Fighting Off the Infestation

If you think you’re in a safe area where Marxist/BLM Critical Race Theory doctrines are not being taught in your schools, maybe you’d better check again.

 

TOO CLOSE TO HOME

cover of the spring 2021 issue of Teaching Tolerance

Yesterday I got a notice from a friend. A teacher in our local school district, Cy-Fair ISD (that’s short for Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District) had passed along to him a pdf sent to teachers in the district. It’s the spring 2021 issue of a periodical called Teaching Tolerance, provided by Tolerance.org. Their cover for this issue announces: 

White supremacy affects every element of the U.S. education system. Find out how students, educators and other stakeholders resist it daily.

Maybe you’ve noticed that the enemies to freedom and civilization frequently change the definition of words to the point that they have no meaning. White supremacy traditionally has referred to a fringe group of racists, so separate from normal society that you’d have trouble finding them and may not have met one in your entire life. There was a time when what few numbers there were of them congregated around a couple of small towns in northern Idaho. We fostered a teenage girl briefly, over 30 years ago, from that area, whose father was one of them. She didn’t even understand his beliefs, let alone share them. Even though she was in a pitiable condition herself, her situation wasn’t the fault of non-whites—few of whom had ever been part of her life, so why blame them? White supremacists are marginalized even further to the fringes today.

So the enemy is changing the definition.

There’s a quote you may be familiar with; I think it may have once become a song. Anyway, Edwin Markham wrote:

“He drew a circle that shut me out-

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle and took him In!”

It’s a Venn diagram, possibly reversing the purpose of that quote. The circle of white supremacists was so small—and yet so delightfully toxic—that the Critical Race Theorists drew a circle around all whites, with those actual white supremacists in the middle, and labeled the larger circle all white supremacists. Like this:

normal view (left) and Critical Race Theory view (right)

The handy thing is, the stigma of that tiny subset is still there; it is just smeared on the whole set.

So, how do you stop being a white supremacist? Stop being white. If you fall short of that (and what choice do you have?) then at least be anti-white and bow down to the supremacy of non-whites—blacks in particular—as penance for your inherited skin color sin.

The first inside page of the online magazine—before the table of contents—advertises a film for grades 6-12. Here’s the blurb:

Our new streaming classroom film, Bibi, tells the story of Ben, a gay Latinx man, and his complicated relationship with his father and his home. The 18-minute film can inspire critical conversations about identity, culture, family, communication and belonging.

Further in, they mention that the title of the organization/publication is being changed to Learning for Justice—so if you look for the Teaching Tolerance title, you won’t find it much longer. And, just as they weren’t teaching actual tolerance, the new publication will have nothing to do with learning justice. We’re told, on page 5, that in this issue,

We highlight stories across a wide spectrum of education, examining the ways systems and institutions perpetuate racism and white supremacy.

That doesn’t sound like it covers a wide spectrum of education; it sounds like it covers a tiny, narrow band of something irrelevant to our children in our very “diverse” neighborhood schools.

The new definition of “white supremacy” is “related to a society that historically had a majority of white-skinned people.” So Shakespeare is a white supremacist—and therefore unworthy of being taught. Even Greek classicism, along with any of its wisdom, is white supremacist and unworthy of being taught. (See p. 46, “The Classical Roots of White Supremacy.”

One discussion in the magazine mentions how horrible it was to read the classic novel The Scarlet Letter (see p. 24):

Like many products of the U.S. education system, I read The Scarlet Letter in high school. My English teacher practically danced around the classroom—she loved the story so much. I remember feeling conflicted. I knew some of my classmates had children. Others had unmarried mothers. The discussion felt unfair. I was left feeling dejected by a book that did not speak to me and by a lesson I knew could harm my classmates.

I did not love this book either. But it’s a style problem, not any problem this author notes. The lesson of the story was not that the woman deserved to be marked for life with a scarlet letter for bearing a child out of wedlock; it was that the hypocritical priest who had gotten her pregnant was not held accountable for his sin. She was seen as the more virtuous character, and he was despicable. This author misunderstood the story and missed the “lesson.” And I don’t think it’s because the theme is lost on someone with a different skin color from the person in the story, or from the book’s author, or even a different skin color from the teacher; it’s because this author is obtuse. Making an assumption that anything that comes from a white person must be unworthy of being taught sort of skews one’s ability to see value in stories from various cultures—something that Western civilization does remarkably well by any objective measure.

If this author had understood the book, she might have noticed that the message was that sex outside of marriage is not an act of love by the man; it is an act of self-indulgence at the expense of the woman. If only the author’s classmates had gotten that message early and often before they got themselves pregnant during high school! That message could have helped them, not harmed them, as this author mistakenly claims.

As the article’s author misinterpreted the book and its meaning, Critical Race Theory is a purposely obtuse misinterpretation of actual history. If you notice and disagree, you are, ironically, labeled with a modern-day scarlet letter—as racist, and probably also homophobic, transphobic, or whatever else they put in the Venn diagram, deeming you unworthy of participation in society.

 

WHERE HAVE WE SEEN HISTORY CHANGED BEFORE?

Let me remind you of the character Winston Smith from George Orwell’s 1984. Dr. Larry Arnn talked about this in a Constitution Day speech last year (reprinted in the December 2020 issue of Imprimis):

The protagonist of 1984 is a man named Winston Smith. He works for the state, and his job is to rewrite history. He sits at a table with a telescreen in front of him that watches everything he does. To one side is something called a memory hole—when Winston puts things in it, he assumes they are burned and lost forever. Tasks are delivered to him in cylinders through a pneumatic tube. The task might involve something big, like a change in what country the state is at war with: when the enemy changes, all references to the previous war with a different enemy need to be expunged. Or the task might be something small: if an individual falls out of favor with the state, photographs of him being honored need to be altered or erased altogether from the records. Winston’s job is to fix every book, periodical, newspaper, etc. that reveals or refers to what used to be the truth, in order that it conform to the new truth….

Winston’s awareness of this endless mighty effort to alter reality makes him cynical and disaffected. He comes to see that he knows nothing of the past, of real history: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified,” he says at one point, “every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute…. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Dr. Arnn then asks, “Does any of this sound familiar?”

illustration from Teaching Tolerance, spring 2021, p. 56

Incidentally, that CRT magazine regales students who pushed for changing the name of three schools named for Robert E. Lee, the anti-slavery general for the south, whose military acumen and personal honor were admired in both the North and the South during and after the Civil War (see page 54). Somehow I’m certain the students were unaware of anything about him other than that he fought for the South. The article has an “of course he was evil” assumption, but it’s really about turning students into activists. If you can get them angry enough, you can get them to make the demands they’re told they should make.

There’s this insidious infestation of a “new” history (based neither on history nor scholarship) claiming that the real beginning of this nation is 1619—supposedly the year African slaves were first sold on this continent, as though this is the seminal moment that led to the country.

If only black or Muslim Africans had never captured and sold their fellow black Africans to people on other continents! If only none was ever sold in the Western hemisphere! Then the world would have been free of the slavery that has plagued pretty much every part of the world throughout history. Except—slavery was already here—and of course all those other countries. So whatever happened in 1619 was absolutely irrelevant to what became the nation that was based on the revolutionary moral idea that God created all human beings as equal—an idea that birthed our nation in 1776, when we declared independence from a tyrannical monarchy. It was the birth of that idea of freedom that led to the end of slavery—even at the cost of a painful Civil War.

And, according to Mary Graber in Debunking Howard Zinn (p. 92),

The Civil War not only led to the emancipation of American slaves but inspired leaders in the slave-holding nations of Cuba and Brazil to take steps to end slavery and avoid a similar outcome.[i]

To gloss over the moral antipathy to slavery, the very thing that made black Africans more free—and offered them more opportunities—than anywhere else in the world is nothing short of the darkest lie.

Pretending that all people without a certain amount of skin melanin are evil and shameful is not only a lie; it is racist. They call it “anti-racist,” because they like to control words. But in thought and deed, it is simply racism. It does not heal old wounds—wounds that in almost all cases were not caused by any living person toward any living person. It stirs up hatred and division. You can’t get to civilization by heading in this savage direction.

 

AGAIN, TOO CLOSE TO HOME

This evening I happened upon a video about Critical Race Theory at Brigham Young University, my alma mater. BYU is a large private religious university with an excellent reputation. It’s one of only a few universities that still required a core curriculum when we sent two of our children there. I was saddened to learn that the problems of other universities are happening here as well, where we ought to feel safe from the infestation of these Critical Race and Intersectionality lies.

The podcast talked about how, after you’ve prepared your child with four years of early morning seminary (scripture study classes before school), family home evenings (weekly home gospel study), church youth programs, church attendance, and everything you can think of to prepare your child spiritually, you’re so happy to send them to this wonderful school where the gospel is taught as part of every subject. But you might be disappointed.

The video is from Cwic Media, which offers helps for family scripture study, often related to the standard reading for the week, which I’ve watched from time to time. I’m uncertain who the speaker is, or whether it’s always him on this channel. But he says, after all your preparations, you send your child off to BYU,

And within a couple of weeks of being at BYU, a teacher starts telling you about some aspect of Critical Race Theory, and asks you to do a report, let’s say, on race issues. And they begin to talk to you in a new language that you’ve never heard before, for that student. They bring up words like anti-racism and ideas like intersectionality. And they start introducing you into new authors and ideas. This could be in any class. This could be in your English class—especially in the humanities. This could be in your history class. This could be in your religion class.

And it becomes obvious throughout the semester that, with that teacher who’s there at BYU, that they support this ideology. And you start thinking to yourself, because of the way the teacher presents it, that this is part of the gospel. That this is good. Right? This has to do with race relations, for example.

And all of a sudden, all of the effort you’ve put in for 18 years with that child, in their home, starts to turn to an ideology that is un-Christlike. To an ideology that takes away from the complete doctrine of Christ. And that, as people pursue it stronger and stronger, begin to doubt their own testimonies.

This is a reality, folks, happening all the time at Brigham Young University.

Last September there was a discussion, on Instagram, with people sharing their challenges with Critical Theory—and just plain anti-gospel opinions—being taught at BYU. Here’s a sampling:

Something interesting the speaker said on the Cwic podcast was that it starts with empathy. You want to have empathy; you should have empathy. So they use that as a hook. But then they extend that: If you don’t think blacks should be given preferential treatment above all other races, then you must hate blacks; you’re not a good person. If you don’t think gays should have the right to marry—thus changing the definition of what marriage has meant for 6000 years—then you must hate gays; you’re a bad person.

Instead of defining “good” the way God defines it, suddenly this Critical Race/Intersectionality doctrine redefines what you must believe to be “good.” No heresy from their doctrine is allowed.

 

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT? STAND UP.

If standing for something that all the people around you agree with was enough, it wouldn’t take any courage, or stamina. But we’re in a time when it does take courage—not so much because you’re standing up to your enemies, but because sometimes you’re required to stand up against friends, neighbors, and family. Still, you have to do it. Not shrilly. But resolutely.

My friend, Bill, who informed us about this CRT publication being sent to the teachers in Cy-Fair ISD, already came up with an action. He says,

I am working with constituents in my precinct to meet at the Cy-Fair Board meeting on June 24th, to understand and get them on record if they are supporting CRT or not.  There are 3 board seats up for election in November.  We need to understand where they stand on this Marxist propaganda.  If you want to get involved or can support me anyway, please let me know and I will do my best to keep you posted.

He also already contacted his state representative to ask for support.

Meanwhile, in the Texas Legislature this session—which is nearing a close in a week and a half—there’s a bill that has made it through the House, and out of committee in the Senate, and looks like it might get a floor vote: HB 3979 by Rep. Steve Toth, from Montgomery County, just north of here. It would outlaw Critical Race Theory from being taught in any form in our public schools, and would require the teaching of real history, including source documents.

I hope it passes. But the people who simply change words at will are likely to call their lies something not yet invented so they can say, “Oh, that’s not Critical Race Theory.” They did that when we outlawed Common Core; they just slapped a different label on it. And upped the ante with Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality.

I might as well mention one more thing you could do: homeschool.

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[i] Graber includes this footnote: Paquette and Smith, “Introduction: Slavery in the Americas” in The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas, ed. Robert L. Paquette and Mark M. Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 3-17.

Days That Live in Infamy

This is the 79^th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which led to our entrance into World War II. It was an attack on our nation, on American soil. We still remember it, mark the day, and honor those who died there and who fought thereafter. There was a good movie last year about that attack and the months that followed, called Midway. It’s not the only movie about this event. And who knows what stories will recount the event in the future. I heard that this was the first year that survivors did not attend a memorial service in the nation’s capital. There are still a few survivors alive today, but because of the pandemic, or whatever reason, they did not travel to the event. Still, the the attack on Pearl Harbor remains clear in our collective memory. It woke us up to the threat to our freedom from those who would overthrow our country, our Constitution, and impose tyranny upon us. With God’s help, they did not win.

Images of Pearl Harbor and World Trade Center attacks are from memes found on Facebook.
Photo of mail-in ballot counting is by Rachel Wisniewski/Reuters, found here

Another day that lives in infamy is September 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center with airplanes, and also the Pentagon, and a fourth attempt taken down by heroic passengers before it could attack somewhere in the nation's capital. We responded with war beyond our shores, in the countries that supported the attackers, carrying that on until this year. This attack on American soil also woke us up to the threat to our freedom from those who would overthrow our country, our Constitution, and impose tyranny upon us. While that threat is not gone, in the past few years it has been decimated.

I think we have another day that will live in infamy—if our nation survives it: November 3, 2020. This attack on American soil ought to wake us up to the threat to our freedom from those who would overthrow our country, our Constitution, and replace it with tyranny. We don’t yet know the outcome. But I think we know what happened.

It’s hard to catalog all the cases. The Epoch Times has done a good job of distilling the various types of fraud in the various places into an infographic. (Joshua Philipp also goes through the information on this infographic on an episode of Crossroads.)

The Epoch Times Infographic on Election Fraud

Another large detail this week was the hearing in Georgia in which security footage showed that, after the observers and media were cleared out, several workers pulled out ballots from under tables and spent a couple more hours counting them, unobserved. The video corroborated testimony contained in multiple affidavits.

The complicit media followed up by saying the accusations were debunked; nothing to see here. Erick Erickson,  who was a reliable conservative until he became a never-Trumper, parroted those talking points. I guess people believe what they want to believe. Buck Sexton pointed out the various debunking claims, which don’t line up and can’t simultaneously be true.

Earlier today Mollie Hemingway put out an excellent piece going through the debunking—and destroying it. Pretty much the only thing they were able to “debunk” was that what were referred to as “suitcases” containing votes, because they had handles and wheels, as we could see on the video, were actually “containers” used to carry votes. OK. We still don’t know why they were pulled out from under tablecloth-covered tables only after all the watchers and media left the area. You can’t throw out the whole story because you prefer a different word be used for what we saw on a video. Please read the rest of her very thorough piece.

Another possibly major detail this week is that, over the weekend Trump’s legal team was allowed to do a full forensic audit of the Dominion machines in Antrim County, Michigan. They were given eight hours on Sunday of access to the machines. And they expect to be able to report their findings about 48 hours after that. So we’re looking at hearing something by Wednesday. The machines are supposedly set up so that they do not leave a trace—logs are erased after changes are made. But the digital forensic technicians seem to believe they can still find evidence of the inserted votes, switched votes, and deleted votes. If the evidence is found in the Michigan machines, that opens up the need for such a forensic audit of all such machines—at least in the contested states, and possibly others as well.

One other thing to be aware of is timing. We’ve been looking at December 14^th as something of a deadline, with the week before as a “safe harbor” date, meaning it gives Electors enough time to be prepared for the December 14^th Electoral College voting. Sidney Powell said this: 

We have at least until Dec. 14. We might file more suits. The court in Michigan or Wisconsin today just gave us a great order recognizing that. These are not pure election contests we are filing. These are massive fraud suits that can set aside the results of the election due to this fraud at any time. The states should not be certifying election results in the face of it.

Sidney Powell tweet, found here

But Electors can only vote if their state has resolved voting disputes. If they cannot, then, if they act in time, state legislatures can send their own slate of Electors. If they simply fail to certify Electors—meaning the vote in that state is still in question—and no one receives 270 valid electoral votes, then in early January, the House votes, one vote per state, as prescribed by the Constitution for such a time as this. It may be that even that is not the last date. If the forensics show without a doubt that the election was stolen, remedy must be made; a fraudulent actor cannot be installed as our President.

It’s a tough road. It requires resolve on the part of many people—including Supreme Court justices, who would rather not be put in the arbiter position.

But the alternative is dire.

In a Verdict podcast this weekend, Senator Ted Cruz was talking about what is likely to happen, not just related to the presidential election, but the Georgia senatorial races. He said, 

Here’s what I believe will happen with a Biden/Schumer/Pelosi government. I think they’ll end the filibuster, which means there is no ability of the minority to stop the most radical policy proposals they put forward. I think they will pass a massive tax increase—not just repealing the Trump tax cut, but massively increasing taxes. I think they will pass all or major components of the Green New Deal, which will be absolutely crushing to small businesses and jobs. I think they will grant amnesty to every single illegal alien in America and try to make them voters as quickly as possible….

And I think they will add two new states to the union. They will add the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, because they believe they’ll elect four Democratic senators immediately. Which means we could start January with 50 Democratic senators and end the year with 54.

And this is all about power. This is about locking in their power. And I believe, if we lose these two Georgia seats, I believe that the Democrats will pack the US Supreme Court. They’ll put on four radical judicial activists.

Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College was interviewed by Patrick Bet-David on Valuetainment, and shared his concern about the possible permanent changes: 

Patrick Bet-David (left) and Larry Arnn, screenshot from here

Patrick Bet-David: Is there the possibility of what Reagan said, many years ago, that we’re one generation away from losing our freedom? Is that really something that applies to where we are today, where we can really dramatically change the face of America in one election?

Larry Arnn: Yeah. I’ve been thinking that’s coming for a long time. I think it’s here. You know, these things that we’ve been talking about, they will change the structure of the nation and make it very difficult for ordinary people to have any influence on that.

And here’s something. You know, the intensity of the political debate is like the 1850s. Violence in the streets. Completely divergent views about the Declaration of Independence, it’s meaning, and the Constitution. But now there’s something new. And that is, all of the establishment, all of the people who are in the best and most privileged places—they’re all in agreement with each other. And it’s just breathtaking to watch how uniform and predictable are the things that are said in the media and the things that are said in the academy.

I may have used this scripture, but I’ve been thinking of it since it came up in our scripture study reading recently: Ether 8:23-24. An ancient civilization is ending. We are being told their story by the man who abridged their story while his civilization is ending nearly a millennia later, speaking to those of us in our day who will read these words. He’s warning of the “secret combinations,” the corrupt collusion, that has led to the demise of both of these civilizations. I highlighted the phrases that especially strike me today:

23 Wherefore, O ye Gentiles, it is wisdom in God that these things should be shown unto you, that thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous combinations shall get above you, which are built up to get power and gain—and the work, yea, even the work of destruction come upon you, yea, even the sword of the justice of the Eternal God shall fall upon you, to your overthrow and destruction if ye shall suffer these things to be.

24 Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you; or wo be unto it, because of the blood of them who have been slain; for they cry from the dust for vengeance upon it, and also upon those who built it up.

I know that I have been awake to some of it—the injustices, the wrongness of things—for a good part of my adult life. I know I have felt the urgency of this message through more than the past decade. I have been sharing what I believe is true. Is it enough? I don’t know.

So, the question is not whether there was voter fraud; there was. The question is not whether there was enough voter fraud in enough places to change the outcome from Biden to Trump; there was. The question is whether or not we will allow such things to be among us, leading to our destruction.

What I think we’re seeing play out is a connection between the massive voter fraud of the November 3^rd election and the massive corruption that has been attempting to overthrow our government for some time. Take note of the now-proven corruption detailed in the Carter Page lawsuit and the Michael Flynn case—both of which were engineered by bad actors within our government against individual Americans for the purpose of staging a coup against our duly elected President Trump. Those who would do that collusion and corruption have not ceased.

If President Trump is successful in overcoming the election fraud, there will be a chance of uncovering the corruption and rooting it out. If he is unsuccessful, then I do not see a way back. We will be living under a full and totalitarian tyranny in a shockingly short time.

Some of the worst can be staved off temporarily if the two Senate races in Georgia go to Republicans—although, note that we already know we can’t trust the voting system in Georgia. Losses there would mean Democrat-run House, Senate, and Presidency, meaning they can go ahead unhindered. A Republican-majority Senate would mean they could stonewall some legislation. These two races need to be won even with a President Trump, to avoid more impeachment shenanigans, which would not be blocked by a Republican Senate.

I hope we are awake to our awful situation. I hope there are enough of us—because clearly a majority of us voted to retain freedom—who will stand firm against this encroaching darkness. Keep praying for the President, for his legal team, and the people’s legal teams, and for those brave individuals who have stepped up to testify to the fraud, at sometimes great personal risk. Pray for judges to have clarity and resolve to maintain the rule of law that keeps us free. 

The time is getting short. But it’s still unimaginable to me that this much injustice can be allowed in America. When a burden is too big, too heavy for me to carry, I ask God to carry it. And I’m doing that now. Pray with me that this infamous November 3rd date will live in infamy as yet another unsuccessful attempt to destroy our country.

 

Although this isn’t my normal format, while we’re working through this election business, there’s too much for me to cover. So again I’m including a list of sources I’ve referred to plus several more. Also, you can find what I’ve already written on the subject in my blog archive; most of November pertains to the election.

Sources:

·         “No, The Georgia Vote-Counting Video Was Not ‘Debunked.’ Not Even Close” by Mollie Hemingway for The Federalist, Dec. 7, 2020. 

·         “Voter Rights Group Notifies DOJ of Pakistani Link with Nevada Election Email System” by Ivan Pentchoukov for The Epoch Times, Dec. 6 (updated Dec. 7), 2020.  

·         “Whistleblower USPS Truck Driver Reveals Trailer Filled with up to 288K Ballots Disappeared” NTD News, Dec. 6, 2020. 

·         “Press Conference by Amistad Project on 'Election Whistleblowers Come Forward'” NTD News, Dec. 1, 2020. 

·         “Trump Team Begins Forensic Examination of Dominion Machines in Michigan: Ellis” by Jack Phillips for The Epoch Times, Dec. 6, 2020.   

·         “HUGE: Judge Allows Forensic Audit of Dominion Voting Machines in Michigan” by Matt Margolis for PJ Media, Dec. 6, 2020. 

·         “Sidney Powell: There’s Still Time for Trump to Overturn Election Results” by Jack Phillips for The Epoch Times, Dec. 6 (updated Dec. 7), 2020.  

·         “Voting Machine USB Drives Had Totals Altered Overnight, Witness in Nevada Election Contest Alleges” by Ivan Pentchoukov for The Epoch Times, Dec. 3 (updated Dec. 7), 2020.  

·         “Infographic: The 4-Year-Long Campaign Against Trump” The Epoch Times, Nov. 25 (updated Nov. 27), 2020. 

·         “Arizona Supreme Court Agrees to Hear GOP Election Challenge Lawsuit” by Jack Phillips for The Epoch Times, Dec. 7, 2020. 

·         “Video Shows Poll Workers Pulling out Boxes of Ballots: Georgia Election Hearing” NTD News, Dec. 3, 2020. 

·         “Trump Legal Team Presents CLEAR Evidence of Fraud Before Georgia Senate Committee” Right Side Broadcasting Network, Dec. 3, 2020. 

·         “China's Unofficial Declaration of War” The First, Buck Sexton interviews Gordon G. Chang, Dec. 4, 2020. 

·         “Revealed: How Trump Broke China's Control of America” Crossroads with Joshua Philipp, December 6, 2020. 

·         “Is America About to Lose it All?” Valuetainment with Patrick Bet-David interviews with Larry Arnn, Dec. 2, 2020. 

·         “Carter Page Lawsuit Against FBI is OUTRAGEOUS! Lawyer Explains” Viva Frei Vlawg (law video blog), Dec. 1, 2020. 

·         “2 BOMBSHELLS from Judge Sullivan’s Flynn Hearing” Viva Frei Vlawg, Oct. 1, 2020. 

·         “The Battle Over Ballots” The Verdict with Ted Cruz, Ep. 60, Dec. 5, 2020. 

·         “The Battle for Georgia Votes... They Say 'No Evidence of Fraud'?” Buck Sexton Show, Dec. 4, 2020. 

·         On Life, Liberty & Levin Mark Levin interviews Patrick Basham, Dec. 6, 2020. 

·         “A Witness Has Alleged that Voting Machine USB Drives Had Totals Altered Overnight in Nevada” by Charlie Kirk, Dec. 3, 2020. 

·         “Live Q&A: A Look at the Vote Fraud Allegations” Crossroads with Joshua Philipp, December 4, 2020. 

·         “Curtis Bowers: A Socialist Agenda Is Underway” Crossroads with Joshua Philipp, Dec. 3, 2020. 

·         “Ex-CIA Officer Alleges That Election Irregularities Could Be Part of a Big Scheme” by Allen Zhong for The Epoch Times, Dec. 3 (updated Dec. 4), 2020. 

·         “How It Started: Senate Hearing on FBI Investigation In President Trump and Russia” NewsNOW from FOX, Dec. 3, 2020. 

Education Conversation

Some friends and I have been thinking a lot about education lately. It is a two-month theme for our local Tea Party meetings. I spoke, and wrote about that, a few weeks ago. (Someone recorded it, and it’s actually available for viewing here. If you go to the website of the person who recorded it, the other speaker and the Q&A are available there as well.)

We’re having another meeting this Saturday, hearing from two members of the State Board of Education.

The entire public education system is something of a mess, and not succeeding in what we want it to do. There are many approaches to solving that. But key is getting the decision making more local. 

Toward that end, a friend shared with me, and I’m going to pass along to you, some things from a tele-townhall in which Hugh Hewitt interviewed Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, and Dr. Kathleen O’Toole, the provost for K-12 education for Hillsdale, which covers their Barney Charter School Initiative.

Hugh Hewitt (left), Dr. Larry Arnn, and Dr. Kathleen O'Toole
at tele-townhall for the Barney Charter School Initiative

A conversation between Hugh Hewitt and Larry Arnn is always fun to listen in on. They typically talk once a week for an hour on radio, called the Hillsdale Dialogue. Dr. O’Toole happens to be Dr. Arnn’s daughter, and she is a good addition to the discussion, particularly on the issue of education.

This discussion was meant to provide information about their charter schools, and to give people an opportunity to donate—because they try to give away as much education as they can, which they can only do when there are enough donations.

Anyway, I’d like to share parts of their discussion, just because I think it helps us see the gap between what we know works to educate students and what our schools typically do—often at no fault of the teachers.

The Barney Charter Schools are about classical education. That’s another name for liberal education—but not what liberal means in the political sphere. It means open-minded and clear thinking. It implies studying the classics, and the good. That’s probably going to include Aristotle and Plato, who pointed out that there’s evidence of the divine everywhere. Wherever you rate one thing as being better than another, you imply there is an ultimate good. That is God; and God is the arbiter of what is good.

These schools will talk about the role of ethics and religion. They’re public schools, but they can still talk about what a religion believes, what it is, and the role of the three major monotheistic religions in Western thought.

Dr. Arnn often speaks about defining what is good. He references C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, which comes up in this discussion as well. In that book, Lewis talks about the problem you have when you strip out conscience from a person. Humans are the only creatures with a conscience. Without that, all you have left is appetite; you lose what makes you human. You need to build character, which is the condition you build in yourself, foregoing pleasure, enduring pain, so that you can become educated and just.

Dr. Katherine O'Toole
at the tele-townhall for Barney Charter School Initiative

Schools are going to teach what the adults in the school believe to be virtue, that that might as well be intentional. Dr. O’Toole says,

If you send your child to any school, you are sending your child to a group of people who are giving examples to your child of what adults and bigger kids are like. That’s what school is.… Every school is teaching kids about right and wrong, good and bad, who you should be and who you shouldn’t be. That’s just what school is, in part. If you send your kid to one of these classical schools, you will send them to a group of people who are thinking about that question explicitly, and talking about it explicitly. They’re talking about virtue. We recognize that kids are going to be learning about right and wrong by being around us, so we might as well make a point of doing it right.

Dr. O’Toole points out that education is an activity performed by the student. You cannot educate someone against his or her will. She says,

The teachers are there to guide them, set up framework, hold them accountable, introduce them to the ideas. But students are the ones doing it. If a class is run well, they are the ones asking questions. They are being asked questions. They are interested in what is going on. They are connecting what they’re learning in one subject to what they learned in another subject in the previous period. They’re talking about what they’ve been learning all day every day with each other. It’s part of who they are. It’s not some other thing that they do besides their real life. It is their lives.

There’s a key, she says, to an excellent school. It’s “involved parents, excellent teaching, and a sound and solid and robust curriculum.”

And what does it take to have an excellent teacher? Teacher have to have learned and studied the content. Dr. Arnn suggests getting rid of the teaching of teaching. It’s a waste for teachers to spend time studying methods for teaching the subject matter—which takes away time from actually studying the subject matter.

I used to notice this in college, as an English major. Many people in my major headed toward education. But I didn’t like taking the time out from what I wanted to study and spending that in classroom preparation classes. In addition, let me note that, many English majors going into teaching (in my experience) struggled with grammar—where we diagrammed sentences, among other things. It was their worst subject, typically a C, D, or Fail class for them. If you’d taken a foreign language, it came much easier, which I had. But future teachers took English because they loved reading stories. Maybe, if they were good, they could help lead a discussion for students on what they’d read. But they were typically subpar in grammar and writing. They needed more time learning those skills, rather than taking that time to learn how to write out a lesson plan.

Dr. Arnn talked about the rights and responsibilities of parents, which I think is an essential part of any discussion on education, and why the control has to be local.

The school, should absorb this. You have a right, as a parent to raise your children—the duty and the right. And the natural love that parents have for children is the strongest force on earth. Human babies take longer to raise than any other kind. And they would die, for years, if they were not tended. So that love that you have should be influential in the school.

Now, the second thing is teachers. Teachers are smart people. And they could do a lot of things with their lives, and this is not the highest paying profession. So, they’re people who are devoted. And they and the parents and the administration of the school—which shouldn’t be very many people—they are the right ones to run the school. And that is the way education worked in America.

Charter schools, he says, are a step back toward self-government, toward management by the people who know and love the kids. Also, he points out, as I would expect, that education is not among the things enumerated for the federal government to do.

There is some discussion about learning phonics, rather than whole language. And getting young children to memorize important writing, such as the Preamble to the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address (both of which we memorized in our homeschool), or maybe Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, which is only seven minutes long. Kids memorize, and then they understand the words and the concepts.

There’s discussion about learning math facts, so when you get to more complicated equations, you’re not taking time to work out 6 time 7 on your fingers; there’s no time for that. In our homeschool, we memorized through 12X12 for multiplication, but we have a book that recommended memorizing up through 25X25, which would be handy.

They discussed connecting subject matter, rather than keeping each subject disconnected.

There’s more, but I’ll leave it to you to listen to the whole thing, if you want to know more specifics about their charter schools. But, here’s something to think about. They started in 2010, and opened their first school in 2012. They now have 22 schools in 11 states. Dr. Arnn’s goal is to have 50 schools. They can be smaller, but the one Dr. O’Toole headed in Leander, Texas, had about 650 students K-12.

When you look at the total number of students who would like this kind of education instead of what they’re getting, it seems like just a drop in the bucket. We've talked about the difficulty of getting in here and here.

The hope is that getting started, and doing even this small number, will have an effect on society as a whole.

If you’re interested in taking a look at their curriculum for free, email them at charterschoola@hillsdale.edu and they’ll quickly get back to you and provide it—no charge. There was also a fair amount of information at the link to this tele-townhall, here.

If you’re interested in donating, call 800-437-2268, or click the link at the bottom of the page below the tele-townhall.

Dr. Larry Arnn
at the tele-townhall for Barney Charter School Initiative

Dr. Arnn ended with a thought I’d like to repeat here, while we’re in the midst of this conversation on education:

Nothing is more important than to become an informed citizen, because we’re losing the whole constitutional fabric of the nation, and the principles that gave rise to it. That [loss] started in education, and it’s proceeding through it now. We have to interrupt that. So, first of all, inform yourself. Anything you don’t know, always learn more. And then, talk to your neighbors…. If you’ve got opinions and influence, use it. And we will help you; we will give you things to know. It’s very possible to save the country by saving the education system.

People who know how to learn, and how to teach, and how that all connects to raising people to become great souls—we can find a way together to make that happen. We have to.

Upward after the Darkest Hour

I’d been looking forward to the movie Darkest Hour for some time. Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, and Churchill scholar and author of Churchill’s Trail: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government, talked about it on radio with Hugh Hewitt a time or two.

Winston Churchill
image from Wikipedia

I also went through the online Hillsdale course about Churchill a year or so ago. And in December, the Imprimis newsletter was by Larry Arnn about Churchill. So, in addition to doing a bit of a movie review, I’ll also quote Dr. Arnn here and there. The movie is a portrayal of history, so I hope you don’t consider this piece as spoilers, but if you’re worried about that, see the movie first.

The movie was about the time in Britain when the mollifying foreign policy of Neville Chamberlain was seen for what it was, and a vote of no confidence removed him as Prime Minister of England, opening up the position for an unpopular but determined Winston Churchill.

Almost immediately after his acceptance, Churchill finds the country in the unacceptable position of having nearly its entire army—about 300,000 soldiers—stranded on the northern French beach of Dunkirk following Hitler’s swift sweep across France. If you saw the recent movie Dunkirk, things will start to fit into place. It was about to be an unmitigated disaster. Churchill was the one who ordered the civilian boats to be recruited to cross the channel to rescue the soldiers. The heroic “win” at Dunkirk was the rescue, against great odds, that allowed Britain to fight another day.

movie poster
from AMC

Churchill was under tremendous pressure, including from his own party. Chamberlain and his ally, Lord Halifax, maneuver against Churchill; they seem to think diplomacy at all costs is the answer, and if they can prove Churchill isn’t open to that option, they can step down from the war council Churchill has appointed them to, leading to a no confidence vote again—possibly opening the position for Halifax.

King George VI—the father of Queen Elizabeth, who was portrayed in the movie The King’s Speech—had been a longtime friend of Chamberlain and Halifax. It was distasteful to him to be forced to work with Churchill. But there’s a turning point. And it comes on a very good question.

The King is wondering whether he will need to flee, with his family, to Canada, and live out his reign in exile, because it is assumed by so many that, if the Germans invade the Isle of Britain, they could conquer. Halifax and Chamberlain are saying, wouldn’t it be better to get the best terms possible, by negotiating through Mussolini, than risk a bloody war they might lose?

But Churchill, feeling the heavy weight of his people on his shoulders, can’t imagine any terms with Hitler that would mean anything but complete subjugation to that monster.

It is a discussion with the King, and then a discussion with some everyday common folk that, according to the movie, lead to Churchill’s decisive speech—which in the process gains full support of Parliament and the British people, and outmaneuvers Halifax and Chamberlain. I’ll leave out the details because, though I really don’t like political maneuvering in literature (or in real life), it’s the crux of the story here. It's hard to imagine a movie about leading up to a speech being all that interesting, but it is.

Here are a couple of memorable passages from that speech, often called “We shall fight on the beaches”:

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."  …

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be….

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

That kind of frank determination against tyranny will always be needed.

bust of Churchill
in the US Capitol building

If there’s something I didn’t like in the movie, it is how much drinking Churchill does—and possibly more importantly, how often they point it out. He probably did drink quite a lot, but there was never any evidence it was affecting his mind—which was determined and sharp up to age 90 when he died. He was both quick and sharp witted.

One of my favorite Churchill quotes, from the English major world, has to do with grammar. A woman commented to him that he had incorrectly ended a sentence with a proposition. He retorted, “Madam, that is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.” It makes me laugh; maybe you have to be a word person.

Churchill was a word person. He wrote some 50 books in his lifetime, about battles in war—colorfully told. About political philosophy, history. and more. He had a prodigious mind, and a flair for being able to say what was on it.

There’s talk of Gary Oldman getting an Oscar for his performance; I’d be agreeable to that. He captured the swiftness, the push forward nature, the energy. And also made the force of nature that was Churchill seem human.

Also good in the movie was Lily James (who played Cinderella beautifully a couple of years ago), portraying his personal secretary, Elizabeth Layton. Churchill’s wife, Clemmie, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, was also good for humanizing him—she corrects him for scaring off the secretary in her first hour (she returns), and tells him to better behave himself, so that people can think well of him, as she does.

Getting back to Larry Arnn’s Imprimis speech, he lists three lessons we learn from Churchill:

Dr. Larry Arnn
image from Imprimis

1.       It is not trends but choices that matter most at the key moments of history….  [Of that important speech] No one else on that day was either inclined to make or capable of making that speech, and Churchill had only become prime minister by a series of narrow chances. No story better illustrates one of Churchill’s favorite lessons—a lesson valuable for us to keep in mind: both chance and choice play a large part in human affairs.

2.       The second lesson concerns the limits of war, of politics, indeed of all human action. Churchill helped to save his country by his willingness to fight to the death and to inspire others to joining him. He also saved it by his reluctance to do that.

3.       Strategy must be rooted in the purposes of the nation: it aims to preserve the nation in pursuit of those purposes. This means that strategy is not confined, when it is pursued by the statesman, to war alone. Churchill wrote: “The distinction between politics and strategy diminishes as the point of view is raised. At the summit true politics and strategy are one.”

Dr. Arnn goes on to say (and note that “liberal society” means classical liberalism, or free society, not a democrat party that is exactly opposite to that),

Churchill lived, loved, and fought for the liberal society. Liberal societies protect the rights of their peoples; their right to make their livings, to raise their children, to speak their minds. These are the elements of a fully human life. Under a free and limited government, the right of all to pursue this life is recognized and defended. The justice of this kind of government is the reason that Churchill, the grandson of a duke, was not an aristocrat but a defender of democracy.

That’s a pretty good description of what we’re talking about in the northern hemisphere of the Spherical Model, up out of tyranny and into the freedom zone.