of having an affair with her when Joe’s wife was still alive and Jill Biden was still married. Never mind that he was accused of digitally raping a staffer years ago. Never mind that there is good evidence that Joe and his corrupt son and brother colluded to line their pockets with the filthy lucre of America’s chief enemy. Never mind that with a straight but slightly confused face, he lied during election season, telling voters that he knew nothing about Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings. To Never-Trumpers, Biden’s plans to destroy America are trivialities to be ignored.

While facilitating the election of Joe Biden—a man who will enact policies that destroy the bodies, minds, and hearts of children—apparently has no bearing on our Christian witness, voting for Trump does—or so goes the argument of Ed Stetzer, dean and professor at Wheaton College and contributing editor at Christianity Today.

Stetzer thinks the dim view the world has of evangelicalism has everything to do with gullible, non-thinking, Trump-voting evangelicals. No mention of the hatred the world has for the word of God when it comes to homosexuality and sexual passing.

No mention either of the unconscionable cowardly silence of theologians and pastors who have said next to nothing as the world captured the hearts and minds of children in their own houses of worship and whose silence contributed to the spread of evil so dark and ugly that many evangelicals, when faced with the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, believed rightly that Trump was better.

Trump offered hope to parents who didn’t want their daughters sharing locker rooms with boys. He offered hope that Planned Parenthood would be defunded. He offered hope for a Supreme Court that would protect their religious liberty.

In Stetzer’s myopic view, expressed in a USA Today editorial devoid of nuance, “far too many [evangelicals] failed to live up to their promise of speaking truth to power.” Perhaps. But there are tens of thousands more evangelicals who voted for Trump than there are well-known evangelicals who had access to Trump to speak truth to power, and Stetzer lumps them all together.

What about the well-known evangelicals who have had opportunities for decades to speak truth to power about the poisonous, enslaving “LGBTQ” ideology and have said nothing either to the powerful or publicly. How does Stetzer think the world—whose opinion he seems to care so much about—would think about evangelicalism if every well-known evangelical spoke truth to power publicly about the “trans”-ideology and homosexuality?

Has Stetzer considered that maybe evangelicals wouldn’t have been so attracted to Trump’s muscular rhetoric, if evangelical leaders had not been speaking in such emasculated tones for so many years?

Maybe Stetzer doesn’t know any, but there are scores of evangelicals who see with clarity Trump’s flaws and who worship no political (or evangelical) leader. Those evangelicals were careful to distinguish between Trump the man and the policies of his administration. Given a choice between a corrupt man with terrible policies and a corrupt man with better policies, they chose the latter.

The dark shape of things to come

The 1619 Project has changed the date of America’s founding. All summer, Orwellian monsters—also known as Biden voters—rampaged through our cities, tearing down statutes and demanding that buildings and streets be renamed and artwork replaced. Birth certificates are now legally falsified to indicate a biological male was identified at the time of his birth as female. Birth certificates will now identify a biological woman who was impregnated by a biological man and birthed a baby as the “father.” Within a nanosecond after the announcement by a Hollywood starlet at age 33 that she will henceforth pretend she’s a man, the Internet was scrubbed of any past references to her by female pronouns. Her history was erased.

In the novel 1984, George Orwell wrote,

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

As I wrote several weeks ago, “Leftists See Orwell’s Novel 1984 As a Blueprint for Progress.”

So, tell me again, Mr. French, Mr. Stetzer, and Christianity Today, how exactly does facilitating the election of the patently corrupt Biden who heartily endorses sexual perversion, religious persecution, human slaughter, and the erasure of history enhance the witness of theologically orthodox Christians?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/auThe-Shape-of-Things-to-Come.m4a

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This is how it’s going down, my friends—the eradication of speech rights for conservatives, that is. The stage was set years ago when “hate speech” laws were passed.

The Left argues that any rhetoric that is or may be in any distant way at any time related to acts of violence should be banned. So, if I say that volitional homosexual acts and relationships are abhorrent to God as Scripture teaches, and a lone, crazed, alienated, Godless sociopath or a few hundred alienated fatherless, Godless anarchists—people who may or may not have read my words—commit acts of heinous violence against homosexuals—my words should be banned. Of course, the banning of my words necessarily requires the banning of God’s Word as well as the words of any theologically orthodox Christian since the inception of the church.

If I say that humans born with healthy, normally functioning penises are male and can never be female, and some man deceived into having sex with a man who pretends to be a woman kills the deceiver, my expression of a moral proposition must be banned.

When Lila Rose, founder of the pro-life organization Live Action, tweeted, “Abortion is violence,” abortionist Dr. Leah Torres tweeted back this:

This is violent rhetoric. It is objectively false and meant to incite others to commit crimes against clinics, patients, and health care providers. This is what domestic terrorism looks like.

Note the three arguable claims Torres makes: 1. She says Rose’s claim is false, 2. She says Rose’s claim is meant to incite others to commit violent crimes, 3. She says Rose’s tweet constitutes domestic terrorism. How convenient that those claims are precisely the type of claims leftists now say are not protected by the First Amendment. See how that works?

Torres is also the author of this since-deleted tweet:

You know fetuses can’t scream, right? I transect the cord [first] so there’s really no opportunity, if they’re even far enough along to have a larynx.

She later claimed the “cord” was not referring to babies’ vocal cords but, rather, to their umbilical cords. So much better. So much less violent.

Those with eyes to see recognize that leftists are using their special skill in manipulating language—also known as sophistry—to turn good into evil and protected speech into violence requiring censorship.

Leftists argue that saying the election was “stolen” should be banned because some far-right anarchists who hold similar views engaged in violence. Therefore, a few words about the phrase “stolen election”—the newest bugbear used by dishonest leftists to crush the civil rights of conservatives—are in order.

The claim that “an election was stolen”—you know, like Hillary Clinton has claimed for four years—means that an election lacked integrity. Some may claim it was stolen via, for example, Russian interference, or algorithmic manipulation, or ballot-harvesting, or voting irregularities regarding signatures, or unconstitutional changes in election requirements, or the counting of late ballots, or Big Tech’s censorship of the Biden crime family’s corruption that likely affected votes, or dead people voting, or a combination of shady acts by shady actors. Someone needs to tell the liars and paranoiacs in the Democrat Party that the term “stolen election” is not a code word for “attack the Capitol.”

If, however, “stolen election” is a secret code word used to initiate violent lawlessness, then surely Hillary Clinton should be thrown in the slammer—a lot. Here are two of her many seditionist/insurrectionist statements:

You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you.

and,

[T]here was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level. We still don’t know what really happened. … you don’t win by 3 million votes and have all this other shenanigans and stuff going on and not come away with an idea like, “Whoa, something’s not right here.

The fact that her alleged attempts to incite insurrection and/or sedition failed shouldn’t matter. The law prohibits even attempts to incite insurrection or sedition.

Trump and many other Americans said the election was “stolen” in the sense that myriad dubious acts took place that cast doubt on the fairness and integrity of the election. Some anarchists—angry about a boatload of corrosive leftist words and deeds, including election malfeasance—breached the Capitol. Therefore, leftists argue, anyone who attended the pro-Trump protest or voted for Trump must be banned from all social media, kicked out of elected office, lose their private sector jobs, or never be hired. Social media newbie Parler must lose all access to the Internet. Americans must lose their medical insurance and recording contracts.

Via a Royal Proclamation, Randall Lane, Forbes Magazine editor, has threatened to harm any company that hires Kayleigh McEnany, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Stephanie Grisham, or Sean Spicer—Trump’s former press secretaries:

Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.

He actually wrote, “Let it be known.” Can the left get any more arrogant and oppressive? Rhetorical question.

Trump (again, like Hillary before him) and many decent, law-abiding citizens claimed the election was “stolen.” Some far-right anarchists also believe the election was stolen. Those far-right anarchists stormed the Capitol. Ergo, in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of cynical leftists, Trump is responsible for the storming of the Capitol. Anyone who attended the protest is responsible for the violence—including even those grandmas who abhor violence and didn’t know the violence was happening. Anyone who has prepared food for Trump is responsible because they helped sustain the life of a man who caused a 90-minute seditious violent protest. Anyone who sold food to anyone who prepared food is responsible for the violence. And any of Trump’s kids’ college friends who may have met Trump and thought he was not Hitler is responsible for the violence—obviously.

So, why aren’t YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter being tossed off the Internet, since all were used to organize both the Capitol riots and the BLM riots of 2020?

Why isn’t Kamala Harris who didn’t condemn BLM violence until late August, three months after it began, being accused of fomenting violence?

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waited until three months after the BLM riots began to condemn them, did she facilitate violence and property destruction through her silence?

What about Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the inaccurate, leftist 1619 Project, who said in the middle of the BLM riots that “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” Was she guilty of inciting more property-destruction?

The goal of leftists isn’t really to prevent violence. Appeals to thwarting violence are merely stratagems for preventing the dissemination of ideas leftists hate. They must link ideas they hate to violence in order to undermine foundational American principles. How do I know? Because the linguistic ground is shifting. We are now hearing calls for banning or “reining in” “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and discourse that “harms,” because—the argument goes—such information may lead to violence.

AOC recently said,

We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.

So, who determines what constitutes “disinformation and misinformation”? Remember Dr. Leah Torres calling Lila Rose’s statement “false”—in other words, disinformation or misinformation? And remember when just before the election CNN asserted—without conducting any investigation—that the New York Post story about Hunter and Joe Biden was “disinformation,” and then conveniently, after the election, declared it a legitimate news story?

If leftist rhetoric about violence, disinformation, misinformation, harm, and hate leads eventually to imprisonment of dissidents—i.e., conservatives—no problem. All conservatives need to do to avoid the inconvenience of imprisonment or “enlightenment camps” is agree with Big Brother, take some Soma, burn some books, and shut up.

At least leftist rhetoric won’t lead to violence—will it?

The arc of the shady leftist universe is long, convoluted, and bends toward injustice, tyranny, and a senile old man who’s shuffling around looking for his moral compass and a milkshake.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/audio_Leftists-Exploit-Violence-to-Cancel-Conservatives-.mp3

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*Updated to include Joe Biden’s Friday comparison of Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to Nazi Joseph Goebbels.

Another tempest is brewing in the Land of the Lost, formerly known as the Land of Lincoln. It all began when, in a speech to Moms for America, newly elected U.S. Representative Mary Miller quoted Hitler’s infamous assertion from Mein Kampf about the indoctrination of children. Miller said,

If we win a few elections, we’re still going to be losing unless we win the hearts and minds of our children. This is the battle. Hitler was right on one thing. He said, “Whoever has the youth has the future.”

The political world came unhinged.

In a D.C. minute, Illinois’ foolish Democrats (I know, I know, redundant) U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth and U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky—both on the wrong side of, well, everything—with unsheathed claws, pounced, calling for Miller’s resignation.

I forget, did Duckworth and Schakowsky call for the resignation of colleague Jim Clyburn when he first compared Donald Trump to Hitler in March 2019? Did they call for Clyburn’s resignation in March 2020 when for the second time he compared President Trump to Hitler and then for good measure compared Trump supporters to Germans under Hitler’s reign, saying this:

I used to wonder: How did the people of Germany allow Hitler to exist? But with each passing day, I’m beginning to understand how.

*Have Duckworth and Schakowsky yet called for unifier Joe Biden to resign as president for his despicable comparison on Friday, January 8 of Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels?

Did Duckworth and Schakowsky call for the resignation of Michigan Democrat, U.S. Representative Brenda Lawrence when in September 2020, she compared Trump to Hitler and his supporters to supporters of Hitler?

Did Duckworth and Schakowsky call for the resignation of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she called border detention facilities that Obama used to separate children from parents “concentration camps”?

In February 2020, did Duckworth and Schakowsky urge the firing of the history teacher in a government-subsidized school in Maryland “who showed a picture of Trump above pictures of a Nazi swastika and a flag of the Soviet Union” with captions that said ‘wants to round up a group of people and build a giant wall’ and ‘oh, THAT is why it sounds so familiar!’”

Lynn Sweet, longtime writer for the lying leftist rag the Chicago Sun-Times oddly and falsely described Miller’s comment as “praise of Hitler,” when all decent, fair, non-bigots understood Miller’s comment as criticism of Hitler and anyone else who seeks to inculcate children with evil ideas, as all tyrants do.

With his chest puffed up with the air of the self-righteous, busy beaver U.S. Representative from Illinois, Adam Kinzinger—a self-identifying Republican who is always eager to condemn conservatives—jumped aboard the smite Miller bandwagon, saying, “I outright condemn this garbage.” Yeah, that took courage.

Setting aside Godwin’s over-used law, I think it’s time for the faux-outrage from politicians about comparisons to Hitler or Nazism to stop. Both sides use such comparisons. Some comparisons are more apt than others. For example, the comparison of the Democrat view that defective humans are legitimate targets for government-sanctioned extermination to the Nazi view of “life unworthy of life” seems apt.

I’m climbing in bed with a strange fellow for a moment, the very liberal Michael Hiltzik, writer for the LA Times who in a July 2019 commentary challenged the leaders of the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s “unequivocal rejection” of any and all “efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary.”

While I disagree with Hiltzik’s apparent motive—that is, his desire for “progressives” to be free to compare Trump to Hitler—I agree with the view that the use of Holocaust analogies is not intrinsically sinful or off-limits.

Hiltzik explains his dissent from the Holocaust Museum’s absolute prohibition of the use of Holocaust analogies:

[T]he Holocaust Museum’s view of its mission as communicating the “history” of the Holocaust seems crabbed and narrow. Its real mission is to communicate the lesson that, unique as the Holocaust was in scale, the evil that brought it about lurks in the psyche of humans in groups, and may not be visible from the outset.

He goes on to cite Yale Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder who argues,

A monopoly on historical interpretation, claimed by a single institution, is a mark of authoritarianism … one of the dangers of placing a taboo on analogies … ensures that we never learn what we need to know.

Doesn’t that reflect the oft-cited view of philosopher George Santayana who famously warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”? Don’t we teach the evil events in history in part so that we recognize the shadows of those past events in current events? When we recognize those shadows—those contours—are we not to speak of them?

Don’t be naïve or gullible. Politicians don’t really take offense at the use of Nazi analogies. Political animals without principles—particularly animals who don’t believe in objective moral truth or the source of such truth—lack even a grounding for moral outrage. Like everything else within their grasp, their faux-outrage is a political tool for influencing people and winning power. Faux-outrage—fauxrage—emanates from whichever political side is being gored by the analogy.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t be intimidated by it. It’s a tall tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Freshman Rep. Mary Miller, a Christian, mother of seven, grandmother of 17, and farmer, under withering and indefensible attacks from around the country and next to no support from colleagues, has issued a gracious and humble apology for an alleged sin she did not commit:

Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of mothers about the importance of faith and guarding our youth from destructive influences. I sincerely apologize for any harm my words caused and regret using a reference to one of the most evil dictators in history to illustrate the dangers that outside influences can have on our youth. This dark history should never be repeated and parents should be proactive to instill what is good, true, right, and noble into their children’s hearts and minds. While some are trying to intentionally twist my words to mean something antithetical to my beliefs, let me be clear: I’m passionately pro-Israel and I will always be a strong advocate and ally of the Jewish community. I’ve been in discussion with Jewish leaders across the country and am grateful to them for their kindness and forthrightness.

Oh, btw, Hitler—the evil monster—was right on one thing: Whoever has the youth, has the future. As Christians seek to train up their children in the way they should go, they would do well to remember that supremely evil men understand the long-term effects of indoctrinating children. Hitler was not the first, nor will he be the last evil monster to pursue our youth. There are other monsters prowling around, seeking whom they will devour.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

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We have been blessed with many liberties here in America, many of them unknown throughout human history. And we should diligently guard those liberties. It would be a terrible tragedy if we lost them, especially for the generations that will follow. Few things are as precious as our freedoms.

At the same time, as followers of Jesus, it’s easy for us to lose our perspective because of those very liberties and freedoms. It’s easy for us to become dependent on the government. Or to put our trust in a worldly system. Or to believe that human limitations can put limitations on God. Perish the thought.

With this in mind, we do well to think back to the situation of the first century church, living in the Roman Empire and subject to the Roman emperor, meaning men like Caligula (37-41 AD) and Nero (54-68).

According to one history website, “Caligula was Rome’s most tyrannical emperor. His reign from 37-41 AD is filled with murder and debauchery, to levels even his infamous nephew Nero could not reach. The great-great grandson of Julius Caesar certainly left his mark by his possible madness and definitely horrific acts.”

Another website states, “Historical accounts of Caligula may vary, but nearly all historians agreed on one dark fact: this deranged emperor placed very little value on human life. In one twisted story, Caligula was supposedly meant to sacrifice a bull to the gods by hitting it over the head with a huge mallet. At the last minute, Caligula had an even worse idea—he turned and struck the priest instead.”

This was the leader of the empire.

As for Nero, where do we start? According to the historian Tacitus,

“. . . to stop the rumor [that he had set Rome on fire], he [Emperor Nero] falsely charged with guilt, and punished with the most fearful tortures, the persons commonly called Christians, who were [generally] hated for their enormities. . . . . Accordingly first those were arrested who confessed they were Christians; next on their information, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of ‘hating the human race.’” (Yet, these early Christians were called “haters.”)

Tacitus continues:

“In their very deaths they were made the subjects of sport: for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights.”

Picture this happening in your city to your friends and family members.

Yet it was during the reigns of Caligula and Nero, among others, that the early church thrived. It was during these times of intense, unspeakable cruelty and persecution, that the gospel message flourished and grew.

And it was while the demented, murderous Nero was emperor that Paul wrote these words: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1).

Of course, Paul did not call for unqualified submission to governing authorities, as in cases where the authorities command you to do evil. Accordingly, if you were a Christian living in Hitler’s Germany and were commanded to turn in any Jews you knew, the right thing would be disobedience – disobedience to man but obedience to God. We always submit to the highest authority.

But that’s now what I want to focus on. Instead, I want to draw our attention to the attitude of believers under a dictatorial regime. You cannot vote. You cannot take legal action against the government. You cannot protest (unless you want to be killed in the process). You cannot change “the system.” Such matters are out of your hands.

But you can do something much more powerful. You can spread the gospel. You can advance God’s countercultural, spiritual kingdom. You can liberate people’s hearts and minds. You can bring healing and redemption. You can be an agent of eternal change. You can challenge the system from the ground up.

And that’s what these early believers did, turning their world upside down.

The ultimate battle is a spiritual battle, and that battle can be waged regardless of what kind of government we’re under.

In fact, it is often during the hardest times that the church grows the most. Just look at the explosive growth of the Church in Communist China over the last 70-80 years. Or consider the church in Muslim Iran, which is growing as rapidly as any church in the world.

The church often does much better under persecution than under prosperity.

That’s why it doesn’t surprise me that the most precious, devoted Christians I have met in the world are Christians under persecution. Conversely, it doesn’t surprise that, quite often, the most complacent Christians I’ve met have been Christians in the midst of abundant prosperity.

That’s why the church became much more compromised and worldly once Constantine Christianized the Roman Empire. With the good came the bad. Governmental backing now produced a foreign mixture, as the Church became an appendage of a still-worldly empire.

Freedom and prosperity are gifts that can be easily abused.

It’s true, of course, that at different times in history (including recently), radical Islam has virtually wiped out entire Christian populations in some parts of the world. And it’s true that no one in their right mind would want to bequeath brutal persecution and mass killing on the generations to come.

To repeat: we must guard the freedoms and liberties God has given us here in America.

But let’s also be realistic. Just as Donald Trump is not Jesus, Joe Biden is not the devil. Neither is he Nero.

Biden may support gay “marriage” and transgender activism, but  Nero “castrated a boy named Sporus to make him womanlike, and then married him in a traditional ceremony, which included a bridal veil and a dowry, according to the Roman historian and biographer Suetonius (circa A.D. 69).”

And I do not believe for a moment that Biden would call for Christians to be set on fire and burned alive to illuminate the night. Please! (And for the record, we still do not officially know who our next president will be.)

So, while we work hard to preserve our freedoms and push back against those who seek to take them from us, we must never put our trust in the arm of flesh.

Paul’s counsel was simple: “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:1-4).

Here in America, we should get involved in the political system as much as we are called to and have the opportunity to do so.

But our trust is placed elsewhere. The invisible kingdom is advancing, and no power in heaven or on earth can stop it.

Peter and Paul and a host of other first century Christians, all killed for their faith, would add their hearty Amen.

This article was originally published at AskDr.Brown.org.

I want to assure you that the title to this article is not click bait. Rather, it reflects the very open sentiments of the extreme leftist, political commentator Keith Olbermann. He has made himself perfectly clear.

Before I share his exact words, though, I want to be perfectly clear as well. My answer to the question of whether Christian conservatives will soon be prosecuted by the millions and removed from American society is an emphatic (but qualified) no.

It is an emphatic “no” because there is no way that tens of millions of Christian conservatives would simply stand by and let this happen. Not a chance.

It is a qualified “no” because, in part, it has happened already. Christian conservatives have been prosecuted for their Christian beliefs. We have been imprisoned for our beliefs, right here in America in the 21st Century.

More broadly, we have been marginalized and muted by the cancel culture and the spirit of intimidation. And the more we cower and capitulate, the worse it will get. Now is the time to stand up and speak out. And while Olbermann’s sentiments may be extreme, they are not isolated.

I have documented for years how Christian conservatives have been likened to Hitler, to the Nazis, to the KKK, to ISIS, and that was long before Donald Trump appeared on the political scene.

I have supplied verbatim quotes of protesters wishing that we would be thrown or the lions or killed in other ways.

And, again, this had been totally unrelated to hostility towards President Trump. The hatred was in response to our conservative, biblical ideology, most particularly, when it came to LGBTQ activism. And no matter how loving or gracious or compassionate we were, we were still branded haters, people who were a danger to society. People who should be removed.

As one reviewer on my Facebook page stated,

It’s people like this so called ‘Doctor’ are what are wrong with the world.

People like him need to be bound and tied by their hands and feet, beaten repeatedly in the head with their book of fairy tales until they are twitching from never [sic] damage and bleeding profusely from their ignorant heads.

Yes, “people like him,” meaning, people like you, too, if you share my beliefs. By no means was I the sole target of this demented person’s rage.

As for Olbermann, whose words reach far more people than that Facebook review, he said this on October 9:

The task is two-fold. The terrorist Trump must be defeated, must be destroyed, must be devoured at the ballot box. And then he, and his enablers, and his supporters, and his collaborators, and the Mike Lees and the William Barrs and the Sean Hannnitys and the Mike Pences and the Rudy Gulianis and the Kyle Rittenhouses and the Amy Coney Barretts must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society while we try to rebuild it and rebuild the world that Trump has nearly destroyed by turning it over to a virus. Remember it.

(He also referred to Trump supporters as “maggots” and “morons” in his rant).

Of course, this is beyond unhinged, and I pity Olbermann more than anything. He is certainly zealous. And I’m sure there are good things he stands for. But this is completely beyond the pale, totally irresponsible, and very dangerous.

Thankfully, this was not delivered on network TV but rather on Olbermann’s new YouTube channel (which now has 123K subscribers). And while the clip has 8.6K thumbs up, it also has 7.3K thumbs down.

But without question, his words reflect the seething hostility that exists toward Christian conservatives in many quarters in America today. We dare not underestimate it.

And even though this clip is more than one month old, I bring it up today because of the attitudes already surfacing in the apparent electoral defeat of Trump. No need to hold back any longer!

Yet this is not simply because many of us voted for Trump. As I noted, the hostility was there long before he came on the scene, and it will be there long after he is gone.

It is an ideological hatred more than a political hatred, a hatred based on deep moral differences, a hatred that can easily turn violent, as it often has through the centuries and in recent months.

That’s why it’s fair to ask: on what charges will people like us be prosecuted and convicted? (Let’s be more specific: on what charges should Amy Coney Barrett be prosecuted and convicted?)

And, how, exactly, will people like us be “removed” from society? Prison? Concentration camps? Something worse?

Again, I haven’t the slightest fear of something like this happening in the immediate future here in America. The country would have to fall to depths beyond our imagination for that to happen so quickly. But every step in that direction is a dangerous step, and every step should be resisted.

It is true that Trump has inflamed hostilities with his own irresponsible rhetoric. We must continue to separate ourselves from those words and sentiments.

But let’s not deceive ourselves. Trump is not the ultimate issue. It’s our beliefs. Our faith. Our values. Our Bible. Our God.

It’s about to get really ugly here in our land. Resolve to stand strong. Resolve to speak the truth. Resolve not to be moved by fear. Resolve not to live for the praises of people. Resolve not to be marginalized.

And determine not to respond to hatred with hatred. Let’s show the Keith Olbermanns of the world who we really are. Let’s overcome evil with good.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org. 

Written by John A. Sparks

The idea of expanding the size of the U.S. Supreme Court, also known as “court packing,” has surfaced once again, as it did after the Brett Kavanaugh appointment. Often mentioned is a proposal by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of University of California Berkeley’s Law School. He favors increasing the size of the court to 13 instead of its current nine. There are other calls for a larger court, such as those produced by organizations like “Take Back the Court” and “Demand Justice.” Of course, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) simply demands: “Expand the court.”

Let’s start with the basics. The U.S. Constitution does not state a particular size for the U.S. Supreme Court. The number of justices are fixed by Congress. The initial size was set by the Judiciary Act of 1789, which was passed by both houses and signed into law by President George Washington. That act called for one chief justice and five associate justices—a total of six. The number has been changed a few times, but a later Judiciary Act (1869) set the total number at nine, where it has remained for over 150 years. Although there are other proposals circulating—rotating justices off the court and onto the U.S. Courts of Appeals and requiring mandatory retirement at a certain age—a change in the number of justices would be the only change which would clearly not require a constitutional amendment.

So, why change the size of the court? Is it really necessary?

One reason given by advocates of expansion is that the current configuration of nine justices does not give duly elected presidents sufficient opportunities to shape the court by their appointments. In theory, since a newly elected president can’t “clear the deck” and name an all new court, the president must wait for court retirements or deaths to occur. Until that happens, the president is unable to make a court appointment. In the case of President Trump, he had the rare occurrence of two deaths and a retirement during his first term.

However, such opportunities are not far from the norm. Remarkably, the facts show that with the exception of partial-term presidents (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson), virtually every U.S. president, beginning with George Washington and ending with Donald Trump, has been able to appoint at least one U.S. Supreme Court justice during his term of office, with Jimmy Carter being the only exception. In fact, the average number of appointments by each of our 45 presidents is approximately 2.6 appointments. Two-term presidents appoint on average 3.1 justices, if one excludes Franklin Roosevelt (8) and George Washington (11), who are “statistical outliers.”

Coming forward to the post WWII era, the 13 elected presidents—six Democrats and seven Republicans—have maintained an average similar to the historical average. Here are the number of appointments for each: Truman (4), Eisenhower (5), Kennedy (2), Johnson (2), Nixon (4), Ford (1), Carter (0), Reagan (3), George H.W. Bush (2), Clinton (2), George W. Bush (2), Obama (2), and Trump (3). The mean average per president for this period is 2.3 appointments. The statistics on appointments by sitting presidents seem to show that on average presidents have not been curtailed by the nine-justice configuration.

Another argument made years ago is now resurfacing. It challenges the fundamental structure of American government. These supporters of change say that our current constitutional system of presidential nomination and senatorial confirmation is outmoded because it is anti-democratic, that it is not responsive enough to “the people.” They say the existing judicial processes of choosing justices are  “relics” from a political “ice age” that was “pre-democratic.”

True, the court and the way its members are chosen and serve is not democratic, if by that one means that “the people” choose the justices directly and can regularly remove them. The fundamental configuration of American government put in place by the Founders is what Aristotle called “mixed government,” that is a mixture of democratic and non-democratic forms. Members of the U.S. Supreme Court are chosen by the president, not elected by the people. The confirmation of the nominee is done by the U.S. Senate, where population does not determine political power because each state has the same number of votes. The term of service for a justice (and other federal judges) is for life. These are the only federal office holders with life-long tenure. Therefore, the justices are not reachable by “the people” in the same way that, for instance, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives is. The reason? The Founders wanted the judicial branch to be able to resist the fitful pressures of majorities and of the executive which would endanger the cardinal rights of citizens—life, liberty, property, religious expression, and speech.

However, this is not to say that the people have no voice in the shape the court takes. But that voice is a muted, indirect voice. It is expressed by choosing a president who then, through the rigorous filter of the U.S. Senate, appoints a justice upon a vacancy. The voice of the people, though restrained by the existing system with nine justices, has produced courts of differing political hues. One only must only compare the New Deal court with the Rehnquist court or the Warren court with the current Roberts court. However, those changes in emphasis and judicial philosophy come gradually, helping to guarantee a substantial degree of certainty and predictability which should be the hallmark of a court, the chief interpretative body in our constitutional republic.

What the proponents of expansion actually fear is candidly expressed by Chemerinsky. Expansion of the court “is the only way to keep there from being a very conservative court for the next 10-20 years.” Chemerinsky’s statement reveals that he is not really dissatisfied with the current size, structure, and process of judicial nomination. What he is unhappy about is that certain Republican presidential wins coupled with deaths and retirements by justices have produced a court with a conservative tilt. He fears a “long winter” of conservative opinions by the court and is unwilling to trust that future Democrat presidential wins, deaths, and retirements could just as well turn the court back in the liberal direction he desires while keeping the current process and size of the court.

Despite current polls which indicate that court packing would be viewed unfavorably by the electorate, the temptation to pack the court would be significant with a Democrat presidential win. Assuming an expansion of the court to 13 justices, the four new members of the court would presumably be liberal judges inclining the court in that direction. Regrettably, such an abrupt change in the size of the court based on a single presidential victory would diminish and eventually destroy respect for and confidence in the court. It would result in long-term damage to the court, which would be converted from a generally impartial deliberative body following the rule of law into a branch whose size could be altered in favor of either victorious political party in any given election.

Court packing is unnecessary and potentially destructive of the court’s dignity and high standing. It would undermine the delicate balance between the branches that the Founders labored to ensure.

This article was originally published by The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

Written by Walter Williams

The United States Constitution’s Article 2, Sec. 2, cl. 2, provides that the president of the United States “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States.” President Donald Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett as U.S. Supreme Court justice who will replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Barrett currently serves as United States Circuit judge of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The 7th Circuit serves the Midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

It is now the U.S. Senate’s job to decide whether to confirm Barrett’s appointment as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. In thinking about the U.S. Senate’s criteria for making their decision, we might ask what is the role of a U.S. Supreme Court justice? A reasonable answer is to recognize that our U.S. Constitution represents our rules of the game. It dictates what is and is not permissible behavior by government and its citizens. Therefore, a U.S. Supreme Court justice has one job and one job only; namely, that of a referee.

A referee’s job, whether he is a football referee, baseball umpire or a U.S. Supreme Court justice, is to know the rules of the game and to ensure that those rules are evenly applied without bias. Do we want a referee or justice to allow empathy to influence their decisions? Let us answer this question using this year’s Super Bowl as an example.

The San Francisco 49ers have played in seven Super Bowls in their franchise history, winning five times. On the other hand, coming into the 2020 game, the Kansas City Chiefs had not won a Super Bowl title in 50 years. In anyone’s book, this is a gross disparity. Should the referees have the empathy to understand what it is like to be a perennial loser, not winning a Super Bowl in five decades? What would you think of a referee whose play calls were guided by empathy or pity? Suppose a referee, in the name of compensatory justice, stringently applied pass interference or roughing the passer violations against the San Francisco 49ers and less stringently against the Chiefs. Would you support a referee who refused to make offensive pass interference calls because he thought it was a silly rule? You would probably remind him that it is the league that makes the rules (football law), not referees.

U.S. Supreme Court justices should be umpires or referees, enforcing neutral rules. Here is a somewhat trivial example of a neutral rule from my youth; let us call it Mom’s Rule. On occasion, my sister and I would have lunch in my mother’s absence. Either my younger sister or I would have the job of dividing the last piece of cake or pie. Almost always an argument would ensue about the fairness of the cut. Those arguments ended when Mom came up with a rule: Whoever cuts the cake gives the other person the first choice of the piece to take. As if by magic or divine intervention, fairness emerged and arguments ended. No matter who did the cutting, there was an even division.

This is what our society needs — the kind of rules whereby you would be OK even if your worst enemy were in charge. Despite the high stakes of bitterly fought football contests, most games end peaceably, and the winners and losers are civil. It is indeed a miracle of sorts that players with conflicting interests can play a game, agree with the outcome and walk away as good sports. That “miracle” is that it is far easier to reach an understanding about the game’s rules than the game’s outcome. The same conflict-reducing principles should be a part of a civilized society.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
This article was originally published at the Creators Syndicate webpage at creators.com.

Americans educated by government today are, for the most part, hopelessly ignorant of their own nation’s history—and that’s no accident. They’re beyond ignorant when it comes to civics, too. On the history of the rest of the world, or the history of communism, Americans are generally clueless as well. This was all by design, of course.

After generations of flying under the radar, the ongoing corruption of history education in public schools is now suddenly the topic du jour. With the spread of the New York Times’ discredited 1619 Project aiming to “reframe” history through the lens of slavery, which even the New York Times’ own fact-checker called out, Americans everywhere are suddenly paying attention to what’s being taught to impressionable children at taxpayer expense.

President Donald Trump recently blamed the escalating mayhem in the streets on indoctrination by schools and the media. This month, he blasted the “toxic propaganda” being peddled as “history” in American classrooms. To deal with it, the president even said he will sign an executive order to “promote patriotic education.”

The reason why history is being re-written is hardly a mystery. In George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel “1984,” the totalitarian ruling Party’s motto explaining its strategy is: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” And it’s very true—whoever controls the historical narrative will be able to shape the future. Liberty-minded Americans and truth are currently losing the battle—big time.

Totalitarians have long understood the power of historical narratives. Consider Chairman Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” in communist China. Under the guise of purging remnants of the old ways of capitalism and tradition, Mao’s communist storm troopers did their best to destroy the records and evidences of thousands of years of Chinese history. Books were burned and monuments destroyed in an orgy of destruction.

After true history was erased and disfigured, the Chinese Communist Party was able to re-write history on a blank slate to suit its own agenda. Especially important to that effort was the indoctrination of children in government schools. Everything ancient and traditional was portrayed as primitive or even evil, while the new party line surrounding the supposed glories and progress of communism was force-fed to China’s youth.

America’s ongoing cultural revolution has not been quite as dramatic, violent, or thorough—so far. But if left unchecked, the results of this long-term operation may turn out to be just as deadly. And there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind about the effectiveness of the effort to re-write the history of the United States, Western Civilization, and even the world.

Consider the data. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the “nation’s report card,” just 15 percent of American students were at or above the “proficient” level in history. When it comes to civics, less than one in four U.S. eighth-grade students performed at or above “proficient” in 2018 on the NAEP, the latest year for which scores are available.

Keeping in mind the wild bias of the Education Department (some 99.7 percent of the bureaucrats’ contributions to a presidential candidate in the 2016 election went to Hillary Clinton), even those numbers probably drastically overstate the true level of historical and civic understanding of U.S. students.

Contrast the dismal scores with previous generations. There was a time when Americans were the best educated people on the planet—especially when it came to history and civics. According to prominent French scholar Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited America in the early-to-mid 1800s and recorded his observations in two volumes before government hijacked education, “every citizen … is … taught the doctrines and evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of the Constitution.”

Some areas on the Western frontier and the deep South were not quite as advanced educationally. However, in the more populous and developed areas, “it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon,” de Tocqueville continued.

Today, it’s just the opposite: Finding a person who understands the history of America or the leading features of its Constitution is a sort of phenomenon.

The Re-Writing of History in America

The process of re-writing history was a long one. Unlike Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which took about a decade, those seeking to erase and distort America’s incredible and unique history were forced to proceed slowly, working over decades and generations rather than accomplishing it all in one fell swoop. But concrete evidence of this deliberate plot has surfaced periodically since at least the 1940s.

In the early 1950s, Congress became suspicious about the scheming of the major tax-exempt foundations, a subject covered extensively in part 7 of this series on education. To deal with the issue, lawmakers formed the Select Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations, sometimes referred to as the “Reece Committee” after its chairman.

What investigators found should have shocked America to the core. In its final report, the select committee reported that the major foundations of the day, which still exist, had “supported a conscious distortion of history.” The foundations also sought to hijack education for the purpose of undermining American constitutional principles and liberty, investigators found.

One of the expert witnesses who testified during the select committee’s investigation, attorney and investigator Aaron Sargent, an expert in subversion through education, put it clearly. “They sought to create a blackout of history by slanting and distorting historical facts,” Sargent testified about the goals of the major tax-exempt foundations in the education field. “They introduced a new and revolutionary philosophy—one based on the teachings of John Dewey.”

By the time of the congressional probe, the situation was so serious that Norman Dodd, the chief investigator for the committee, said the foundations had orchestrated a “revolution” in the United States. The revolution “could not have occurred peacefully or with the consent of the majority unless education in the United States had prepared in advance to endorse it,” Dodd told lawmakers in his sworn testimony. The attack on real history in school was a crucial element of that.

Of course, the situation only got worse from there. By 1980, pseudo-historian Howard Zinn, a radical exposed in declassified FBI documents as a Communist Party member, published his book “A People’s History of the United States.” It’s a favorite in public schools. More than 3 million copies have been sold so far, shaping the minds and attitudes of countless millions of Americans while turning them against their own nation and their own political institutions that guaranteed individual liberty for so long.

The propaganda “history” book was full of obvious lies, as exposed most recently by scholar Mary Grabar in her book “Debunking Howard Zinn.” The deception was strategic, too, and powerful. The lies begin right at the start of the book, portraying Columbus as a genocidal monster, and continue onward from there.

“We were really no better than the Nazis in the way Zinn presents it,” Grabar told The Epoch Times.

It was carefully calculated. “Rewriting history is what communists do,” continued Grabar, who also serves as a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. “They don’t want people to know about any other form of government or to remember a time when there was freedom and abundance. Like Zinn, the Marxists of today want young people to be so disgusted with their own country that they become inspired to overthrow it.”

While demonizing the United States and Western civilization more broadly, Zinn and other communists work hard to conceal the history of communism—“the horrors of starvation, gulags, repression, and mass murder,” Grabar explained. Interestingly, there were clear parallels between Zinn’s fake history and a history written by Communist Party USA chief William Z. Foster published in 1951 dubbed “Outline Political History of the Americas.” Foster wrote openly about how crucial hijacking education would be for the Soviet-style communist regime he envisioned for America.

When starting the project, Grabar said she already knew Zinn’s book was biased. “But even I was surprised by how blatantly and deliberately Zinn lied,” she said, urging students, parents, and community members to use her book to refute the propaganda with facts.

More recently, the New York Times released its “1619 Project,” the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones. Like Zinn’s book, it’s essentially fake history, as historians from across the political spectrum—and even the New York Times’ own fact-checker—publicly confirmed. Like Zinn’s book, it seeks to “reframe” America’s history as one based on oppression, slavery, and racism rather than liberty. And like Zinn’s fake history, the 1619 Project is now being used in public schools across America.

Perhaps most alarming about Hannah-Jones’s false narrative is the notion that racism and evil are embedded “in the very DNA” of America. In other words, there’s nothing short of the complete annihilation of the United States’ very foundations and essence that could possibly resolve the real and imagined shortcomings. The message of the project was obvious and clear: Death to America!

In reality, the truth about American history is almost exactly the opposite of what the project presents. The principles upon which the nation was founded—“all men are create equal,” for instance, and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”—paved the way for abolishing slavery worldwide while facilitating the greatest expansion of human freedom and prosperity in world history.

Despite the obvious lies and deception, Hannah-Jones received a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 Project. Ironically, though, New York Times writer Walter Duranty also won a Pulitzer Prize for peddling lies and communist propaganda. In Duranty’s case, he infamously parroted Stalin’s obvious propaganda and covered up the Soviet genocide in Ukraine that killed by some estimates up to 10 million people.

Effects of Fake History

This strategic re-writing of history in public schools across America has led to dramatic shifts in Americans’ attitudes, values, beliefs, and worldview. For example, national pride among Americans, who arguably live in the richest and freest nation in human history, has reached historic lows, according to a Gallup poll released this summer. Among younger Americans, just one in five are extremely proud to be American, while among those 65 and older, just over half are extremely proud.

But the real dangers are becoming clear, too. A 2019 survey by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that 7 in 10 millennials said they are likely to vote for a socialist. Fully 36 percent of millennials support communism, the survey found. And just 57 percent of them believe the Declaration of Independence guarantees freedom and equality better than the Communist Manifesto. A generation ago, these numbers would have been inconceivable.

“When we don’t educate our youngest generations about the historical truth of 100 million victims murdered at the hands of communist regimes over the past century, we shouldn’t be surprised at their willingness to embrace Marxist ideas,” explained Victims of Communism (VOC) Memorial Foundation Executive Director Marion Smith.

“We need to redouble our efforts to educate America’s youth about the history of communist regimes and the dangers of socialism today.”

In comments to The Epoch Times, VOC Director of Academic Programs Murray Bessette explained that American public schools simply do not teach the true history of communism. Part of the reason for that, he said, is the “ideological character of many involved in developing and delivering curricula for American schools.” Parents must insist on a full account of history, and teachers must seek out programs and materials that teach the whole truth, added Bessette.

The effects of these false narratives pushed on children in government schools are becoming more and more obvious. Just think of the brainwashed armies of young Americans rampaging through the streets rioting, looting, killing, protesting, and destroying. Funded by rich and powerful individuals, companies, and foundations, their goal is to “fundamentally transform” what they view as an evil America. And because they don’t know the truth about their own nation or its history, many genuinely believe in what they’re doing.

Speaking at an Independence Day celebration this summer, the president of the United States hit the nail on the head. “The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats, in every case, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions,” Trump explained. “Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that they were villains.”

Their goal, the president correctly observed, is not to improve America, but to destroy it.

Fortunately, now that the problem has been identified, steps are being taken to address it. And at the core of that process will be ensuring that young Americans understand the truth about their own nation’s history. During remarks made on Constitution Day, Trump blasted left’s distortion of American history with lies and deception.

“There is no better example than the New York Times’ totally discredited 1619 Project,” said Trump, calling it “toxic” propaganda that would “destroy” America. “This project rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.”

In reality, as Trump correctly pointed out, “nothing could be further from the truth.” “America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and built the most fair, equal, and prosperous nation in human history,” the president declared.

The president also promised action to reverse the progress of the history destroyers and re-writers. “We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country,” he said. “We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.”

To accomplish that, grants are being awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to help develop a pro-American curriculum that “celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history,” Trump said. He also said he would soon sign an executive order to create a national “1776 Commission” that will promote patriotic education that will “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history.”

Whether the rot and corruption that has taken over the teaching of history and civics in America’s government schools can be reversed remains to be seen. But diagnosing an illness is the first step to treating and curing it. Now that Americans are starting to understand what’s killing their nation, serious efforts can be made to stop the bleeding. Teaching children the truth about U.S. history will be a good first step.

This article was originally published at The Epoch Times, and is part 18 in a series examining education in the United States. 

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

On Thursday, Sept. 17, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation extolling our country’s virtues and praising our Founding Fathers for their courage, wisdom, insight and sacrifice as they crafted a Constitution that would guard and guarantee life and liberty for all United States citizens.

In his corresponding speech, the president announced his intention to establish a “1776 Commission” aimed at encouraging our nation’s public schools to teach the historical facts of our nation’s founding.

Within seconds the progressive establishment completely lost its mind and went apoplectic.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten bewailed, “It’s disgusting. The president has no right …!”

White House correspondent and NBC and MSNBC contributor Yamiche Alcindor mocked the “loud applause” the president received for his educational priorities.

And New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones lamented, “The efforts by the president of the United States to use his powers to … dictate what schools can and cannot teach … should be deeply alarming … .”

Now one might wonder what exactly the president said about his priorities for this new commission that has the left so up in arms.

What did the president suggest that was so offensive?

Was it when he said he wanted to “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history?”

Or maybe it was his admonition that “the only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans?”

Or perhaps it was when he suggested that “our youth [should] be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul” and that “we [must] save this cherished inheritance for our children, for their children and for every generation to come?”

Or could it have been when he declared that he and the commission “embraced the vision of Martin Luther King where children are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character?”

Or maybe it was when he contended that, “[We cannot] divide Americans by race in the service of political power?”

Or it might have been his invocation that, “we are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny. We will reclaim our history, and our country, for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed?”

Or perchance it was his condemnation of those who seek to “silence dissent, to scare [others from] speaking the truth, and [who] bully [our children] into the abandonment of their values, their heritage and [our] very way of life?”

Or maybe it was his charge that “America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in human history?”

Or possibly it was when he implored that teaching our youth “concepts such as hard work, rational thinking, the importance of the nuclear family, and belief in God” are good things and not racially pejorative values?”

Yes, one does wonder what the Democrats find to be so outrageous in the president’s call for our public schools to teach these simple truths.

Could it be that the answer is obvious?

Could it be that when one wants to “fundamentally transform” a culture and a country that the first step is to disparage its history?

Could it be that you must first deconstruct a nation’s principles when your goal is to “redistribute” a nation’s “power”?

Could it be that if your end game is “death to America,” as the Democrats’ favorite child, Black Lives Matter is now chanting in the streets, you must first kill the American dream in the minds of America’s youth?

Russell Kirk once wrote, “Ignorance is a dangerous luxury.” He went further,

“Many Americans are badly prepared for their task of defending their own convictions and interests and institutions … The propaganda of radical ideologues sometimes confuses and weakens the will and well intentions of Americans who lack any clear understanding of their nation’s first principles. And in our age, good-natured ignorance is a luxury none of us can afford … We need to urgently recall to our minds the sound convictions that have sustained our civilization and our nation … If we ourselves are ignorant of those ideas and institutions which nurture our culture and our public liberty, then we will fall … .”

Could it be that the reason for the left’s angst is that they understand Kirk’s warning quite well?

Could it be that our president just struck at the very heart of their cause — the Democrats’ desire for an “ideology of ignorance” and, thus, they are furious?

History tells us that Demosthenes pleaded, “In God’s name, I beg you to think!” as he tried to awaken the confused and divided people of Athens to stand against the looming tyranny of Macedonia.

An “ideology of ignorance” or an educated, aware and “thinking” citizenry. Something to think about as you prepare for Nov. 3.

This article was originally published by The Washington Times. Dr. Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper) is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery).