Academics are fast becoming a thing of the past in public schools.

In their place are behavioral psychology and “social and emotional learning” (SEL) designed not to educate but to transform children’s core values, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior.

Once upon a time, education meant learning how to read, write, do math, and think. It meant learning history and science as well.

That is barely happening now, as government data show.

Perhaps more importantly, once upon a time, school children all over the nation also learned the Ten Commandments—do not murder, do not lie, do not steal, and so on.

They learned the Golden Rule, too: Treat others as you want to be treated.

But those “good old days” are largely gone.

Today, government schools use advanced methods including SEL to instill in children a radical new and oftentimes contradictory “politically correct” value system: radical environmentalism, radical feminism, critical theory, Marxism, social justice, LGBTQ-plus, population control, socialism, hyper-racialism, class struggle, and more.

There’s also an occult connection to it all that would shock most secular observers—not to mention Christians, Muslims, Jews, and adherents of other traditional faiths.

SEL: The Mechanism for Transformation

In public schools across the United States today, from pre-K through 12th grade and beyond, children are being subjected to what is seemingly just the latest educational fad—silly, perhaps, but no more harmful than anything else—at least on the surface.

The education establishment refers to it as “social and emotional learning,” “social-emotional learning,” or just SEL for short. Generally they speak only in vague generalities using soothing language while dealing with the public.

And it’s true, some of what falls under the SEL umbrella is fairly harmless.

But then again, the food pellets that contain rat poison are fairly harmless, too—at least until the poison, which is just a trace component in the pellets, is digested by the intended victim.

Similarly, SEL all seems innocent enough at first glance.

“Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions,” explains the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), one of the leading outfits promoting SEL.

The way proponents explain it, SEL is simply aimed to help children do well emotionally and succeed.

What could be wrong with that?

Well, CASEL’s website, a review of SEL programs, and educators themselves reveal a great deal more about the agenda. And it’s not pretty.

Political Extremism and Radical Values

Behind the nice public facade lurk swarms of psychologists, psychiatrists, “educators,” and radical leftists hoping to exploit a century of psychological research for the purpose of molding children’s beliefs and “deconstructing” the values parents seek to instill.

“With a growing number of partners, CASEL is creating a more comprehensive approach to education, one that will lead to a more equitable, just, and productive society,” the organization’s website boasts under the headline “SEL as a Lever for Equity,” hitting multiple key buzzwords associated with the far-left “social justice” movement.

In other words, one of the purposes of SEL—as its leading promoters admit—is to reform society.

Among the webinars offered there are “SEL as a Lever for Equity and Social Justice,” and also a lecture on how to use SEL to “support antiracist practices.” Another webinar outlines how to use policy to “dismantle inequities.”

Again, the leftist buzzwords are everywhere. And that isn’t an accident.

Under SEL Competencies, CASEL drops multiple bombshells acknowledging the far-left globalist indoctrination taking place under the guise of “social” and “emotional” learning.

“SEL competencies can be leveraged to develop justice-oriented, global citizens, and nurture inclusive school and district communities,” it states, adding that the programs will involve getting children to “assess power dynamics” and confront “issues of race and class across different settings.”

The children are also expected to “develop an understanding of systemic or structural explanations for different treatment and outcomes.”

In short, they are expected to believe the highly controversial hypothesis that America is awash in “systemic” and “structural” racism, and that only massive government-led social engineering can fix it.

The children are also expected to accept and agree with the artificial divisions being fomented along “race” and “class” lines as part of the now-obvious effort to “divide and conquer” America.

Put simply, this is all blatantly Marxist “critical theory” rhetoric masquerading as “education.”

It’s extremely dangerous.

In Practice, Educators Shine the Light

A review by The Epoch Times of a wide range of SEL programs used across the United States found that all contain similar extremism, along with highly controversial teachings on sex, sexuality, gender, race, racism, class, economic liberty, family, marriage, and more.

Interviews with educators and a review of their writings on the subject were also very revealing.

In short, the real goals of SEL go far beyond “helping” children socially and emotionally. And it isn’t difficult to find that out.

In fact, in practice, SEL is frequently and explicitly used in public schools to instill certain attitudes and values in children that many parents, if not most, would find controversial at the very least.

For example, public-school teachers in Florida, to comply with SEL mandates, were ordered to show a number of videos to their middle school students.

These included propaganda videos promoting homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, “diversity,” “inclusion,” and more.

Regardless of one’s views on these subjects, countless parents—especially those from faith traditions including Christianity, Islam, or Judaism—would find the effort to obliterate traditional sexual morality and even biological sex in children’s minds to be objectionable.

Numerous other highly controversial political, religious, economic, and worldview positions are treated as “correct” by the forces behind SEL.

More than a few self-styled SEL educators are very open about how they intend to use SEL to brainwash children.

Open Circle Director Kamilah Drummond-Forrester, who supports “social and emotional development for children,” wrote openly at EdSurge.com about weaponizing SEL to indoctrinate children with her hyper-racialist views.

“Teaching [white children] to be aware of their racial identity would allow them to better understand the privileges that accompany that identity,” she wrote, adding that this would help them dismantle the “concept of ‘whiteness.’”

“Social and emotional learning (SEL) has an important role to play in that education.

“One of the core competencies we focus on, as a necessary foundation for the others, is self-awareness. That self-awareness must include race,” she continued, without acknowledging that many parents probably don’t want their children obsessing about “race” or being propagandized by a far-left activist posing as an educator.

In an article for EdTech Magazine on peddling SEL to students amid coronavirus-inspired online learning, writer Adam Stone touts “SEL-oriented teaching materials from the Zinn Education Project.”

Howard Zinn, of course, is the far-left pseudo-historian whose dishonest and politically motivated narratives were most recently debunked by historian Mary Grabar in the book “Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America.”

Zinn described himself as “something of a Marxist,” his biographer recounted.

According to EdTech, though, the “SEL-oriented” propaganda from Zinn is supposedly “aimed at nurturing empathy and compassion.”

In the real world, Marxism has everywhere and always nurtured hatred, death, slavery, torture, starvation, shortages, political repression, religious persecution, and other evils.

And yet under the guise of SEL programs and “nurturing empathy and compassion,” millions of children are having their minds poisoned by being force-fed actual Marxist propaganda and fake history.

And perhaps even more alarming, Stone urges educators to use surveillance tools that give “insight into students’ online behaviors—both inside and outside the virtual classroom—to enhance SEL.”

One of the recommended total surveillance tools offers educators “a holistic view of online activity across search engines, social media, email and web apps,” Stone said, adding that an artificial-intelligence engine would perform “real-time assessments” to “flag online behaviors that indicate emotional distress.”

As explained in an earlier segment of this series, Orwellian technology is used to monitor and track “progress” on adjusting children’s attitudes, too. That data is being compiled and saved forever under the label of “emotional intelligence.”

The Big Brother technology is also used to determine whether further “interventions” are needed to coerce the child into holding the desired attitudes, values, and beliefs about the issue in question.

And, as U.S. Department of Education documents make clear, it will also be used to predict “future behavior and interests” of the children.

Educators Speak Out

Of course, educators who have seen through the agenda reject SEL as a massive threat to America’s children.

One of those who spoke out against the SEL abuses taking place in her school, Jennifer McWilliams of Indiana, was even fired for being too vocal about it.

“The thing I find to be the most disturbing about social emotional learning is how well it disguises its true sinister motives,” she told The Epoch Times. “Parents do not understand that SEL psychologically manipulates children to question (and eventually rebuke) any Christian or conservative beliefs that may be taught in the home.”

While parents are led to believe that SEL is like teaching children The Golden Rule, “it is quite the opposite,” McWilliams said.

“Social emotional learning is rooted in progressive, social justice ideology that divides anyone who questions the radical groupthink agenda,” she said. “From my personal experience, not only do parents not understand it but teachers and administrators don’t either.”

SEL also represents the “brainwashing of our children,” McWilliams continued, noting that it trains children to “compromise on everything” with no consideration of what is taught in the home.

“These programs rely on a bombardment of propaganda, conditioning, and role playing to separate children from God and the nuclear family,” she said, saying SEL was the vehicle used to get children to accept as truth the narratives behind Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) and Black Lives Matter (BLM).

The popular SEL program used in McWilliams’s school, Leader in Me, was designed to “shift the culture of the school to influence children’s morals and values based on progressive social justice standards,” she said, adding that it became ubiquitous on campus.

When she began publicly speaking out about it on social media, she was fired for supposedly making the school look bad.

“Parents must speak up and take back control of the influence in their children’s lives. If not, the kids will pay with their freedom,” McWilliams said.

The Occult Origins of SEL

The story behind SEL is even more troubling.

According to a history of SEL by CASEL, the term “social and emotional” originated in a meeting at the Fetzer Institute, a shadowy New Age powerhouse created by wealthy New Age guru and late media baron John Fetzer.

One of the founders of the SEL movement, David Sluyter, served as president and CEO of the organization.

“Our mission is to help build the spiritual foundation for a loving world,” the group states on its website, adding that it is working toward a “transformative sacred story for humanity in the 21st century.”

According to Brian Wilson’s book “John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age,” Fetzer was, among other things, a public and fervent devotee of Alice Bailey, the controversial occultist who founded the Lucifer Publishing Company (now known as the Lucis Trust).

So obsessed was Fetzer with Bailey that he and his people would regularly recite her “Great Invocation,” which she claimed was given to her by spiritual beings known as “ascended masters,” Wilson documents in his book.

The Fetzer Institute didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. CASEL initially suggested it would make somebody available for an interview, but didn’t follow up despite multiple requests.

More than a few other prominent names in education were similarly enamored with Bailey’s bizarre teachings from supposed spiritual entities.

United Nations World Core Curriculum author Robert Muller, for instance, who served as assistant secretary-general of the U.N., said in the teachers’ manual that his U.N.-backed global school curriculum was based on the teachings of Bailey and one of her “ascended masters.”

The values being taught to children under Fetzer-inspired SEL programs feature remarkable similarities to those taught by John Dewey, a man almost universally known among educators as the founding father of America’s “progressive” education system.

Dewey, who was inspired by the Soviet educational system, was a co-author and signer of the Humanist Manifesto, a religious document rejecting God and prescribing collectivism as the cure for society’s ills.

For at least 12 years—more if they go to college—American children are indoctrinated into the collectivist values of Dewey’s religion, which was essentially just warmed-over communism and atheism hiding behind a religious facade.

Interestingly, as early as 1898, Dewey himself expressed an understanding of the need to utilize psychology, a discipline then still in its infancy, if the plan to re-shape Americans through “education” was going to succeed.

Even more interesting, perhaps, is the fact that Bailey, citing her ascended masters, recognized the importance of Dewey’s educational schemes in achieving her goal of a one-world order with a global religion.

“Our problem is to attain the kind of overall synthesis that Marxism and neo-Scholasticism provide for their followers, but to get this by the freely chosen cooperative methods that Dewey advocated,” Bailey wrote in her book “Education in the New Age.”

Funding and People

Even a brief review of the funding and individuals behind SEL also reveals a great deal about the agenda.

On its website, CASEL lists, among other financiers, billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Gates, who has a friendly relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, put almost $300 million behind the Obama-backed Common Core standards, which formally nationalized and helped globalize America’s education system.

Before that, Gates signed a deal with UNESCO, the subject of part nine in this series, to work on globalizing the world’s education systems.

Also listed among the financiers of CASEL is Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which CASEL said “provides generous funding to CASEL to support school districts and their capacity to promote social and emotional learning.”

For some background, the recently deceased patriarch of the family, David Rockefeller, wrote in The New York Times in 1973 that “the social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.”

Rockefeller also boasted in his autobiography “Memoirs” of “conspiring” with a “secret cabal” of globalists, “against the best interests of the United States,” to build a “One World” political and economic system.

Aside from its financiers, CASEL’s leading super-stars also suggest something is amiss, to put it mildly.

Consider the involvement of radical Stanford educator Linda Darling-Hammond, a board member emeritus of CASEL and known associate of communist terrorist turned educator William Ayers.

Ayers’s Weather Underground group set off bombs across America in cooperation with communist Cuban intelligence. The FBI operative who infiltrated the group’s leadership, Larry Grathwohl, revealed that the organization’s leadership was plotting to exterminate millions of Americans in camps.

Interestingly, Darling-Hammond had an opportunity to test out her educational quackery unimpeded in the Stanford New Schools. The results are now in: In 2010, Stanford New Schools placed in the lowest-achieving 5 percent of schools in California, according to multiple reports.

More than a few other colleagues of Ayers are or were also involved with CASEL and SEL, with his University of Illinois at Chicago being central to the scheme. At least 3 of 13 members listed on CASEL’s website came from that university’s Department of Education and Psychology.

SEL was formally unveiled in the late 1990s. However, the real history behind it goes way back to Lev Vygotsky, a Soviet psychologist who studied how to effectively brainwash children to become good communists.

Vygotsky’s contributions in laying the foundations for SEL are widely acknowledged among practitioners and even in the academic literature (pdf).

Interestingly, Vygotsky was a close colleague of Ivan Pavlov, the Soviet psychologist famous for his behavioral-conditioning experiments on dogs.

Vygotsky had been inspired, in part, by American psychologist and educational researcher E.L. Thorndike, a student of close Dewey-ally and associate James McKeen Cattell of Columbia University.

In fact, Vygotsky wrote the foreword to the Russian translation of Thorndike’s “Principles of Learning Based Upon Psychology” published in Moscow in the mid-1920s.

Thorndike didn’t bother to conceal his views on education: Children should be educated like circus animals, and it should be so arranged that the child will be incapable of not doing what the trainer wants.

Vygotsky, too, had grandiose ideas about how Soviet “education” and “psychology” would be used to fundamentally transform the individual, and ultimately, mankind.

“It is education which should play the central role in the transformation of man this road of conscious social formation of new generations, the basic form to alter the historical human type,” Vygotsky wrote in 1930 in the journal of the All-Union Association of Workers in Science and Technics for the Furthering of the Socialist Edification in the USSR.

“New generations and new forms of their education represent the main route which history will follow whilst creating the new type of man,” he added.

SEL is simply the latest tool of the collectivist education establishment in its fiendish drive to create this “new type of man”—a collectivist man who will mindlessly submit to the tyranny of his overlords, without the intellectual ability to effectively resist.

Conclusion

Today, while most educators and parents have little understanding of what is going on, SEL has become ubiquitous in government schools across the nation.

National Education Association (NEA) Foundation Global Learning Fellow Wendy Turner, a second-grade teacher and self-styled “SEL warrior” quoted in an article on the NEA’s website, explained that SEL is now the top priority for schools.

“SEL is the foundation, the heartbeat of the classroom,” she said. “It’s about connecting everybody and making them feel safe and secure before you get to the academics.”

In a U.S. Department of Education report, a “review” of existing studies called for subjecting “the entire student body” to constant SEL programming “in order to reinforce social and emotional learning not only in the classroom but also on the playground, in the cafeteria, and in hallways.” Parents should also “reinforce” it at home.

But the facts are now clear: The SEL craze is an extreme threat to America’s youth—and to individual liberty.

The scheme isn’t about helping children at all. Instead, it’s about manipulating and conditioning America’s youth to hold the values and beliefs that the education establishment wants to instill.

Unfortunately, those values and beliefs are incompatible with individual liberty, Western civilization, the U.S. Constitution, the nuclear family, religious liberty, and other key values that underpin the United States.

Parents and policymakers must urgently protect the nation’s children from this dangerous threat.

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

All those Anti-Trump Christians who either did not vote for the oft-unpleasant Trump or, worse, voted for befuddled Biden and his puppeteers now bear some culpability for ceding more control to those whose lust for power far exceeds their compassion for the weak or love of freedom. After leftists’ Russian-collusion disinformation ruse failed, they floundered about until the Chinese Communists came to their rescue. An ocean of blood has been and will be spilled at the hands of leftists, and all who played a part in facilitating their acquisition of more power bear a measure of guilt.

When the escaped Wuhan virus began its deadly circumnavigation of the world, the left mocked Trump for saying hydroxychloroquine was effective, children should be in school, and businesses opened. A nanosecond after Chinese Communist colluder, profiteer, and taradiddler (pun intended) Biden was elected via the mail-in voting allegedly impervious to fraud and the machinations of Big Tech, leftists said hydroxychloroquine was effective, children should be in school, and businesses should open. Can’t have all that Trump-caused misery associated with leftism (nudge nudge wink wink. Ssshhh! Don’t mention the suicides of children.)

In the midst of the Wuhan crisis, the rage of the fatherless and improperly tutored made our streets and businesses abominable infernos unfit for civilized humans for months. The left cheered and paid for the criminals’ freedom, thereby normalizing lawlessness. When, in a far less destructive or deadly riot, the Capitol was besieged by a crowd imitating the lawlessness they saw celebrated for months, the left marshalled a military response that would make Stalin, Chairman Mao, Kim Jung Un, and Xi Jinping proud.

Throughout “campaign” season, the daft old man shuffling between his cellar and the nearest Dairy Queen was left unmolested by the thoroughly corrupt press who would have made mincemeat out of any Republican candidate who so resembles Grampa Simpson. No hard questions about Biden’s plans for America, no inquisitorial questions about his crime syndicate family, no questions at all about his questionable mental agility.

Over the past five years, our thoroughly corrupt press has exposed exactly how committed to inclusivity they are.  The all-inclusive leftist press that licks the sneakers of Kamala Harris because she’s the first semi-black, female (whatever that is) vice president, and continues to drool over the sartorial style of Michelle Obama, shunned Melania Trump, the most beautiful First Lady in America’s history, who is also an immigrant and polyglot with a fashion sense surpassing Michelle Obama’s. The press revealed that leftist inclusivity and love of diversity looks remarkably like mean-spirited, petty, non-inclusive, middle-school-girl bullying.

And now the bloodletting and oppression are really gaining steam—thanks in no small part to anti-Trump Christians.

In a flurry of Executive Orders so furious that even the New York Times said, slow down, old man, Biden has increased funding for Calculated Carnage Planned Parenthood, and released U.S. taxpayer money to fund human slaughter all around the world. Yes, leftists seek the destruction of babies of color everywhere, and they get special pleasure from making you, Americans, fund it.

But remember, anti-Trump Christians insisted self-righteously that ensuring Trump’s loss would enhance the image of Christianity among the God-hating. Sure, sure, Trump’s administration did do more to protect the unborn than any administration since 1973, but getting Biden elected would do far more to make God-hating, baby-killing leftists think Christians aren’t so bad after all—or so anti-Trumpers insist. Never mind, that Jesus told his followers the world would hate them because it hated him first. Anti-Trump tub-thumpers know better.

In the name of unity, creepy Biden wants to unify boys and girls in college dorm room assignments. He wants to unify naked boys and girls in locker rooms. He wants young men with all their male “equipment” intact to be set loose in the showers and barracks of young women who have volunteered to serve our country. And what Biden wants, Biden gets with the stroke of a pen.

An Army training manual created in the wake of Obama’s efforts to unify males and females in military barracks and showers includes this:

[F]ollowing her [sic]transition from male to female (which did not include sex reassignment surgery) …  a transgender Soldier begins using female barracks, bathroom and shower facilities. Because she [sic]did not undergo a surgical change, the Soldier still has male genitalia. [Female] Soldiers must accept living and working conditions that are often austere, primitive, and characterized by little or no privacy.

I guess we should be thankful that leftists still recognize that forcing young women to shower in the presence of male peers is “primitive.”

The Trump administration began unraveling Obama’s obscene, science-denying offenses against women. Biden is reinstating them. Maybe anti-Trumpers can explain how their complicity in the sexual integration of the private spaces of girls and women enhances their Christian witness.

Brassy AOC and brittle Nancy Pelosi have accused Congressional colleagues of attempted murder without being censured. AOC has urged the creation of a blacklist to track Trump-supporters and keep them unemployed. Other Democrats have urged the creation of another spy agency to be used specifically for targeting “domestic terrorists.” Sounds benign, maybe even good, until you remember that Big Brother’s Ministry of Truthiness redefines everything. Division is unity, men are women, war is peace, and Trump voters are domestic terrorists.

Months of lawless riots that included direct brutal attacks on police officers and setting fire to federal buildings, state property, and private businesses are “mostly peaceful protests.” A 90-minute lawless siege on the Capitol during which there were no direct attacks on law enforcement is a seditious insurrection that necessitates an overwhelming show of military force and a lethal razor-enhanced border wall around the area where the elite sequester themselves from the deplorable rabble they rule serve.

Biden has committed to passing the “Equality Act,” which explicitly subordinates religious free exercise protections to sexual perversion. Or perhaps it won’t actually be Biden who will kill the First Amendment. Perhaps it will be an unseen Kamala Harris who in the dark of night like the unsexed Lady Macbeth will drive a knife into the heart of American freedom.

Unifier-in-Chief Biden is restoring federal funding for the dissemination of Critical Race Theory through government agencies. And Democrats under a Biden administration are gearing up with the help of gullible Republicans to usurp local control of education through a tricksy Common Core-type maneuver. Stanley Kurtz warns,

Remember, the Obama-Biden administration imposed Common Core on the country via a Rube Goldberg mechanism designed to circumvent the prohibition on federal curriculum controls. That mechanism was powered by money tucked away in the stimulus package and passed without debate. Obama hadn’t run on Common Core, and there was no national consensus in favor of it. Instead this ill-conceived experiment was imposed by stealth with the help of massive funding from the Gates Foundation, various businesses, and an education bureaucracy decidedly at odds with parents and voters.

There is every indication that this process is about to repeat itself under a Biden administration—this time in the culturally critical area of history and civics standards. The effort to create a civics version of the Common Core will be made by the “bipartisan education reform movement.”

Kurtz draws attention to a proposed “bipartisan” bill—sponsored by a Democrat and co-sponsored by 10 Democrats and one lone Republican, Tom Cole from Oklahoma—that has received too little attention:

Comprehensive proposals to create de facto national history and civics standards on the model of Common Core are in the works as well, and likely to be adopted by a Biden administration.

The text of the bill sounds innocuous enough until you remember who’s in charge of the organizations that will be creating curricula that will enable schools to get their mitts on federal dollars. What the government under a Biden administration will fund will not be curricula that conservatives like.

Totalitarian control requires this kind of indoctrination. Haven’t Americans learned anything from history? Oh, wait … Never mind.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/audio_What-Is-Becoming-of-America.mp3

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Less than 20 years into the 21^st Century and it seems that many Americans have either forgotten, or simply do not know about, what could arguably be described as the largest worldwide scourge of the 20^th Century.  Roughly 97 million people died in two world wars.  However, more than 100 million people died under the governing system of Communism in what many historians have called the bloodiest century in the history of man.

Each year the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation commissions a poll of Americans to find out what they know about Socialism, Marxism and Communism, the triplets of totalitarianism.

Here is what their newly released 2019 survey has found:

•  The percentage of American Millennials who say that they are likely to vote for a socialist is 70%.   The number who say they are “extremely likely” to vote for a socialist candidate has doubled from 10% in 2018 to 20% in 2019.

• Young people aged 23-38, known as Millennials, and those aged 16-22, known as Generation Z, views of capitalism has taken a big hit with only one-in-two having a favorable view of capitalism.

• Communism is viewed favorably by more than one-in-three Millennials (36%), up 8 points since 2018.

• Marxism has the highest favorability among Millennials at 35%, up 6 points since 2018.

• 7 in 10 Americans do not know that communism has killed over 100 million people.

• Only 57% of Gen Z and 62% of Millennials, compared to 88% of Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation, think that China is a communist country.  (I’d bet that a poll of NBA players and owners is closer to 1%. Most of them seemed to have had no idea that Twitter has been banned by the government of China since 2009.)

• While 80% of Americans say that they trust themselves more than government or community to take care of their own interests, younger generations are 25% less likely to say this.

• Overall, capitalism is still viewed favorably by 61% of all Americans.

• Overall, among all Americans there is more hesitancy to vote for a “democratic socialist” than there was last year.

• Perceptions of communism and Marxism vary widely across generations.

• Only 57% of Millennials, compared to 94% of the Silent Generation think the Declaration of Independence better guarantees freedom and equality over the Communist Manifesto.

• Millennials are the least likely to have studied communism in high school, but they are more likely to have studied it in college.

• Millennials are much more likely to report communism being presented favorably in K-12 and college than are older generations.

• While 83% of Americans say that they know at least a little about socialism, 66% of Americans cannot accurately define socialism.

• Baby Boomer opposition to voting for a democratic socialist has increased by 8 points since 2018.

• Nearly half of Millennials think that the government should provide a job for everyone who wants to work but can’t find a job.

• 37% of Millennials think America is one of the most unequal societies in the world.

• One in four Americans say that Donald Trump is a bigger threat to world peace than figures like Kim Jung-un, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

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This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

In June, 2016, when candidate Trump promised a large gathering of evangelical Christian leaders that he was committed to defending our liberties, I was skeptical. Was he just trying to get our votes? Did he really care about our freedoms? Was he truly concerned that our rights were being eroded?

For more than two years, he has answered those questions emphatically. Yes, he is committed to defending our liberties. Yes, he really does care about freedoms. And yes, he is truly concerned that our rights are being eroded.

Now, the president has gone one step further, standing up for religious freedom worldwide.

As he said in an important UN gathering,

“Today, with one clear voice, the United States of America calls upon the nations of the world to end religious persecution. Stop the crimes against people of faith. Release prisoners of conscience. Repeal laws restricting freedom of religion and belief. Protect the vulnerable, the defenseless, and the oppressed.”

For whatever reason, this has become something very important to Trump, and as one who works with persecuted believers in different parts of the world, I can affirm that this is highly significant.

It is also historic. As widely reported online, “Donald Trump has become the first US President to ever host a meeting at the United Nations on religious freedom.”

Donald Trump, indeed.

But this time, he didn’t only draw attention to persecuted Christians, although he did mention that “11 Christians a day [are killed] for following the teaching of Christ.” (To my knowledge, this is an easily verifiable, if not very conservative, number).

Trump also spoke of Muslims and Jews who were killed for their faith:

“In 2016, an 85-year-old Catholic priest was viciously killed while celebrating mass in Normandy, France. In the past year, the United States endured horrifying anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish Americans at synagogues in Pennsylvania and California. In March, Muslims praying with their families were sadistically murdered in New Zealand. On Easter Sunday this year, terrorists bombed Christian churches in Sri Lanka, killing hundreds of faithful worshippers. Who would believe this is even possible?”

Why this deep concern from the president?

It’s clear that Trump has gained a deep respect for evangelical Christians in recent years. And he seems genuinely troubled that our rights have come under attack here in America. How much more, then, would he be concerned when he learns that thousands of Christians worldwide are being slaughtered for their faith every year?

At the same time, his daughter Ivanka is a convert to Judaism, and his son-in-law Jared, along with their children (his grandchildren) are Jewish. And I believe he was truly horrified at the two synagogue shootings where Jews were mowed down in cold blood, right here in America.

And, as much as he is (wrongly) painted as an enemy of all Muslims, he must also have been troubled at the slaughter of Muslims in a mosque in New Zealand.

In that light, it’s no surprise that he is leading the way in the call for religious freedom worldwide.

Let him use his bully pulpit to call out religious oppression. Let him use the power of his office (and the force of his personality) to rebuke tyrannical governments.

But this is where the rubber will meet the road.

Two of the chief offenders today are China and India. Is the President willing to rebuke these governments directly? Is he willing to confront China’s Xi and India’s Modi?

[On Tuesday], September 24, Trump suggested that Modi be referred to as “the father of India” because of his success in uniting the nation.

And while Trump is engaged in trade wars with Xi, he has not as aggressively confronted China’s massive crackdown on religious believers in China, be they Muslim, Christian, or other.

It is true that, after North Korea, the next eight countries where it is most dangerous to be a Christian today are all Muslim. But India is now number 10 on that list, earning a ranking of “extreme persecution” from Open Doors World Watch List 2019.

Consequently, “For the first time since the start of the World Watch List, India has entered the top 10. Additionally, China jumped 16 spots, from 43 to 27.” And based on inside information I have received from China, it will soon be climbing high on that list.

And, when we remember that these are two massive countries, totally nearly 2.5 billion people between them, the implications of these religious crackdowns are massive.

A headline two days announced, “Mosque demolitions across China raise fears over escalating persecution of Uighur Muslims.”

As for India, headlines proclaimed in June, “Incidents of persecution of Indian Christians on the rise.” Yes, “Christian activists say uptick follows landslide victory of country’s Hindu party in national election.”

Yet there are many who believe that Trump has the power to tell Modi to put a stop to this, and he will do it. And perhaps, through economic and other means, Trump can pressure China to change as well.

Let’s hope and pray that this is so. If anyone has the courage to stand up to these powerful leaders, I believe it is Donald Trump.

And when it comes to fighting against religious oppression worldwide, but friend and foe of the president should wish him Godspeed in this battle.

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This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.com.

May I propose a New Year’s resolution for 2019? Let’s determine to speak up and to speak out, to raise our voices with clarity and compassion, to refuse to hold back regardless of cost or consequence. Will you join me?

To those of you who are already doing this, I encourage you to continue to stand strong.

To those who are not, now is most certainly the time. What are you waiting for?

One of the most important principles taught by Jesus was that if we try to save our lives, we lose them. But if we lose our lives for Him – for the gospel – we find them.

To apply this concept to our contemporary situation, if we try to avoid controversy and conflict so as to preserve our presence on social media platforms, we lose our souls in the process. We become compromisers, fearers of man rather than fearers of God. We are no longer guided by conviction; we are guided by convenience. We survive but we do not thrive.

If we speak what is right and do what is right and live what is right, we might lose a lot in the process, but we will find our souls. We become alive!

We can learn a lesson here from Wang Yi, pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. He was addressing the sinful policies of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is fashioning himself to be the new Mao and is actively persecuting Christians and other minorities.

In a sermon dated September 9, 2018, Pastor Yi said, “President Xi Jinping does not repent he will perish!”

Yes, he said, “The government he is leading has sinned greatly against God, for it is persecution the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and if he does not repent, he will perish!”

But won’t Pastor Yi suffer consequences for preaching such a message? No doubt. In fact, he was subsequently arrested and is currently imprisoned. Yet he still preached with boldness and conviction.

“When we are not being persecuted,” he said, “we spread the gospel. And when persecution comes, we continue spreading the gospel. If we are talking about a President, we declare he is a sinner. And if we are talking about a general secretary, we still declare that he is a sinner. We believe that we have the responsibility to tell Xi Jinping that he is a sinner.”

What a contrast with today’s “gospel of nice,” a PC-compliant, made-for-America message if ever there was one. Whatever you do, don’t offend! Better to skirt the truth. Better to mislead. Just be sure to smile and be nice!

Of course, we should speak the truth in love. With broken hearts. With compassion.

Being mean is no more Christian than being weak.

But if ever there was time to crucify our cowardice, it is now. If ever there was a time to speak up and to speak out, regardless of cost or consequence, it is now. If we don’t, day by day, our freedoms will be taken from us, one at a time, until we find ourselves confined to a tiny, silent corner. This is how those words of Jesus’ apply.

Back in March, 2018, despite not being a fan of Infowars myself, I wrote an article titled, “Why YouTube’s Conflict with Infowars Should Concern Us All.”

I closed the article with this poem, inspired, of course, by the famous World War II poem of Martin Niemoller:

First they came for Infowars, and I did not speak out—because I found them offensive.

Then they came for Geller and Spencer, and I did not speak out­—because I found them obnoxious.

Then they came for Prager U, and I did not speak out—because I found them opinionated.

Then they came for a host of others, and I did not speak out—because I have my own life to live.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

I followed this up with an article on August 6, 2018, “Conservative Speech Be Banned!” This added further documentation and closed with the same poem.

Since then, many other conservative and Christian outlets have been affected (see this shocking list for 2018 compiled by Allum Bokhari). And most recently, Rev. Franklin Graham, arguably the best-known, most-prominent evangelical voice in America, was banned from posting on Facebook for 24 hours because of an innocuous post dating back to 2016.

Facebook quickly apologized and said he was banned in error, but the fact that this could happen at all is another sobering wake-up call.

In 2016, I drew attention to a ridiculous attempt at Princeton University to ban the “m” word (man!) from its campus. No more “man hours” or “manpower” or “layman.” Different, non-sexist terminology must be employed, such as “person hours” (for “man hours”) or “personnel” (for “manpower”) or “non-specialist” (for “layman”).

You might say, “But who cares about what happens on a university campus. That’s already an extreme PC-environment.”

Of course, we should care about what happens on our campuses, since that’s where the next generation is being educated.

But these things are not just happening on college campuses. The UK Telegraph reported on December 27, 2018, that “The European Parliament is attempting to stamp out the use of words such as ‘mankind’ and ‘manpower’ and have them replaced with more gender neutral terms such as ‘humanity’ and ‘staff”.”

Yes, the European Parliament is trying to enforce this hyper-PC speech control.

And, on a related note, let’s not forget that Canada passed a law in 2017 against “misgendering” people, while a similar law had already been passed (with stiff fines) in New York City.

So what will we do? Will we continue to retreat in order to avoid conflict, thereby muting our own voices? Or will we speak the truth in love – as compassionate as we are bold, as Christlike as we are firm, as wise as we are unwavering?

If not now, then when? If not you and me, then who?

Let’s make this our resolution in 2019: “I will not hold back for fear of consequences. I will speak up and speak out as the occasion demands. I will love my neighbor by speaking the truth.”

Are you in?

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This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.