Over the last few generations, Christianity has declined at a massive rate in America, with millennials becoming the first generation in American history with self-proclaimed Christians in the minority. Now, the culprit is becoming clear to everyone: Government. In particular, anti-Christian, anti-God indoctrination masquerading as “public education” has been the key driver of those trends.

While it is a widely held misconception that government schools became more secular as the culture did, the reality is that the “public education” system was always intended to turn Americans against God. Indeed, it was created for that purpose. And it has been phenomenally successful in pursuing that goal, with most Christian children abandoning the faith after more than a decade in a public “school.”

According to a massive report headlined “Promise and Peril: The History of American Religiosity and Its Recent Decline” from the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, the record is clear on the issue. It is not urbanization, or more education, or the progress of “science,” or even more welfare spending, that has so thoroughly de-Christianized America and the rest of the Western world.

Instead, the data and the historical record show that the more tax money a secular government spends on “education,” the more the public will turn away from God. “Childhood religiosity was heavily affected by government spending on education,” wrote AEI researcher Lyman Stone in his report, perhaps stating the obvious.

“Thus, while more educated people were not less religious, societies that spent more public money on education were less religious,” Lyman found. “It is not educational attainment per se that reduces religiosity, but government control of education and, to a lesser extent, government support for retirement.”

Other researchers have theorized that simply receiving more “education” could explain the trend away from faith and Christianity. However, researchers Raphael Franck and Laurence Iannaccone, who studied the issue in depth, noted that “higher educational attainment did not predict lower religiosity: More and less educated people are similarly religious.”

Similarly, the move toward cities and industrialization could not explain the trends either. Ironically, the two researchers found the opposite. “A more urban and industrialized population was associated with greater religiosity,” the report states, adding that even government welfare largely taking the place of churches supporting the poor did not explain the catastrophic plunge in religiosity.

Indeed, according to Lyman, who also cites other researchers, secularized education provided by government that banishes any mention of God “can explain nearly the totality of change in religiosity.” As he puts it, “increasingly secularized government control of education … can account for virtually the entire increase in secularization around the developed world.”

This is exactly what Scripture warns of. “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it,” reads Proverbs 22:6. Jesus warned in Luke 6:40, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.” And yet American Christians continued to send their children to anti-Christian government schools.

The fruit is clear, too. Since 1960, the report says, the share of American adults who attend any religious service has plunged from half to about a third. Meanwhile, the share who say they are members of any religious body has fallen from over 75 percent to just 62 percent. And the number of American who identify with any religion has plunged from over 95 percent to just 75.

This was deliberate, of course. “The decline in religiosity in America is not the product of a natural change in preferences, but an engineered outcome of clearly identifiable policy choices in the past,” the AEI report explains, again stating the obvious.

This writer has investigated those policy choices in depth. It began with anti-Christian Communist Robert Owen in the early 1800s, who created what whistle-blower Orestes Browson described as a “secret society” to promote the then-radical idea that government should “educate” children.

Horace Mann and John Dewey, the architects of America’s government “education” system, also used “public school” to wage war on Christianity and individual liberty. The outrageous 1962-1963 U.S. Supreme Court rulings against Bible and prayer in school merely formalized the revolution and put the final nails in the coffin.

Decades after sensible conservative leaders such as E. Ray Moore of Exodus Mandate began sounding the alarm and calling for Christians to leave government schools, even the Big Government neo-“conservatives” at the anti-Trump National Review have finally caught on.

“For religious conservatives who care about the fate of American culture, it cannot be emphasized enough that education is the whole ball game,” wrote Cameron Hildtich in NRO in an article about the AEI report. “All other policy areas amount to little more than tinkering around the edges.”

“The time has come for religious parents to take their children back from the state,” he concluded. “It simply will not do anymore for faithful Americans to drop their sons and daughters off at the curbside every morning for the government to collect as if they were taking out the trash…. the only real road to religious revival is the one that begins with each parent’s first step out of the public school’s doors.”

Finally, the fact that government schools have brainwashed generations of Americans against God and the church is becoming too obvious to hide. Whether it is too late to turn the tide in America and the rest of the West remains to be seen. But at this point, what is clear is that religious parents of all faiths must run for the exits of the government indoctrination system — now.

One of the many remarkable aspects of this time in America is that all the forces of oppression about which George Orwell warned in his novel 1984 are present and growing, and many of the oppressors can’t see it. Ironically, many of the oppressors view themselves as paragons of virtue when, in reality, they’re paragons of virtue-signaling, which constitutes a performative cloak of invisibility that conceals their totalitarianism.

In Orwell’s portentous novel, he describes four government ministries, one of which—the Ministry of Truth—“concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts.” Orwell wrote,

‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ … All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.

While our news, entertainment, education, and fine arts are not institutionally linked to the government, they are ideologically bound together in an unholy alliance that seeks to indoctrinate society just as Big Brother does in 1984.

Today “progressives” are tearing down statues and renaming government schools to erase recognition of our Founding Fathers. Government schools are teaching the revisionist history of the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.

Through falsified birth certificates and drivers’ licenses, the state colludes with mainstream news outlets, entertainment, and educational institutions to scrub history by identifying men and women as the sex they aren’t. Try looking for information on the actress Ellen Page. Within hours of Page’s recent announcement that she was no longer a woman, the disparate minions in the Ministry of Truth began scrubbing history, changing “Ellen” to “Elliot” and replacing all pronouns that refer to her with deceitful male pronouns.

Acts of hatred and deceit against the human person are now called “love” and “authenticity” by those practiced at the art of Newspeak.

Orwell wrote, “If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.”

It’s happening now, and it is terrifying, indeed. Now we have intrusive Big Government—including government schools—in cahoots with Big Tech to control the past, the present, and the future. Social media has created algorithms and inconsistently applied “community standards” to suppress the dissemination of not only ideas but also news.

Orwell explains that in the government-mandated language of Newspeak, “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” When I worked at Deerfield High School, two English teachers, Michael Wolf and Jeff Berger-White, sent a letter to the local press which was signed by half the department in which they argued,

It is difficult for … people … to simultaneously hold conflicting opinions. But this difficulty should not prevent us from attempting to do so. The best work we do in our classrooms is to highlight how multiple understandings are true, and that the validity of one idea does not necessarily negate the validity of another.

I’m pretty sure they read 1984 but seemed to have missed the point.

In their letter, they acknowledged that “certain doctrine” that “may not allow diverse and conflicting views to coexist” still have a “cherished place” in their classrooms—unless those doctrine are “malicious.” Guess which views on sexuality the gods of government schools have declared malicious.

The vehicle for our rocketing trip deep down into our subterranean Orwellian dystopia is “trans”-cultism. The world we’ve entered is the anti-science Transtopia where, in Orwell’s words, “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” The propellant that reality-denying “trans”-cultists and their fearful and/or foolish collaborators use is Newspeak.

Newspeak, like the speech rules leftists impose today, is intended to control thought:

It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all… a heretical thought… should be literally unthinkable. … This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings. … [T]he special function of certain Newspeak words. … was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them.

In two now-famous quotes, Orwell illuminates the troubling views of tyrants about language:

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

On December 8, 2020, the University of Michigan’s Information and Technology Services’ “Words Matter Task Force”—Ministry of Truth for short—issued its spanking new Newspeak lexicon. Acknowledging that “language is powerful,” the Ministers of Truthiness have published a document with banned words and “recommended” replacements along with a bewildering array of action steps to ensure widespread compliance. The banned list—which is “not exhaustive and will continue to grow”—are those words deemed by the Ministers of Truthiness (aka Thought Police) to “harm morale, and deliberately or inadvertently exclude people from feeling accepted” or “cause people to feel alienated.”

Here are a few of the alienating terms (left column) and their “recommended” Newspeakian replacements (right column):

I don’t know how fans of Masters of the Universe are going to feel about Primaries of the Universe.

This list reveals that the left is teaching people to be offended in order to maintain their cultural power through intersectional-identity grievance politics. My anecdotal experience with even leftists suggests virtually no one has been offended by most of these expressions as they are commonly used until the last five minutes of history. And the faux-offense now being asserted didn’t arise naturally. It had to be beaten into them by the hammer of tolerance wielded by far-left social justice warriors.

It also raises a question for leftists: If a word’s history is largely unknown and its current meaning is inoffensive, why eliminate it? Why not be thankful that the old ugly association has been supplanted by a new innocuous one?

If, on the other hand, we must commit to linguistic stasis, then shouldn’t we retain the historical meaning of, for example, pronouns?

And what if I’m offended by being commanded to use pronouns based on “gender identity” rather than on biological sex?  What if, because I’m deeply committed to science, reality, truth, and the First Amendment, I’m offended by attempts to socially coerce language compliance in the service of a political agenda?

Orwell wrote that “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” Yep, that pretty much describes what 16+ years of secular education does to children.

Under an article about the University of Michigan’s Ministry of Truth on the College Fix website, one waggish fellow left this perfect response to the banned words list:

Every member of the Words Matter Task Force has sold his or her ideals down the river. This black-and-white thinking only ever leads to blacklists, and shunning people off the reservation while the crazies enjoy a crippled picnic. To be thrown under the bus for being the low man on the social-justice totem pole is to be grandfathered into the ever-growing community of gypped guys and gals, excluded when the masters change the rules of polite society into one of a dummy society where every utterance is weighed for a privileged account. Even asking for a sanity check of these lunatic brown-baggers puts you at risk of being professionally, if not personally, disabled. They may start by cracking the whip rhetorically, but their rhetoric inevitably leads to insane physical realities sooner or later.

In short, kiss my grits, sweetie.

Remember this list next time you see the leftist American Library Association’s annual umbrage-fest called Banned Books Week. Leftists ban not only books, but also words.

Orwell said something else “progressives” will hate:

Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

Written by Ruth Hoskins

Many people have homeschooling mixed up with virtual schooling. These parents are “teaching” their children via virtual school, yet commenting that they hate homeschooling! They think the two are one and the same. Unfortunately, because so many children are not performing well with virtual school, this misunderstanding between the two educational options is ripe for tarnishing the reputation of homeschooling.

Let me be clear, homeschooling is not at all the same as virtual school. I can see how some may confuse the two, as both learning environments happen within the home; however, the similarities stop there. In this article I will discuss three very distinct differences between homeschooling and virtual schooling. These differences could be reasons why many homeschoolers are thriving at the same time that virtual school learners are not.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have walked away from the virtual school platform and embraced true homeschooling. Having observed a few online homeschool forums, it is clear that parents are not only curious about homeschooling, but many are excited and thriving in the homeschool arena. Below are three differences that parents and students experience when the teaching environment is a homeschool versus a virtual school.

1.) As a parent of a homeschool child, you are in charge. You set the agenda for your child based on the learning objectives that you have set forth. These objectives are a combination of what your state requires as well as what you feel is best for your child. You decide how your child will meet and, in some cases, surpass the learning goals for the year.

In contrast, as a parent of a virtual school child, you act as an administrator, pushing forth the teacher’s agenda. Your job is to make sure the assignments are completed. You have no control over the agenda or the assignments. Your job is to ensure that the work is completed to the teacher’s satisfaction.

2.) As a parent of a homeschool child, you have freedom and flexibility in organizing your school day. You plan your child’s schoolwork, breaks, lunches, chores, and crafts around the needs of your child within the family unit. You control the pace of learning. If your child is outperforming or struggling with a subject, you can increase or decrease the amount and the pace of schoolwork based on your child’s ability to comprehend the material. This is the epitome of a tailor-made education.

In contrast, as a parent of a virtual school child, your job is to ensure your child’s school day begins and ends when the online teacher dictates and see to it that the student shows up, logs in on time, and completes their designated assignments. You have limited to no control over the pace of learning happening inside the virtual classroom; breaks happen according to the teacher’s classroom schedule. Virtual classroom management can be challenging, especially when twenty or so children are logged online and offline at any given time throughout the day.

3.) As a parent of a homeschool child, family life and education are intertwined. Not only does your child learn through worksheets, textbooks, and reading material, but they also learn through valuable life lessons. In a homeschool environment, children learn to share and serve at home and to help each other. They learn that life isn’t about sitting alone and doing their own work. They observe and understand that households work together to achieve shared goals. In addition, you, as a parent, get to spend quality time with your child: learning and reading together, passing down family recipes, creating traditions and memories, instilling integrity, and working through challenges. Homeschooling emphasizes that education is about educating the entire child – academically, mentally, socially, and spiritually.

In contrast, as a parent of a virtual school child, family life and education are easily separated. Just as in traditional school, children are not available during “school time.” Your child can check out of family life because they are “in school.” Chores have to wait.  There isn’t time to read to a younger sibling because “I have school.” A parent may even feel they cannot ask anything of their child while the child is in virtual school. This can lead to parental frustration. Some parents may find that the child’s helpful statements “your turn” and “let me help” are replaced with “I need” and “I can’t.” In the virtual school environment, parents discover they have to manage a child’s school life and home life as two separate entities. It is no wonder virtual school is causing many parents to grow weary.

Homeschooling is a great alternative to virtual school.  Perhaps take the time during this holiday break to decide if homeschooling is right for your family.

Learn more! Ruth has recently released a book titled, “Homeschooling as a Lifestyle.” You can order a copy of this book by calling the IFI Office during normal business hours at (708) 781-9329.

This book is written to give clarity to something that, as a parent, you are uniquely designed to do: teach your children. This book is a roadmap of sorts. It’s a guide to help you along your homeschooling journey. It will take you from the beginning of your children’s educational career through high school. It will discuss how to get started, the three phases of homeschooling, things to consider when picking a curriculum, and much more.

Ruth Hoskins is a veteran homeschooling mom, who along with her husband, taught their children from birth through high school. They did this without having an educational degree or certificate. She says that it was one of the most rewarding and challenging endeavors she’s had in her life. Ruth wants to encourage others who have a desire to homeschool their children to go for it. The benefits are so much more than academic achievements. 

Check out Ruth’s blog: Homeschooling As A Lifestyle for more information.

Since diversity re-education is all the rage these days (and if Harris and her shadowy, confused puppet win the election will only get worse), I thought it might be helpful to publish the letter I emailed to Deerfield High School’s principal in about 2007 when I dropped out of an ongoing divisive diversity workshop due to the intolerance, close-mindedness, bigotry, and dishonesty of my un-collegial colleagues.

Here’s my lightly revised letter:

There’s gold in them thar hills–I mean, I have good news about the diversity group. I am so out of there. My time is better spent working for equity, balance, religious freedom, and parental rights as a parent rather than as participant in a diversity group. 

I am incensed at the rhetorical manipulation that took place in the meeting. For a faculty member to imply or state that somehow it is illegitimate or inappropriate for me to challenge the use of the word “safety” is itself, inappropriate. Liberals have co-opted the word “safety” precisely for its political efficacy (i.e., “safety” carries more gravitas and urgency than does “comfort”). After co-opting and redefining the word “safety,” liberals then criticize others for challenging its linguistic accuracy as well as the reality of their assertions regarding “safety.” 

I do not, in any rational way, make homosexual students unsafe. If they know my moral views—which I do not discuss with students—they may feel uncomfortable. But uncomfortable does not mean unsafe no matter what someone may “feel.” Sometimes feelings are not based on reality, and sometimes “bad” feelings are actually good things.

Then one administrator [a lesbian] said that she doesn’t like that I said she “was not legitimate.” I did not say that, nor do I think that. I said I believe homosexual acts are not morally legitimate. But I guess those are her “feelings,” so to hell with truth or reality. Actually, I had earlier said that we should value the dignity and worth of all people, which does not necessitate valuing, celebrating, or affirming homosexuality.

And we expect kids to negotiate this terrain when we can’t make it through a one-hour conversation without one administrator making things up and a faculty member attempting to prohibit me from dissenting.

Even the most fundamental aspects of debate are now controlled by liberal ideology.  That is, feelings have assumed some privileged polemical position that renders challenges to them unethical.

Feelings, in reality, have no inherent analytical value, although a society increasingly unable to think analytically, finds feelings increasingly persuasive (Read Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death). Feelings are neither the arbiters nor signifiers of right or wrong. They tell us precisely nothing about morality. If we can’t even agree on the relative value of subjective feelings, then dialogue, discussion, or debate is a meaningless exercise in futility.  

The arrogance of educators asserting, as our liberal faculty members do, that it is their job to compel kids to negotiate difficult conversations and their job to challenge the morals of students about arguably the single most controversial issue in society is astonishing. I don’t understand why the administration cannot see the intractable, irreconcilable nature of addressing this at school. Conservative beliefs will always be viewed as discriminatory, hurtful beliefs that make others “unsafe.” Liberal beliefs will always denigrate the deeply held beliefs of conservatives and–in my view–encourage destructive choices, and violate religious and parental rights.

And the assertion by the administration that the school must address this because “kids are growing up in a different world” is nonsense. Perhaps you live in some parallel universe, but I inhabit the very same world with the very same diversity issues and the very same communication challenges as my children. And when they get out in the real world, they will choose to negotiate this problematic terrain in the very same ways we adults do: some will avoid the topic in all contexts, most will avoid it except with those who share their views, and some will choose to become active on one side or the other for one reason or another.   

How dare the school compel adolescents who may be struggling with academics, peer pressure, drugs, alcohol, athletics, or family dysfunction to confront this issue that they will not be compelled to address publicly as adults. No one in the administration ever seems to entertain the possibility that this grand social experiment may indeed lead to greater division and greater stress for students—not less. I not only suspect it will exacerbate disunity, I’m certain of it. 

The administration and liberal faculty members are selective, however, in the issues and aspects of issues that they feel obliged to compel students to confront. They say the school must address homosexuality because it’s “in the world” but that homosexual kids can’t hear that many believe homosexual acts are immoral, because they will feel bad. Well, that’s the real world too. Some people will find our beliefs wrong, our behaviors immoral, our desires misdirected, and our feelings disordered.  

Our mission as educators should be much more humble, modest, and circumscribed. It is not our job to fix every problem in the world. It is not our job to expose students to every phenomenon that exists in the world. It is not our job to take our political or moral views into the classroom. It is not our job to compel others to view the world through the lens of our choosing. It is not our job to lead kids in areas for which we were not hired or try to mold our area of expertise into one that comports with our ideology. But the issue at hand is even more complex because we can’t even agree on what the problem is, let alone fix it.

The implication that the presence of bad feelings, or shame, or “lack of safety” proves that an injustice has been done is fallacious. Any time a government, society, school, or parent asserts that some behavior or impulse is wrong, those who choose that behavior or have that impulse feel bad. We don’t automatically condemn the judgment of those who assert moral principles.  

We abdicate our right to lead if we abdicate our responsibility to make judgments about right conduct. But now that some have arrived at the moral judgment that homosexuality is moral, everyone else is expected to refrain from expressing an opposing judgment so as not to make anyone feel bad.  

Polyamorists feel bad, “unsafe” and stigmatized due to societal disapproval of polyamory. Are we now expected to refrain from asserting that polyamory is wrong? Would you like your child exposed to an idea that you find profoundly immoral, just because a phenomenon exists, or because some feel bad when you assert it’s wrong, or because some want to coerce society into approval?

I also feel frustrated with the hypocrisy of colleagues who declare repeatedly how deeply they value diverse voices. Last year, I had a private conversation with a colleague in which I respectfully expressed my concern over what appeared to be a lack of balance on the topic of homosexuality in the school. I suggested that since he was teaching The Laramie Project, perhaps he could bring in an essay articulating an opposing view. Well, he shared my wrong-thoughts with other faculty members–an act for which he later apologized to me when he saw what his sharing caused.  

His sharing of my wrong-thoughts—which were that there should be ideological balance when addressing this controversial issue—prompted three colleagues in paroxysms of rage to send a letter to the local press and then demand the English Department chair have a meeting in which the three—all men by the way—could gang up on me in a man-splaining struggle session. … Oh, and guess what: one of those teachers is also in this diversity group. 

A school administrator at the time told me that actively addressing controversial issues related to sexuality is necessary in public schools in order to teach children “how to negotiate difficult conversations.” Who said that’s the role of government employees in public schools hired to teach English, social studies, world languages, calculus, or physics to other people’s minor children? What is their expertise in the fields of morality, ethics, ontology, epistemology, psychology, endocrinology, neuroscience, and conflict resolution—all of which are central to discussions on homosexuality and “trans” cultism? And if that is a responsibility of government employees, why are we letting people who are manifestly unfit for such a task, as demonstrated by their eager willingness to censor dissenting voices, take charge of it?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/audio_Drop-Out-of-Diversity-Re-education-Struggle-Sessions-While-You-Can.mp3

The state of Illinois long ago made the embarrassing leap from local joke to national joke. The Land of Lincoln is now the corrupt, insolvent, morally vacuous, leftist dystopia of U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, Springfield mob boss Mike Madigan, Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. I guess the lazy, irresponsible, anti-science, and morally vacuous community organizers that comprise the Chicago Teachers’ Union thought Illinois was not getting quite enough national PR, so on Sunday, they tweeted,

The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.

Say what? Even for head-scratching comments from leftists, that’s a doozy.

Are black and Latino families who want their children back in school learning and socializing racists?

Are mothers who want their daughters back in school learning and socializing sexist and misogynistic?

No need for defining terms, making assertions, and providing evidence that others are completely free to critique through reason and the provision of counterevidence. Just call names plucked from the intersectional name-calling toolbox.

Safety of school openings

Parents have seen the scientific evidence which clearly and consistently shows that if infected, children under 18 have a 99.997 percent chance of surviving COVID-19. These parents wonder why their children should suffer socially, emotionally, and academically from school shutdowns when the health risk of opening schools is negligible.

If the CTU opposes school openings out of fear for the safety of their union members, here are the survival rates for adults by age if they should contract the Wuhan virus:

22-24: 99.996 percent survival rate

25-29: 99.987 percent survival rate

30-34: 99.976 percent survival rate

35-39: 99.960 percent survival rate

40-44: 99.925 percent survival rate

45-49: 99.879 percent survival rate

50-54: 99.793 percent survival rate

55-59: 99.677 percent survival rate

60-64: 99.544 percent survival rate

Over two-thirds of public school teachers (71 percent) are under 50 years old, and only 17% are over 55.  According to the Illinois Policy Institute, “More than 71 percent of [Illinois’ Teachers’ Retirement System] members retired before the age of 60.” So, most teachers are at little risk of dying from COVID-19. Those employees who have co-morbidities that put them at great risk from contracting the Wuhan virus should be free to stay home.

But no teacher whose chance of surviving COVID-19 is over 99 percent but chooses not to work should not be paid one red cent. Their jobs should be filled by teachers who are rational and eager to work.

If teachers think it’s unsafe to work unless they’re guaranteed 0 percent risk of death, then they shouldn’t be working—anywhere. There’s a risk of death by driving to and from work or contracting influenza from a student or colleague. There is a risk of death from tripping over a small child or being bowled over by a strapping high school boy during passing periods. Life carries risks.

CTU tweet straight out of Critical Race Theory

The CTU’s tweet is what Critical Race Theory (CRT) has wrought in America. CRT—whose ideas are taught everywhere including in our public schools—divides society up into two groups: the purported oppressors and the purported oppressed. CRT claims that oppressors are those who allegedly have power and that the oppressed are those who allegedly lack cultural power.

So, who has no power—allegedly? People of color, women, those who are erotically attracted to persons of the same sex, and those who wish they were the sex they aren’t. That’s who. Those with power—allegedly—can’t help but oppress them.

Pastor and theologian John Piper identifies accurately the unbiblical assumptions at the dark heart of Critical Race Theory:

[A]t root [critical race theory proponents] believe a person’s essential identity is self-chosen, self-constructed, not God-designed or God-given. Or another way to say it would be that, when it comes to our own identity, we are our own god. We do not acknowledge or submit to any divine truth or morality as above us, constraining or limiting our own self-definition, self-construction.

So, if I choose to be a woman though God made me a man, I am right to do so. No God, no morality, no religion, no ideology can replace me as the self-determining, self-defining, self-deifying sovereign of my own identity. …

[The] fundamental assumption is that human identity is self-constructed, not God-given. Any group, therefore, that claims to have access to an infallible word of God that dictates human identity and human right and wrong is a manifest threat to human autonomy. Within the framework of critical race theory, the claim of biblical authority can be understood only as a group trying to seize power. …

Inside critical race theory, God is small and negligible. The Bible is small and negligible. Truth is small and negligible. And evil is big, and there is no answer for it. It is a hopeless path.

Who really oppresses whom in America?

While virtually the entire institutional power structure in America now worships at the altar of the gods of melanin, sexual libertinism, and genitalia, the Chicago Teachers’ Union expects us to believe persons of color, the sexually deviant, and women are relentlessly oppressed.

While people can and do lose their jobs for saying they believe homosexual acts are immoral and humans with penises are not women, the powerful in society celebrate those who announce that henceforth they will pretend to be the sex they aren’t.

I wonder, if the CTU believes opening schools constitutes hatred of women, what do they believe the vivisection of minor girls who suddenly believe they’re boys constitutes?

Chicago Teachers Union squeaks “uncle”

Facing a barrage of national criticism and mockery, the CTU deleted the absurd tweet and tweeted this in hope of soothing the justifiably outraged parents:

Fair enough. Complex issue. Requires nuance. And much more discussion. More important, the people the decision affects deserve more. So we’ll continue give [sic]them that.

“Continue” giving people affected by the CTU’s activism “nuance,” “discussion,” and “more”? Does the CTU expect people to be deceived by their inclusion of the word “continue” into believing the CTU has been providing “nuanced discussions and more” to everyone affected by their actions?

Once again, the CTU reveals its disdain for the public that pays their bloated salaries and benefits.

If only the CTU, the National Education Association, and all “progressive” activists working in public schools had the humility and commitment to tolerance, diversity, and critical thinking that they claim to have, we might have a shot at making government schools places of education instead of indoctrination.

If only “progressive” educators really believed what they tell parents about “honoring all voices” instead of censoring all voices with which they disagree, schools could become a “safe space” for even conservative students and teachers.

If only “progressive” educators who use the classroom to assail the beliefs of parents who pay their salaries respected boundaries, perhaps the government school system wouldn’t need to be dismantled.

Imagine a government school system in which “progressive” teachers and administrators admitted that some other things are complex and require nuance and much more discussion and where all voices were included in those discussions without fear or favor.

Imagine a government school system where systemic bigotry against conservative ideas did not reign supreme.

Imagine a government school system in which teachers and administrators acknowledged that ideas about race and racism derived from Critical Race Theory and embedded in the 1619 Project and a host of other resources recommended by CTU members are not objective facts but arguable assumptions.

Imagine a government school system in which teachers and administrators acknowledged that teaching other people’s children that conservative beliefs on sexuality constitute ignorant, hateful bigotry is neither objective, nor factual, nor the business of public employees.

Two chances of that happening: slim and fat.

This rare semi-apology from one of the most arrogant demographics in American society—leftist government schoolteachers—demonstrates one good thing: the collective voices of the great unwashed, ugly, deplorables still have some power remaining. And that’s why leftists want to undermine the First Amendment, pack the Supreme Court, end the filibuster, corrupt elections, and allow Big Tech and Big Media unfettered control over communication.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Absurd-Tweet-by-CTU.mp3

We are committed to upholding truth while resisting and opposing the rising wave of delusional thinking and tyrannical laws/mandates that have afflicted our state and nation. IFI will continue to provide our supporters with timely alerts, video reports, podcasts, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences, and thought-provoking commentaries—content that is increasingly hard to find.

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Schools across America are “weaponizing whiteness,” according to the scandal-plagued Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). To combat this alleged problem, teachers must let children run classrooms while indoctrinating them into hating the very foundations of the United States and viewing everything through the lens of “race,”  explained the far-left hate group.

Infamous for its grotesque bigotry against people of faith and even for inspiring a Christian-hating terrorist to attempt mass murder, the SPLC offers a range of materials to “educators” through its “Teaching Tolerance” program — a program that praised communist terrorist Bill Ayers as a role model for educators. Its latest initiative to further weaponize government schools by promoting “Critical Race Theory” is now drawing nationwide scrutiny.

It begins with a lie. “Weaponizing whiteness happens in schools every day,” reads a report about the supposed problem in the latest issue of the SPLC’s “Teaching Tolerance” magazine, which also works to promote homosexuality, transgenderism, hatred against Christians, and other controversial ideas in government schools. It is a bold claim from the SPLC. However, it is supported by zero credible evidence, as the piece itself shows.

The first actual example provided of this alleged “weaponization” of “whiteness” supposedly happening in schools is offered by “humanities” teacher Charles McGeehan, a guilt-ridden white man who founded an outfit (that seems to be mostly a Facebook page with 678 likes) called “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” (BARWE). Yes, seriously.

His oh-so-horrifying example of this alleged scourge is that “minor issues — like a student coming to class late or cutting class—end up spiraling into more serious disciplinary issues that can have dire consequences for students.” Yes, seriously: Consequences for tardiness or cutting class is the very first example of this ubiquitous plague said to be afflicting children all across America.

Simply being a teacher and doing what teachers are hired to do — exercise authority in the classroom while teaching children — makes McGeehan feel guilty over his racism. “I have to actively resist the urge to maintain power or control in my classroom, and especially to resist the anger that can bubble up in me when that control is called into question,” he told the SPLC.

The second example of this alleged “weaponization” of “whiteness,” even more ludicrous than the first, comes from a 2016 “study” using “eye-tracking technology.” According to the “study,” teachers — especially black teachers — were supposedly 8 percent more likely to look at black boys than white boys when looking for indications of “challenging behavior” in the classroom. Ironically, the same study found teachers were also more likely to look at white girls than black girls.

And yet, despite the almost comical nature of the easily discredited “findings” and conclusions, the fake media and the SPLC trumpeted this “study” as proof that teachers are somehow systemically racist against black children. Apparently, black educators supposedly being harsher on black children is also evidence of white supremacy and weaponizing whiteness.

Of course, there is a far simpler explanation than systemic racism and “implicit bias” for the findings. The number of black boys coming from single-parent homes is significantly higher than the number of white children, and every study that has looked at the issue shows children without fathers at home are far more likely to get in trouble. The same argument applies to the SPLC’s claim that black children are more likely to be referred to law-enforcement.

Incredibly, disciplining children without regard to race and even exasperated teachers crying in the classroom are offered as additional examples of the supposed weaponization of whiteness. Yes, seriously. Indeed, when a female teacher requests support from law-enforcement to deal with an out-of-control child, this is tantamount to “recreating the dynamics that were used as excuses for racial terror,” SPLC propagandist Coshandra Dillard claims in the fall 2020 issue of Teaching Tolerance.

Even teachers denying their racism and “weaponization of whiteness,” or insisting that they did not mean any harm, is inflicting “further damage” on children, according to the SPLC. Yes, seriously: If teachers refuse to confess their alleged guilt and collective sin stemming from their lack of sufficient melanin in their skin, they are somehow hurting children. Welcome to the absurd world of the SPLC and its allies in government “education.”

Ironically, studies show the sort of “diversity” indoctrination being advocated by the SPLC and other race-mongers actually makes people more racist. As the Harvard Business Review put it, “a number of studies suggest that it can activate bias or spark a backlash.” Of course, the SPLC and the race-mongers know this. But since they thrive on fomenting racism and hate to bring in money, it is no surprise to see them peddle quackery that encourages racism and hate.

The SPLC has a long and almost unbelievable history of absurdity. For instance, it was forced to pay millions of dollars after libeling a practicing Muslim as one of the world’s top “anti-Muslim extremists.” The group also smeared a top black law professor for supposedly enabling “white supremacy” by supporting border security. The SPLC even claimed a Cherokee Indian married to a direct descendant of Sacajawea as the “matriarch” of the “anti-Indian movement.”

Perhaps more alarming, the SPLC’s vicious hate-mongering even inspired homosexual terrorist Floyd Corkins to try to massacre employees of the Family Research Council for speaking against the LGBT agenda. Using the SPLC “hate map” as a guide, Corkins admitted to the FBI he was inspired by the SPLC and planned to rub Chik-Fil-A sandwiches in the faces of his victims after slaughtering them.

To normal people, the SPLC’s unhinged whining about the supposed “weaponization of whiteness” by school teachers probably sounds more like the rantings of a madman than a legitimate concern about a legitimate issue. However, despite the outlandishness of it all, the implications are deadly serious. The far-left group claims to reach over half a million educators, many of whom have also been conditioned by propaganda and substandard “education” into believing the absurdities of the Marxist ideology known as “Critical Race Theory.”

In addition to its widespread influence, the lies being peddled by the SPLC would lead to the collapse of the United States as a constitutional Republic guaranteeing God-given rights for all. For instance, in the SPLC rant on the “Weaponization of Whiteness in Schools,” the writer peddles the false notion that “anti-Blackness and white supremacy are baked into our country’s foundation.”

In reality, America’s Founders made a revolutionary claim that remains at the foundation of America: That all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The argued that this was a self-evident truth. But if the false narrative pushed by the SPLC about the nation’s biblical foundations in liberty were to become widely accepted, it would literally lead to the crumbling of the America that sits on those foundations.

More importantly, the racist arguments made by the SPLC are preposterous from a Christian perspective — and the overwhelming majority of Americans (whose taxes pay for public schools) continue to describe themselves as Christian. While the Bible speaks of tribes, nations, and tongues, the God of the Bible never divides people by “race.” In fact, the Scriptures never even mention “race” in the same sense as modern-day race-mongers such as the SPLC.

We are committed to upholding truth while resisting and opposing the rising wave of delusional thinking and tyrannical laws/mandates that have afflicted our state and nation. IFI will continue to provide our supporters with timely alerts, video reports, podcasts, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences, and thought-provoking commentaries—content that is increasingly hard to find.

We encourage you to join us in our efforts. Your support will help us to continue our vital work in 2021. A vigorous defense of biblical truth is needed more than ever in Illinois. #GivingTuesday

Conservative parents with kids in Illinois public schools, WAKE UP! Leftists on the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and in Springfield aren’t anywhere near done with their indoctrination mandates. A new amendment to Illinois State Board of Education teacher standards has been proposed by an ISBE committee to infuse the assumptions of Critical Race Theory, identity politics, BLM, and the 1619 Project into 1.  all teacher-training programs/education majors, 2. all Professional Education Licensing (PEL), and 3. all public school classrooms. The proposed standards are called “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards”–translated: Leftist Responsive Indoctrinating Diktats.

In an excruciatingly detailed 2,400- word document, leftists laid bare the comprehensive nature of the indoctrination they seek to mandate. These “standards” will apply to all teachers, administrators, school counselors, school psychologists, school social workers, school nurses, and speech language pathologists.

Not surprisingly, the ten-member steering team of the Diverse and Learner Ready Committee that concocted the new indoctrination standards has three lawmakers—all Democrats (Fred Crespo, Mary Edly-Allen, and Maurice West).

Knowledge of objective facts and the development of the capacity to think logically through critical examination of diverse ideas are relegated to the back of the “education” bus in favor of promoting propaganda about identity, “systems of oppression,” “sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege,” and “Eurocentrism.”

I will attempt to make clear the loathsome outlines and dangerous implications of this proposal while sparing readers many of the excruciating details.

Teachers are expected to accept as objective truth and implement the following:

1.) Understand and value the notion that … there is not one “correct” way of doing or understanding something.

2.) Affirm students’ “backgrounds and identities.”

3.) Assess how their own biases and perceptions affect their teaching practice and how they access tools to mitigate their own racist, sexist, homophobic, Eurocentric behavior or unearned privilege.

4.) Be aware of the effects of power and privilege and the need for social advocacy and social action to better empower diverse students and communities.

5.) Align expectations … used in the classroom with the values and cultural norms of students’ families.

6.) Encourage and affirm the personal experiences … students share in the classroom.

7.) Consistently solicit students’ input on the curriculum.

8.) Co-create, with students, the collective expectations and agreements regarding the physical space and social-emotional culture of the classroom.

9.) Create a risk-taking space that promotes student activism and advocacy.

10.) Invite family and community members to teach about topics that are culturally specific and aligned to the classroom curriculum or content area.

11.) Intentionally embrace student identities and prioritize representation in the curriculum.

12.) “Curate the curriculum.”

13.) Employ authentic and modern technology usage inspiring digital literacy through an equity lens.

14.) Ensure assessments reflect the enriched curriculum that has embedded student identities.

15.) Embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives … toward traditionally marginalized populations.

16.) Implement and integrate the wide spectrum and fluidity of identities in the curriculum.

17.) Ensure text selections reflect students’ classroom, community, and family culture.

18.) Ensure teacher and students co-create content to include a counternarrative to dominant culture.

19.) Use a resource tool to assess the curriculum and assessments for biases.

20.) Promote robust discussion with the intent of raising consciousness that reflects modern society and the ways in which cultures and communities intersect.

21.) Consider a broader modality of student assessments, such as … “community assessments, social justice work, action research projects, and recognition beyond academia.”

So many issues raised by this ethically repellent, logically contradictory bill:

• Should lawmakers, the ISBE, or departments of education that train teachers require school professionals to value the dubious claim that “there is no correct way of understanding or doing something”? If so, does that claim apply to the claim itself? Perhaps the claim that there is no correct way of understanding or doing something applies to the entire amendment, in which case it must, by its own logic, be rejected.

• Is it the proper role of lawmakers, the ISBE, or departments of education to require school educators to affirm all “identities”? Would those identities include trans-racialists like Rachel Dolezal? Trans-ethnicists? Trans-speciesists? Minor-Attracted Persons? Polyamorists? Zoophiles? Infantilists? Trans-ableists who identify as amputees or paraplegics? Who gets to decide which “identities” educators must embrace and affirm? I guess if there’s no correct way of doing or understanding anything, then “educators” must include all those marginalized groups or any others that may emerge.

• Don’t be fooled by any of the tricksy rhetoric used in this amendment. None of the marginalized groups that will be valued, embraced, affirmed, coddled, and mollycoddled will be conservatives or theologically orthodox Christians. The leftists who wrote this amendment are not interested in the “backgrounds, communities, or cultures” of conservative students or theologically orthodox Catholics or Protestants.

• Does anyone think the “enriched,” “curated” curricula and assessments, or the community speakers and robust consciousness-raising discussions will include conservative beliefs on race, cross-sex identification, and homosexuality?

• The “broader modality of assessments” is a way to incentivize and reward leftist activism. Leftists want, for example, an award for youth activism from BLM or a “trans” cultic organization to count toward a student’s grade.

Lest anyone be unclear of the focus of these new standards, Capitol News cites ISBE spokeswoman Jackie Matthews, who said this about the proposed standards:

Culturally responsive practices are especially important in better supporting Illinois’ LGBTQ+ youth.

As reported by Capitol News,

The state board is scheduled to act on the [proposed standards] at its Dec. 16 meeting. If the board approves them, the new rules would be published a second time, starting another 45-day period during which the proposed standards would be reviewed by the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR.

If approved by JCAR, the standards would become part of the standards by which all teachers and administrators are evaluated.

This is how garbage gets into our children’s classrooms: It starts by either leftist professors in education departments, or state boards of education committees, or in state legislatures using their positions to advance their ideological beliefs.

Illinois leftists in control of everything have already mandated that K-12 public schools teach positively about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, and now they’re about to mandate that all college and university teacher training programs and all professional educators affirm leftist beliefs about systemic racism, homosexuality, and “trans”-cultism. If conservative Illinoisans are unwilling or unable to stop this, they better get their kids out of our government indoctrination centers pronto.

Those whose kids are grown or who don’t have kids ought not be complacent, because this indoctrination will use their taxes to infect the hearts and minds of kids who will be their culture-makers in 10-20 years. Those whose children are in private schools ought not be complacent because this amendment will affect teachers in their schools as well.  And home schoolers should care because their taxes are being used to infect the hearts and minds of kids who will be their culture-makers in 10-20 years—culture-makers who will one day try to ban homeschooling. Leftists are nothing if not all-inclusive totalitarians.

Leftist lawmakers in Illinois, who with their supermajorities in both the state Illinois House and Illinois Senate own our public schools, are hell-bent on supplanting education with indoctrination. The concern of leftist lawmakers and leftist activists operating in our public schools is to indoctrinate Illinois school children with leftist dogma on race, sexuality, and American history–dogma that will undermine faith and foment yet more division. They want to make it impossible for conservative parents to shape their own children’s views on these fundamental issues. Leftists achieve that goal through legislation, ISBE guidelines, professional development, curricula, and fervent opposition to school choice.

Teachers, leave those kids alone.

Take ACTION: It is vital that the members of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) hear from all Illinois taxpayers. Please click HERE to send a message to this committee urging them to vote against any proposal that would mandate left-leaning standards for educators in Illinois public schools.

The Democratic Co-Chairman is Illinois Senator Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago). His office number is (773) 445-8128.

The Republican Co-Chairman is Keith Wheeler (R-North Aurora). His office number is (630) 345-3464.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Indoctrination-Efforts-Accelerate.mp3

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Written by Dr. Sean M. Brooks

The 1776 Commission and the executive order signed by the president of the United States are the last things being discussed right now, and understandably so.  However, the 1776 Commission is more than what meets the eye.  The executive order is committed to restoring an education about the founding of our nation to the frontline of the information war: our nation’s schools.

The 1776 Commission is dedicated to increasing an accurate teaching and an emphasis on this teaching in America’s K–12 schools and throughout formal instruction.  The executive order also emphasis this education regarding the current statues and historical landmarks that currently exist, thereby providing protection of these monuments and statues that have previously been attacked and vandalized or taken down by radicals and politicians throughout America.  This has been a historic tactic by Marxists to remove America’s history in an effort to destroy the truth, while replacing this history with their own propagandized interpretation.

The 1776 Commission is also a full rebuke and a knockout punch to The 1619 Project and its mission to rewrite America’s history based on the lie that America is founded on racism, bigotry, and discrimination.  A simple reading of Thomas Jefferson’s own writings would clearly show that he, too, was interested in abolishing slavery, even as a young congressman in Virginia before the revolution.  In fact, it was placed to a vote because of his hard work on this issue.  The vote failed due to countless congressmen in Virginia being beholden to England.  It’s this accurate history that the 1619 Project sought to ignore while replacing it with their own false interpretation.  The 1776 Commission takes the 1619 Project head on, while also emphasizing the need to fully remove Common Core, which has been known to be the vector of such indoctrination and propaganda.

The Commission is to be made up of approximately no more that 20 people, including members of the president’s own Cabinet and non-administrative civilian members who are content experts and experts in the field of education.  These individuals are given two years to organize and report growth in the areas of education and exposure to America’s youths and protection of landmarks and state parks, veterans’ memorials, and other historic sites that are critical to the education of our youth to instill an accurate understanding of our nation’s history and the founding of America.  The 1776 Commission is also committed to grant funding for groups and educational institutions who show an increased interest in education America’s youths about the founding of American, its founders, its history, and the Revolutionary War and those who fought for our independence and allow us to be free.

The Commission has two years to produce results, and those results and accomplishments are to be reported by the secretary of education.  The Commission can continue beyond two years, based on a presidential order or recommendation.  However, this is where the bullet hits the bone.  If Common Core digs in, as it has in the past, by simply moving into and hiding within corporatized curricula that are commonly sold to and accepted by K–12 school districts, the propaganda and indoctrination will not go away.  The Commission cannot recommend that those who are in positions of influence (i.e., administrators, elementary teachers, history teachers, civics teachers, etc.) be replaced, as these decisions reside with the school districts themselves.

Effective educators have already been teaching an accurate history of our nation’s founding and the Revolutionary War, along with our founders.  So the 1776 Commission cannot remove destructive ideologies that exist within individuals who are hell-bent on indoctrinating America’s youths.  What the 1776 Commission does do, however, is stop groups and organizations such as the 1619 Project from entering government-funded K–12 schools, along with government-funded higher education institutions.  This is a good thing.  In fact, those institutions that allow these groups to enter and plant their seeds of propaganda will most likely be defunded by the federal government, but it will take a vigilant citizenry to pay attention and report any occurrences of infiltration.

The final part, and perhaps a more hidden positive aspect of the 1776 Commission and the signed executive order, is that it may give educators the right to refuse any professional development that seeks to disparage our nation’s history or indoctrinate or humiliate educators based on their race or ethnicity.  If educators are knowledgeable of these actions and movements in a positive direction, they could easily reference the 1776 Commission and the executive order as a possible defense as to why they are filing a complaint regarding unprofessional or insulting training that seeks to disparage their heritage or race.  However, this too is a slippery slope, and it’s up to the discretion of the individual educator to make such a decision because the executive order clearly states that the removal of an educator is up to the local district, not the federal government.

The 1776 Commission is a step in the right direction.  It stops radical Marxist organizations from infiltrating our schools in an organized fashion.  It incentivizes educators and K–12 school districts to teaching and seeking out a further education for America’s youths regarding our nation’s founding and those who fought for and worked toward our nation’s independence.  The 1776 Commission also seeks to halt the removal of historic sites, monuments, and statues that advance an accurate history of our nation’s founding and our nations conflicts, while preventing their removal or destruction, as these sites and monuments are deemed national educational sites to be referenced and learned from.

The 1776 Commission could stem the tide of the infiltration of Marxist ideologies that seek to disparage our nation’s founding and those who fought and died for our freedom.  Time will tell.

Dr. Sean M. Brooks is the author of six books, and the host of American Education FM Podcast. This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

Here’s a story of actual racial injustice that happened in a liberal North Shore school district: District 113. As you read this, imagine if the Hispanic community in Highland Park and Highwood, Illinois had known this story as it was taking place.

In 2007, District 113, which is composed of Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools, received a federal grant of thousands of dollars because Highland Park High School (HPHS) had failed to make “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP).  AYP is a tool for measuring how well a district’s students perform on standardized tests under the controversial No Child Left Behind Act.

The reason HPHS’ scores on standardized tests failed to make AYP is that HPHS has a sizeable Hispanic population from primarily neighboring Highwood. Most of these families do not have the financial resources available for private subject area and test-prep tutors as many Highland Park and Deerfield families do, and in many of these families, English is not spoken at home.

To be clear, District 113 had received a hefty federal grant to help Hispanic students score better on standardized tests. And what did the administration and school board chose to do with those taxpayer dollars?

Between spring 2007 and spring 2008, District 113, using both the federal grant and some  district money, spent approximately $83,000 to hire the San Francisco-based shyster Glenn Singleton and representatives from his Pacific Educational Group to come  seven times to District 113 to teach employees about their “whiteness.”

Every time Singleton or his representative came, every administrator, every department chair, two teachers from every department and area (e.g., multi-media, custodial pool, technology, secretarial pool) from both high schools attended all-day meetings during which they discussed their “whiteness.” This meant that all the participating employees missed seven days of work or classes.

The $83,000 included $53,000 for Pacific Educational Group’s fees, travel expenses, and per diem; $10,000 for hiring substitute teachers for all the teachers who were absent from class to attend the all-day indoctrination seminars; and $20,000 to feed all the district attendees at the swanky Highland Park Country Club where the meetings took place.

Ironically, both Singleton and his facilitators explicitly stated at the time that neither he nor his book (Courageous Conversations) on which his “consultations” were based provided any solutions for the problem of underperformance of minority students on standardized tests.

Singleton also preposterously claimed that neither poverty, nor language issues at home, nor lack of family support, nor family mobility contributes to the racial learning gap. The causes, Singleton claimed, are “institutional racism” and “whiteness.” Singleton also declared that anyone who disagrees with his preposterous theories is “gifted at subverting reform.”

He explicitly exempted Indians and Asians from the category of “persons of color.” Why would that be? If America is systemically racist against persons of color, and if this systemic racism is the cause of the underperformance of students of color on standardized tests, why exempt them? And why do Indians and Asians manage to excel on standardized tests in the face of systemic racism?

Could it be that Singleton tacitly admitted—and hoped no one would notice—that language issues, lack of family support, mobility, or poverty may, indeed, contribute to the racial learning gap? Could it be that systemic racism didn’t exist in District 113?

I asked the District 113 School Board and administration at the time how even in theory would having secretaries, custodians, and teachers miss school to talk about their “whiteness” at the Highland Park Country Club help minority students improve their test scores. They offered no answer–as in, they literally said nothing.

Imagine if the educationally and economically disadvantaged Hispanic community had known the shameful truth that District 113 had had thousands of dollars available to help their children score better on standardized testing and used it instead to line Singleton’s pockets while district employees talked about their whiteness and noshed at the Highland Park Country Club.

In a recent article in The New York Times Magazine about “antiracism” re-education, writer Daniel Bergner told this story about attending one of Singleton’s indoctrination workshops:

At my table, Malik Pemberton, a Black racial-equity coach at a middle school, who had been a teenage father, wanted to talk, he said in the softest of voices, about “accountability,” about how “it starts inside the household in terms of how the child is going to interpret and value education,” about what can happen in schools “without consequences, where they can’t suspend.”… One of Courageous Conversation’s “affiliate trainers,” stationed at the table, immediately rerouted the conversation, and minutes later Moore [another affiliate trainer] drew all eyes back to him and pronounced, “The cause of racial disparities is racism.”

Glenn Singleton is a slicker version of Al Sharpton, a manlier version of Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 Project, and a blacker version of White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo. He sells the same divisive, racist Critical Race Theory dogma just gussied up in different packaging.

Hans Bader writing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute shared that Singleton—who has been hired by wealthy school districts all around the country, including in Evanston, Illinois—teaches teachers that,

“white talk” is “verbal,” “intellectual” and “task-oriented,” while “color commentary” is “emotional” and “personal.”

This is disturbingly similar to the ideas in a chart posted by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on their online portal about race and racism—a chart the Smithsonian was forced to take down and apologize for.

The chart promoted the false and racist idea that the following are “aspects and assumptions” of communities of color:

• de-emphasis on objective, rational, linear thinking
• de-emphasis on cause and effect relationships
• de-emphasis on planning for the future
• de-emphasis on working before playing
• devaluation of hard work
• devaluation of respect for authority
• devaluation of delaying gratification
• devaluation of politeness in communication

Critical Race Theory and its many ugly faces solves no societal problems and creates many. IFI is deeply thankful that the Trump administration has ceased the use of federal funds for promoting Critical Race Theory, which is fomenting race and class warfare in America.

“Progressives” have obscenely exploited the disadvantaged among us for votes and power for decades. “Progressives” pretend to care about the impoverished even as they promote policies that destroy their families, their schools, and their communities.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/A-Story-of-Actual-Racial-Injustice-in-an-Illinois-School-District.mp3

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Some people have asked me what shaped my conservative worldview. One of the things that formed it was my time in college. I attended a Southern Baptist university in Missouri. Before you assume that it was the school’s worldview, it wasn’t.  In some ways it was just the opposite. I saw and heard things expressed that conflicted with the school’s principles which made me examine my own worldview. Certainly, I benefited greatly from Biblical teachings, but I also had to stand for what I believed was right as liberal ideas crept into many classes, and to a greater degree, among students raised in the church.

So, I guess I am not surprised to hear of another Christian university that appears to have conformed to the views of the culture. But what is shocking is the specific ministry that this school opposed. It is a group that uniquely defends Christianity in an insightful way that our culture can hear.

Think about how Satan can desensitize people and compromise values through humor, whether it be TV sitcoms or shows that are funny, but advance lifestyles or agendas that conflict with a Christian worldview. If you recognize this, then you probably understand what The Babylon Bee does so well by making people think, through humor and satire.

Palm Beach Atlantic University has disinvited Seth Dillon, CEO of the Bee from speaking at their chapel service even though Seth is an alumnus of the college.

Apparently, several students were upset that the Babylon Bee has exposed Black Lives Matter as a radical Marxist organization and has shown the LGBT agenda to be intolerant of Christian beliefs.

Seth, naturally, had some direct words for this. “Cancel culture has come for me . . . I’m just too dangerous and divisive to be permitted to speak on the campus of my alma mater,” Dillon said.  “Since when do you have to support terrorist organizations that use violence and intimidation to advance their agenda to be welcome on a Christian campus?”

BTW – Dillon’s appearance was meant to be a series of lighthearted questions about his experience as an alumnus and a Christian media interpreter with questions like “Who was your favorite professor?”

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana. 

From the president on down, we’re seeing a welcome pushback against Marxist indoctrination in our colleges, government agencies, and even the military.

It had better happen soon, too, because in K-12 schools, hapless children are being subjected to the awful, anti-American 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter curricula. But at least there is movement at the top of the academic and government food chains.

In Maine, Republican state State Senator Lisa Keim has written a forceful letter to the University of Maine System board, objecting to University of Southern Maine President Glenn Cummings’ order for everyone on campus to “align” with Black Lives Matter.

After explaining that “racism, in any form, has no place in our state,” she lays out BLM’s radical agenda, which is “antithetical to many Americans’ political and religious views.” She quotes anti-police statements from BLM’s website such as: “law enforcement doesn’t protect or save our lives. They often threaten and take them.”

She adds, “These slurs are fueling hate and violence all over our country.”

BLM, which is openly Marxist and demonizes white people and America, calls for defunding the police and “disrupting the Western prescribed nuclear family structure.”

In Washington, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently shocked the academic community by outing Princeton University’s embrace of BLM’s agenda.  She cited Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber’s open letter declaring Princeton full of “systemic racism.”

On Sept. 22, President Donald J. Trump let the other shoe drop by signing an executive order barring federal funds from contractors who employ Critical Race Theory in diversity training, including in the military, where unity and trust are paramount.

“It is difficult to imagine a more demoralizing course of instruction for officers who will soon lead soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines into combat,” writes Center for Military Readiness President Elaine Donnelley in The Federalist. “Unresolved accusations and suspicions of racism eviscerate mutual trust and team cohesion, two things essential for survival and mission accomplishment.”

Since 1971, the Defense Race Relations Institute has conducted racial sensitivity training. Among the materials were Robert Terry’s 1970 book “For Whites Only,” which “taught militant black separatist ideas to white audiences,” according to Capital Research Center filmmaker Joseph (Jake) Klein.

Other federal entities such as the FBI used the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source for materials and identification of “hate groups” until their far-Left agenda was exposed.  It took an SPLC-inspired gunman attempting mass murder at the Family Research Council in 2012 to alert people to the SPLC’s smear campaign against Christian groups that continues to this day.

Contempt for religion and family is a major part of BLM and the Left’s culture war on America, as explained by Maine State Senator Keim in her letter opposing BLM’s inroads.

“A family unit of one man married to one woman is not only a Western prescription for family; it’s a Biblical one,” she writes. “Therefore, mandating the University’s faculty, students and staff to subscribe to BLM’s political message arguably violates those individuals’ freedom of religion.” Spot on.

If America is going to rise beyond the current climate of Marxist race-baiting, it’s going to take more leaders like State Senator Keim and Russell Vought at all levels.  Plus, a president who gets it and keeps doing something about it.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.
His website is roberthknight.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Writing of History in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Effects of Fake History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by Makenna McCoy

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced a new rule that aims to protect the First Amendment rights of students, teachers, and student organizations at public colleges and universities.

The final rule, entitled Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities, serves to defend First Amendment rights in two primary ways. First, in order to receive grants from the Department of Education, public colleges and universities must uphold religious liberty and free speech rights. Second, public colleges and universities must treat religious student groups the same as any secular student group, providing them with the same rights, funding, and privileges.

In announcing the rule, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos declared, “Students should not be forced to choose between their faith and their education, and an institution controlled by a religious organization should not have to sacrifice its religious beliefs to participate in Department grants and programs.”

Although the same guidelines for public universities do not apply to private universities, the rule does require private universities to abide by their own policies on freedom of expression in order to receive Department funding. WORLD also notes that the rule lays out “a shield for religious schools” by establishing that Title IX’s prohibition of discrimination based on sex, which some now claim encompasses sexual orientation and gender identity, is not binding for colleges “controlled by a religious institution.”

The new rule has been particularly beneficial for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a Christian campus ministry. Greg Jao, Director of External Relations for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, pointed out that the rule was necessary because universities were accepting some faith-based student groups and refusing others. Most often, he says, the groups that were rejected were those that required their student leaders to comply with the group’s religious beliefs.

Jao also recognizes that the rule not only benefits Christian groups, but all religious organizations because “universities should welcome all religious groups equally, in order to encourage tolerance, pluralism and religious diversity.”

The Department of Education rule will go into effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register sometime in November.

This article was ordinally published at NCFamily.org.

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did the president suggest that was so offensive?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could it be that the answer is obvious?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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