Here is Jonathan Haidt delivering the 2017 Wriston Lecture to the Manhattan Institute, Nov. 15 (the emphasis is my own):

Today’s identity politics . . . teaches the exact opposite of what we think a liberal arts education should be. When I was at Yale in the 1980s, I was given so many tools for understanding the world. By the time I graduated, I could think about things as a utilitarian or as a Kantian, as a Freudian or a behaviorist, as a computer scientist or as a humanist. I was given many lenses to apply to any given question or problem.

But what do we do now? Many students are given just one lens—power. Here’s your lens, kid. Look at everything through this lens. Everything is about power. Every situation is analyzed in terms of the bad people acting to preserve their power and privilege over the good people. This is not an education. This is induction into a cult. It’s a fundamentalist religion. It’s a paranoid worldview that separates people from each other and sends them down the road to alienation, anxiety and intellectual impotence.

He continues — and this is an interesting way to frame a state of mind:

I am actually pessimistic about America’s future, but let me state very clearly that I have very low confidence in my pessimism. Because until now, it has always been wrong to bet against America, and it’s probably wrong to do so now. My libertarian friends constantly remind me that people are resourceful—this is what many people forget. When problems get more severe, people get more inventive, and that is actually happening right now.

Haidt is not alone in his concern about the future. On November 28, 2017, Trey Sanchez writing at Truth Revolt had this to say:

‘LGBT’ Gets Like a Thousand More Letters to Represent All Possible Combos (So Far)

And to think, this is not even peak ridiculousness!

A flyer from an “inclusiveness training” seminar earlier this year in Canada has gone viral because “LGBT” has gotten an upgrade of 12 extra letters.

So far, we’ve had to navigate slight variations such as GLBT, or LGBTQ. But with all of the intersectionalities, gender identities, and sexual preferences leftists have dreamed up, the new acronym looks more like a randomly generated password, an auto-correct gone wrong, or the old secret codes to warp levels on the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Now they want us to type “LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP.”

Here’s what that stands for:

Lesbian, Gay, Genderqueer, Bisexual, Demisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Twospirit, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual, Allies, Pansexual, Polyamorous

Have fun looking up what some of those mean.

Leftists are making it so easy for conservatives to make their case – too bad too many conservative leaders are failing to do so.

Here is a clip from my “Welcome to America 2017” file:

Feds Spend $138,000 Asking Four-Year-Olds About Their ‘Internal Sense of Gender Identity’

A grant for a two-year study was awarded to the University of Washington this summer. The project will interview 250 children aged four to six, and their parents, asking a series of questions about “gendered behavior.”

“Prominent theories of gender development have discussed the degree to which gender identity results from an internal sense of gender and socialization processes,” according to the grant. “However, tests of these theories have been limited because, for most children, internal gender identity and environmental socialization substantially overlap, rendering it impossible to distinguish the relative impact of each factor on gender development.”

As noted last time, Laurie Higgins wrote that much of this foolishness is “transforming the country at breakneck speed” because of the “ignorance and cowardice of conservatives.” She is exactly right — conservatives need to educate themselves “resolutely resist” the efforts of Leftists to fundamentally transforming our culture away from common sense and into paganism.

Up next: Paraphilias of the day: Peodeiktophilia and Homeovestism.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias

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“boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy” in Illinois.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) just issued guidelines that allow gender-dysphoric students and teachers to use restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the sex they wish they were rather than the sex they actually are. In public schools, staff and faculty regularly use student restrooms, so adult men who wish they were women may now use girls’ restrooms, and adult women who wish they were men may now use boys’ restrooms.

These new guidelines apply to all schools from elementary through high school, and they apply not just to restrooms and locker rooms but to overnight school trips as well. Now boys who wish they were girls will be able to stay in rooms with girls and vice versa.

These morally and intellectually incomprehensible guidelines also apply to “gender non-binary” students who don’t “identify” as either male or female and to “questioning” students who aren’t yet sure which sex they would like to be. In other words, these students may make their restroom, locker room, and hotel room selections in accordance with their fluid, unfixed sexual confusion.

The CPS guidelines also require faculty and staff to use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric students. Since pronouns correspond to one’s sex–not to feelings about one’s sex–this means that the government is requiring staff and faculty to lie.

CPS erroneously believes that these guidelines are necessary to create “an environment of complete tolerance and respect” for every “student and adult” and promote “safe and inclusive schools.”

The CPS is decidedly not, however, tolerating or respecting those who believe that physical embodiment as male and female is profoundly meaningful and is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy. These guidelines will not ensure the inclusion of those students, parents, staff, and faculty who believe it’s immoral to share restrooms, locker rooms, or hotel rooms with persons of the opposite sex.

If safety is defined as the absence of uncomfortable feelings, then these guidelines do not ensure the safety of those who don’t want to do their business with an unrelated person of the opposite sex doing his or her business in the stall next to them.

CPS needs to explain why gender-dysphoric persons have the right to use restrooms with only those who share their “gender identity,” but other students have no right to use restrooms with only those who share their objective, immutable sex. Why should restrooms, locker rooms, and hotel rooms correspond to feelings about one’s sex rather than one’s actual sex?

In the service of inclusivity, why not make all restrooms, showers, and hotel rooms completely co-ed? Why not allow all boys and girls to make these choices? Why should only students who wish they were the opposite sex or aren’t sure if they want to be a boy or girl be allowed in opposite-sex restrooms? Isn’t that discriminating based on “gender identity”?

The truth is it is not the feelings of students about their sex that make girls and boys not want opposite-sex students in their restrooms, showers, and hotel rooms. It is the actual sex of students that makes girls and boys not want opposite-sex students in their restrooms, showers, and hotel rooms. What possible difference does it make to girls if the boy in their restroom, shower, or hotel room wants to be a boy or not?

Parents of CPS students are once again ill-served and disrespected by the Chicago Public School system.