To: County Republicans
If you’ve been troubled by the terms in
italics below, I suggest several articles that may help you to further
understand how to confront those who are trying to transform our institutions
and, broadly speaking, American culture.
BIPOC, wokeness, BLM & Marxist
leaders, Whiteness - white privilege - white supremacy, racism – racist – ‘1619
Project’ of the NY Times, social justice, Critical Race Theory (CRT) cognitive imperialism, global warming,
climate change, meritocracy
The cultural and
intellectual movement of the Left is attempting to replace traditional American
and Republican values. The Leftist
effort is unrelenting, powerful and national in scope. To defend Constitutional values, we need to
battle false claims of “White supremacy” and the emotionalism of ‘cancel culture’ with information and logic. We are more than fighting Democrats and liberalism. Our battle is for the ideology and worldview
of students, K-12 through college. It is a battle where your personal effort at the
local level will have an important outcome. It is, clearly, the fight to keep
socialist-communist ideology out of our
local classrooms and local curriculum.
As most teachers know, it is very rare for parents or citizens to
inquire about the granular details of the curriculum in social studies courses.
Thus, there are many opportunities for a teacher to inject BLM-Woke (Marxist)
ideology into ostensibly non-political courses like history, civics, or
economics. Worse, many districts are now adopting BLM-sanctioned curriculum as teachers
and administrators (and even school board members) respond axiomatically to
accusations of racism and white supremacy.
The Left curriculum will only be prevented, or removed from
schools, if citizens and parents fight.
The articles below should help you better understand more clearly the
challenges we face.
and
https://quillette.com/2021/02/10/unspeakable-truths-about-racial-inequality-in-america/
February
10, 2021 Unspeakable Truths about Racial Inequality in America written by Glenn Loury
and
My table-pounding recommendation
if you're fighting the curriculum of WOKENESS
https://counterweightsupport.com/2021/04/03/educating-for-politics-how-critical-social-justice-politicizes-the-classroom-and-indoctrinates-students/
This, too, is a great
explanation about how normal kids are transformed into Social Justice
Warriors………. aka Communist recruits. https://www.city-journal.org/critical-race-theory-in-american-classrooms
Gov. DeSantis bans Critical Race Theory from Florida classrooms à
https://thepostmillennial.com/watch-florida-gov-ron-desantis-says-there-is-no-room-for-critical-race-theory-in-state-curriculum
https://quillette.com/2021/03/25/race-and-false-hate-crime-narratives/ for sources
who do not agree with that view of Andrew Sullivan.
-----------------------------------------
Great radio programs that are available by
smartphone and iheart media:
Dan
O’Donnell M-F, 9-11 AM, because that is convenient for me and also easy to do
on the smartphone. I try to listen to Jay Weber, too, but he starts at
6AM. Problem is that both of them are EVEN better than Vicki
McKenna. By better, I mean much better intellectual substance. Jay
Weber is amazing for contemporary stuff. TRY one of his podcasts.
He is astute, quick and conservative—kind of like Wisconsin’s own
“Tucker.” Dan is slightly different, but still a 5-star info
source. Memory is that Rep. Tom Tiffany has been a guest on each of their
respective shows
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-the-jay-weber-show-28167130/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-the-dan-odonnell-show-27550539/
try April 6 show. They are all
good……but that one should capture your heart and mind
Why “WOKE” history is Not the Answer https://www.realclearpublicaffairs.com/articles/2020/10/27/why_woke_history_is_not_the_answer_581610.html
Articles:
1619 Project of the NY Times……..and its epic
distortions -- https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html
https://www.educationnext.org/1619-project-enters-american-classrooms-adding-new-sizzle-slavery-significant-cost/
Hope? https://www.fairforall.org/
This article is a great introduction to the America’s greatest
conservative mind (IMHO) à https://quillette.com/2021/03/27/thomas-sowell-tragic-optimist/ if you’re not familiar with Sowell, this is
outstanding.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-the-left-is-rewriting-american-history-to-push-their-radical-agenda
Sharif Khan
https://quillette.com/2021/03/25/race-and-false-hate-crime-narratives/ Race and False Hate Crime Narratives
written by Heather Mac Donald
Also, https://www.city-journal.org/diversity-delusion “The Diversity Delusion,” December 26, 2018 Heather Mac Donald discusses the decline of the university and the rise of campus intellectual intolerance, the subjects of her important new book, The Diversity Delusion How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture. She spoke at a Manhattan Institute event in autumn 2018.
How to be
an Anti-racist https://www.city-journal.org/how-to-be-an-antiracist
Associated
article https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/is-it-racist-to-expect-black-kids
about purging wascism from the schools.
https://quillette.com/2021/04/03/beyond-order-12-more-rules-for-life-a-review/ a review
of Jordan Peterson’s latest book.
Acclaimed non-liberal books -- https://www.dailywire.com/news/10-books-every-conservative-should-read-in-2021
Woke Math Is Coming to a Classroom
Near You
by Cameron Hilditch March 5, 2021 [edited for length]
The British
author Douglas Murray has lately argued that intersectional social justice represents
the most serious ideological threat to the liberal order since the end of the
Cold War. Even a few years ago, his thesis would have sounded overblown, but no
longer. Events have conspired to vindicate him.
Take the
phenomenon of woke math, for instance. As Catherine Gewertz laid out in a piece for Education Week late last year,
more and more teachers in K–12 classrooms are introducing left-wing
intersectional agitprop into math lessons. Progressive talking points on subjects
like policing patterns and campaign-finance reform are being used to supply
students with numerical data that is then used to teach multiplication,
division, algebra, and the like. Gewertz describes one such initiative,
developed in Seattle, as attempting to supply “a framework . . . that weaves
questions of power and oppression into math instruction, along with
explorations of ethnic identity.”
This infiltration
of leftist dogma
into education is troubling for
several reasons. First of all, it shows just how seriously intersectional
social justice takes itself as
a comprehensive agenda for social change. Totalitarian ideologies work by
supplying an intellectual filter through which all of life is sanitized and
presented to people as something uncomplicated and easily understood. This is
why the force and momentum of political ideologies is always centripetal,
drafting every extraneous facet of social life into the service of the party
agenda. The notion that something might be intelligible or worthwhile
independent of how it fits into this agenda — that there might be metrics of
measuring truth or beauty other than those prescribed by the regnant ideology —
is therefore threatening. To combat the threat, ideologues tend to make war on
everything that could be construed as apolitical or politically neutral.
But there’s
nothing harder to politicize than mathematics. It’s stubbornly indifferent to
all of our plans and agendas. That’s why it plays such a central and chilling
role at the denouement of 1984.
In a totalitarian society, math is the last refuge of irresistible reality.
When we find thinking like Krylenko’s not only in our history and English
classrooms (wherein ideology can be easily adapted to the subject material) but
in math class as well, we have reason to recoil at just how far and how deep
the rot of ideological militancy has spread throughout our educational
establishment.
The most popular
woke math textbook being used right now is High School
Mathematics Lessons to Explore, Understand, and Respond to Social Injustice. Published by Corwin in tandem with the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, it provides 22 lessons that draw
on left-wing talking points. Chapter 6, on algebra and functions, includes
lessons like “Children at the Border: Looking at the Numbers,”
“Intersectionality and the Wage Gap,” and “What’s a Fair Living Wage?” In Chapter
7, meanwhile, we find a statistics and probability lesson about “Humanizing the
Immigration Debate,” and in Chapter 8, gerrymandering is used to teach kids
about geometry.
After the book
was published, the editors received so many requests from K–8 teachers looking
for something similar to suit lower grades that three new volumes are
currently in the works, aimed at the youngest and most impressionable of
school-aged children.
It
would be comforting to think of this trend as something confined to a particular
state or locality, but, unfortunately, it’s spreading across the country faster
than Beatlemania did in the spring of ’64. In the Los Angeles Unified School
District, 22 schools are currently working together on “equity focused math
instruction.” A popular social justice math wiki was built and is administered by
a teacher in Oregon. The Clayton County school district in Georgia is currently
working to institute woke math across all grade levels. And on top of all this,
EduColor,
a nonprofit devoted to advancing “equity” in education, has a presence
nationwide. It’s true that woke math is, for the most part, a feature of
schools in blue enclaves right now. But as long as there exists a federal
Department of Education, and as long as the Democratic Party remains a wholly
owned subsidiary of the teachers’ unions, the danger that these practices will
become policy on a national scale is very real.
The cancer of indoctrination is
spreading and, if left untreated by parents, teachers, and politicians, it
could rob entire generations of their ability to think, judge, and act for
themselves.
by Greg
Lukianoff (Author), Jonathan
Haidt
2. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and
Religion
4. Springtime
for Snowflakes: Social Justice and Its Postmodern Parentage by
Michael Rectenwald
Retired professor of liberal studies at New York University, Dr.
Rectenwald traces the ideological roots of “woke culture” in Springtime for
Snowflakes. A former Marxist turned libertarian critic of political
correctness, Rectenwald weaves together a first-person narrative from the
perspective as a red-pilled convert in academia with a philosophical reflection
on the postmodernist movement.
Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.
Peterson
also has a wonderful list of 100+ great books, for
those looking for further reading recommendations.
Unlearning Race: Self Portrait in Black and
White by Thomas Chatterton Williams
Cultural critic and New York Times Magazine contributor,
Thomas Chatterton Williams is perhaps best known as the mastermind behind the
notorious Harper’s Magazine letter
standing against cancel culture signed by dozens of celebrities and thought
leaders.
In his recent book, Chatterton Williams explores his own racial
identity as a mixed-race American man living in France, and ultimately
concludes that the only way forward is a rejection of critical race theory and
neo-racist identity politics in favor of a reclamation of our common humanity.
The book is a refreshing perspective reminiscent of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s
vision for our nation’s future.
The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and
Identity by Douglas
Murray
British author and political commentator, Douglas Murray, has made
waves with his best-selling The Madness of Crowds. The book chronicles
the rise of woke culture and divisive identity politics, taking on societal
misconceptions surrounding race, gender, and sexuality, with interludes on the
cultural impacts of technology and Marxist theory.
Ben Shapiro…. Debunks Climate Change à https://www.dailywire.com/episode/climate-change-hysteria?utm_campaign=debunked&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=120775280&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_rvBBFVQjPObP9Akrg6v3NjC1Eu2sOg7iwmISrgIQyTEAcnyWBShvvKQVJBseXA9D7IDx7jDrSEvsgroi-m__PaaNweg&utm_content=debunked_ep_7&utm_source=housefile
Review of Green Fraud,
the new book by leading anti-global warming writer, Mark Morano https://www.dailywire.com/news/graham-green-fraud-and-the-climate-lockdown
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/
The
Neoracists -- A new religion is preached across America. It's nonsense
posing as wisdom.
John McWhorter Feb 8. (Selections
of McWhorter’s works are quoted below)
One can divide
antiracism into three waves.
First Wave Antiracism battled slavery and segregation. Second Wave Antiracism,
in the 1970s and 1980s, battled racist attitudes and taught America that being
racist was a flaw. Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s,
teaches that racism is baked into the structure of society, so whites’
“complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black
people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of
experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a
suspension of standards of achievement and conduct.
Third Wave
Antiracist tenets, stated clearly and placed in simple oppositions, translate
into nothing whatsoever:
I suspect that
deep down, most know that none of this catechism makes any sense. Less obvious
is that it was not even composed with logic in mind. The self-contradiction of
these tenets is crucial, in revealing that Third Wave Antiracism is not a
philosophy but a religion.
The revelation of
racism is, itself and alone, the point, the intention, of this curriculum. As
such, the fact that if you think a little, the tenets cancel one another out,
is considered trivial. That they serve their true purpose of revealing people
as bigots is paramount—sacrosanct, as it were. Third Wave Antiracism’s
needlepoint homily par excellence is the following:
Battling power
relations and their discriminatory effects must be the central focus of all
human endeavor, be it intellectual, moral, civic or artistic. Those who resist
this focus, or even evidence insufficient adherence to it, must be sharply
condemned, deprived of influence, and ostracized.
John McWhorter,
contributing writer at The Atlantic and professor of linguistics at
Columbia University, is a member of Persuasion’s Board of Advisors. His
new book, The Elect: Neoracists Posing as Antiracists
and their Threat to a Progressive America, is being published in serial at It
Bears Mentioning.