Mark Vincent Busenbark, a middle-aged man with a cross-dressing alter ego he calls Vica Steel, has been creating intellectual and moral havoc in Frank Allis Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin for a year. Last school year, Busenbark, a science teacher, created a creepy video about his creepy predilection for cross-dressing and pretending to be sometimes a man and sometimes a woman. Then, with the permission of his administration, he presumptuously showed his creepy “coming out” video to all K-5 students without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

In this video, he describes in biased language his disordered and delusional view of his sex, asks to be referred to as Mx. Steel, asks that students refer to him by absurdly by the pronouns “they,” “them,” and  “theirs” (presumably to accommodate his imaginary alter ego), and then reads a picture book about a little girl who identifies as both female and male, which he tells the students is “just like” his story.

In this book, those who reject the “trans” ideology are depicted as an undifferentiated mass of specters with evil eyes who refuse to use the false pronouns of the little girl who grows up to be a “nonbinary” teacher.

Here’s part of what the cunning propagandist Busenbark, doing his best Mr. Rogers impersonation, said to all the K-5 students:

Hello. Let me introduce myself. You’ve known me as Mr. Busenbark or Mr. B. … There is one truth that I’ve hidden from you, [and] until about a month ago from my fellow teachers, from friends, [and] from family. I am transgender. Maybe you know what that means. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve only heard those words through the filter of those who hate and fear. … When I was a child, I was named a boy, but that never felt right or true. … Can I tell you how terrifying it is coming out, being honest about a truth I’ve hidden for decades? The only words I knew for people like me when I was growing up were words of hate and words of fear. And those words are still out there. … I know that you will love and honor me as we move forward. And now let me introduce myself anew. … I am going to take my wife, Stella Steel’s, last name. And I am going to use—not Mr. and not Ms.—but Mx. So, you can call me Mx. Steel. … And for my pronouns, I’m using “they,” “them,” and “their.”

Busenbark is cunning in that, to other people’s young children, he suggests that at birth, children’s “identity” is “named,” whereas, in reality, their sex is acknowledged.

He’s cunning in that, to other people’s young children, he suggests without stating outright that those who reject the “trans” ideology and the cultural and interpersonal demands of “trans” cultists are hateful and fearful.

He’s cunning in that, to other people’s young children, he suggests that his feelings, desires, and beliefs constitute “truth.”

He’s cunning in that, to other people’s young children, he suggests that to love and honor him require that they affirm his disordered beliefs about biological sex and wicked efforts to masquerade as the sex he is not.

And he’s cunning and manipulative in that he tries to engender sympathy by telling other people’s young children that he is terrified to tell them he’s “trans.”

The complaints of angry parents who confronted the administration for its failure to notify parents or obtain permission for their children to view Busenbark’s “trans” propaganda fell on morally deaf ears, which evidently emboldened the already bold Busenbark further: This January, he started using the girls’ restrooms—again with no parental notification.

And again, parents found out and justifiably objected to a grown man sharing a restroom with little girls. The school then found itself embroiled in a public relations nightmare, so they did what “progressive” districts do when entangled in an imbroglio of their own making. They tried to spin the story by saying the problem was allowing an adult to share restrooms with children.

Hogwash.

Anyone who works in a public school knows that teachers commonly share single-sex multi-occupancy restrooms with students because there are far more student restrooms than staff restrooms.

Male staff use boys’ restrooms, and female staff use girls’ restrooms. When I worked at Deerfield High School, I always used the girls’ restrooms. It was never an issue with students. No girls of any age object to the presence of women in their restrooms.

The problem in the Madison, Wisconsin elementary school is not that teachers are using the same restrooms as students. The problem is that a man was using a girls’ restroom.

Busenbark doesn’t belong in women’s staff restrooms either. Are adult women too spineless to say that? Are male faculty members and administrators too lacking in testosterone to defend the assaults on the honor and dignity of their colleagues by a cross-dressing man? Sheesh.

Girls and women have an intrinsic right to be free of the presence of biological males in their restrooms. Conversely, boys and men have an intrinsic right to be free of the presence of biological females in their private spaces.

In an open letter published in an “LGBT” magazine in Madison, an unhinged Busenbark went off on his own district for trying to find a way to keep him out of little girls’ restrooms by making all staff stay out of all student restrooms. The district is trying to keep the “trans” cult off their backs by camouflaging the fact that they want the cross-dressing man out of the girls’ restrooms. Here’s part of what the mixed up, muddled up, shook up “Mx. Steel” wrote:

In the 23 years that I’ve been in the district, students and staff have always used the same multi-stall bathrooms in our schools. Does that shock you? Women using the same bathrooms as girls? Can I ask you to name any public space that segregates bathroom use by age? … In the 23 years I’ve been in the district, there has never been a complaint about women using the same bathrooms as their students. … Women have used that bathroom for decades. No complaints. I used it. I am an open and out transgender woman. I fought decades with the trauma that our society laid on me. But I stood up and I came out, and yes, I used the bathroom because, seriously, can you just let us pee! Within days a transphobic parent complained to the district and our leadership. … I, alone, of all our female staff, I was to change the bathroom I used.

Busenbark is right on one point and in addressing it, he has exposed the deceit of his district administrators. They don’t really care if adults share restrooms with students. That’s a smokescreen to stave off the wrath of the tolerant “trans” cult when they find out that a female-impersonating man is being excluded from the girls’ restrooms.

But on his central point, Busenbark is wrong. He is not a member of the female staff.

This foolish, mawkish, juvenile, and tendentious letter from the principal of the Frank Ellis Elementary School  illuminates just how lost today’s government school leaders are and why parents must find educational alternatives for their  children:

Leading with love

As the principal of Frank Allis Elementary, I have the responsibility to lead our school with love, acceptance, understanding and justice. I hold the responsibility to hold the space where everyone is honored and affirmed. Frank Allis is a Welcoming School and we are proud to openly support our science teacher, Mx. Vica Steel. Vica Steel identifies as transgender. …

Public schools have the responsibility to teach students how to become caring, inclusive, welcoming members of our communities. … [W]e believe that teaching about gender diversity is essential to creating gender-inclusive schools free of bias and bullying.

We reject the exclusion of anyone’s known identity, as this is an act of discrimination. We will continue to support and affirm Vica’s identity. …

We believe every person should feel connected and respected for who they are and Vica is not excluded from this principle. Vica aka Mx Steel came out as their true self. Their courage has resulted in the strengthening of our community. We are all more beautiful because of Vica Steel’s inclusion in it.

Leading with love,

Sara Cutler

Well, at least Cutler is semi-honest when she refers to “teaching” about “gender diversity,” which is euphemistic language for using government schools to impose a leftist sexuality ideology.

Neither love, acceptance, justice, honor, care, inclusivity, welcome, support, nor respect require humans to affirm every feeling, desire, belief, or act that other humans choose to place at the center of their identities.

Enquiring minds want to know, when Busenbark intrudes into the private spaces of girls who, along with their parents, believe it’s wrong for girls to share private spaces with persons of the opposite sex, is he showing them love? Is he honoring them?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Female-Impersonating-Teacher.mp3

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Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Students are taught self-esteem and sexual promiscuity more effectively than science and civics

Hardly a day goes by that you don’t hear the question: How did we get in this mess?

Where did this lunacy come from, and how did it all happen so quickly?

Well, let’s play a game. Let’s play “imagine.”

Imagine that we live in a day where we intentionally sever a man’s arm from his body and then expect him to win a fight.

Imagine that we live in a country where it’s common practice to remove a woman’s eyes from her head and then ask her to paint her portrait.

Imagine that ours is a time where we surgically alter a child’s frontal lobe and then demand he explain an algebraic formula.

Imagine that we live in such a world; a world where, as C.S. Lewis warned, the elite among us claim it makes sense to “remove the organ and demand the function;” a time and a place where we “geld the stallion and then “bid him be fruitful.”

Just imagine. As John Lennon said, “it’s easy if you try,”

How did we get in this mess?

One answer: As Richard Weaver said, “Ideas have consequences.” Education matters.

Why would we expect decades of teaching sexual promiscuity in our schools to result in sexual restraint in our students? Why are we surprised at the selfishness of our culture when we have immersed several generations of our children in a curriculum that teaches self-esteem more effectively than it does science and civics? How can we possibly think that teaching values clarification rather than moral absolutes will result in virtuous people?

Where is there any evidence in all of human history that the subordination of a child’s right to be born to an adult’s right to choose ever resulted in the protection of any individual’s unalienable right to life? And why would any culture ever think that after decades of diminishing the value of marital fidelity that the same culture would then be able to mount a vigorous defense for the meaning of marriage and morality, or anything else for that matter?

This list could go on and on. The evidence is clear. All you need to do is Google the daily news to see the proof. When you have schools that revel in separating fact from the faith, head from heart, belief from behavior and religion from reason, the result will never be liberty. It will always be licentiousness.

Severing things that should be united has a very predictable result. “Removing the organ while demanding the function” gives us “men without chests,” an electorate of those who have nothing but a gaping cavity in the center of their being; a callousness of mind; an emptiness of conscience; vacuity where there should be virtue. As the wisdom of Solomon tells, cutting babies in half always results in dead babies.

Ours is a day of delusion. We destroy ourselves by our dishonesty. We boast of freedom and yet live in bondage to deception. We champion human rights, yet we ignore the rights promised to us by reason, revelation and our own Constitution. We march for women while denying that women are even real.

We claim to stand for the dignity of children but remain silent while their dignity is mocked in the ivory tower’s grisly game of sexual nihilism. We are what M. Scott Peck called “people of the lie.” The road to hell is before us, and we enter its gates strutting with the confidence of an emperor with no clothes. And, when we are challenged, we belittle the “incredulous rubes” and the “deplorables” who dared shout out of our nakedness.

Santayana once said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Well, here is one irrefutable lesson of the past: Ideas always have consequences. Education matters. It will always lead somewhere. Our schools will either take us toward the liberty found in that which is right and just and true and real or toward the slavery made of our own dysfunction and lies.

Why are we in this mess? It is because of our local schools, colleges and universities. When you relentlessly work to remove the next generation’s soul, you should not expect your culture to stay out of hell.

“All your life long you are slowly turning … either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, and rage … Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.” — C.S. Lewis “Mere Christianity”

Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017). This article was originally published at the WashintonTimes.com.

The Chicago Board of Education voted 5-2 on Wednesday, February 26, 2020, to stop celebrating Columbus Day and replace it with “Indigenous Peoples Day.” This latest example of political correctness comes on the heels of calls for paintings in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) that contain images of white people to be removed. CPS has the largest collection of early 20^th century murals in the U.S. Most of them were commissioned by the Work Projects Administration as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

CPS has created a new educational steering committee to evaluate all future artwork displayed in the schools saying they will, “evaluate concerns raised about specific works of art to ensure equity and cultural responsiveness.”

A district statement read, “The district recognizes that some works of art in schools do not reflect the district’s values of diversity and inclusion.” This statement is ironic considering most of the paintings that are being suggested for removal feature Native Americans pictured peacefully with early white missionaries and settlers. Apparently, “diversity and inclusion,” means excluding white people.

Sarah Dennis, a social justice advocate, says her children were taken on a field trip to Bateman Elementary where they saw a mural that contained white women wearing head-coverings (a religious symbol that was common in early American history). Head-coverings are still worn today by Illinois citizens in the Amish and Mennonite communities. Her response is, ““We went out into the hallway and stared at it. I asked them, ‘What do you see? What kind of message does it send to the children who attend here, about who is important?’”

Other commentators called the art, “racist, dated and offensive.” This kind of disregard for religious practice and historical accuracy is reflective of the new postmodern deconstructionist mindset that seeks to tear down existing social structures and replace them with new politically correct ones.

Ironically, the Italian-American community that hosts more than 500,000 citizens in Chicago alone, released a statement against the removal of Christopher Columbus as a historical figure in the schools:

For Italian Americans, who endured horrific discrimination and continue to be the subject of stereotypical degradation in popular culture, Christopher Columbus is a symbol for the resilience of a people that have helped shape the cultural landscape of this great nation.

Is CPS seeking to represent all cultures equally and fairly or do they seek to give preference to some people groups while excluding others? This is the inequality that often happens when multiculturalism gets hijacked by special interest groups who seek to promote their own agendas.

Some paintings have already been removed. Last year at Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park, students from the Social Justice Club successfully pressured administrators to remove Ethel Spears’s 1937 mural Child and Sports – Winter because the painting included only white children.

This follows the example of other schools around the nation that have removed any paintings of America’s founders (e.g., George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry) because they owned slaves.

Teaching history demands telling the truth about the mistakes that have happened in American History. We don’t want to lie to our children, telling them that America’s past was perfect. That can be done, however, without removing any reference to the positive impact made by European settlers. They were not all slave-owners, oppressors and racists. And even those who were often contributed in ways that have helped all future generations of Americans including historically oppressed groups.

The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, though written by flawed humans, have helped all Americans. Oppressive regimes like Communist regimes scrub history to advance an ideology. As Americans we should seek to tell the whole story: the good, the bad and the ugly. We can’t do that if ideology leads to censorship.

THIS SATURDAY! IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

Illinois parents shouldn’t need any more reasons to get their kids out of the sexual indoctrination hellholes that masquerade as government schools, but here are some more reasons courtesy of the cunning creatures that inhabit the Springfield swamp.

Two weeks ago, two bills were introduced to amend Illinois’ already offensive comprehensive sex ed law: SB 3788, which is sponsored by Illinois State Senators Celina Villanueva (D-Summit) and Laura Fine (D-Glenview), and HB 5012, the chief co-sponsors of whom include the Illinois House’s most objectionable propagandist, State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) along with Representatives Ann Williams (D-Chicago) and Michelle Mussman (D-Schaumburg).

Then on Wednesday, a bill that should be called the “GET OUT OF ILLINOIS SCHOOLS PRONTO” Act (SB 2762), was filed by nine Democrats and will mandate comprehensive sex ed  for all grades. This bill, laughably named the “Responsible Education Adolescent and Children’s Health” (REACH) Act, is heartily endorsed by Planned Parenthood of Illinois and by Illinois’ premiere “LBGT” activist organization, Equality Illinois, which should tell you everything you need to know about it.

Here are some troubling parts of the Villanueva/Cassidy monstrosities that apply to grades 6-12:

• Their bills mandate that all curricular “materials and instruction” must be “affirming” of “individuals, families, and communities” in an “inclusive, respectful, and effective” manner based on their identities as homosexuals or cross-sex impersonators.

• Their bills delete the section that says curriculum must “teach honor and respect for monogamous heterosexual marriage.”

• Their bills add “Course material and instruction shall [must] teach pupils … how to give [and] receive … consent” for sexual activity. Let’s repeat that: Our government is going to order schools to teach 11-year-olds how to give consent for sex.

• Current law requires “evidence-based” curricula. These new bills add the term “evidence-informed,” which is a far less rigorous requirement. “Evidence-informed” resources are much more useful to leftists who want to promote, for example, the “trans” ideology, because there is no hard science proving that social, chemical, and surgical interventions for gender dysphoric children are harmless.

These bills also say that all curricular “materials and instruction” must be “affirming” of “individuals, families, and communities” in an “inclusive, respectful, and effective” manner based on their “religion.” So, does anyone believe that the feelings and beliefs about sexuality, sexual identity, sexual relationships, or marriage of Christians, Orthodox Jews, or Muslims will be explicitly affirmed in exactly the same ways the feelings and beliefs of homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators on these issues will be? Does anyone believe the feelings and beliefs of the religious groups will be presented at all?

Then on Wednesday, things got worse. Nine Democrats in the Illinois Senate sponsored a bill that expands sex ed to include all grades from kindergarten through senior year in high school and includes the following:

• “It is the intent of the General Assembly that comprehensive sex ed shall [must]… promote awareness and healthy attitudes about gender identity, gender expression” and “sexual orientation … and must be available to students in kindergarten through 12th grade.”

• “Comprehensive sex ed in kindergarten through second grade shall [must] include … instruction on the following topics: human anatomy … gender roles … [and] varying family structures.” Discussing human sexual anatomy in co-ed K-2 classes is yet one more way for our culture to dissolve feelings of modesty in young children just as those feelings are beginning to develop. Leftists view that as a good thing.

• “Comprehensive sex ed in the third through 5th grades shall [must] include information about diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. … and an examination of the harm caused by gender-role stereotypes.”

• “[C]omprehensive sex ed must include … Discussion about … sexting” with 8-10-year-olds. Leftists may be unaware of the many 8-10-year-olds who have never heard of sexting, never heard of porn, and don’t have cell phones. In those many cases, the passage of this law would mean the government would be introducing these young children to sexting. The innocence of their children that, at great effort and vigilance, parents have been able to preserve in the midst of this sex-saturated and defiling culture, the government would steal.

• Comprehensive sex ed “may not use stigmatizing or shame-based instructional tools or stigmatize parenting or sexually active youth,” “may not employ gender stereotypes” (you know, like saying only girls menstruate or only boys have penises), and “may not teach or promote any religious doctrine.”

In other words, schools must express only one judgment on homosexual behavior, cross-sex identification, and same-sex parenting: approval. So, what happens when the next sexual lobby gets their sexual identity added to the lawbooks? What happens when polyamorists are successful in having “polyamory” included in law as a “sexual orientation”?

Let’s for a moment look at not just the trees but the forest too. In that dark forest lurks not only comprehensive sex ed for K-12 students but also the “LGBT” school indoctrination law, which takes effect this coming July and applies to all grades K-12. Every student starting at 5 years old will be exposed to positive images and ideas about homosexuality, cross-sex identification, and activism in the service of normalizing both. There won’t be any way to escape such indoctrination by opting out because it’s going to be integrated across curricula.

According to research conducted in 2018 by the market research firm Ipsos Mori, 88 percent of baby boomers identified as exclusively heterosexual, 85 percent of Gen X identified as such, 71 percent of millennials, and a shocking 66 percent of Generation Z, that is, young people between the ages of 16-22, identified as exclusively heterosexual. Ideas have consequences.

While conservatives claim to believe that homosexuality is not biologically determined, they act as if they believe it is. They have for decades allowed their children to be exposed to “LGBT” dogma because they don’t really believe it will affect their children. Conservative parents have for decades tolerated their children’s exposure to homosexuality-affirming plays, novels, movies, essays, “anti-bullying” programs, and sex ed in school, ignorantly believing such propaganda won’t affect their children’s hearts, minds, and behavioral choices.

But of course, it will, and we’re seeing the toxic fruit of the erasure of sexual taboos and concomitant wholesale cultural approval of deviant sexual behavior. Layer on top of that widespread and easy availability to homosexual and “trans” porn, pro-homo/pro-“trans” postings on social media, loss of faith, broken homes, and broken children in search of connection and existential meaning, and voilà, we’re a pagan culture.

While parents may opt their children out of the sex ed indoctrination, they may not exempt them from the “LGBT” indoctrination that will permeate all other curricula. Fat lot of good opting their kids out of pro-“LGBT” sex ed will do when all their peers are in it and the rest of their classes are similarly poisoned.

A question for the non-gullible in Illinois: If these laws are passed, how long do you give it before the conscience-less swampsters propose a bill amending them to get rid of the opt-out option?

A question for Christian parents: How wicked do the ideas have to become and how young the children to whom these ideas are presented in government schools before you realize government schools are training up your children to go in ways that no one should go?

A question for Christian teachers: How wicked do the ideas you’re asked to teach or implicitly speak (e.g., through the use of incorrect pronouns to refer to “trans”-identifying students) have to become before you will take up your cross and refuse?

A question for pastors, priests, and elders: How wicked do the ideas that children in your congregations are exposed to in government schools have to be before you realize these children are your mission field? How wicked do the ideas that children in your congregations are exposed to in government schools have to be before you will either create affordable schools or make funds available to your families so they can send their children to existing but cost-prohibitive schools?

Government schools are no longer places that shape character or cultivate virtue. Government schools are places dedicated to the ideological grooming of children into the deviant-sex-obsessed world of “progressivism.”

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state senator and state representative to ask them to vote against these bills:  SB 3788, SB 2762 and HB 5012. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

Even if your children or grandchildren are not in public schools, your taxes are being used for this relentless indoctrination campaign. In addition to sending an email, please call both of your state lawmakers during normal business hours via the state switchboard: (217) 782-2000.

A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone,
after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.
~Jesus Christ (Luke 6:40)

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/sexed_mixdown.mp3

THIS SATURDAY! IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

Written by Jerry Newcombe

We are in trouble in America because we have millions of uneducated young people who think they are “woke”—who believe America is basically evil—and always has been

If the New York Times gets their way, there will be more such Americans. The NYT has initiated, along with the Pulitzer Center, something called the 1619 Project. 1619 was the infamous year in which slavery was introduced into Jamestown, and thus, into America. This curriculum is now being peddled to school districts in every state of the union.

The idea of the 1619 Project is that without the slaves, there never would have been an America. America is defined because of the slavery experience. Furthermore, the 1619 Project, based on a dubious foundation, marries slavery with capitalism. In their view, no slavery, no capitalism.

This is so misguided in every way. Slavery in antebellum South delayed capitalism and its benefits there by slowing modernization as owners relied on the inhuman tradition.

Slavery was not unique to America. What was unique was the 600,000-plus men who died in the Civil War, ultimately over the catalyst issue of slavery.

Abraham Lincoln argued their blood was not shed in vain. In his Gettysburg Address, the 16th president said of the decisive battle there, “…we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

But now the 1619 Project seems to ignore that sacrifice as it sets out to teach Americans that this nation is and always was racist.

Writing for hotair.com (11/30/19), John Sexton highlighted some prominent historians who do not think the 1619 Project is accurate.

One of them, for example, is James Oakes, history professor at City University of New York who has won awards for some of his books on the conflict over American slavery.

Oakes responds to the idea promoted by this new curriculum that racism is intrinsic to America (as 1619 Project lead writer Nickole Hanna-Jones claims, writing, “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country”).

Oakes disagrees. He says, “These are really dangerous tropes. They’re not only ahistorical, they’re actually anti-historical. The function of those tropes is to deny change over time.”

Furthermore, he notes, it implies we cannot change. “There’s nothing we can do to get out of it. If it’s the DNA, there’s nothing you can do. What do you do? Alter your DNA?”

Thankfully, there has arisen a new counterpart to the 1619 Project. In his End of Day Report (2/20/20), Gary Bauer warns, “Public schools across the country are embracing this fiction and teaching it as fact in their classrooms.” But he notes, “I am pleased to report that a group of scholars has come together to defend our nation. They are specifically rebutting the absurd claims of the 1619 Project, launched by the New York Times, to recast America as a racist nation founded on the evil of slavery.”

Bauer continues, “Many historians have spoken out against the 1619 Project. And now several of the nation’s preeminent black scholars, pastors and activists are pushing back too, and speaking up for America through what they are calling ‘1776.’”

One of the participants in the 1776 push is Dr. Carol Swain, former law professor at Vanderbilt. Swain decried the 1619 Project, arguing that it sends a “very crippling message to our children.”

Recently, I interviewed Dr. Walter Williams, the syndicated columnist and economics professor at George Mason University, for a television segment.  Dr. Williams told me, “Slavery has been mankind’s standard fare throughout his entire history. Even the word, ‘slave,’ in most languages is ‘slav.’ That is because the Slavic people were among the first to be enslaved. And Africans were among the last to be enslaved. And the great thing about the Western world is that we spent many resources on eliminating slavery.”

When I see the constant attempt to rewrite our history and erase God from our history, I am reminded of the line from the Michael Moore-type character in the politically incorrect satirical movie, An American Carol (by David Zucker, 2008) who said in effect, “I love America. That’s why we have to destroy it, to build it up again in a new way.”

Since slavery has not been unique to America, 1619 does not define this nation. 1776, when we accepted the notion that we have God-given rights, ultimately planted the seeds for the abolition of slavery and is the real birth of our nation.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

In Part 6 of Pastor Derek Buikema’s interview with Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option and blogger at American Conservative, Pastor Derek asks how Christian colleges can stay faithful to Christ. Rod’s edifying, inspiring, and convicting response encompasses far more than suggestions for Christian colleges. He offers a vision of the narrow gate and hard path that is now set before Christians in America, and what this will require of us if we seek to remain connected to God. He warns especially about the failure of Christians to “fully grasp how much the world gets into us.”

IFI urges you to watch this short video with your family and share it with your friends.

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

As if the sexualization and radical politics were not enough cause for alarm, the latest data shows public schools are failing Illinois children academically, too — and big time! Indeed, the vast majority of high-school graduates are unprepared for basic college work.

According to a recent report by Chicago Public Media, almost two thirds of the new students enrolled in Chicago-area community colleges placed below college level on their placement exams. That means they must complete remedial education to proceed, even under the watered-down “college” standards that exist today.

Furthermore, even though the colleges only offer two-year degrees, just one in ten of those students in remedial classes — euphemistically dubbed “developmental education” — end up graduating within three years. By contrast, the figure is about one third among students not in remedial education.

One developmental English professor at a community college in Chicago, Tara Whitehair, was quoted revealing that many students lack even a “basic foundation” in “literacy.” Comparing that to the “foundation for a house,” Whitehair said it “takes time” to bring students up to that level.

In previous generations, graduating from 2nd or 3rd grade without strong literacy skills would have been unthinkable. Today, however, according to the government’s own literacy data, many high-school graduates would struggle to read their own diploma.

Other professors interviewed for the story confirmed the extent of the disaster. “When I ask them to go to a [reading] and say, ‘What is this text saying? Put this into your own words’ … they can’t,” Wright College English Professor Carrie Mocarski said. “They can’t comprehend the writing. … Generally we’re not talking about academic journals, we’re talking about newspaper articles.”

The reporter confirmed the dismal situation. “Students also haven’t learned to write academic essays,” reported Kate MgGee in an in-depth piece about “Starting College Behind.” “Many don’t know how to craft a thesis statement or cite research. They struggle with sentence structure, topic sentences, vocabulary and grammar.”

If these were 3^rd graders, or even perhaps 5^th graders, it might be understandable that they struggle with sentence structure, grammar, or vocabulary. Yet it completely boggles the mind to contemplate how anybody could graduate from junior high — much less high school — without being able to write a thesis statement or cite research.

The problems begin early, though. According to 2019 results from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as “America’s Report Card,” less than one third of American 8th-grade students are proficient in any core subject. That includes math and English. In 4^th grade, NAEP data show well over a third of children are “below basic,” which means they cannot read at all.

Despite spending an astonishing $17,000 per pupil annually, the 12^th highest in the nation, Illinois is slightly worse off than the atrocious national average when it comes to NAEP scores. But it is not the money that is the issue — some of the highest spending districts, such as Baltimore and Detroit, have among the lowest scores in the nation.

Other data confirms the fact that American children are getting dumber and dumber with each passing generation. The SAT, for instance, must be regularly re-centered to conceal the ongoing plunge in scores and educational levels.

According to recent ACT’s data, which also relies on standardized testing, just two out of five high-school graduates were ready for college work, with the numbers continuing to drop. Only about one in four graduating students had the “foundational work readiness skills needed for more than nine out of 10 jobs recently profiled in ACT’s JobPro database,” ACT researchers found.

Incredibly, instead of addressing the real problem — a fraudulent K-12 “education” that leaves students unprepared for anything except collecting welfare and contemplating “gender identity” — lobbyists are working to scale back or even eliminate remedial education completely. More tax-funded “financial aid” to the students, even when the overwhelmingly majority will never graduate, is also being advocated, along with more hand-holding by ever more “advisors.”

Others wring their hands and blame “poverty,” “systemic racism,” “oppression,” and all sorts of other real and imagined problems. And yet, Americans today are dumber than ever before, despite the nation and its people being richer and less racist than ever before. Data from the 1800s, for instance, reveals that Americans were far more literate than compared with today.

With government schools pumping out illiterate and innumerate graduates by the millions after bilking taxpayers for more than $200,000 per child over the span of 12 years, the question must be asked, “What are the schools actually doing?” The answer is simple: indoctrinating, sexualizing, and confusing the children on an unprecedented scale.

In any other industry, these sort of abysmal numbers would be prosecuted as fraud and extortion. But when it comes to government schools, the education establishment simply demands more money and more victims. This is absolutely outrageous. It should not be tolerated for another instant.

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

In Chicago Public Schools, captive students are being indoctrinated to believe that one of the very first societies in the world to end slavery was actually a monster defined by the evils of slavery — almost as if this monstrous nation had invented it.

This narrative is peddled despite the fact that the nation in question sacrificed hundreds of thousands of its finest men to eradicate slavery — not only ending it domestically, but eventually, worldwide, too.

And this slanderous lie is peddled despite the fact that institution of slavery has been ubiquitous throughout human history — at least until America and the Christian West put an end to it.

Indeed, in the African nation of Mauritania, slavery did not even become a crime until 2007, and the institution remains firmly entrenched there, as it does across broad swaths of Africa and the Middle East.

But supposedly, it’s America that is evil.

Welcome to the upside world of America’s “progressives” — the post-modernist absurdity where good is evil, evil is good, up is down, and truth does not even really exist.

During a recent visit to Chicago, self-styled “journalist” Nikole Hannah-Jones, a fringe left-wing race-monger, argued that the real history of America begins not with the Pilgrims in 1620, but with the almost unknown arrival of a slave ship the year before.

“It is a moment that is really at the basis for so much of American life, the very definition of American freedom, our culture, our politics,” claimed Hannah-Jones, founder of the so-called “1619 Project” and a prominent propagandist for the racist New York Times.

This absurd narrative has now been embedded into government schools in Chicago, with Hannah-Jones giving a “shout out” to CPS CEO Janice Jackson for forcing it on the child inmates under her control.

During an interview with the tax-funded “Chicago Tonight” show on WTTW, Hannah-Jones admitted that this is a “radical re-framing” of history.

Of course, it is also an absurd and shameful re-writing of history that turns reality upside down and deliberately misleads innocent children.

But in Chicago and beyond, radical anti-American activists have been working for decades to completely re-write U.S. history, literally flipping reality on its head for the purpose of undermining liberty and the United States.

In reality, America is a unique and special nation — perhaps the first to be founded on the biblical principles brought over by the Pilgrims.

This would lead directly to the creation of the first self-governing Godly republic since ancient Israel.

And eventually, this would lead to the ending of legal slavery worldwide and the near-universal acceptance of what America’s Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence was a “self-evident” truth: the idea that “all men are created equal.”

Like virtually every society throughout all of human history, some Americans originally tolerated slavery.

However, it was because of America’s founding, and the biblical principles and worldview upon which it was founded, that this ubiquitous scourge was practically eradicated from the face of the Earth, beginning in the Christian West and then slowly spreading around the globe.

Before William Wilberforce in Britain would use God’s Word to explain why slavery was evil in the sight of God, many of America’s Founding Fathers were plotting to systematically end slavery for the first time in human history.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, for instance, was one of the original and most fervent anti-slavery crusaders to ever walk on the planet up until that time.

Calling slavery a “national evil” and blasting the slave trade as “criminal conduct” and a “violation of the laws of humanity,” Madison demanded in 1810 that Congress devise “further means of suppressing the evil.”

This “1619 Project,” though, wants Americans — and especially children in government schools who don’t know any better — to believe that the great Christians who made this all possible are actually the culprits for the evils they helped eradicate.

Naturally, the half-baked project is being spearheaded by the New York Times.

Ironically, though, the Times has a long and sordid history of this sort of racism and deadly dishonesty.

In 2018, for instance, the Times hired virulent racist Sarah Jeong to serve on its editorial board. Among other outrages, Jeong admitted it was “kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” She also argued that “white people” are “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” The raw, seething hatred shocked America, but the Times saw no problem with it.

Before that, Times “journalist” and Soviet apologist Walter Duranty helped the mass-murdering Bolshevik regime conceal its ghastly genocide of Ukrainian people via deliberate starvation. An estimated 10 million people were murdered while Duranty deceived Americans into believing everything was just fine.

Another Times “journalist,” Herbert Matthews, marketed mass-murdering communist butcher Fidel Castro to America as an “anti-Communist” so-called “freedom fighter,” even referring to him as the “George Washington” of Cuba. As a result, the nation of Cuba was enslaved and destroyed.

It is bad enough that a dying newspaper would peddle this sort of disgusting and dishonest propaganda to gullible “progressive” adults who pay to read that garbage.

But forcing these twisted lies on captive school children at taxpayer expense should be considered a crime. It is time for the people of Illinois to speak out.

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is slated to hear a case regarding the use of tax-payer dollars for private education. It seems that the more conservative judges will support this concept. Interestingly, although it grows the tax burden and increases government reach not merely over public school, but extends it over private schools as well, Republicans and Christians are two groups that almost always support this kind of legislation / ruling.

Espinoza vs. Montana Department of Revenue centers on the Montana Supreme Court’s decision to end a state program giving students scholarship aid to attend private schools. The court based its decision on the state’s constitutional provision barring government money from going to religious schools. The SCOTUS is scheduled to hear the case in the Summer of 2020.

President Donald Trump and Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, have both previously expressed their desire to see not only state funds, but federal funds allocated for private school and homeschooling programs. While there is a desire on the part of many conservative taxpayers to see their tax money going to something that would support their own beliefs and values, I suggest we should step back for a moment and look before we leap at the offer of government money.

Here are some questions we should ask:

1.) Is it Constitutional?

Whatever is not explicitly directed as a role of the federal government in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights is the responsibility of the individual states. The U.S. Constitution does not make a provision for the federal government to guide, oversee, and direct education. That means that any such decisions need to be handled on a state level. The U.S. Department of Education should be closed. We don’t need it because it isn’t Constitutional.

2.) Is it Biblical?

As Christians, the Bible gives us guidelines of what God expects from the civil government, the church and the family.

The Civil Government

First Peter 2 and Romans 13 tell us that God gave the power of the sword to the civil government for them to punish those who do what is evil. They are to protect the God-given rights of the individual, the family, the church, etc. They are not supposed to be involved in raising children. That is an assignment given exclusively to families.

The Church

While it surprises many who have never specifically studied the issue, there are no verses in the New Testament where the church is commanded by God to teach children as a segmented group. Children in the early church learned with the rest of the congregation but were never separated out by age or grade for specific instruction. That model is one that churches imported far later (often from the government school system).

The Family

Fathers and mothers (and in a couple of places grandparents) are the only people commanded by God in the Bible to teach and instruct children. Parents (with the help and instruction of Biblically qualified church elders and a loving Christian community) are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the education of their own children. While it is not forbidden in Scripture for children to be taught by people other than their parents (in a supplementary role), God does not allow parents to neglect their own duties in this matter.

3.) Is it Wise?

Even if we can get government funding for private schools or homeschools, do we truly want that? If there is one lesson that should be abundantly clear from history it is that whatever the government funds, it controls. If you want your children to receive an education that is free from leftist bias and propaganda, you are going to need to pay for that education yourself. I have written elsewhere about why I believe tax-funding for private education (especially religious instruction) has strings and should be avoided.

4.) It Makes Government Bigger

Spending tax dollars for private education not only compromises its own integrity and autonomy, it also increases the already crushing tax burden on working class Americans. Increasing government spending for private schools only makes government bigger, a concept that most conservatives claim to be against. We need to remember that the government doesn’t have any money. It only has what it takes by force from its citizens. Do we really want our private schools being funded by money taken by force from our neighbors who did not choose to give it? Is that the goal of privatized education?

5.) You Must Allow All Religious Schools Equal Access

Many Christians are inconsistent with their application of how tax funds could/should be used for private education. When I ask them if they like the idea of tax dollars being used to fund religious instruction in Christian schools, many say they favor it. But when I ask them if they are fine with their tax dollars going to fund Islamic instruction in a Muslim school, they suddenly get quiet, or oppose the idea outright. Fair is fair when it comes to public monies. You can’t encourage the idea of atheists paying for religious instruction for your children in your private schools, and then complain about a Wiccan school, or a transgender private school receiving the same funds.

Keep Private Education Truly Private

As conservatives, we should be looking for ways to decrease taxation for all schooling, and support tax incentives for businesses and individuals that allow them to keep their own money in their own pockets. Private education is successful because the private sector is always more efficient than the government. Given the opportunity (and adequate capital), privatized schools will always out-perform (on the average) government-controlled schools. There are many changes that can be made to the tax law that help encourage private education (privately funded savings accounts, tax deductions, etc.) that leave money in the pockets of the citizens/businesses, rather than take them away, and apportion some of it back with strings attached. I’d encourage you to consider strongly that what looks like a carrot dangling at the end of a rope may end up being a noose that kills the freedom of private schools to completely control what they teach.

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

Written by Walter Williams

It’s nearly impossible to have even a short conversation with a college administrator, politician or chief executive without the words diversity and inclusion dropping from their lips. Diversity and inclusion appear to be the end-all and be-all of their existence. So, I thought I’d begin this discussion by first looking up the definition of diversity.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, diversity is “the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.” The definition gratuitously adds, “equality and diversity should be supported for their own sake.” The standard definition given for inclusion is involvement and empowerment where the inherent worth and dignity of all people are recognized.

Here’s my question to those who are wedded to diversity and inclusion: Are people better off the less they have in common with one another? For example, women are less likely to be able to march 12.4 miles in five hours with an 83-pound assault load. They are also less likely to be able to crawl, sprint, negotiate obstacles and move a wounded comrade weighing 165 pounds while carrying that load. Would anyone argue that a military outfit would benefit from diversity by including soldiers who can and those who cannot march 12 miles in five hours while carrying an 83-pound load?

You say, “Williams, the military is an exception!” What about language? The International Civil Aviation Organization has decreed that all air traffic controllers and flight crew members engaged in or in contact with international flights must be proficient in the English language as a general spoken medium. According to UNESCO, there are about 7,000 languages in the world. The International Civil Aviation Organization could promote language inclusiveness by requiring language rotation. Some years, Cebuano (of the Malayo-Polynesian language family) and in other years Kinyarwanda (of the Niger-Congo language family) could be the language of pilots and air traffic controllers. Keep in mind that it is claimed that the great benefit of diversity and inclusiveness is that it promotes and fosters a sense of belonging. It values and practices respect for the differences in the talents, beliefs, backgrounds and ways of living of its members.

Another issue is what should be done when people who should know better praise non-diversity and non-inclusiveness? Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse L. Jackson said, “I applaud commissioner Adam Silver’s commitment to diversity and inclusion within the NBA.” During the 2018-2019 season, more than 33% of NBA teams had head coaches of color. The number of assistant head coaches of color was over 42%. The number of black NBA players was 82%. In the face of these statistics, Oris Stuart, the NBA’s chief diversity and inclusion officer said, “Diversity, inclusion and equality are central to every aspect of our game and our business.” I would like for Jesse Jackson and others who claim that there’s racial diversity and inclusiveness in professional basketball to make their case. The same question can be asked about professional football where 70% of NFL players are black, and 9% of team head coaches are black. The thornier question and challenge is what can be done to make professional basketball and football look more like the American population?

Most of the diversity and inclusiveness insanity has its roots in academia. An example is a paper titled “Equilibrium Grade Inflation with Implications for Female Interest in STEM Majors,” written by Naval Postgraduate School professor Thomas Ahn, Duke University economics professor Peter Arcidiacono, Duke University researcher Amy Hopson, and James R. Thomas of the Federal Trade Commission. The authors argue that science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs at colleges and universities lacking female enrollment can be attributed largely to harsh grading policies in these fields. Their solution to increase the number of women’s involvement in STEM is to standardize grading curves, in order to grade less “harshly.” The insanity of this approach is to not only weaken standards for women but to weaken standards across the board. This is more evidence that George Orwell was absolutely right when he said, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

School leaders who sexually integrate restrooms and locker rooms know what they’re doing is based on a lie. Why do I say that? First, let’s take a quick look at what’s happening in those schools that choose to sexually integrate private spaces to accommodate the wishes of students who feel they are or wish they were the sex they are not.

In addition to allowing “trans”-identifying students unrestricted access to opposite-sex locker rooms, these schools provide private changing cubicles for students who don’t want to undress in the presence of opposite-sex students or be in the presence of opposite-sex students who are undressing. For example, schools like the five high schools in Illinois’ District 211 provide what are essentially teeny tiny locker rooms within girls’ locker rooms for girls who don’t want to undress in front of the biological boys who are now allowed unrestricted access to the larger girls’ locker rooms.

Now set that information aside for a moment to look at the analogy on which cultural regressives ground their assertion that restrooms and locker rooms should be sexually integrated: They ground it on the claim that basing private space usage on biological sex is equivalent to racial discrimination. My online debate in September with Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, clearly exposes that common “progressive” position. (As an aside, I highly recommend reading and discussing this debate with your children ages 12 and up.)

Mills (falsely) claimed this about my opposition to the sexual integration of private spaces:

[Y]ou are demanding that women who do not conform to your notion of what a woman should look like should be segregated, because it would make women who look different uncomfortable. This is exactly the argument used for segregated neighborhoods, separate drinking fountains, public accommodations, etc.

Mills was wrong. I said nothing about what women “should look like.” And if by “notion,” Mills means a “belief” or a “fanciful impulse,” he’s wrong again. That women have vaginas, uteruses, and breasts is not a “notion,” nor is it a fanciful impulse about what women “should look like”; it’s a scientific fact. The scientific fact that humans born with penises are male is not a “notion” either. Women are not uncomfortable sharing locker rooms with women “who look different.” Many women are uncomfortable sharing locker rooms with men. And men aren’t different-looking women.

Nor did I say that some women should be segregated from other women in private spaces. I said, biological men (or boys) should not be allowed in the private spaces of women (or girls).

But more important, note that Mills, like countless other self-identifying “progressives,” says that segregating biological men who wish they were women from biological women is analogous or equivalent to separate drinking fountains, lunch counters, or bus seating for blacks and whites.

This common leftist analogy is intellectually vacuous and constitutes the kind of sophistry that smart people with bad ideas use to confuse and deceive others. Mills and his ideological collaborators ignore the fact that while skin color differences have no meaning relative to eating, drinking, or riding buses, sex differences have profound meaning relative to undressing. In fact, sex differences are the very reason we have sex-separated private spaces for men and women. (This points to another lie from leftists. They implicitly claim that the desire for sex segregation when undressing or going to the bathroom has nothing whatsoever to do with sex differences, which raises the question for leftists, how and why did sex-segregated private spaces ever come into existence in the first place?)

I wonder how Mills and his collaborators explain the fact that there are many women of color who don’t want to undress in the presence of biological men. Are those women discriminatory bigots? Are they unable to see the equivalence between separate lunch counters for people of different races and separate showers for people of different sexes?

Now back to public schools’ provision of teeny tiny, private changing cubicles within girls’ locker rooms for girls who don’t want to undress in front of biological boys who wish they were girls.

Let’s employ the leftist analogy that separate private spaces based on biological differences between the sexes is unjustly discriminatory. If girls’ opposition to undressing in the presence of boys who identify as girls is equivalent to racism, why should schools provide private changing cubicles for those girls? Don’t those private cubicles signify the accommodation of egregious bigotry? If white girls said they were uncomfortable undressing in front of black girls, would schools ever provide private cubicles to accommodate their bigotry? In other words, if we apply the leftist analogy consistently, schools are now providing accommodations for “notions” that the advocates of sex-integrated privates spaces say are intrinsically evil.

I asked Mills the following questions four times, and, tellingly, four times he refused to answer:

If you believe sexual “segregation” is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation, are you fighting for the end of all sexual “segregation”? How do you justify leaving some sexually segregated spaces? Would you allow some racial segregation to remain legal? Using your deeply flawed analogy, would you allow some “whites only” spaces to remain?

Schools are being hoist with their own petard. If unwillingness to undress in front of “trans”-identifying, opposite-sex students is analogous to racism, then schools must get rid of private changing cubicles for “bigots.” If they don’t get rid of private changing cubicles, then they are either complicit in hateful bigotry or implicitly admitting that unwillingness to undress in front of “trans”-identifying, opposite-sex students is not analogous to bigoted discrimination.

School leaders who sexually integrate locker rooms either don’t really believe that sex-segregation in private spaces is bigoted and unjustly discriminatory, or they do believe it is and these tiny, private changing cubicles are just an interim step—a sop to conservative bigots—on the “progressive” path to the total eradication of sex-segregation everywhere for everyone. Community members need to find out which it is.

And while community members are at it, they should ask school leaders if it’s legitimate for girls to want to be free of the presence of boys in spaces where they—the girls—undress. If such a desire is legitimate, do the feelings of boys about their maleness or their ability to conceal their sex delegitimize the girls’ wishes? If, however, the desire of girls to be free of the presence of boys in spaces where they undress is not legitimate, then why have any sex-segregated spaces anywhere for anyone?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Sexually-Integrate-School-Locker-Rooms.mp3

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Giving taxpayers and parents a sense of just what their money is being spent on, the University of Illinois declared a “climate emergency” ahead of the recent United Nations COP25 “climate” summit in Spain. About 200 other universities and organizations around the world made similar declarations by signing on to the letter.

In the so-called “Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Accord,” signed by U of I President Timothy Killeen, signatories recognized the alleged “need” for “a drastic societal shift to combat the growing threat of climate change.” As part of that, the university vowed to ensure that the “young minds shaped” by its professors were “equipped” with the “knowledge” they would need to respond to this supposed “threat.”

To “step up to the challenge,” the university committed to supporting a three-point plan. This includes spending more money on “climate change research” and going “carbon neutral by 2030 or 2050 at the latest.” It also involves stepping up the climate indoctrination, described in the document as “increasing the delivery of environmental and sustainability education across curriculum, campus and community outreach programs.”

“We all need to work together to nurture a habitable planet for future generations and to play our part in building a greener and cleaner future for all,” the letter states. “We call on governments and other education institutions to join us in declaring a Climate Emergency and back this up with actions that will help create a better future for both people and our planet.”

The “SDG Accord,” named after the UN’s highly controversial Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, was signed by radical groups from around the world, including organs of mass-murdering Communist Party dictatorships that jumped on the “climate” bandwagon to extort Western taxpayers. Multiple governments and other organizations have also declared a “climate emergency.”

At the UN COP25, under the guise of stopping the supposed “climate emergency,” policies ranging from drastic population reduction and enforced lower living standards to imposing global taxes and “global governance” were all openly promoted. One prominent professor in Denmark even suggested the UN could use “peacekeeping” troops to enforce its climate mandates.

Ironically, when the European pseudo-Parliament was debating the measure to declare a “climate emergency,” German Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were extremely uneasy. That is because National Socialist (Nazi) dictator Adolf Hitler also declared an “emergency” (Norstand, in German) to usurp all sorts of totalitarian powers under the guise of dealing with the supposed “emergency.”

Countless scientists, though, have ridiculed the notion of a “climate emergency.” Internationally renowned Princeton University physicist Dr. William Happer, who most recently served as climate advisor to President Donald Trump, warned in Madrid that the alarmist movement was a “bizarre environmental cult” that had manufactured a phony “climate emergency” to unleash its policies.

Speaking of Nazi emergencies, former senior NASA climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, who now serves as a senior research scientist at the University of Alabama, blasted extremist peddlers of the man-made global-warming hypothesis as “global-warming Nazis.” Among the main reasons he chose the term is that the policies they advocate would kill far more people than Hitler’s National Socialists ever did.

The University of Illinois is no stranger to climate hysteria. In September, hundreds of high-school and college students gathered on campus to protest against alleged man-made “climate” changes, which they believe are caused by the gas they exhale (CO2). Professors are offering a great deal of “support” for their efforts, organizers of the demonstration said.

Speaking to the tax-funded Illinois Public Media talk show known as “The 21^st,” students involved in putting together the climate march offered insight into the sort of dangerous and misleading propaganda they are being spoon-fed at their tax-funded university. And it was not pretty.

“I kind of figured out the polar bears aren’t dying because I’m leaving the lights on at night,” said U of I “Students for Environmental Concerns” campus President Abbi Pstrzroch. “They’re dying because climate change is very systematic and it’s deeply rooted in greed and corruption.”

Of course, in the real world, polar bears are not actually dying at all — they are thriving in an incredible way. In fact, according to leading polar bear expert Dr. Susan Crockford, a Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Victoria, polar bear numbers have actually exploded, with populations quadrupling just since the late 1960s when the “global cooling” scare was getting underway.

After complaining about the “eco-anxiety” that young people supposedly suffer from due to alleged man-made warming, Pstrzroch revealed what has long been very clear to observers: the “climate” movement has less to do with changes in climate, and more to do with imposing left-wing progressive changes on society.

The goals of the climate marchers, Pstrzroch said, include: “respect for indigenous lands, climate justice, sustainable agriculture, protection and restoration of biodiversity, as well as a Green New Deal mainly focusing on legislative with fossil fuels.” The proposed “Green New Deal” called for banning airplanes and “farting cows,” paying people who do not want to work, and many other absurdities.

Despite the U of I joining hundreds of other institutions around the world in declaring a “climate” emergency, the UN COP25 summit in Madrid did not succeed in advancing the extreme policies sought by the alarmist movement. That is mostly because President Trump stood in the way and quit showering billions of U.S. tax dollars on the schemes.

However, with public schools and left-wing universities such as those in Illinois flagrantly indoctrinating students into climate alarmism and progressive ideology, advocates of a planetary “climate” regime remain hopeful. It will be up to grassroots Americans to defend truth and freedom.

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It started with a tweet. (What doesn’t these days?) But before we go into the content of it, here’s how a few news outlets headlined it:

• November 20^th, Indianapolis Star: IU won’t fire professor for tweets provost called ‘racist, sexist and homophobic’
• November 21^st, Indianapolis Business Journal: IU says professor’s views are racist, sexist and homophobic—but it can’t fire him
• November 22^nd, Time: Indiana University Says It Can’t Fire Professor for ‘Bigoted’ Social Media Comments

Here’s what happened. On November 7^th, Indiana University Kelley School of Business Professor Eric Rasmusen tweeted an article from an alternative media webzine. The title of it, “Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably,” was, granted, provocative. Rasmusen, perhaps feeling a bit punchy, added an up-the-ante pull quote from it: “geniuses are overwhelmingly male because they combine outlier high IQ with moderately low Agreeableness and moderately low Conscientiousness.” And from there, the twitterverse was off to the reactionary races. No one, as far as I could tell, bothered to actually read the article.

So, in the interest of fact-finding, I did. It discussed different traits common to women and men and then raised the question of how those traits may or may not serve the purpose of academia. Women, it said, tend to be more empathy-driven, sensitive toward others, and concerned with getting along and not hurting people’s feelings. Meanwhile men, generally more socially inept and driven to solve problems, don’t care so much about giving offense.

And then it put forth its central contention. If the purpose of academia is the pursuit of truth – an effort which necessarily requires rigorous, unemotional examination of facts and arguments – then an overemphasis on empathy may compromise the mission of the academy. Or, putting it in the terminology of the pull quote, if a university’s governing ethos too heavily favors agreeableness, then genius breakthroughs of new insight – which usually come at the expense of breaking rules and offending the status quo – are less likely to happen.

Which Will Rule: Reason or Emotion?

Now, one may agree or disagree with that contention. Or one may take issue with some part or another of the argument. But to do either one would require reading the article, engaging with the points it makes, and calmly analyzing the argument as if there is some discernible truth worth pursuing. This is how engaging with ideas works, and people who think rationally come to reasoned conclusions this way – by weighing and cross-examining competing ideas.

But ironically (and devastatingly indicting for IU as an academic institution), the official statement from IU Provost Lauren Robel, only served to validate the article’s point. First, she restated the scathing ad hominems against Professor Rasmusen in her own words – without giving any evidence that she’d read the article or engaging with anything he said. And, in so doing, she utterly failed as an academic to parley in the realm of objective truth or the facts of a matter. Then, she reacted at length from a place of raw emotion. Rasmusen’s views are “stunningly ignorant” and outdated. She finds them “loathsome,” condemns them “in the strongest terms,” and [supports IU’s] colleagues and classmates in their perfectly reasonable anger and disgust.”

Kelley School of Business Dean Idie Kesner’s statement, reflected the same sentiments and emphasized her commitment to ensuring a “non-threatening,” “respectful, and inclusive environment” that is “supportive of diversity.” Neither woman engaged with the argument in the article or with anything specific that Professor Rasmusen actually said.

And so, what the dustup revealed was this. In the place dedicated to ideas, emotions were in charge. Whether you agree with Professor Rasmusen him or not, the whole episode validated the point of article he tweeted and showed him to be light years ahead of his accusers as an academic.

Contending for Reason

Several years ago, I picked up a simple two-question rubric for responding to false accusations from University of North Carolina-Wilmington professor Mike Adams. He applies it to an accusation of racism, but it’s applicable to any of the stock ad homenims now in vogue. As Adams explains it, it’s a way of responding to bad speech with better speech. You ask for a definition of the “sin” with which you have being accused. Then you invite the accuser to present evidence to support the charge based on the definition of the term. It’s a supremely reasonable tactic to have on hand.

Rasmusen’s accusers, for example, called him many things, but the only accusation remotely relatable to the kerfuffle at hand was the charge of sexism. Given the chance, then we might pose two simple questions to any would-be accusers:

• What is meant by sexist?, and
• What has Professor Rasmusen said or done that meets that definition?

Honestly what could be more reasonable (and potentially peaceable) than inviting your accuser to state her case by defining her terms and presenting evidence? This is not a sport for the emotionally weak, though, so be wise and compassionate in the way you go about it. People have varying capacities for reason, but that is precisely why rational questions should be posed. These two questions serve both as a diagnostic of that capacity and as an invitation to grow it.

**For a helpful exercise in growing your own capacity, read the article, then click here and work your way through Professor Rasmusen’s point-by-point response to Robel’s statement.

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-and, please-

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent.” Only 25 percent of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test’s readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math and science).

It’s clear that high schools confer diplomas that attest that a student can read, write and do math at a 12th-grade level when, in fact, most cannot. That means most high diplomas represent fraudulent documents. But when high school graduates enter college, what happens? To get a hint, we can turn to an article by Craig E. Klafter, “Good Grieve! America’s Grade Inflation Culture,” published in the Fall 2019 edition of Academic Questions. In 1940, only 15 percent of all grades awarded were A’s. By 2018, the average grade point average at some of the nation’s leading colleges was A-minus. For example, the average GPA at Brown University (3.75), Stanford (3.68), Harvard College (3.63), Yale University (3.63), Columbia University (3.6), University of California, Berkeley (3.59).

The falling standards witnessed at our primary and secondary levels are becoming increasingly the case at tertiary levels. “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” is a study conducted by Professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. They found that 45 percent of 2,300 students at 24 colleges showed no significant improvement in “critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.”

An article in News Forum for Lawyers titled “Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent” cites a study done by the American Institutes for Research that revealed that over 75 percent of two-year college students and 50 percent of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20 percent of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30 percent of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually to train employees in “basic English.”

Here is a list of some other actual college courses that have been taught at U.S. colleges in recent years: “What If Harry Potter Is Real?” “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame,” “Philosophy and Star Trek,” “Learning from YouTube,” “How To Watch Television,” and “Oh, Look, a Chicken!” The questions that immediately come to mind are these: What kind of professor would teach such courses, and what kind of student would spend his time taking such courses? Most importantly, what kind of college president and board of trustees would permit classes in such nonsense?

The fact that unscrupulous parents paid millions for special favors from college administrators to enroll their children pales in comparison to the poor educational outcomes, not to mention the gross indoctrination of young people by leftist professors.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at creators.com.

Next time you hear some arch-defender of the a-constitutional “wall” of separation between the church and state whose knickers are in a twist because a school allows ten seconds of silence during which students may pray, remember this story, reported last summer by the Chicago Tribune:

Students at a Chicago high school were led into a room with shades drawn and door windows papered over, lit only with candles and scented by incense. They were handed flowers and told to pay attention to instructors, according to one student’s account.

Jade Thomas, an incoming sophomore at Bogan Computer Technical High School, said instructors “chanted in a foreign language” and “threw rice, seasonings and oranges in a pan in front of a picture of a man.” She described the ritual, which she said involved a “secret mantra,” to a rapt audience at a Chicago Board of Education meeting Wednesday.

At one point, Jade said, “they tell us to place the flowers in the pan with everything else, and they ended the song. I felt uncomfortable because I didn’t know what they were saying or who the man was in the picture.”

Jade Thomas’ discomfort was entirely warranted. The program to which she was objecting is called Quiet Time, a euphemistic name that conceals from parents that it’s the practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM), which is Hinduism repackaged (and trademarked) for Western audiences.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, disciple of Guru Dev (aka Swami Brahmananda Saraswati), repackaged Hinduism—which emerged from the ancient religious Vedic tradition—in a form more acceptable to western minds and brought it to American hippies in the 1960s and 1970s. While disciples of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi publicly (and deceitfully) claim that TM is solely a scientific method of relieving stress, they conveniently omit the religious dimensions of the program and practice.

The Chicago Board of Education is colluding with the University of Chicago Urban Labs, which is, in turn, partnering with Hollywood director and long-time Transcendental Meditator David Lynch to experiment on Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students.  They hope to determine whether introducing students secretly to Hindu religious practices can “help youth reduce their toxic stress, succeed in school and stay safe.”

The Quiet Time website includes this claim:

Transcendental Meditation, the core intervention of the Quiet Time Program. … does not involve any religion [or] philosophy.”

“Does not involve any religion”? Lol. You be the judge of that claim. As a former TMer married to a former TM teacher, I’ve already judged that claim.

Decades ago when I became a TMer and my husband a TM teacher, mantras—the secret word repeated soundlessly during meditation—were assigned during the “initiation” ceremony that Jade Bogan described, which is called a puja. Initiates were asked to bring a piece of fruit, a new handkerchief, and flowers to the ceremony which was conducted in a darkened, incense-filled room in front of a de facto altar. The TM teacher would then begin the ceremony which was conducted in Sanskrit, so the initiate had no idea what was being spoken. Much later after studying in Spain with Maharishi and becoming a TM teacher, my husband learned the Sanskrit words spoken during the ceremony:

To LORD NARAYANA, to lotus-born BRAHMA the Creator to…GOVINDA, ruler among the yogis…to SHANKARACHARYA the redeemer, hailed as KRISHNA and BADARAYANA, to the commentator of the BRAHMA SUTRAS I bow down. To the glory of the LORD I bow down again and again, at whose door the whole galaxy of gods pray for perfection day and night…GURU [Dev] in the glory of BRAHMA, GURU in the glory of the great LORD SHIVA, GURU in the glory of the personified transcendental fullness of BRAHMAN, to Him, to SHRI GURU DEV adorned with glory, I bow down…with Brahman ever dwelling in the lotus of my heart…to That [Brahman], in the form of Guru Dev, I bow down.

At various points during the ceremony, the teacher would pause and ask the initiate for one of the gifts they were asked to bring which the teacher would then place on the altar, thus making the initiate an unwitting participant in a distinctly religious ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, initiates were given their mantras, which, as it turns out, are the names of Hindu gods.

Initiates were prohibited from telling anyone their secret mantras, which I eventually learned were chosen according to the initiate’s age. My mantra was pronounced “ah-ing” and is intended to honor the Hindu goddess of Saraswati.

So, does that sound like it “does not involve any religion”?

As to the claim that TM involves no philosophy, ask any long-time meditator about transcendental consciousness, cosmic consciousness, unity consciousness, god consciousness, and sidhis. If you have the patience to slog through Maharishi’s thicket of religious/philosophical dogma, click here.

David Lynch created the David Lynch Foundation, which then created the Center for Wellness and Education in order to promote TM by renaming it Quiet Time. Unfortunately, CPS is not the only school district introducing children to the ancient Vedic practice of TM.

TMers continually cite positive effects. They even take credit for civil conflict ending, claiming that any place where at least 1 percent of the population is meditating, peace ensues. Maharishi claimed that,

the nature of life is to grow. Ninety-nine people can violate their own nature to grow and maybe weave around non-growth. One man, having a desire to evolve, having a desire to progress, having a desire to grow, by nature, he’ll take up Transcendental Meditation. On that basis, he will start producing a harmonious influence around him. Without knowing how he does it, without knowing the mechanics of how the radiations go from a more orderly mind to influence the less orderly minds around him, without knowing it, invariably he’ll be producing a harmonious influence in the whole society. Then the whole society will find a trend in the direction of evolution.

Here are two questions that Chicago Board of Education members should be asked:

1.) If it is legal and appropriate for public schools to promote and teach ancient Vedic/Hindu meditative prayer practices, is it legal and appropriate for schools to promote and teach Muslim prayer practices, Kabbalistic meditative practices, and Christian prayer practices?

2.) If the possibility of a reduction of problematic behaviors justifies the formal implementation of Hindu religious practice in public schools, will public schools now permit the implementation of other religious practices in order to determine their efficacy in positively affecting school climate?

For years, the TM organization has been plagued by myriad criticisms for deception like its failure to acknowledge its religious nature or promises of superpowers (sidhis) like Yogic flying. Over 40 years ago, Maharishi told his disciples that by attending longer residential courses during which attendees would meditate for extended periods of time and receive additional magic words (i.e., sutras), they would start levitating and shortly thereafter flying. Of course, the TM organization profited from these longer courses.

Well, here we are decades later and to my knowledge, no TMer is flying. You can find amusing videos online of TMers still “hopping.” Well, you can find videos of hale and hearty men “hopping” whilst huffing and puffing. I’ve yet to see a video of a frail elderly woman “hopping.”

There are also criticisms of the studies the TM organization touts regarding its efficacy as well as more serious concerns about potential risks to mental health. For more information about TM from a former meditator, click HERE.

In the interest of parental rights and transparency, I hope CPS administrators in schools that are teaching ancient Vedic meditative techniques will reveal to every parent the criticisms of Transcendental Meditation leveled by many.

In the interest of intellectual consistency, I hope those virulent opponents of 10 seconds of silence in public schools during which students may pray (but are not taught prayer practices) will direct their virulence to schools that teach repackaged Hinduism to students.

And in the interest of fiscal transparency and accountability, I hope some public watch dogs will find out if any local, state, and/or federal money is lining the pockets of the David Lynch Foundation.

Here’s more on TM:

Transcendental Meditation in the New Millennium (Part One)

Transcendental Meditation in the New Millennium (Part Two)

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Transcendental-Meditation-and-CPS.mp3

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