The Family Foundation in Virginia is a fantastic faith-based pro-life, pro-family public policy organization similar to the Illinois Family Institute. On November 30, 2022, just 90 minutes before The Family Foundation’s (TFF) scheduled, pre-reserved event at Metzger’s Bar and Butchery in Richmond, Virginia, one of the restaurant’s owners called and said their event was canceled.

When a TFF staff member pressed as to why Metzger’s was canceling, they admitted that one of their employees had looked up TFF online, didn’t like what they saw, and refused to serve the group.

“They did a little research, found out who we are. We are unapologetically pro-life and stand for traditional marriage,” Victoria Cobb, President of The Family Foundation, to the Daily Signal.

In another interview with Fox News, Cobb expounded, “Restaurants are not allowed to discriminate even if their employees are discriminatory. They can be hateful, they can be bigoted, but that’s not the right of a restaurant to simply say, ‘We’re just not going to let you eat here.’”

Even the left-leaning Washington Post covered TFF’s denial of service, citing Cobb’s concerns with the restaurant’s move:

In her blog post, Cobb likened the restaurant’s move to establishments that refused to serve Black customers in the 1950s and ’60s, and she decried what she called a “double standard” by liberals who think a Colorado baker should not be allowed to refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

But make no mistake, The Family Foundation was denied basic food service based on their Christian beliefs. There is clearly a regression of rights occurring in the United States as Cobb aptly pointed out in her comparison to segregation of the 1950s and 60s.

Some liberal pundits, such as the Occupy Democrats, are drawing false and incorrect comparisons between TFF’s denial of service to the free speech fight currently in the hands of the US Supreme Court, 303 Creative v. Elenis.

The truth is, 303 Creative involves a business owner’s right to refuse to use her skills to create and endorse a specific message. There should be a clear distinction between this type of expression and the basic goods and services being given at a restaurant. We echo this charge for Pennsylvania from Victoria Cobb:

“We will speak out when we see viewpoint discrimination occurring in Virginia. And we encourage all Americans who value freedom of thought and expression to stand up and speak up in their communities.”

I guess Fox News hasn’t learned any lessons from CNN’s self-inflicted wounds and rapid descent into ratings hell, the chief interrelated lessons of which are 1. don’t promote lies as truth, and 2. don’t promote evil as good. Fox News just did both and created a firestorm of anger among its faithful viewers. Last week, Fox News (channeling CNN) aired a segment about an ignorant mother and father in California who are raising their now fourteen-year-old daughter as a boy.

Dana Perino introduced the story that was narrated by Brian Llenas.

The story begins with the deceitful claim that Brian Llenas’ story about Ryland Whittington’s “transitioning journey is helping other families.” Chemically stopping natural, health puberty and then inducing puberty natural to children of the opposite sex is not “helping” other families, no matter how deeply Whittington’s parents, Hillary and Jeff, “feel” it is.

Then Llenas goes off the deep end, asserting that Ryland is a “typical Southern California teenager.” While to Midwesterners, California seems to be a place where an inordinate number of people engage in unnatural body modification, the country is not yet at a point where cross-sex bodily mutilation among children is typical.

Llenas in cahoots with Ryland’s publicity-loving parents then tests the gullibility of viewers by claiming that “somehow before Ryland could even speak, he [sic] managed to tell his [sic] parents that he [sic] is a boy.”

According to her parents, while Ryland was still in a non-verbal stage of life, she told them that she is a boy via her resistance to wearing feminine clothes. Credulous viewers are expected to believe that a non-verbal toddler already knows which clothes are feminine and which are masculine.

Children typically start speaking between 12-15 months. They are forming simple sentences by about age 18 months. So, we are expected to believe that sometime before 12-18 months, Ryland knew she was a boy. Further, Ryland’s parents would have us believe, her toddler resistance to wearing feminine clothing styles is proof positive that Ryland’s brain is male while her body is female. We are also expected to believe that Ryland’s certainty during her toddlerhood that she is a boy would have persisted.

Relevant fact: Before the advent of the “Trans” Age, the percentage of young children who suffered from gender dysphoria was exceedingly small and most were boys. Studies have shown that unless children are affirmed socially and chemically in their corporeal masquerade, upwards of 80% will eventually accept their biological sex.

So, the question is, how did Ryland’s parents know the feelings of their five-year-old daughter would never change. Moreover, should a persistent delusion always (or ever) be affirmed? What about children who persist in their identification as amputees (Body Integrity Identity Disorder)? Should they be affirmed, aided, and abetted in their quest for an elective limb amputation?

Llenas admiringly reports, “when Ryland came out at age five. … he [sic] had the full support of his [sic] parents.”

Llenas omitted from his sanguine tale that Ryland was born deaf and had surgery at age one to implant cochlear implants, which have enabled her to hear and speak. It’s interesting that Ryland’s parents would have surgery to restore normal functioning to her ears, while using chemicals (and perhaps at some point surgery) to disrupt the normal functioning of Ryland’s sexual anatomy.

Llenas oddly attributes Hillary Whittington’s support for “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices to her “conservative Christian” faith. Hillary explained:

For me, it’s just a deep spiritual belief that you believe in God. And he … created us the way he wanted us. Well then, yes, he created Ryland just the way he is.

God creates us. He does not create birth defects, disease, confusion, sinful desires, obsessive thoughts, or mental illnesses. We are born into a fallen world and the world’s fallenness affects our minds (thoughts), bodies, hearts (desires), and wills. Did her conservative Christian church not teach her about the fall?

Jeff also cited statistics from the far leftist Trevor Project on “transgender” self-harm as a reason for their support. But Trevor Project statistics have been widely criticized, as have been many studies purporting to prove that not only are “trans”-identifying youth more like to commit suicide, but also that the cause is societal disapproval. Somehow most of our intrepid reporters, in the news media—including Brian Llenas—haven’t been able to find such criticism.

Just this past Monday, the Heritage Foundation, published a study on suicide among young people that upends the narrative leftists use to terrorize parents into collaborating with the “trans”-industrial complex in harming children:

The Heritage study released Monday found that 2020 saw 1.6 more suicides per 100,000 residents ages 12 to 23 in states that allow minors access to puberty blockers and other gender-reassignment procedures without parental consent.

That represents a 14 percent increase in suicides.

A 2011 study found another troubling trend:

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.

Nor have our intrepid and objective journalists managed to dig up exactly how many and who in our esteemed medical and mental health organizations come up with their “trans”-affirming positions. Let’s just say, it’s a small number of handpicked, biased members who create policy positions that the rest of the members do not vote on. As I have twice written, only about 30 members of the American Academy of Pediatrics—all leftists—created its pro-“transition” position. No minority report, no votes of all members taken.

Within a year of five-year-old Ryland’s “coming out,” her parents made a video and Ryland became an Internet sensation by the time she turned six. Exploiting their own children’s gender dysphoria has become a cottage industry.

Dyson, the princess boy.

There’s the mom, Cheryl Kilodavis, who wrote the book My Princess Boy about her then five-year-old son Dyson who masquerades as a girl. She trotted him out on a talk show in a purple tutu where he, visibly uncomfortable,” twirled at the urging of Meredith Viera. Dyson is now 16 and identifies as homosexual.

Then there’s Desmond is Amazing and Lactatia, two little boys whose mothers introduced them to drag, facilitated the creation of drag personas, and then made bank on parading them around dressed in drag.

And who can forget Jazz Jennings (born Jarod Seth Bloshinsky), the now 21-year-old obese eunuch, who pretends to be a woman and whose parasitic parents have profited from his suffering on the TLC show I Am Jazz.

The foolish, narrowminded sycophant Llenas concludes his rhapsodic segment by thanking Ryland and his family for their “extraordinary courage” in sharing Ryland’s story. Yet another lie. It takes virtually no courage for this family to share their story, which they’ve shared for almost a decade in a viral video, book, legislative hearings, and interviews for the Human Rights Campaign.

Llenas repeats the tired trope that “people are often afraid of what they do not understand,” implying that ontological and moral assumptions that are different from those of the “trans”-cult are born of fear. Has he spent anytime asking counselors, physicians, pastors, and detransitioners who disagree with the “trans”-cult if their beliefs are born of fear?

The controversy this story generated is well-deserved. On the “trans” (and homosexuality) issue, Fox News has segued into advocacy for lies and evil that are harming children, families, religious liberty, and speech rights.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Fox News Channel to let them know how disappointed you are that they are caving into a radical child abuse agenda. Urge them to stop contributing to the “trans” contagion, and ask them to stop lying to us by using incorrect pronouns. This left-wing social agenda is antithetical to science and will alienate both their conservative Judeo-Christian viewers as well as many on the left who oppose what is being done to children.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/FNC-Airs-Story-that-Celebrates-Trans-Cultic-Experimentation-on-Children.mp3

It takes a lot for a tenured professor to be fired, but it recently happened to Frances Widdowson. As reported by Fox News, Widdowson “who taught economics, justice and policy studies, was fired from Mount Royal University (MRU) in Calgary, Alberta, last December after stoking controversy for comments criticizing BLM, which she said ‘destroyed MRU’ to such an extent that she ‘doesn’t recognize the institution anymore.’”

In addition, “Widdowson, who studied Indigenization initiatives for 20 years, also took flak for claiming that Canada’s controversial residential school program offered Indigenous children the opportunity ‘to get an education that normally they wouldn’t have received.’ Her comments came amid a national backlash over the discovery of unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.”

And for that, she was fired, no doubt with the help of a Change.org petition titled, “Fire France Widdowson – a Racist Professor at MRU.”

To quote the petition itself, “Frances Widdowson is a racist professor who works at Mount Royal University. This is a call to demand that the university condemns Widdowson’s hateful actions against the BIPOC community and that she is terminated for her racist remarks.

“Mount Royal University has still yet to make a statement regarding Widdowson’s racist actions and continues to employ her.

“In ignoring the racist actions of people in power, we directly contribute to the systemic racism within our society.”

Now, you may or may not agree with Widdowson’s comments, and you may or may not agree that they were racist.

But she certainly had every right to express these views as a college professor, especially a tenured professor. To deny her that right is to deny free speech, plain and simple. As Elon Musk recently said,

“A good sign as to whether there is free speech is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like. And if that is the case, then we have free speech.”

But what makes the firing of Widdowson all the more egregious is that those on the left are allowed to engage in all kinds of outrageous hate speech without any penalty in the least or, certainly, without losing their job. (I have documented this radical shift to the left on American campuses in the chapter “The Campus Thought Police” in my new book The Silencing of the Lambs: The Ominous Rise of Cancel Culture and How We Can Overcome It.)

For example, in April 2020, in response to Kansas lawmakers who argued against a complete shutdown of religious services due to COVID, Philip Nel, an English professor at Kansas State University tweeted, “Local branch of death cult, aka @KansasGOP, votes to exempt churches from quarantine rules, endangering the lives of us all.”

That sounds pretty hateful to me. But was Nel censored for this tweet, let alone fired? Not a chance. (For the record, he’s the author of “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature” and “Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature.”)

Last December, Professor Monica Casper, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University, tweeted this with reference to the Dobbs v. Jackson U.S. Supreme Court case, which could possibly overturn Roe v. Wade: “Two sexual predators, a white lady, and some racists walk into a courtroom…#SCOTUS #AbortionIsHealthcare.”

What a despicable characterization of an immensely important pro-life case.

Does she still have her job? Is she still dean? Take a guess.

But perhaps these comments were too mild, hardly worthy of dismissal or censure.

How about these comments? As reported by Prof. Jonathan Turley on February 2:

“An Australian professor of “moral psychology” used Twitter to call for the death of Trump supporters.  Neither Twitter nor his colleagues objected to Macquarie University Associate Professor Mark Alfano calling for ‘more of this please‘ after reading that a Trump supporter died in the recent Capitol Hill riot. He also called such deaths ‘comedy.’ He is not the first academic to call for such violence or defend killings. We previously discussed Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis who writes for the site Lawyers, Guns, and Money and declared that he saw ‘nothing wrong’ with the killing of a conservative protester. (A view defended by other academics). Other professors have simply called for all ‘Republicans to suffer.’ What is striking is that such views are neither barred by Twitter nor, according to a conservative site that broke this story, denounced at his university.”

What a surprise!

Another professor openly wished for the death of Republican lawmakers who were shot at a baseball game in 2017, while in 2018, yet another professor posted this:

“OK, officially, I now hate white people. I am a white people, for God’s sake, but can we keep them — us — us out of my neighborhood? I just went to Harlem Shake on 124 and Lenox for a Classic burger to go, that would [be] my dinner, and the place is overrun with little Caucasian [expletives] who know their parents will approve of anything they do.”

He actually had a lot more to say, but this gives you an idea. Were either of these professors fired? Nope. Were they censored?

In the first example, citing Trinity College professor Johnny Eric Williams, he had also written that “all self-identified white people (no exceptions) are invested in and collude with systematic white racism/white supremacy.” And he tweeted that “whiteness is terrorism,” defending his comments rather than apologizing for them.

As a result of his “let them die” wish for the wounded GOP lawmakers, he was temporarily suspended, shortly after which he was granted tenure. I am not making this up.

In the case of the second professor quoted here, James Livingston, a tenured history professor at Rutgers, the university decided to sanction him but then reversed its position.

Yet Prof. Widdowson, a longtime tenured professor, was fired for comments that were far less offensive than any of these (and, the truth be told, probably quite accurate).

That’s the reality on our campuses today, and I barely scratched the surface of some of the extremism that exists.

The good news is that Widdowson is fighting back with vigor, wit, and determination (in the courts too), calling out the “woke” crowd.

May freedom and equality prevail.

This article was originally published by AskDrBrown.org.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is the New York Times Magazine reporter who wrote the 1619 Project which is being used in many schools across the country. The 1619 Project postulates that America began in 1619, when the first black slaves were brought here—not 1776, when the founders declared independence.

Hannah-Jones made an historical faux pas in a tweet the other day, in which she said that the U.S. Civil War began in 1865. She later apologized, claiming that her tweet was just “poorly worded.” She said she knows the conflict that ultimately ended slavery in America began in 1861 and ended in 1865.

We all make mistakes, but I can’t help but feel her historical error reveals her lack of a true grasp of our history. We’re all entitled to our own opinions, but we’re not entitled to our own facts.

Hannah-Jones coincidentally doesn’t have a firm grasp on the concept of parental rights, either. She recently told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught. I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science….I think we should leave that to the educators.”

Gary Bauer, former Under Secretary of Education for President Reagan, reacts to her remarks: “She admits that she’s not a professional educator. She’s right about that. She’s a professional left-wing agitator.”

Bauer adds, “Parents, policymakers and state legislators are right to ban the 1619 Project. It’s garbage! Numerous professional historians have thoroughly debunked it. It has no business in our schools. But she thinks banning her radical screed is a sign of oppression.”

Dr. Carol M. Swain is a prominent black scholar who has taught at Vanderbilt Law School and at Princeton. I spoke with her on my radio show about the ongoing battle over American history.

She told me the 1619 Project presents a “revisionist history. [It postulates that] the country is racist to the core. Black people built the country. Racism defines who we are as a nation.” Swain would remind us: “When slavery was introduced into America, we were British colonists.”

When I asked her about the idea of America being “systemically racist” today, she said that the passage of the Civil Rights laws in the 1960s, “really ended systemic racism under the law. And any racism that continues is not because of our national structure.”

It pains her to see the distortion of our history which is propagandizing whole new generations against America. She said, “I care about America. And I care about race relations, and anything [the Left] pushes takes us backwards.”

Swain also notes that this America-is-and-always-was-racist message has a “crippling” effect to underprivileged children because “they give up before they ever get started.” What a tragedy.

Nonetheless, the “historian” peddling this false narrative of American history is feted today by the left. Fox News notes that Hannah-Jones “was named to TIME’s list of the ‘100 most influential people’ in 2021.” That is scary since she peddles this false narrative that America began because of slavery.

America became America despite the evil practice of slavery. The American founders created the framework whereby slavery could one day be uprooted. And it was—at the cost of about 700,000 lives.

Civil rights leader Bob Woodson of the Woodson Center created the group 1776 Unites, which aims to address our history in an accurate way. He has recently compiled a book entitled, Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers.

I’ve interviewed Woodson on a couple of occasions. He told me in reference to the 1619 Project, “There are all kinds of historical inaccuracies. We at the Woodson center organized 23-plus scholars and activists to confront this 1619. We called ourselves the 1776 Unites.” Many of these scholars are African-American.

There is a battle over history today. But there are a few historical resources that I would point people to. I have a set of The Annals of America, which is a series of volumes put together by the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1976. The first three volumes in this 20-or so book set focus on the settling and the founding eras of America. It provides the text (and context) of the leading documents in American history. God and the Christian faith can be found all over in many of these original sources.

Meanwhile, Yale University has put such key documents on-line as part of their Avalon Project. This is much more trustworthy—since it’s the original sources—than revisionist claptrap sold to us today by the likes of Nikole Hannah-Jones.

There’s a battle over history in our time. And this battle has big implications as to what our nation was, is, and ever will be.

In his November 1 op-ed for The Hill, Fox News Analyst Juan Williams claimed that the “parents’ rights’ mantra in the Virginia gubernatorial elections is simply “a code for white race politics.” To the contrary, this really is about parents’ rights and about what is best for all children. To inject charges of white supremacy and racism is to miss the whole point of why so many parents are so upset. In all candor and with due respect, I would have expected better from Mr. Williams.

The fact is that these parents are concerned with the injection of racism into every phase of their children’s education, not to mention the injection of an extreme LGBTQ agenda. Williams should be standing with these parents, not against them. With reference to campaigning strategies in the 2018 elections, he wrote,

“Virginia Republicans are back with a new and improved ‘Culture Wars’ campaign for 2021. The closing argument is once again full of racial division — but this time it is dressed up as a defense of little children.”

Specifically, he claimed that,

“It is a campaign to stop classroom discussion of Black Lives Matter protests or slavery because it could upset some children, especially white children who might feel guilt.”

To the contrary, every white Christian parent with whom I have interacted wants their children to know the truth about slavery, segregation, and the lasting effects of those sinful institutions. And they want to see equal opportunities for all.

But they do not want their children thinking they are evil because they are white (this is actually happening). And they do not want their children to feel guilty for having a nice home or good educational opportunities, as if all success of all white Americans was built on the shoulders of slaves. In the words of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,

“The way we’re talking about race is that it either seems so big that somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past.”

Most of all, these parents do not want everything to be about race, to the point that math can be seen as racist. Or that famous European poets and historians are cancelled because of their whiteness.

Remarkably, to make his case, Williams repeats the “very fine people” lie, writing, “Recall, it was Trump who famously said there were ‘very fine people’ on both sides of the violence sparked by ‘Unite the Right,’ the 2017 rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.”

Surely Williams must know that this has been debunked time and time again. But why let a good lie die? He also claims that,

“Critical race theory — broadly, a focus on racial disparities as a fact of American life — is not explicitly taught in Virginia’s public schools or anywhere in American public schools. But Republicans nationwide have made it a boogeyman to excite racial divisions and get their base to the polls.”

To be sure, there are different ways to define CRT. For some, it is healthy, positive, and objective. For others, it is unhealthy, negative, and biased. So, before we debate CRT, it’s important to ask, “What, exactly, do you mean by the term?”

And clearly, CRT in its full-blown, academic form, is not being taught to kids in Virginia (and elsewhere). But are classes taught through the lens of CRT? Without question.

As a Daily Wire headline announced on October 31, “Terry McAuliffe Claims CRT Has ‘Never Been’ In Virginia Schools. His Administration Pushed It, Documents Show.” The documentation is clear and undeniable.

Yet Williams approvingly cites McAuliffe, who said, “[Gubernatorial candidate Glenn] Youngkin’s closing message of book banning and silencing esteemed Black authors is a racist dog whistle designed to gin up support from the most extreme elements of his party — mainly his top endorser and surrogate, Donald Trump.”

To the contrary, it is authors with extremist views that are under scrutiny, or, at the least, authors whose views are being exploited by educators with extremist agendas, while contrary views are rejected and banned. (As an aside, but for the record, Youngkin largely campaigned as himself and for himself, not as an extension of Trump, as other political commentators have noted.)

To be clear, I would not deny that white racism remains an issue for some (perhaps many?) families in Virginia. Nor would I deny that some of them would prefer that the full truth about slavery and its legacy not be taught in schools. May they have a change of heart, may they face the facts, and may they enlighten their children. There is no place for white supremacy anywhere and at any time.

Unfortunately, Williams is guilty of a reverse racism, one that projects all kind of nefarious motives on to parents who really do care and who really want their kids to get a solid education rather than cultural brainwashing. In that spirit, I recently tweeted,

“The solution to anti-black racism is not anti-white racism (or anti-Asian racism, etc.). Instead, it is cultivating mutual understanding, respect, and love, with a real desire to see others thrive and enjoy the best of what America has to offer.”

Mr. Williams, I invite you to step higher with me so that, together, we could advance that mutual understanding, respect, and love – based on truth – rather than engage in an endless game of biased and racially charged sniping.

Surely America in 2021 deserves better.

This article was originally posted at AskDrBrown.org.

Let’s join USA Today and Fox News for a short, illuminating stroll down memory lane:

2001: Following the Bush vs. Gore election in 2000, “Members of the Congressional House Black Caucus spent 20 minutes objecting as they sought to block Florida’s 25 electoral votes” from being certified for George Bush.

2005: “In the joint meeting of Congress to certify Bush’s win over Democrat John Kerry, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, received a Senate signature to object to the electoral votes from Ohio. It came from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. The two Democrats raised concerns about voting irregularities.” (emphasis added)

At that time, Illinois’ corrupt senator Dick Durbin said,

Some may criticize our colleague from California for bringing us here for this brief debate. I thank her for doing that because it gives members an opportunity once again on a bipartisan basis to look at a challenge that we face not just in the last election in one State but in many States.

And Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) issued a statement saying,

I believe that Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) have performed a very valuable public service in bringing this debate before the Congress. As Americans, we should all be troubled by reports of voting problems in many parts of the country.

But that was then, and this is now, and now Durbin describes Senator Josh Hawley’s similar effort as “The political equivalent of barking at the moon. This won’t be taken seriously, nor should it be.”

Van Hollen harrumphed faux-indignantly,

Sen. Hawley’s actions are grossly irresponsible. He’s attempting to undermine our democratic process, fuel Trump’s lies about voter fraud, and delay the certification of Biden’s win.

While Van Hollen described the efforts of Boxer and Tubb Jones as a “very valuable public service,” he calls Hawley’s efforts a “reckless stunt.”

Please take special note that Durbin, Van Hollen, and many other leftists and some RINOs are focusing their laser beams of destruction on Hawley even though other Republicans in Congress objected to the vote-certification process. Is that just because Hawley was going to be the central spokesperson articulating the constitutional issue raised by peculiar electoral mischief that took place in Pennsylvania—an issue that mild-mannered, non-insurrectionist Byron York described as “a fundamental issue that is important to all 50 states”?

Or could it have something to do with Hawley’s singular and bold attack on the outrageous Big Tech monopolies and on social media tyrants’ Section 230 protections?  According to CNBC “About 98% of political contributions from internet companies this cycle went to Democrats,” and that 98% constitutes millions of persuasive dollars.

2017: Following the 2016 win by Trump, “Half a dozen Democratic House members raised formal objections to the Electoral College vote count. … The objections were based on Russian election interference, allegations of voter suppression or what Democrats considered to be illegal votes cast by Republican members of the Electoral College.”

Now, when Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz pursue the same constitutional procedure that Democrats have pursued three times, Congress-despots call for their expulsion from Congress, and the House Homeland Security Committee Chair, U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, suggests they might be placed on the no-fly list once reserved for terrorists.

Democrats who unjustifiably whine that Hawley and Cruz were trying to subvert the electoral process have been weirdly silent about Twitter’s effective effort to subvert the electoral process by censoring the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden/China collusion story. And these hypocritical Democrats say nothing about Facebook’s and Google’s wildly successful algorithmic efforts to subvert the electoral process.

AOC and other leftist members of Congress have been demanding Silicon Valley autocrats get rid of the chief threat to “progressive” political hegemony by cancelling the upstart Parler, which serves as the neutral platform that Twitter and Facebook falsely claim to be.

Leftists in Congress argued that Parler had to be silenced because of the role it played in the Capitol attack. But liberal journalist Glenn Greenwald discovered that Twitter, Facebook, and Google-owned YouTube played a far more significant role in promoting the riot. To date, no member of Congress has demanded they be shut down. Greenwald writes,

The Capitol breach was planned far more on Facebook and YouTube. As Recode reported, while some protesters participated in both Parler and Gab, many of the calls to attend the Capitol were from YouTube videos, while many of the key planners “have continued to use mainstream platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.” …

So why did Democratic politicians and journalists focus on Parler rather than Facebook and YouTube? Why did Amazon, Google and Apple make a flamboyant showing of removing Parler from the internet while leaving much larger platforms with far more extremism and advocacy of violence flowing on a daily basis?

In part it is because these Silicon Valley giants — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple — donate enormous sums of money to the Democratic Party and their leaders, so of course Democrats will cheer them rather than call for punishment or their removal from the internet. Part of it is because Parler is an upstart, a much easier target to try to destroy than Facebook or Google. And in part it is because the Democrats are about to control the Executive Branch and both houses of Congress, leaving Silicon Valley giants eager to please them by silencing their adversaries.

Smelling the conservative chum in the water, corporate America has joined the congressional and Big Tech lefties’ feeding frenzy, cutting off all donations to any of the 147 Republican Congresspersons who contested the certification of election results. Here’s the list—so far—of the companies with conservative blood dripping from their lips:

Airbnb, Amazon, American Express, AT&T, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Comcast, Commerce Bank, Dow Chemical, Marriott, Mastercard, and Verizon.

They’re shutting down donations to any Republican who opposed certification—even if those Republicans did what Democrats have done in prior elections and even with no evidence that they supported, endorsed, or incited either violence or an insurrection.

The Walt Disney Corporation, Ben & Jerry’s, Coca Cola, and JP Morgan rightly issued statements of condemnation of the Capitol building assault. I’ve been searching the Internet far and wide, but I can’t find similar statements from corporate America during or following the lawless BLM riots that caused billions of dollars of damage and included destruction of federal property, harassment of members of Congress, direct assaults on police officers and police precincts, and the looting and arson of scores of businesses.

Oh wait, I remember now.  Corporate America issued statements of support for those riots and donated money to BLM.

Well, surely corporate behemoths issued condemnatory statements following these shocking words from Senator Chuck Schumer at a pro-human slaughter protest in October 2018:

I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.

Sounds kind of like trying to subvert a judicial process. Has Hawley ever said anything even close to that?

Did corporate behemoths condemn Democrat U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal, who was arrested in June 2018 along with 630 other protesters at an illegal occupation of the Hart Senate Office Building? Thankfully, this lawlessness was led by women who are generally less likely to commit acts of violence—well, except for female BLM rioters who were recorded beating people up in the street riots of 2020.

Dishonest leftists argue ad nauseum that 1. private companies are entitled to make whatever decisions they want based on their corporate “principles,” 2. that the First Amendment doesn’t protect citizens from the consequences of their speech, and 3. that serfs customers who don’t like their corporate tyranny are “free” to take their business elsewhere.

The first point should be true and uncontroversial, but now the overriding operating principle of our soulless corporate behemoths that are vacuuming up America’s freedoms is a firm commitment to use their vast nearly unchecked power to impose destructive leftist ideologies everywhere.

Moreover, leftists don’t apply the principle of business freedom consistently. Leftists don’t really believe all businesses should be free to make business decisions in line with their principles.  Rather, leftists believe that businesses have the right to conduct business in line with their ethics as long as those ethics are pre-approved by leftists.

So, for example, teeny tiny Christian-owned businesses enjoy considerably less freedom than, say, the colossal Amazon. A Christian calligrapher is not permitted to refuse to make wedding invitations for a same-sex faux wedding based on her belief that homosexual acts and relationships are abhorrent to the God she serves.

The second point regarding consequences is completely true. Speaking freely does not guarantee freedom from consequences, and leftists are making sure those consequences include the inability to work in America or exercise one’s religion freely.

In a society controlled by corporate and Big Tech monopolies, only leftists are free to speak without fear of consequences. Conservatives face dire consequences for saying the very same things “progressives” say without fear of any consequences. Democrats can object to election certification, and they’re celebrated. Republicans object and they are accused of being insurrectionists, threatened with expulsion, and put on no-fly lists. Talk about a banana republic.

The third claim that conservatives are “free to take their business elsewhere” is false or will be soon if Americans don’t rise up in opposition to the tyranny of unelected corporate monopolists and Big Tech Overlords. If all corporate and Big Tech tyrants adopt the same unprincipled policies, conservative Americans will be unable to work, feed their families, exercise their religion, assemble, or speak in the public square.

If you know any honest leftists, ask them if they believe corporate behemoths should be free to fire or refuse to hire Americans who publicly say this election was unfair.

Ask them if they believe corporate behemoths should be free to fire or refuse to hire anyone who has publicly said homosexual acts are immoral and marriage is intrinsically sexually differentiated.

Ask them if they believe corporate behemoths should be free to fire or refuse to hire Americans who have publicly said persons born with healthy and properly functioning male anatomy are not and never can be women and don’t belong in women’s private spaces or sports.

What recourse do conservative, Constitution-respecting Republicans have left for fighting the dangerous collusion of Congress, corporate behemoths, and Big Tech monopolies to eradicate the First Amendment if the right to assemble and speak are in effect cancelled without even a public debate or vote?

See you in Siberia, my dissident friends.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

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The Leftist mainstream press has been on its heels for months now for its biased and erroneous reporting. The more it’s criticized for biased reporting, the more biased it becomes while declaring itself unbiased. Next time Leftist journalists take (or fake) umbrage over President Donald Trump’s criticism of the mainstream press, pretending they think his criticism of bias is an attack on the foundation of our republic, or when a “progressive” talking head goes all middle-school snotty on a guest for his or her criticism of press bias, remember their responses–if you can–to these comments from Barack Obama and his water-carriers who routinely accused Fox News of being a de facto fake news network and shill for the Republican Party:

Obama:

“We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated…. [Y]ou had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition—it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.”

“If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

“I’ve got one television station entirely devoted to attacking my administration.”

Implying that negative views of him result from the misrepresentation of him on FOX News, Obama said, “They’re responding to a fictional character named Barack Obama who they see on Fox News or who they hear about through Rush Limbaugh.”

“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls.[T]he way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak!” 

Obama refers to fictional character Uncle Jim to imply that FOX News is inaccurate: “Uncle Jim, who’s been watching Fox News, thinks somehow I raised taxes.” 

“Look if I watched Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me either. You’ve got this screen, this fun-house mirror through which people are receiving information.” 

Again accusing FOX News of disseminating false stories: “…Fed by Fox News, they hear Obama is a Muslim 24/7, and it begins to seep in.”

“There’s a reason fewer Republicans are running around against Obamacare—because while good, affordable health care might still be a fanged threat to the freedom of the American people on Fox News, it turns out it’s working pretty well in the real world.”

“And if all you’re doing is watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh and reading some of the blogs that are churning out a lot of misinformation on a regular basis, then it’s very hard for you to think that you’re going to vote for somebody who you’ve been told is taking the country in the wrong direction.” 

Obama’s team:

Obama communications director Anita Dunn: “We’re going to treat them the way we would an opponent. As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

Anita Dunn also said that FOX News operates “almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”

White House senior advisor David Axelrod on This Week with George Stephanopoulos in 2009: “It’s really not news—it’s pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way.”

In an interview with ABC News in 2009, White House spokesman Josh Earnest described FOX News as “an ideological outlet,” saying, “We figured Fox would rather show So You Think You Can Dance than broadcast an honest discussion about health insurance reform.”

In CNN’s State of the Union, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel shared Obama’s view of  FOX News: “I suppose the way to look at it and the way…the president looks at it…It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”

Recently, Sebastion Gorka, military analyst and deputy assistant to Trump, was interviewed by CNN’s smug, disdainful Jake Tapper who was reduced to a mine-is-better-than-yours playground taunt in this exchange:

Gorka: The last 16 years, to be honest—disastrous. The policies that were born in the beltway by people who have never worn a uniform, the people who were in the White House like Ben Rhodes… helped to create the firestorm that is the Middle East, that is ISIS today. So, we are open to new ideas because the last 16 years have failed American national interests and the American taxpayer.

Tapper: There were plenty of people who wore a uniform who advised President Obama and advised President Bush.

Gorka: Not people as influential as Ben Rhodes who had a master’s degree in fictional writing. That is disastrous.

Tapper: Well, I’m sure [Rhodes] would put his graduate degree against yours any day of the week.

Yes, a news anchor actually said that.

In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Gorka called CNN on the carpet for the absence of substantive “reportage.” When Gorka asserted that CNN’s coverage of the White House was corrupted by the desire to increase ratings, a contemptuous Cooper responded, “Okay, I’m just going to ignore the insults because I don’t think it really gets us anywhere.” Apparently, an obtuse Cooper didn’t notice that in his retort he actually did respond to the “insults.”

After the interview, Cooper ridiculed Gorka, referring to him as the “Hungarian Don Rickles.” This from the anchor who in May said to a Trump defender, “If [Trump] took a dump on his desk, you would defend him.”

Cooper better never criticize Trump for lack of decorum.

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle embarrassed herself as well. In answer to her question about where Trump would be during the August congressional recess, Gorka said, “[I]n the last 25 weeks, you’ve seen [Trump’s] leadership, from the Southern border, to NATO, to Warsaw, to the economy, to the stock market. We’re crushing it, and he can do that from anywhere.” For no apparent reason other than childishness, Ruhle responded, “Alright, well, the White House doesn’t ‘crush’ a stock market, but I do appreciate your time.”

Maybe I’ve forgotten, but I can’t recall hearing Special Report’s Bret Baier ever responding to a  guest like the adolescent Tapper, Cooper, or Ruhle did.

Some will argue that many of Trump’s tweets are inappropriate, distracting, or worse. Some will argue that Gorka’s comments were unnecessarily provocative (that said, it doesn’t take much to provoke self-righteous, brittle, thin-skinned “progressives”). Neither of those issues is my concern here. My concern here is with the hypocrisy, arrogance, and bias that now corrupt the Fourth Estate. Many on both sides of the political aisle believe a free and fair press remains a critical cultural institution. Many, however, also believe the absence of objectivity, neutrality, or impartiality in most mainstream press outlets (as in many other cultural institutions, especially academia) pose a danger to the republic, and that should concern all Americans.

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Yesterday in the Chicago Tribune, Bob Secter writing ostensibly in support of Common Core Standards (CCS) engaged in the very kind of hyperbolic mischaracterization of critics of CCS for which he condescendingly mocks them. He spends the first quarter of his opinion piece comparing CCS critics to Joseph McCarthy, and then he spends the rest of his time mocking CCS critics based on one flawed story on FOX News. He wraps up his piece of demagoguery—as opposed to reasoned analysis—by returning to his dishonest and paranoid McCarthy analogy. This was not a sound analysis of CCS. It was a hit piece on FOX News masquerading as an analysis of CCS. Not once did Secter respond to the substantive criticisms proffered by reasonable experts on the left and right, some of which are outlined here. 

As I wrote in Part 1, opposition to the effort to nationalize public education known as Common Core Standards (CCS) is growing. And we’re witnessing a rare political event: opposition is coming from both the political right and left.  Part 2 outlines some of the problems that are likely to accompany the adoption of  CCS.

Problems with Common Core Standards:

• No prior research or testing of CCS to determine their efficacy. Early on, Common Core proponents claimed the standards were “internationally benchmarked.” Since that claim was proven false, the Common Core website has removed it.
  
  Further, education historian and professor, Dr. Diane Ravitch says, “The Common Core standards have been adopted…without any field test. They are being imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools. We are a nation of guinea pigs, almost all trying an unknown new program at the same time.” 

• Academic quality will diminish in many schools. Literary reading and study will decrease to make room for the study of “informational,” non-fiction texts. Many educational experts believe this will further exacerbate the decline in college-readiness that began in the 1960s with the replacement of more challenging literature by “easier, shorter and contemporary texts.”

  According to Sandra Stotsky, one of the Common Core co-creators, Dr. Jason Zimba, offered this bit of critical information about which the public remains ignorant: “Common Core defines ‘college-­readiness’ as ready for a nonselective community college, not a four-­year university.”
  
  The Common Core math standards too are challenged for their weaknesses relative to other “high-achieving” countries. In a series of articles critical of CCS, Michelle Malkin exposes some of these weaknesses: 

Stanford University professor James Milgram, the only mathematician on the (CCS) validation panel, concluded that the Common Core math scheme would place students two years behind their peers in other high-achieving countries. In protest, Milgram refused to sign off on the standards. He’s not alone. 

Professor Jonathan Goodman of New York University found that the Common Core math standards imposed “significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries.” 

• CCS will shape both curricula and assessments (i.e., tests). Proponents claim that CCS are just that, standards. Proponents of CCS are crossing their fingers hoping no one will realize that uniform testing will follow uniform standards and that uniform curricula will inevitably follow uniform standards and assessments. They conceal the close connection between CCS and the curricula and assessments (i.e., tests) that have already been developed to align with CCS and which are currently being marketed to schools.
  
  Lindsay Burke of the Heritage Foundation suggests that this newest effort to expand the expansive reach of the federal government into curricula via CCS is unconstitutional:

The constitutional authority for education rests with states and localities, and ultimately with parents—not the federal government. The federal government has crossed this line in the past, but dictating curriculum content is a major new breach that represents a critical level of centralization and a major setback for parental rights.

• Testing/Assessments are flawed. In a letter excerpted here, fifty New York State school principals complained to the state education commissioner about the CCS-aligned assessments developed by Pearson Education (see Part 1):

Unfortunately, we feel that not only did this year’s New York State Exams take an extreme toll on our teachers, families and most importantly, our students, they also fell short of the aspirations of these Standards.

…As it stands, we are concerned about the limiting and unbalanced structure of the test, the timing, format and length of the daily test sessions, and the efficacy of Pearson in this work.

…

[T]he testing sessions….were unnecessarily long, requiring more stamina for a 10-year-old special education student than of a high school student taking an SAT exam. Yet, for some sections of the exams, the time was insufficient for the length of the test. When groups of parents, teachers and principals recently shared students’ experiences in their schools, especially during the ELA exams with misjudged timing expectations, we learned that frustration, despondency, and even crying were common reactions among students.

There were more multiple-choice questions than ever before….for several multiple choice questions the distinction between the right answer and the next best right answer was paltry at best. The fact that teachers report disagreeing about which multiple-choice answer is correct in several places on the ELA exams indicates that this format is unfair to students….The math tests contained 68 multiple-choice problems….The language of these math questions was often unnecessarily confusing….

Finally, we are concerned about putting the fate of so many in the education community in the hands of Pearson – a company with a history of mistakes. (…Pearson has a 3-year DOE contract for this test alone, worth $5.5 million.) There are many other examples of Pearson’s questionable reliability in the area of test design….Parents and taxpayers have anecdotal information, but are unable to debate the efficacy of these exams when they are held highly secured and not released for more general analysis. These exams determine student promotion. They determine which schools individual students can apply to for middle and high school. They are a basis on which the state and city will publicly and privately evaluate teachers. The exams determine whether a school might fall under closer scrutiny after a poor grade on the test-linked state and city progress reports or even risk being shut down.

• Loss of local control. The left is obsessed with choice when it comes to killing babies in utero but not when it comes to educating those lucky enough to survive their treacherous gestational journey. In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, American Principles Project Emmett McGroarty warns that when states choose to adopt CCS, local communities lose control over educational standards: 

[I]n agreeing to entering the Common Core System, they’ve pledged to implement the Common Core 100%. They can’t change the standards at all. They can add 15% but they can’t change any of it….[T]hen tied to the Common Core are federally funded and really federally managed or overseen high stakes standardized tests. So, in entering the system the states have given up large swaths of education policy decision making. 

• Centralization eliminates mechanisms of improvement: local accountability, choice, competition, and flexibility. 

• Costly. Cash-strapped states will have to spend money they don’t have to cover the costs of new textbooks, teacher-training, substitute teachers during teacher-training, assessments, and technological updates to accommodate online testing. Even supporters of CCS acknowledge costs will exceed current expenditures. 

• Invasion of privacy/student tracking: Jane Robbins, attorney and senior fellow at the American Principles Project, explains the creepy invasion of student privacy that will result from the adoption of CCS—an invasion aided and abetted by the Obama administration’s redefinition of terms in a federal student-privacy law: 

Both the 2009 Stimulus bill and the Race to the Top program required states to build massive student databases. It is recommended that these databases ultimately track over 400 data points, including health-care history, disciplinary history, etc. Any of this data that will be given to the Smarter Balanced consortium as part of the national test will be sent to the U.S. Department of Education. USED can then share the data with literally any entity it wants to—public or private—because of regulations it has issued gutting federal student-privacy law. 

Diane Ravitch explains the surreptitious way Obama’s Department of Education gutted this privacy law (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act):

In the past few years, the privacy protections built into federal law have been weakened by the U.S. Department of Education to allow third-parties to access confidential information about students.

…

In December 2011, the U.S. Department of Education changed the regulations governing the release of student data to the private sector, without Congressional authorization to do so. At that time, “the ED issued final regulations implementing its proposed amendments, despite the agency’s admission that “numerous commenters…stated that they believe the Department lacks the statutory authority to promulgate the proposed regulations contained in the NPRM.”…

[T]he proposed FERPA regulations reinterpreted FERPA statutory terms “authorized representative,” “education program,” and “directory information.” This reinterpretation gives non-governmental actors increased access to student personal data.”

…

This is the background for inBloom, the massive database of confidential student information funded by the Gates Foundation with $100 million, assembled by a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, stored on a “cloud” by amazon.com.

Previously, “authorized representative” meant the parents or student once he or she turned 18. The spanking new “interpretation” includes school administrators as “authorized representatives” who have the right to release private student information to third parties. 

A Reuters report exposes who benefits from this indefensible violation of parental rights and student privacy:

[T]he most influential new product [at an educational technology conference] may be…a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school….

[T]he database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school—even homework completion.

Local education officials retain legal control over their students’ information. But federal law allows them to share files in their portion of the database with private companies selling educational products and services.

…

The database is a joint project of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided most of the funding, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from several states. Amplify Education, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp built the infrastructure over the past 18 months. When it was ready, the Gates Foundation turned the database over to a newly created nonprofit, inBloom Inc, which will run it.

States and school districts can choose whether they want to input their student records into the system; the service is free for now, though inBloom officials say they will likely start to charge fees in 2015. So far, seven states – Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Massachusetts – have committed to enter data from select school districts. Louisiana and New York will be entering nearly all student records statewide.

Federal officials say the database project complies with privacy laws. Schools do not need parental consent to share student records with any “school official” who has a “legitimate educational interest,” according to the Department of Education. The department defines “school official” to include private companies hired by the school, so long as they use the data only for the purposes spelled out in their contracts.

The database also gives school administrators full control over student files.

No matter what the good intentions of the Gates’ or other cultural movers and shakers are, this is tantamount to an end run around the limits placed on the federal government’s ravenous appetite for power and the people’s money. The critical ends of improving low-performing schools do not justify the means of nationalizing public education and robbing high-performing schools of their freedom to control their standards and corresponding curricula and assessments. Moreover, there is no research-based evidence proving that the expensive implementation of Common Core Standards will even achieve the goal of improving low-performing schools.

The left exploits the human tendency to focus on the immediate. It takes time and effort to think through the logical outworking of ideas and the likely  systemic changes that will follow the implementation of ideas like the adoption of CCS.  Dazzle Americans with shiny gewgaws dangled right in front of them, blinding them to the cliff a mile ahead. And just for good measure, slap a dollop of ridicule on critics to keep anyone from listening to them.

The truth is that the United States cannot afford yet another huge expansion of the parasitic, bloated federal behemoth that feeds on Americans. 

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