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MAY 30,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

WELL STATED, FROM FOX:  Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin once again knocked the mainstream media for previously dismissing the theory that COVID-19 potentially originated from a Wuhan lab leak in China, tweeting on Saturday that journalists should "own up" when they "fail" their readers and encouraged them to "just report the facts."   "Most MSM [mainstream media] reporters didn’t ‘ignore’ the lab leak theory, they actively trashed it for over a year while pretending to be objective out of a toxic mix of confirmation bias, source bias (their scientist sources lied to them), group think, TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome] and general incompetence," Rogin, who was one of the very few journalists who previously reported on China's role in the pandemic and raised questions about the origins of the virus, tweeted on Saturday.   He went on to say that, "Also, the lab leak theory didn’t change. It didn’t suddenly become credible. It didn’t jump from crazy to reasonable. The theory has always been the same. The people who got it wrong changed their minds. They are writing about themselves, with zero self awareness."  Ah, there's still some integrity left in journalism.  Catch it while you can.

SOCIAL NOTE – FROM FOX:  LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds married Saturday in a small private ceremony in London, U.K. newspapers reported.  Johnson’s office declined to comment on reports in the Mail on Sunday and the Sun that the couple wed at the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral in front of a small group of friends and family.  The Sun said senior staff in Johnson's 10 Downing St. office were unaware of the wedding plan.  Under current coronavirus restrictions in England, weddings can be attended by a maximum of 30 people.  Hearty congratulations to a true ally of the United States.  We need more like him. 

May 30, 2021       Permalink

THE TRUTH – OVERNIGHT:  The truth is starting to come out about Black Lives Matter.  One by one, knowledgeable people are coming forward to warn us that this organization isn't exactly on the level.  For too long BLM has operated with the knowledge that a corrupt, leftist press would protect it from scrutiny.  But truth has a way of finding cracks to get through.  From Breitbart: 

A former Black Lives Matter (BLM) activist who now serves as executive director of the Minnesota Parent Union revealed he “learned the ugly truth” about BLM, including that the radical group has little concern for rebuilding black families and even less for improving education for black children.

In a video published Wednesday by TakeCharge, a Minnesota-based, black-led movement that rejects Critical Race Theory (CRT) and woke culture, Rashad Turner described how he became a founder of BLM in St. Paul, but came to realize, after only a year on the inside of the organization, that caring for black lives, black children, and black families was the least of the radical group’s concerns.

Born in Minneapolis in 1985, Turner said in the video that, when he was two-years-old, his father was shot and killed. He explained further about his upbringing:

My mother wasn’t able to take care of me, so I was raised by my grandparents. They told me that if I was going to change my life for the better, education was the answer. So, I worked hard in school. I got into Hamline University, and earned a college degree, the first in my family. Then I went on to earn a master’s in education from St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. I am living proof that no matter your start in life, quality education is a pathway to success.

Turner said he hoped for the same success he had achieved for other children in his community, and thought BLM would be the answer, but soon found out the “ugly truth”:

In 2015 I was a founder of Black Lives Matter in St. Paul. I believed the organization stood for exactly what the name implies, black lives do matter. However, after a year on the inside, I learned they have little concern for rebuilding black families, and they cared even less about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis. That was made clear when they publicly denounced charter schools, alongside the teachers’ union. I was an insider in Black Lives Matter, and I learned the ugly truth: the moratorium on charter schools does not support rebuilding the black family, but it does create barriers to a better education for black children.

As Breitbart News reported in June 2020, many individuals, corporations, and teachers’ unions have adopted the rhetoric of BLM, an organization now at the receiving end of massive donations from those who strive to be viewed as “woke,” but who have failed to examine BLM’s larger political agenda.

In the “What We Believe” section of its website that has since been deleted, BLM Global Network Foundation declared its goals to “fight for freedom, liberation, and justice,” can only be achieved through the disruption of the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”

COMMENT:   Please read the whole thing.  There is a national movement building, fueled by outraged parents, against critical race theory.  It will expand to include a hard look at BLM.  Any hard look will expose the truth outlined above.  And then we have an election.

May 30, 2021       Permalink

MAY 29,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

GOOD NEWS FOR REPUBLICANS – FROM FOX:    Many people moving to Florida are registering as Republicans because lockdowns in blue states caused them to reevaluate being a Democrat, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Wednesday.  “So it’s interesting with Florida, like, the media at the beginning of this said, ‘Florida is bad,’ and I think it’s because they wanted to damage Trump in Florida, wanted to damage me, so they just kept saying it was bad, even though the facts didn’t say it,” he said during a town hall event on Fox News Channel’s Hannity:  "Like, literally last April, they’re saying Florida’s doing worse than New York. New York was like, ten times worse. And so I think what it did is, the people that buy those phony narratives for these media, they probably aren’t coming to Florida. But most people see through it, but the people that see through it, they think like us. And so I think a lot of these people are coming. I think they’re registering as Republicans overwhelming. And I also have come across a lot of people who quite frankly were Democrats.
The lockdowns turned them into Republicans because they say ‘I cannot fathom,’ people say, ‘I was a Democrat because of education, and I’m in California and they’re locking my kids out of school. I come to Florida, they’re in school, people are free, people are happy.’ So I think this whole process has caused some people to reevaluate some of their prior commitments. And if you have a political party that puts the interests of teachers unions over the interests of kids being able to just access an education at all, that tells you all you need to know about the modern Democrat party."  Governor DeSantis has done an outstanding job, and we hope that will put Florida solidly in the GOP column.  Governor Abbott has done the same in Texas, and we hope that state, too, is now secure for our side.  There are even some indications that California may not be the sure thing for Democrats than it has been.  Miracles happen.

May 29, 2021       Permalink

AT THE CROSSROADS – OVERNIGHT:  Americans sense that we are at a crossroads in our history, a battle between the American values that made us great, and some new values that would restrict our freedoms, wreck our Constitution, and lead us into a false world of "equality" that will be achieved through mediocrity.  An eminent historian shows us how our children must be prepared for this battle.  From the New York Post: 

We live in anxious times. But many times in our past were far more anxious, and the reasons for anxiety then were more compelling. Consider, for example, the situation facing the world in the early months of 1941, when Hitler’s triumphant armies controlled continental Europe, when only the British Isles managed to hold out and when the future of liberty looked very dim.

Yet at that moment, the novelist John Dos Passos wrote: “In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present.” Dos Passos urged that we look backward to a past that could be a source of sanity and direction, a lifeline of sustenance and instruction. Such training of the mind and memory ought to be at the core of an education for democratic citizenship.

We neglect an essential element in the formation of citizens when we fail to supply young people with a full, accurate, and responsible account of their own country. The evidence of that failure is overwhelming. In fact, the most recent test administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes called The Nation’s Report Card, shows continuing decline in (already-low) history and geography scores and flatlining in civics scores.

We must recommit ourselves to the teaching of both history and civics — and to the recognition that the two belong together. Something more needs attending to in the work of civic education, too. Tracking scores on standardized tests can provide useful, if limited, data about the state of our historical knowledge. But the scores cannot tell us about the depth and quality of that knowledge or the extent to which those who possess it feel a genuine and living connection to it. 

The word “citizenship” has lost much of the noble luster that it once had, just as “civics” has wound up demoted to a kind of “user’s guide” to the machinery of government. Both words deserve better. Citizenship is not merely about voting but also about felt membership in a society of civic equals.
Civic education, rightly understood, extends far beyond how a bill becomes a law. It should promote a vivid and enduring sense of our belonging to one of the greatest enterprises in human history. Hence a civic education should be an initiation not only into a canon of ideas but into a community; and not just a community of the present but also a community of memory.

The word “citizenship” has lost much of the noble luster that it once had. It’s not merely about voting but also about felt membership in a society of civic equals.

Ultimately, a patriotic education should be an education in love. This love must be embraced freely and be unsentimental enough to coexist with the elements of disappointment, criticism, dissent, opposition and even shame that come with moral maturity and open eyes.

Without the deep foundation that this love supplies, a republic will perish.

COMMENT:  Please read the rest and pass it on to others.  This is one of the best essays I've read on the need to teach children far more history and understanding of freedom than we do today.

At the end of World War II in Europe, General Eisenhower marched American soldiers through Hitler's concentration camps.  He said that our men might not know what they'd been fighting for, but this would show them what they'd been fighting against.  Today, fortunately, there are no death camps to teach our men and women what they are against.  But we must insist that they know what they are for. 

May 29, 2021       Permalink