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OCTOBER 2,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

THE FADING OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS – FROM AMERICAN THINKER:   Homeschooling numbers have increased over 300% in the last two years, according to federal government Census data. This spike does not include Americans engaged in virtual learning through a public or private school program due to COVID protocols. These are full-time homeschoolers.  The United States Census Bureau has been tasked with collecting data through nationwide surveys for over 80 years. The data are intended for use by other government agencies and elected officials for policy decisions. This is the first time the Census Bureau has sought to identify the total number of homeschoolers in America. Previous surveys only marked children who were un-enrolled in public or private school. That rate usually hovered around 3.3% and was as high as 5.4% in 2019.  Homeschool families have been traditionally seen as a small minority and have been largely ignored by elected representatives. In 2020, due to the COVID school closures, Census questions were modified to specifically identify the number of homeschoolers, and the results were shocking for many. In October 2020, 11.1% of 22–23 million U.S. households reported being full-time homeschoolers, without any enrollment in a public or private school. Besides Alaska, who reported 27.5% of households dedicated to full-time homeschool, Oklahoma led all states at 20.1%. Other notable states included Florida at 18.1%, Vermont at 16.9%, Georgia at 16.0%, and Tennessee and Arizona at 13.0%.  There was little surprise at the exodus from public and private schools due to COVID mask mandates and health concerns in 2020. What has been surprising is that many of these students did not re-enroll for the 2021–2022 school year. No doubt the push for Critical Race Theory, and the loss of confidence in the traditional institutions' ability to teach children via virtual technology, played a significant role in a shift toward full-time homeschooling.  Read the whole story.  This is a growing revolution, and has the potential to change the face of American education.   As the number of homeschoolers grows, political leaders must pay attention.  After all, homeschooling parents are voters.   I suspect that the next big move will be proposals to provide subsidies to homeschoolers equal to the amount they pay into the public school system through taxes.  I also have no doubt that homeschooling families will have their own social networks, and will provide a social life for homeschooled kids in their area.  But look also for the counterattack by teachers' unions, and attempts to have homeschooling banned. 

October 2, 2021       Permalink

AND IN THE REAL WORLD – OVERNIGHT:  We have warned repeatedly at Urgent Agenda that, in this period of American weakness, the government of China might well make a major move to take Taiwan.  Such an action would be a direct military challenge to the United States.  Every nation in Asia that we hope to keep as an ally would be watching with all available eyes. 

China is already probing.  From Fox: 

The Chinese air force has sent more aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense zone, Taiwan’s military said on Saturday, one day after the largest incursion ever into the zone.

China sent 20 aircraft, followed by a second wave hours later, toward Taiwan. It means that nearly 80 planes, including fighter jets and bombers, have now moved toward the democratically-run country in the last two days.

Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province and claims that it is part of its own territory. The two countries split in 1949 and China has been increasing pressure on the self-ruled nation, while opposing its involvement in international organizations such as at the United Nations.

The regime has been sending aircraft toward Taiwan on a near-daily basis in recent years, but this has ramped up dramatically in recent days.

The new incursions come a day after the communist behemoth marked the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 by sending two waves of aircraft toward Taiwan.

"China has been wantonly engaged in military aggression, damaging regional peace," Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang said on Saturday, according to Reuters.

The Chinese jets never violated Taiwan’s territory, but the Taiwan military did scramble fighter jets in response to the aggression. Taiwan also tracked the Chinese aircraft on its air defense systems, the island’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

China had flown 24 jets toward Taiwan last week after it announced it would seek membership in a Pacific trade group that China is also applying to join. 

COMMENT:  I wonder what the Biden administration will say, and do, in response to these serious provocations.   My guess is that it will do nothing.  And there will be more Chinese actions, and possibly an outright invasion.  This is chilling stuff, and may make Afghanistan look like a minor scuffle.

October 2,  2021     Permalink

OCTOBER 1,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

MORE WOKENESS – FROM CAMPUS REFORM:   Indiana University announced recently its new $30 million “Diversity Hiring Initiative," a multi-year fund to accelerate the hiring of “professors from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education.”  Tuition and fees for an in-state student at IU’s main campus is $11,332 a year, meaning that $30 million dollars could cover one year's expenses for over 2,600 Indiana students.  President Pamela Whitten, who made the details public in an email obtained by Campus Reform, boasted September 21 that the fund will “support the academic needs” of the university in a press release.  “Using reallocated funds from non-academic services, as well as external gifts, new faculty positions will be added,” Whitten explained in the university statement.  The press release also quoted W. Quinn Buckner, chair of the IU Board of Trustees.  "Our collective commitment to a more diverse faculty will have a positive impact on our university, as well as on our state and beyond," Buckner said.  Many IU students, however, are not as ecstatic about the program as the president and board of trustees chair.  In statement to Campus Reform, the university’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter said they are “disappointed” with IU and hope they “reverse course.”  “YAF at IU is disappointed with the university’s decision to continue to use student fees and tuition for meaningless virtue signaling," the statement read. "Hiring faculty based on the color of their skin is an abysmal moral decision by IU and we hope they reverse course on this racist waste of money."  Of course, YAF will be called racist for its statement, and there will undoubtedly be cries to have it banned from campus.  But YAF is fundamentally right.  The new program will weaken the whole foundation of higher education, and turn it into an ethnic clearing house.   And the world ain't buying what the woke crowd is selling, something that is becoming increasingly clear.  And that can devastate our economy.

October 1, 2021       Permalink

A LECTURE FROM FRANCE – OVERNIGHT:  It's not often that I agree with a French view of the United States, but now is one of the rare times.  The French are becoming critical of our new, WOKE culture, and the French are right.  We should listen.  From Fox: 

Some prominent French figures, including President Emmanuel Macron, are rejecting "woke" ideology that has been imported from the United States amid a breakdown in relations between the two nations.

A cover story by Le Spectacle Du Monde, one of France's leading magazines, recently ran a piece titled "The Suicide of America" in which it blames the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan on a "woke dictatorship" and questioned whether the American "empire was collapsing," Zenger News reported.

The article also took American universities to task over alleged extremism and censorship on campuses. The story cited Yale University, where school officials urged students to reconsider Halloween costumes that might be racially insensitive.

Macron, who has been criticized by French progressives, told Elle Magazine this past summer that woke culture was "racializing" French society, Zenger reported.

"I see that our society is becoming progressively racialized," he said.

Several members of his government have also shared anti-woke views, including Elisabeth Moreno, the french French delegate minister for gender equality and diversity.

"The ‘woke’ culture is something very dangerous, and we shouldn’t bring it to France," she told Bloomberg News in May.

A panel at the year's "Tocqueville Conversations," near Normandy discussed the perceived decline of free speech and expression in the United States that some attribute to "woke" culture.

"Our mantra is that we should talk even if we strongly disagree. Nothing prevents you from talking and exchanging and dialoguing," Jean-Guillaume de Tocqueville, the descendant of 19th-century liberal philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, told the news outlet. "The French Revolution was an event that led to a bloody civil war because the people who were not in agreement with the new ideas, the really revolutionary ideas, were just killed and beheaded. It was not a good way to debate."

The French criticism of the U.S. comes amid a fracture in American-French relations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is slated to travel to France next week after Australia canceled a deal to purchase a French submarine in favor of creating a new Indo-Pacific security arrangement with Washington and the United Kingdom.

COMMENT:  Well said by our French colleagues.  The United Stastes is being smothered by woke culture, which is a modern form of thinking that mixes Marxism with McCarthyism, a rather toxic brew.  The wokesters believe they have the answer to every question, but they really don't have the answers to any question.  Look at the behavior of the woke crowd in Congress this week, taking a wrecking ball to anything they didn't like, and obstructing true and thoughtful bipartisan efforts.  We don't need the woke.  Go away.

October 1,  2021       Permalink