If we learned anything from the recent midterm elections—and we should have learned a lot—it should be that “social issues” are not the third rail of politics. The claim that they are the third rail is a manipulative lie told ad nauseum by RINOs who are so foolish they don’t understand that the social issues are essential for the health of any society.

From the midterm elections, conservatives should have learned that Republicans won elections from coast to coast in part because they have been “leaning in” to the “social issues” rather than fleeing from them. And we should have learned from the bellicose responses of Leftists that their only defenses are calling names and lying.

Republicans won in part because they justifiably worry about inflation and crime, both the results of doctrinaire leftist Big Government, pro-criminal, globalist policies. Republicans won also because they were disgusted with and animated by the usurpation of public education by leftist change-agents who use their jobs to promote their social, moral, and political ideologies on sexuality—including abortion—and race.

Taxpayers are fed up with obscene, profane, and age-inappropriate materials being presented to their children.

Taxpayers are fed up with divisive, exclusionary, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, misanthropic, anti- science beliefs that leftists identify as unifying, inclusive, anti-racist, philogynist, philandrist, humanitarian, and scientific.

Taxpayers are fed up with paying the salaries of leftwing propagandists who identify as “educators” and “experts” who believe they should have absolute autonomy over the curricula they teach to other people’s children.

Taxpayers are fed up with children being taught that whites are racist oppressors by virtue of their skin color, that masculinity is toxic, that homosexuality is ontologically and morally equivalent to heterosexuality, that all family structures are equivalent, or that boys can be girls–none of which are true.

Taxpayers are fed up with the sexual integration of private spaces and girls’ sports.

Taxpayers are fed up with the Orwellian de facto suppression of First Amendment speech protections as evidenced in speakers being canceled and jobs being lost.

They’re fed up with leftists screeching that conservatives are racist, homophobic, and transphobic when conservatives express their moral or political views with the clarity and confidence that leftists express their deluded, destructive views.

They’re fed up with the lie that conservative moral beliefs about homosexual acts, or same-sex “marriage,” or cross-dressing constitutes hatred of persons who identify as “gay” or “trans.”

I hope conservatives are learning that addressing the social issues is not only critical to winning elections but also that the “social issues” are critical to the health and future of any society. Dave Rubin, Guy Benson, and Tammy Bruce may be smart, articulate, and right on many issues, but embracing their views on homosexuality and marriage will be a political and humanitarian nightmare for the GOP and America.

It’s not just leftist ideas about sexuality that will destroy. Embracing ideas found in critical race theory (CRT) or allowing our children to be taught those ideas as inarguable truth out of fear of being called “racist” will be equally destructive.

Now that many more Republicans have raised their voices against the racist ideas embedded in CRT, leftists are screaming “racist” with increased volume. They feel the wind changing. Their con has been revealed. Their jig is almost up. Well, it will be if Republicans remain unified and fearless.

Not only are leftists shrieking “racist” louder, but they’re also making the disingenuous case that public schools “don’t teach critical race theory.” What they’re not saying is that the ideas promulgated in public schools on race, race relations, and American history are the same ideas on race, race relations, and American history promulgated by CRT and by both the ideologies that preceded CRT and the many money-making operations promoting CRT-derived ideas.

Leftist ideas about identity groups, “systemic bias,” and “systems of oppression” come from numerous ideological frameworks, including critical theory, critical pedagogy, and CRT. Thinkers associated with these theoretical frameworks include Paulo Freire, Herbert Marcuse, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, and Peggy McIntosh.

Anyone who wonders whether schools teach CRT should spend some time reading what these ambitious scholars promote and then read the resources their local schools provide to students or teachers on institutional racism, intersectionality, oppression, education, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

All the indignant claims from school administrators that they don’t teach CRT are now stinking red herrings tossed out in a frantic attempt to distract opponents from all that inconvenient opposing.

Sure, schools and the organizations that profit from promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in schools may not technically teach CRT and may not use the term CRT. Instead, they extract CRT’s assumptions and repackage them to make them seem less controversial, less scholarly, and more palatable to the gullible among us. For the outside organizations that profit from keeping racism alive, the goal is to make repackaged CRT more marketable to government schools.

From this election, conservatives should have learned that name-calling and lies rather than logic, reasons, and evidence are the chief weapons in the leftist arsenal. They should have learned that courage, boldness, unity, and perseverance in the service of truth are powerful. And they should have learned from the ideological corruption that is now systemic in schools that we must be committed to seeking and speaking truth in the public square even if they have to do it alone and even when doing so is costly.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Social-Issues-Are-Not-the-Third-Rail.mp3

Here’s an excerpt from a July 7, 2020, blog post titled “The White Man Leading the White Man’s Party—and the White Church” written by Nathan Cartagena, associate professor of philosophy at evangelical flagship Wheaton College:

From his birtherism charges against President Obama, to his threats against “bad hombres,” to his bragging about getting away with sexual assault, candidate Trump signaled that he was going to be a white man’s president, dedicated to tapping into and drawing from the U.S.’s deep white nationalist roots and their accompanying sexism. Since ascending to office, he’s labored to establish Trumpism identity politics for white folks. And the Republican establishment has coddled his efforts, as Senator McConnell’s four-year defense of President Trump makes clear.

President Trump and establishment Republicans like Senator McConnell show no signs of ceasing their strategic gendered racism. Instead, they’re doubling down on it to keep their base. Yes, they’re cunning enough to place white women such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany before reporters. But they know these women will pull all necessary stops to promulgate the Party’s racist, patriarchal agenda. Sanders relentlessly lied. Kayleigh tirelessly defends Trump while claiming “I know who I’m ultimately working for, and it’s the big guy upstairs.”

…

[R]emember that a white man is leading a white party—and the white church is promoting both. What you’re witnessing is a byproduct of the seventies, the latest manifestation of the deplorable linking of Christianity and male-exulting whiteness. … And, to rift [sic] on St. Paul, beware: You may become someone’s enemy if you tell the truth about the Republican Party’s strategic gendered racism. Christian or not, President Trump’s followers prefer their white lies.

Cartagena seems not to remember that Senator McConnell was compelled by the corrupt antics of Democrats to defend former President Trump against a series of lies, including the whopper about Russian collusion paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Apparently Cartagena would have preferred Christians vote for the lying, race-exploiting, abortion cheerleader Hillary Clinton who supports compulsory taxpayer-funding of human slaughter throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy for any or no reason.

Does Cartagena have any problem with those Christians who voted for either the corrupt Hillary Clinton or the equally corrupt Joe Biden, both members of the party that, as black professor Carol Swain wrote for Prager U,

defended slavery, started the Civil War, opposed Reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s.

In contrast, the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. Its mission was to stop the spread of slavery into the new western territories with the aim of abolishing it entirely. This effort, however, was dealt a major blow by the Supreme Court. In the 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, the court ruled that slaves aren’t citizens; they’re property. The seven justices who voted in favor of slavery? All Democrats. The two justices who dissented? Both Republicans. …

[A]fter Reconstruction ended, when the federal troops went home, Democrats roared back into power in the South. They quickly reestablished white supremacy across the region with measures like black codes – laws that restricted the ability of blacks to own property and run businesses. And they imposed poll taxes and literacy tests, used to subvert the black citizen’s right to vote.

For decades, the Democrat party passed laws and endorsed policies to buy black votes even when those policies destroyed the black family, killed black babies, kept black children in lousy schools, and made urban black communities unlivable. Does Cartagena think those laws and policies are racist?

What about efforts by leftists to defund police which will inevitably result in more black deaths? Are those racist?

Cartagena calls Sarah Huckabee Sanders a liar and implies both Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany are female tokens. Well, is Jen Psaki a liar? Did she lie when she blamed the defunding of police on Republicans? Rhetorical questions, obviously.

Cartagena whines about the GOP’s alleged “patriarchal agenda” and “gendered racism” but says nothing about Biden’s gendered racism in deliberately choosing members of his administration based—not on merit, wisdom, knowledge, or experience—but on their skin color and sex. Biden makes no secret about his commitment to tokenism, aka “gendered racism.”

I’m not sure what a “patriarchal agenda” is or why Cartagena opposes it seeing as the Bible has a lot of good stuff to say about patriarchs and patriarchal structures. But coming from a leftist, this term would suggest Cartagena holds women in high esteem. For those who hold women in high esteem, it would seem that Trump would have been the preferred candidate over both Hillary and Biden, since both have made it clear they support the sexual integration of girls’ and women’s private spaces and sports.

Cartagena writes about critical race theory (CRT)—a lot and favorably. Much of his writing is academic in nature, picking apart arguments from scholars critical of CRT—you know, dancing on the heads of pins kind of stuff. He takes particular aim at Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Christopher F. Rufo, who has been influential in exposing the tenets and influence of CRT in academia, the corporate world, and the government—including the military. About Rufo, Cartagena says,

Culture-war agitators such as Rufo aren’t interested in offering a just, charitable understanding of CRT.

As evidence for this claim, Cartagena provides a decontextualized tweet—yes, a tweet. That doesn’t seem all that charitable now, does it?

But while he fusses about whether some critic gets a point wrong or misses a point, Cartagena doesn’t spend much time acknowledging that when scholarly theories wend their way down the sewage pipe from sullied Ivory Towers, academic theories morph. Big theories pass through filters that strain out the minutiae scholars love to debate. Large chunks of excrement remain to pollute culture. Right now, ideas derived from Marxism, critical theory, and CRT are stinkin’ up the joint.

In addition to CRT theorists Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Cartagena cites Paulo Freire—a lot and favorably—calling him a “Brazilian Christian.” Since “Christian” means many things to many people, a bit more information from Cartagena about Freire’s Christianity might be helpful to Cartagena’s readers, particularly students.

Freire was a Brazilian Marxist/Christian socialist, heavily influenced by liberation theology. Other  thinkers who influenced him include “Marx, Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro, as well as the radical intellectuals Frantz Fanon, Régis Debray, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, and Georg Lukács.”

Freire wrote the well-known book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which former City-Journal writer Sol Stern critiqued in an article titled “Pedagogy of the Oppressor,” (subtitled, “Another reason U.S. ed schools are so awful: the ongoing influence of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire”). Stern describes Freire’s polemic as a “derivative, unscholarly book about oppression, class struggle, the depredations of capitalism, and the need for revolution.”

Cartagena wants the church and all of America to study CRT as intensely as leftist scholars study it, and unless they do, any criticism of CRT is, in Cartagena’s view, illegitimate:

Because marginalization and oppression in pigmentocracies operate along racialized lines, Christians should share the common interests of critical race theorists. And they should recognize that assessments of those scholar’s conclusions must be robust and nuanced. An endorsement or rejection of CRT requires examining a lot of U.S. history—especially U.S. legal history—political philosophy, sociology, and theology. … We must repent of our shoddy, unjust presentations of CRT. We must labor to understand and evaluate CRT in light of history, political philosophy, sociology, and theology and the movement’s internal diversity. This is what neighborly love demands.

I’m not sure that “neighborly love” demands the kind of lucubration of an academic theory Cartagena demands.  Does neighborly love demand such laborious study of other academic theories? If so, which ones?

His assertion seems a clever way to use Scripture to force Christians either to spend inordinate amounts of time studying CRT or remain silent. His tricksy reasoning is based on the biblical truth that God commands us to love our neighbors. Then he asserts—with no biblical warrant—that “neighborly love demands” that Christians “labor to understand and evaluate CRT in light of history, political philosophy, sociology, and theology and the movement’s internal diversity.”

I haven’t read everything the Cartagena, prolific devotee of CRT,  has written on CRT (or “whiteness“) but so far I haven’t read anything suggesting he believes neighborly love demands the same kind of in depth study accompanied by “robust and nuanced” assessments of criticism of CRT.

No word about whether all teaching of CRT principles and tenets should be banned in public schools unless and until teachers prove they have studied CRT and its critics deeply.

And no word about whether public school teachers should advocate for CRT or present it without bias or favor.

I first wrote about Cartagena in May in an article about Wheaton’s RACIALIZED MINORITY RECOGNITION CEREMONY, which followed close on the heels of Wheaton’s controversial decision to cancel a plaque honoring slain missionaries, replacing it with one more palatable to Wheaton wokesters—one that removes references to the savagery of the killers who happened to be indigenous people.

With Wheaton awash in wokery, the following letter from Wheaton College president Philip Ryken to the Wheaton College community in the fall of 2020—just after the spring and summer destructive, violent BLM/Antifa insurrections—shouldn’t surprise anyone. Disappoint? Yes. Surprise? Not so much.

Dear Campus Community,

We all are witnesses to the egregious and senseless violence that recently claimed the lives of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. Their deaths speak to the enduring presence of systemic and institutional racism within our society. As a community, we are deeply distressed by violent acts that have persisted in our country for more than four centuries.

As Christ followers, we denounce systemic racism and police brutality against any racial or ethnic group. Today especially our hearts are filled with pain for the inhumane treatment of our brothers and sisters in the African American community. We stand united with African American students, faculty, and staff who are all deeply affected by these ongoing acts of racial violence and other sinful injustices, often on a daily basis.

…

[W]e are also committed to identifying and addressing policies and systems in our own institution that hinder access and success of members who belong to marginalized and oppressed groups. In order to have the impact on the world that God is calling us to have, we are resolved to think and act in ways that create a more loving, equitable, and just community.

Wheaton College pursues a biblical commitment to respect and love all people as equal image-bearers of Jesus Christ. This is mandated by Scripture, promised in our Community Covenant, and detailed in our Christ-Centered Diversity Commitment.

…

To the members of our community belonging to the African diaspora, please know that you have our love, support, and concern.

Disabuse yourselves of any fanciful notion that Cartagena is the only wokester at Wheaton. He’s not. Parents considering paying boatloads of money to send their kids to Wheaton College might want to consider other, less woke Christian colleges. And Wheaton donors might want to reconsider how they steward their donations.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Wildly-Woke-Wheaton-College-Professor-Nathan-Cartagena.mp3

By now everyone except off-the-grid cave-dwellers has heard about the student protest at University of Missouri which began when thirty black football players and other teammates, supported by the coaching staff, threatened to boycott practices and games until the university president resigned, which he did, along with the chancellor. The reason for the threatened boycott and subsequent campus protest is the belief on the parts of student protestors that the administration had not adequately addressed campus racism. I suppose the team is busy now interviewing candidates to fill those positions.

Shortly thereafter, a student journalist attempting to exercise his First Amendment rights by reporting on the campus tent city “triggered” a marauding horde of anti-microaggression protestors to commence (to quote Richard Scarry) “pushing and shoving, shrieking and shouting.” Methinks the response of the delicate orchids, deeply traumatized by a reporter reporting, veered dangerously close to ordinary run-of-the-mill aggression.

The events at Mizzou followed close on the heels of another campus brouhaha, this one at Yale where some Ivy League hackles were raised when university lecturer Erika Christakis in a carefully worded, politically correct-ish email challenged a silly administrative warning against insensitive Halloween costumes. Following Christakis’ email, her husband, Yale professor Nicholas Christakis, was accosted on campus, where a young woman of color shrieked and swore at him saying among other things, “Who the f*** hired you?” Now scores of socially-just Yalies are seeking the Christakis family’s removal from their positions and home in a Yale residential college.

All this because Christakis dared to suggest that perhaps college students should have the freedom to choose to be a bit provocative or even “transgressive” on Halloween. And by provocative she means costumes that social justice fanatics may view as “appropriative”—not inappropriate—appropriative. So, for example, no non-indigenous female should wear a Pocahontas costume because that would suggest she’s attempting to “appropriate” Native American culture. The merest hint that these hothouse flowers may see an image that sets off their finely-tuned, offense-o-meters sends them into fits of infantile pique.

The seeds for these cultural weed patches were sown years ago when campus radicals, heavily influenced by Brazilian Marxist and educator Paulo Freire, took over academia and began propagating their doctrinaire ideology about oppression. Proponents of Freire’s critical pedagogy—sometimes referred to as “teaching for social justice”—have imposed on all of society their obsession with the notion of systemic oppression, dividing society into two groups (i.e., oppressor and oppressed) and imputing guilt or victimhood respectively.

For example, colorless people, males (more precisely “cismales”), and heterosexuals are automatically oppressors regardless of whether they have engaged in any acts of oppression. “Progressives” rail against members of the purported oppressor group, telling them that the only way to expiate their imputed sins is to engage in endless self-flagellation.

Conversely, people of color, females, trans-everyone, and homosexuals belong to the oppressed group and, therefore, cannot be found guilty of, well anything, no matter how nasty and oppressive their actions. This is the ideology promoted at the annual White Privilege Conference that many educators attend.

To get a sense of how silly and doctrinaire this oppression ideology has become, look no further than Jonathan Butler, the black Mizzou student whose hunger-strike and demand that the university president “acknowledge his white male privilege” played a pivotal role in this burlesque of a civil rights protest. Jonathan Butler is the son of Eric L. Butler, an executive vice president for sales and marketing for the Union Pacific Railroad, whose 2014 compensation was $8.4 million and whose total net worth is upwards of $20 million. Clearly, Jonathan is systemically oppressed.

“Progressives” have added another layer of ideological slime to their unstable foundation. They have for decades disseminated propaganda via accommodating government schools, academia, the mainstream press, and Hollywood, brainwashing our young’uns into believing that among the gravest social injustices that plague patriarchal, colonialist America is the presence of unpleasant ideas. Oppressed peoples are entitled to be free of exposure to ideas and images they don’t like

Devotees of diversity tacitly teach children and teens that they have a right not to be offended—well, “progressives” have a right not to be offended.

Exalters of emotion extol the supreme value of subjective feelings—well, the subjective feelings of those who belong to the designated oppressed groups. It is their feelings that dictate what may or may not be seen or heard.

Teachers of tolerance tolerate only that which they approve and affirm.

Masters of moral relativism proclaim that there exist ideas so absolutely evil that they must not be spoken or heard. And they alone are the arbiters of truth. Violating their commandment to speak no evil requires prior trigger warnings to prevent oppressed victims and their genuflecting allies from being reduced to puddles of tears, or, as at Mizzou and Yale, rivers of rage.

In the service of their cultural mission to cleanse the university and universe of ideas that offend liberals, teachers help students grow tissue-paper skin in their school laboratories, which they can don whenever they may encounter a “microaggression”—you know like Romans 1:26.

Agents of change have taught their malleable changelings how to feign macro-umbrage to get their way. Now they are stupid-drunk with the power they’ve gained from the supposed “right” to be free from micro-ickiness. Students at once possess oh-so-delicate sensibilities and an incongruent lust for the freedom of others. At Mizzou and Yale, we witnessed the macro-tantrum of a macro-monster with a micro-brain.

The monster created by the Left is now a rapacious, oppressive beast, mindlessly trampling the First Amendment, intellectual diversity, and intellectual freedom. Feeding at the slop trough of narcissism and solipsism, the oppressed have become the oppressors.

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The young black man in the video below, Frederick Wilson II, expresses views that are arguably far wiser and more helpful in the debate over justice and racial reconciliation than anything Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, or Jesse Jackson has said in recent years.

And Wilson’s views are exponentially more helpful than these inflammatory words from Louis Farrakhan who spoke recently at Morgan State University:

The young are God’s children, and they’re not goin’ down peaceful. You may not want to fight, but you better get ready. Teach your baby how to throw the bottle [Molotov cocktail] if they can [he then imitates a child throwing, while the audience laughs and applauds].

We’re gonna die anyway. Let’s die for something. Elijah Muhammad said…near fifty years ago…there were 20,000,000 of us, he said “If 10,000,000 of us lost our lives, there would be 10,000,000 of us left to go free….”

In this book [Farakkhan holds up a book], there’s a law for retaliation: Like for like. The Bible says, an eye, a tooth, a life. As long as they kill us, and go to Wendy’s, and have a burger, and go to sleep, they’re gonna keep killing us. But when we die and they die [cheering and standing ovation], then soon, we’re gonna sit at a table and talk about it We want some of this earth, or we’ll tear this G##d#mned country apart! As-salaamu alaikum.”

Perhaps this kind of rhetoric contributed to some blacks believing that the way to end racial injustice in Ferguson, Missouri was to steal and destroy the property of fellow blacks.

I hope that those high school social studies teachers who currently use tax dollars to promote their Leftist social and political views about race would show the Wilson video to students to balance out the whole “institutional racism” theme.

A few years ago when I was helping a Deerfield High School (DHS) student with a paper for her American Studies class, she shared that by the end of her first semester in that class, she hated America and hated being white. Great job, teachers. I’m sure that’s just what American taxpayers want their hard-earned money to subsidize.

Political proselytizing in public schools continues unabated. DHS teachers Ken Kramer and Neil Rigler continue to teach American Studies, and this year’s curriculum includes an essay by Leftist homosexual playwright Tony Kushner and five essays (some of which come from controversial history book A People’s History of  the United States) by Leftist American history revisionist Howard Zinn:

“American Things” by Tony Kushner

“A Kind of Revolution” by Howard Zinn

“American Ideology” by Howard Zinn

“Columbus and Western Civilization” by Howard Zinn

“We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God” by Howard Zinn

“Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom” by Howard Zinn

Other authors include Eric Foner, Barbara Kingsolver, Lorraine Ali, and Leon Litwack, all liberal.

“Progressives” will argue that these scholars are well-respected scholars and prize-winners, which is true but ignores the bias that shapes their work, determining which facts to include, which to omit, which to emphasize, and how to frame their analyses. It also ignores the academic mission of both Zinn and Foner to use their role as historians to advance their political agenda.

Let’s take a glimpse at the writers whom public school “agents of change” promote.

Former Leftist, now conservative writer David Horowitz writes this about Eric Foner:

In 2002, Columbia University hosted a conference of academic radicals called, “Taking Back The Academy: History of Activism, History As Activism.” The published text of the conference papers was provided with a Foreword by Professor Eric Foner, who is a past president of both the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association, and a leading academic figure. Far from sharing Professor [Stanley] Fish’s view that a sharp distinction should be drawn between political advocacy and the scholarly disciplines, Professor Foner embraced the proposition that political activism is essential to the academic mission: “The chapters in this excellent volume,” wrote Foner, “derive from a path-breaking conference held at Columbia University in 2002 to explore the links between historical scholarship and political activism….As the chapters that follow demonstrate, scholarship and activism are not mutually exclusive pursuits, but are, at their best, symbiotically related.”

Kramer and Rigler include in their coursepack the essay “And Our Flag Was Still There,”  in which well-known author and liberal Barbara Kingsolver takes aim at patriotism:

Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth who’ve spent years learning our culture and contributing their talents to our economy. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union.

In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder? Who are we calling terrorists here? Outsiders can destroy airplanes and buildings, but it is only we, the people, who have the power to demolish our own ideals.

Thomas Sowell (who happens to be black), Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution ), has this to say about Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States of which Kramer and Rigler are so enamored:

It speaks volumes about our schools and colleges that far-left radical Howard Zinn’s pretentiously titled book, “A People’s History of the United States,” is widely used across the country. It is one indictment, complaint, and distortion after another.

Anyone who relies on this twisted version of American history would have no idea why millions of people from around the world are trying, sometimes desperately, to move to this country. The one virtue of Zinn’s book is that it helps you identify unmistakably which teachers are using their classrooms as propaganda centers.

One wonders if all the “progressive” public school “agents of change” around the country tell their students and their parents that Zinn is a controversial historian. One wonders if they require their students to read criticism of Zinn’s revisionist history and discuss Zinn’s open admission that he used his work to advance his Leftist political goals. One wonders if Leftist “educators” require students to spend equal time reading the work of Thomas Sowell, and Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom—you know, in the service of diversity, balance, and “critical thinking.”

It’s not just curricula that are infected with biased Leftist ideas that distort American history and foster division rather than unity among disparate groups. School administrations also promote Leftist assumptions through professional development conferences, workshops, and seminars that taxpayers subsidize. These include controversial racism-profiteer Glenn Singleton’s National Summit for Courageous Conversations, Regional Summits for Courageous Conversations, and “Beyond Diversity” seminars, which suck money from Americans through their public schools.

For the uninitiated, liberal theories regarding oppression almost always address homosexuality. Here’s an excerpt  from one of the sessions offered at last fall’s National Summit for Courageous Conversations in New Orleans:

Phase 2 seminar. Journey back to a time when homosexual men and women were exalted in their native cultures (”Two Spirits”), only to have it stripped away when Eurocentric ways took control.

And we can’t forget one of the most infamous wastes of taxpayer money: the annual White Privilege Conference that seeks to persuade whites that they are racist oppressors by virtue of nothing other than their skin color.

The curricular choices of liberal teachers present a lopsided picture of America that over-emphasizes America’s flaws and de-emphasizes those aspects of America that have made this the greatest nation in history. Biased Leftist resources transform education into indoctrination and exacerbate rather than mitigate racial hostility.  The Leftist assumptions about race, oppression, and justice that emerge from the writings of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire, Peggy McIntosh’s invisible knapsack, the White Privilege Conference, and Glenn Singleton’s dizzying array of money-making seminars and summits are corrupting education and disuniting Americans.

Race ballyhooers who line their pockets from the sale of their snake oil that aggravates racial wounds thus ensuring the perpetuation of their schemes claim they seek courageous and honest conversations.  They don’t. The only kind of “conversations” they want are ones that involve them pontificating and others sycophantically echoing.

It would behoove taxpayers to send an email to their local school administrators, asking if any district money has been or will be spent on any of these professional development conferences.

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Many Americans find President Obama’s obsession with income inequality troubling. Many think the goal of equality of outcome as opposed to equality of opportunity is misguided and harmful. Many are concerned with his hyper-focus on race, class, gender, and the dubious classification “sexual orientation.” Well, get used to it, folks, because the government is breeding a new generation of Obamas, chiefly through public education.  

This indoctrination occurs in schools, colleges, and departments of education that train teachers and then through them, filters down into our high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. 

One of the scores of ways the Obama/Bill Ayers/Peggy McIntosh/Paulo Freire worldviews are promulgated is through the annual “White Privilege Conference” being held this March 26-29 in Madison, Wisconsin. And one sure sign that this conference is up to no good is that the morally impoverished Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will be participating through its ironically named “educational” project: Teaching Tolerance. Yes, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which identifies the Family Research Council, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Liberty Counsel, and IFI as “hate groups” because of our orthodox Christian belief that homosexual acts are immoral thinks of itself as the teacher of tolerance. 

The documents for this conference include a glossary of terms for the uninitiated in which the term “Christonormativity” is defined: “The system of oppression which assumes Christianity as the norm, favors Christians, and denigrates and stigmatizes anyone that is not Christian. Equates Americanness with Christianity.”

Oddly, I couldn’t find the term “Christophobia,” which is the system of oppression which assumes Christianity is the source of all evil and stigmatizes anyone who is an orthodox Christian.

To give you a clearer picture of the ideologies that infect public education, below is a sampling of bios and workshops from the White Privilege conference. (Remember as you read the following that when the terms “racism” and “bias” are used, they do not refer primarily to actual racism and bias, but rather to “institutional racism” and “bias” which are horses of an entirely different color—definitely not white. Just know that if you’re a white, male, heterosexual, orthodox Christian you’re automatically guilty of racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, Christonormativity, and hegemonic practices):

Paul Kivel: “The Roots of Racism in Christian Hegemony: Decolonizing our Thinking, Behavior, and Public Policy”: Before Europeans understood themselves as white they thought of themselves as Christians participating in a cosmic battle between good and evil against all those labeled Other. Today, Christian hegemony punishes the poor, destroys the environment, and contributes to our seemingly endless “war on terror.” As our crises of financial meltdown, war, racism and environmental destruction intensify; it is imperative that we dig beneath the surface of Christianity’s benign reputation to examine how it undermines our interpersonal relationships, weakens our communities and promotes injustice. Join me in a discussion of the impact of dominant Christianity on our lives and on how Christians and those who are not Christian have resisted oppression and built communities of healing and justice. 

Emily Chiariello: The Teaching Tolerance Anti-bias Framework, “Understanding Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action,” will orient participants with the first-ever road map for anti-bias education. Organized into four domains: Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action, the framework represents a continuum of engagement in anti-bias, multicultural and social justice education, moving anti-bias educators from prejudice reduction toward collective action….Participants will walk away with a copy of the complete framework and strategies for integrating the framework into classroom instruction.

Rosemary Colt and Diana Reeves: “Examining White Privilege and Building Foundations for Social Justice Thinking in the Elementary Classroom”:  Learn how to design and implement curriculum around concepts of power, justice, relationship and community building. How does white privilege impact our society at a community level, a global level? …In this session, we will share curriculum that allows children to construct an understanding of how race and privilege have determined what our neighborhoods look like. Even young students can learn to understand and think critically about white privilege and power, as well as detect bias, assume perspectives different from their own, and take social action.

Christine Saxman: “Saxman is an English teacher [at Deerfield High School, Deerfield, Illiniois], Equity leader, Pacific Education Group Affiliate and “Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity” facilitator. She works for racial justice inside her classroom, school district and community….She will be co-facilitating “Interrupting White Privilege at WPC and Beyond: How Interruption Can Strengthen Relationships and Build Community Relationships and Build Community.” What do you do if you see white privilege asserting itself at WPC? What do you do when someone shares that you’ve been asserting privilege and you didn’t realize it? This workshop, facilitated by a Woman of Color and a White woman, will examine how to recognize privilege and how to interrupt it in the service of relationships, community, and justice.   

Andrea Haynes Johnson: Johnson is a Black, female anti-racist leader and educator. Currently she serves as the Director of Diversity and Grants for [Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools], and she is an Affiliate with Pacific Educational Group. She will be the co-facilitator of “Moving K-12 Public Schools to Anti-Racist Action,” in which Participants will engage in a vibrant conversation about the paths and pitfalls to transforming Public Schools into spaces that interrupt White Privilege and promote anti-racist practices. Strategies for accountability, staff development and student engagement will be shared. The dialogue will empower participants to return to their home schools armed with language and concrete practices that can foster a more inclusive environment for all stakeholders.

White Privilege Conferences are attended by public school teachers who will take these controversial ideas about race, gender, class, “sexual orientation,” and bias into the classroom in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. There is no reason for teachers to attend this voluntary conference other than to bring the dubious ideas they ingest back to the classroom. And folks, we often pay for it. 

Take ACTION: Contact your local high school and ask if any teachers are speaking at or attending this dubious conference, and if so, ask whether the school district is footing the bill.

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