Tag Archives: Education

Yes, Children Can Learn To Read And Do Math

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On Monday, The New York Times posted an article about the significant improvement in schools in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi in recent years. I have written about this before when it was reported in Mississippi (article here), but at that time, only Mississippi had made the necessary changes to go from ranked 49th to 21st.

The New York Times reports:

  • Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks No. 1 in math recovery.

  • The state with the lowest chronic absenteeism in schools is Alabama, according to a tracker with data from 40 states.

  • Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.

  • Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil).

Could it be that when we introduced politics into education, education suffered?

The article concludes:

We liberals need to wake up to the reality that we are being outperformed on education, opportunity and racial equity — supposedly our issues. As recently as 2019, blue states had better average test scores than red states, after adjusting for demographics; now, red states are mostly ahead. We used to say that education was the civil rights issue of the 21st century, and if so, we should be ashamed that by that metric, Mississippi Republicans are ahead of California Democrats. If we care about kids, we must be relentlessly empirical, and that must mean a willingness to learn from red states.

Kane said something you don’t expect to hear from a Harvard professor: “I hope that there are lots of governors that are looking at Mississippi and saying, ‘Look, I want us to be next.’”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It seems that the ideas that many of us grew up with still work!

How To Destabilize A Country

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There are several steps to destabilizing a country, and we are watching many of them being used in America now.

The most obvious way to destabilize a country is to destroy its primary unifying factor. In the case of America, that factor is the Judeo-Christian values that this nation was founded upon. Those values include the idea of family and sexual morality, both of which are currently being undercut by many of our political leaders. The two-parent family, which is the foundation for a stable society, has been under attack for a long time in America. In 1968, about 60.0 million (85%) U.S. children under 18 lived with two parents. By 2020, although this living arrangement continued to be the most common for children, the number of children living with two parents had slipped to 51.3 million (70%). Less than two-fifths of Black children were living with two married parents in 2020. These children were most likely to live with their mothers only, with nearly half living in this arrangement in 2020. The easiest way to counter this destabilizing factor is to stay married and to take your children to church regularly.

Another way to destabilize a country is to remove respect for those who enforce the laws of the country or to ignore the concept of equal justice for all. That problem was rampant during the Biden administration and still continues to some degree today. Respect for the law and those who enforce it needs to be taught. Teach your children that the police are there to protect them.

Importing large groups of people from countries with different values or customs also creates a problem—if people come to America in large groups, it is harder for them to assimilate. They tend to stay within their groups, and that also limits their success. Years ago, I was privileged to meet a group of people who had come to America and formed a community in Massachusetts. Because they had formed their own isolated community, they had not learned very much English. Because of that, people with degrees in Physics, Chemistry, and those who had completed medical school were working on assembly lines in local factories. If large groups from other countries enter as a group and do not assimilate, they often will find themselves dependent on government programs for food and other necessities. The Cloward-Pivan Strategy, developed in 1966 by two American sociologists and political activists, was a plan to facilitate a “political crisis” by overloading the welfare system via an increase in welfare claims, forcing the federal government to create a system of guaranteed minimum income. This would redistribute income through the federal government. The idea was to collapse the current system and bring in socialism. Controlled immigration is the solution to this problem.

Another way to destabilize a country is to fail to teach its children an accurate picture of the history of the country and that despite some flaws, it is worth defending. A country that fails to teach its children patriotism will fail. A country also needs to have high academic standards for its children, and it needs to reward achievement. Success should be based on merit—not anything else. It’s time to get our schools back to teaching the skills students need to learn to be successful when they graduate. Let’s get back to the basics.

The future of America is in our hands. We can choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution. All political parties and the people who support them need to work together to make America the country our Founding Fathers envisioned.

Making Schools Work

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On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article about what has happened in the Mississippi schools since 2013, when they were ranked the second-worst state in fourth-grade reading to first in the country in 2024.

The article reports:

Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves detailed how conservative education reform led his state’s school system to achieve some of the best outcomes in the country, a phenomenon dubbed the “Mississippi Miracle,” in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller.

The Associated Press in 2023 referred to the state’s skyrocketing test scores for fourth graders as the “Mississippi Miracle,” explaining, “Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022.”

An updated National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report card from 2024 shows Mississippi leading the nation in demographic-adjusted 4th- and 8th-grade scores and it went viral on social media.

…Reeves credits getting “back to the basics” for his state’s soaring educational outcomes. In 2013, while Reeves was serving as lieutenant governor, Mississippi passed sweeping education reform legislation, including the “Third Grade Reading Gate,” mandating that schools hold back children who don’t meet certain reading standards before the end of third grade. The state reintroduced phonics — teaching students to sound out words — in its reading education and spent $15 million a year on reading coaches.

The percentage of students who both failed the test and were held back from advancing to the third grade decreased from 9% in 2019 to 6.5% in 2023.

“The other side went crazy … they said, ‘well, we’re going to have to hold back half of our students,’” Reeves recalled. “No, we raised the level of expectations and Mississippians did what Mississippians do — they rose up and they met those increased expectations.”

The article concludes:

“By the way, our high school graduation rates during this time have risen from 72% of our kids graduated from high school to, last year, 89.9% of our kids are graduating high school,” Reeves added.

In addition to the new testing requirements, Mississippi also added new charter schools, created an Educational Savings Account (ESA) program for parents of children with disabilities so they can put their children in programs designed to meet their needs, and followed Florida in providing letter grade ratings for public schools.

“It’s really not a miracle at all,” the governor asserted. “It’s really a result of conservative reforms implemented in public education — they’re making a huge difference for kids.”

We need this in North Carolina.

Small Steps As The Path To Victory

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Our Founding Fathers were very wise. Townhall reminds us that James Madison said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” The election we just saw was an example of one party reaching past the political mindset of the majority of Americans and going too far too fast. Most Americans don’t want their children undergoing major surgery that will prevent them from having children later on. Most parents want to see more crayons and fewer drag queens in our children’s classrooms.

Townhall reports:

Mighty and loud revolutions have happened in history and with some degree of frequency. However, the most insidious “revolutions” are the ones mentioned by James Madison in the quote above. That kind of revolution is, no doubt, the one the Democratic Party and Marxist Left have in mind for America because they have been trying to impose it upon the country for the past two generations.

They almost succeeded but got too greedy the past four years, and the American people stopped them this year. But if we think the Left is finished, if we think they will give up, if we believe their attempt to continue their overthrow of the American Revolution of 1776 is over, then we are, of all people, most naïve. They aren’t going to stop; they are only going to regroup and redouble their efforts.

No doubt, the Left was knocked back on its heels a bit by this year’s election. Their arrogant smugness, sense of elite superiority, the belief that they were right about everything and surely the American people would never reject them—all of this received a severe blow and shocked them significantly. They still have no clue why they lost because they have no clue how utterly abhorrent their agenda is to true, patriotic, God-fearing Americans—and to many others who simply want to pay their bills and not have the Left’s communistic, licentious, anti-scientific garbage rammed down their throats.

The article notes:

“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people” (Thomas Jefferson). That education starts with virtue, something our education system has utterly and miserably failed to inculcate into our children the past several decades. “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical [fanciful] idea” (James Madison). Electing Donald Trump to the Presidency was a good start, but there is so much more to do. If the king is righteous but the people are wicked, the country will still be rotten and headed for destruction.

The Left knows—or will figure out soon—that, even with Donald Trump as President, they will eventually win IF they can continue to control the education system of America (including the media). We better figure that out, too. We didn’t get into this pit overnight and won’t climb out of it overnight. But we’d be wise to get started before the pit gets deeper.

Another reason to remove the Department of Education from the federal government.

Governor Cooper Has Vetoed The Expansion of Opportunity Scholarships Bill

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On September 21, The Carolina Journal reported that North Carolina Governor Cooper has vetoed a bill that fully funds Opportunity Scholarships, requires sheriffs to cooperate with ICE, and includes adjustments to the budget proposal. The North Carolina legislature is expected to override his veto.

The article reports:

Just a day before, Cooper spent most of his time as the keynote speaker Thursday at the Legislative Session of the 151st Annual North Carolina Press Association (NCPA) Convention blasting Opportunity Scholarships, insisting they will hurt public schools.

“That veto can be upheld if enough legislators in both parties tell Republican leaders that they don’t want to vote on a veto override this year,” he said at a press conference Friday.

Cooper noted at the NCPA Convention that he, his children (although at least one had gone to a private school), and more than 84% of the state’s students go to public schools, and as the pillars of the free press need to be safeguarded, so do public schools.

“Unfortunately, those public schools are facing the biggest threat in decades from the legislature that is pillaging taxpayer money from them and using it for private school vouchers that even the wealthiest families can use for children already in private school,” he said. “These hundreds of millions of dollars in vouchers come with no accountability.”

Cooper said that legislators plan to spend $4 billion on school vouchers over the next decade and that rural schools would be hurt the most because there are fewer private schools in those areas.

The article concludes:

Incoming Speaker of the House, Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, told CJ that while he couldn’t comment directly on Cooper’s comments since he arrived later in the session, he thinks parents ought to make their own decisions about where their children go to school, pointing to the 55,000 backlog of students waiting on the list.

“I think those results speak for themselves,” he said. “The money that we put towards Opportunity Scholarships is towards education because it’s to help those kids get to the school that their parents want them to go to. I’m proud of the program and glad to continue it.”

When asked about Cooper’s promise to veto it, Hall jokingly said he made that announcement for him last week, so it’s not breaking news. He added that the GA will override his veto sometime shortly, possibly before the election, if not shortly after that, and probably with some Democratic support, making it a bipartisan effort.

North Carolina needs a veto-proof legislature to protect the interests of its voters. Hopefully that pattern will continue.

Injustice for Homeschools

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

Recently, the NC General Assembly passed significant additional funding of taxpayer money for the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) which provides stipends to parents who send their children to private schools. Some of the funding for this program comes from the budget for public schools, but most comes from new taxpayer money. The funding for the OSP has expanded significantly in the past couple of years and is justified as part of expanding school choice for parents. The scholarships vary from $3,300 to $7,400 per student each year. There is a serious problem with this program, and that is that parents who choose to home-school their children receive not one penny of assistance. How can our elected representatives claim to support school choice when they ignore homeschooled children who actually represent the highest number of non-public school students in North Carolina?

As someone who has had my own children in public schools, private schools and homeschooled, I can assure you that the sacrifice and commitment to the education of a child is greatest when homeschooling. According to the state Division of Non-Public Education, there are at least 158,000 home school students in North Carolina which is significantly more than the number of students in private schools. At the current rate of spending for each student in public schools of approximately $10,000 per year, theoretically, by homeschooling their children, parents are reducing the public school budget of $18 billion by over $ 1 billion per year. Home school parents not only have the expenses of typical school supplies, but also spend significant sums on home-school books and instructional material. They also have to pay for field trips and other educational activities that are free for public and private school students. Of course, the largest financial burden is foregoing employment so they can provide the home-school instruction.

Now it should be recognized that all families pay taxes that support the public school system which includes federal, state and local taxes regardless of which educational option they choose for their children. Home-school parents are the only ones who do not receive any of this taxpayer money to support their children’s education. I have been told that some home-school parents would be reluctant to accept state funds for fear of having educational requirements imposed. However, this objection could be easily handled by limiting/prohibiting the state from imposing such requirements and ultimately by making the reception of any funds voluntary. As far as student performance goes, Parentscience.com reports that homeschoolers score at least one grade level above public school students on 5 of 7 academic subjects tests.

It is past time that the General Assembly include home-schoolers in the OSP and correct this obvious injustice. They should also limit the issuing of scholarships to citizens only which is currently not the case. Failure to correct this situation will ultimately lead to a class action lawsuit by the parents of home-schoolers against the state. Seems well deserved. What is more American than allowing parents to educate their own children instead of exposing them to the woke agenda in most public schools. Freedom requires free choice.

This Is How Propaganda Works

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On Thursday, The Ed NC Website posted an article illustrating how propaganda works. The article is about the two candidates for Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina. Essentially, the article is a ‘hit piece’ on Michele Morrow.

The article reports:

She’s been homeschooling her children for over a decade, participated in the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and has used choice words like “indoctrination centers” to describe public schools.

…Morrow isn’t the only Jan. 6 participant vying for office this November. One is in a primary for a Congressional seat, and an organizer of the rally is running for the Texas House. But if elected, Morrow would become the only protester responsible for more than 2,700 schools and a $13 billion education budget.

Why is it relevant that she attended the rally on January 6th? Doesn’t she have freedom of speech rights like everyone else?

The article also notes:

She counts her nine years teaching science and Spanish for a homeschool co-op as her primary qualification for the job and said that after six years talking to parents and educators, she has a “clear understanding” of what voters are looking for in a state schools chief, starting with a strong focus on academics and character development. Green, meanwhile, is trumpeting his experience leading an education agency and advocating for increased education funding at a time when Republican lawmakers are expanding vouchers. 

In interviews, Morrow espouses policies — like a scientific approach to reading instruction and high-dosage tutoring in math — that could bridge the partisan divide in a state with a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled House and Senate. But her past actions and occasionally extreme language are alienating would-be allies.

“I’m fearful of the rhetoric,” said Marcus Brandon, who leads CarolinaCAN, part of a network of policy and advocacy groups that support school choice. He pushed for expansion of the state’s voucher program, and said while Morrow is “good for my issue on paper,” he thinks Green is more qualified. A former lawyer, Green led the Guilford County Schools, which includes Greensboro, for seven years.

The article also notes:

Green agrees and often reminds the public that Morrow, during some of her Facebook live posts early in the pandemic, used words like “cesspool of evil and lies” to describe public schools. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor, has made similar disparaging remarks, calling teachers “wicked people” in a speech last year. 

“Our educators are being disrespected,” Green told The 74. The state ranks 42nd in starting teacher pay, according to the latest National Education Association salary report. “It’s especially challenging to bring folks into this really important profession when you’re not paying them well enough.” 

The professional ‘educators’ have done a lot of damage to our schools in recent years. Covid lockdowns and mask requirements on young children are only one example. Falling test scores are another example. There are a lot of parents who would agree with Michele Morrow’s characterizations of our public schools.

In 2024, according to World Population Review, North Carolina schools ranked 43rd among the 50 states. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That describes the current Department of Public Instruction in North Carolina. Don’t you think it’s time to bring in someone with new ideas?

Is The Basis Of Our Laws Unconstitutional?

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On Friday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the new law in Louisiana requiring that a poster of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom. The ‘separation of church and state’ hysteria was immediately triggered.

The article reports:

The response was predictable howling that the legislation violated the separation of church and state. The American Civil Liberties Union announced it would file a lawsuit against the new law and condemned it as “religious coercion.”

Landry, to his credit, declared he “can’t wait to be sued” and said if anyone wants to “respect the rule of law,” he must “start from the original law giver, which was Moses.”

The law seeks to overturn a 1980 Supreme Court precedent in Stone v. Graham, in which the court ruled that a similar statute in Kentucky violated the establishment clause of the Constitution. But as Justice William Rehnquist noted in his dissent, the Ten Commandments are not merely religious doctrine but the foundation for Western law.

“The Ten Commandments have had a significant impact on the development of secular legal codes of the Western world,” he wrote.

The article concludes:

At a time when a growing number of people are rejecting the basic moral truths that stealing is wrong, marital infidelity is wrong, and sometimes even that killing is wrong, the moral guidance of the Ten Commandments is needed more than ever.

If the ACLU has a problem with the Ten Commandments, it should sue to invalidate the long list of laws in force today that derive their moral foundation from the commands that God gave Moses at the top of Mt. Sinai, because clearly, any law informed by the Ten Commandments must violate the separation of church and state.

The headline of the article, “Louisiana rightly blends education and morality,” reminds us that moral education is a valuable part of education. It does no good to teach a child basic math and English skills if he does not have the moral education to use them wisely.

Let’s Educate Our Own Children

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On Monday, Breitbart posted an article about one aspect of President Biden’s immigration policies that is often overlooked–the education of foreign students to take jobs from Americans.

The article reports:

American college graduates are losing jobs and opportunities in President Joe Biden’s high-migration economy, admits the Washington Post.

“Despite strong labor market, new college graduates struggle to find employment,” says the June 16 article, which continues:

Hiring in professional and business services — which includes jobs in tech, consulting, finance and media that are popular among new grads — has fallen 12 percent, according to federal data … Today’s recent graduates ages 22 to 27 have a higher unemployment rate — 4.7 percent, as of March — than the overall population, according to an analysis by the New York Fed.

The Post article — which was posted a few days before Biden is expected to amnesty another 1 million migrants — offers sympathetic profiles of two young American graduates who remain unemployed — and a profile of an Indian graduate who landed a U.S. job at a banking-related firm in Texas.

The winning foreign graduate is just one of the hundreds of thousands of foreigners who are being imported by Biden and his deputies to take white-collar jobs via little-known work permit programs. In this case, the Indian enrolled in a U.S. university to get up to four years of work permits via the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program:

…Since 2019, roughly 75 percent of all additional jobs have gone to Biden’s flood of roughly 10 million new migrants, including inexperienced OPT contract workers, blue-collar illegal aliens, and legal immigrants. The inflow delivers roughly one migrant for each American birth. The inflated supply of workers ensures lower salaries, less corporate investment in productivity-raising, high-tech workplaces, higher housing costs — and higher stock values on Wall Street.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. We have totally abused today’s students–we have not taught them critical thinking, we have created an attitude of entitlement in them, and we have not taught them the skills they need to achieve the American dream. If students are saying the American dream is dead, it is because our government education system has not given them what they need to access that dream. Putting America first is necessary and must include teaching our children critical thinking and other necessary skills.

A Study in Entropy

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Entropy is defined as the trend of the universe toward disorder. Entropy is illustrated by what happens to a farmer’s field if he ignores it for a few years. It is also what happens to a tractor or wagon that is left out in a field unattended. Crops do not automatically grow in straight lines, and weeds do not pick themselves. It is not a good idea to let children raise themselves. It takes human effort to keep things moving forward.

Does entropy apply to nations? If freedom and liberty are not carefully nurtured, do they degrade? If the culture is not properly guarded and maintained, does it degrade into unhealthy places?

Recently there was something of an uproar about a commencement speech given by a National Football League player. In his speech, Harrison Butker praised the virtues of motherhood. He praised his wife for the role her support has played in his success. He stated that many of the women in the audience that day will eventually become mothers. They will struggle with balancing their roles as wives, mothers, and corporate employees. All those roles are important, but has our culture devalued the role of wife and mother? A poem by William Ross Wallace states, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Is the Hand That Rules the World.” In the past, children learned basic foundational things from their mothers—baking cookies, shopping, language skills and values. In a world where career is valued over motherhood, children may or may not learn these things at daycare. There is nothing wrong with daycare, but I can guarantee that a child’s daycare provider does not love the child the way his/her mother does. I understand that in today’s economy staying home with your children is something of a luxury, but it can be done. Is devaluing motherhood a step forward or a step backward?

The speech given by Harrison Butker would have merely been a statement of the obvious in 1970. What changed?

The programs of the Great Society and the War on Poverty came into their own in the 1970’s. In 1965, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, the Moynihan Report,” was written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He warned against the collapse of the black family unit, noting a rise in single-parent families. The Great Society programs exacerbated that problem by making payments to women only if there was not a man living in the house. The destruction those programs created in the black population later spread to the white population. The 1970’s also gave rise to the Feminist movement and created what was then the cottage industry of daycare—now a billion-dollar industry. This further weakened the family structure—the foundation of a healthy society.

The overspending of the 1960’s and 1970’s and beyond created an inflationary cycle that forced many women into the workforce. One positive aspect of this is that educational and professional opportunities for women increased. That at least was a positive thing.

Is America now experiencing a state of entropy? How many Americans voted in the last primary election? How many Americans voted in the last Presidential election? Are you willing to take an active role in your government? What impact will the dramatic increase in population from places that do not share our culture have on our own already degrading culture?

If Americans want to save our country from entropy, they need to stand up and fight for the values and culture that made this country great. If we do not do that soon, we will go the way of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

Exactly What Are They Supporting?

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The Avalon Project is part of Yale Law School. Below is their statement of purpose.

Statement of Purpose and Document Inclusion Policy

The Avalon Project will mount digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. We do not intend to mount only static text but rather to add value to the text by linking to supporting documents expressly referred to in the body of the text.

The Avalon Project will no doubt contain controversial documents. Their inclusion does not indicate endorsement of their contents nor sympathy with the ideology, doctrines, or means employed by their authors. They are included for the sake of completeness and balance and because in many cases they are by our definition a supporting document.

I downloaded their copy of the Hamas Covenant 1988 to see exactly what our college protestors are supporting.

Below are a few items from the Covenant:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

…Article Two:

The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It is characterised by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgement, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam.

…The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after.

…”The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

This is what the protesters are supporting. In case you still have doubts, this is the link to “An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America 5/22/1991.”

Take heart when you link to the above document–only the first part is in Arabic.

Exactly Who Does Congress Represent?

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On Wednesday, Issues & Insights posted the results of a Scott Rasmussen poll.

The article reports:

Among all Americans, just 7% said they would want their candidate to win by cheating. As Rasmussen put it, he’d rather see that number lower, but that’s not bad.

But more than a third of the elite 1% he surveyed would condone cheating. And among those who are “politically obsessed” – meaning that they talk about politics every day – that number shot up to 69%.

Keep in mind that this elite 1% group is overwhelmingly liberal. According to Rasmussen, these are mainly well-educated urbanites who make more than $150,000 a year and think Joe Biden is doing a great job. Nearly three-quarters identify as Democrats.

They are also highly influential when it comes to policy, and they are completely out of touch with everyday Americans. A few examples from the survey:

    • Nearly 60% say there is too much individual freedom in America – double the rate of all Americans.
    • More than two-thirds (67%) favor rationing of energy and food to combat the threat of “climate change.”
    • Nearly three-quarters (70%) of the elites trust the government to “do the right thing most of the time.”
    • More than two-thirds (67%) say teachers and other educational professionals should decide what children are taught rather than letting parents decide.
    • Nearly three-quarters (74%) say they are financially better off than before COVID, compared with 20% of the general public.

These elites are also the people who are constantly wailing and gnashing their teeth about how Donald Trump is a “grave threat to democracy.” You can’t turn on the television, open a newspaper, or go to any mainstream news site without being warned that “democracy is on the ballot this November,” or told that Trump is a wannabe dictator, his followers semi-fascists, blah, blah, blah.

Yet most of these same elites would be happy to see Biden and the Democratic Party rob and cheat to steal an election rather than let Trump win a second term in office.

It is time Americans elected people who actually represent them. Our current elected officials clearly represent only a small minority of the people. All of us need to get involved in primary elections to change this–until we change the candidates, we won’t change the results.

America First; Part One: The Economy

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

There are two essential things that make a country successful and secure: the economy and military strength. This article will address what we need to do to strengthen our economy, and a subsequent article will deal with the military. Both will focus on putting America first, a principle of our Founding Fathers that we, unfortunately, have gotten away from.

The out of control national debt must be reversed if we have any hope of maintaining a strong economy. Beyond that, however, we need to go back to the American economy of the 1950s that made us the envy of the world. First, we need to return essential industries to America. For the past thirty years we have been allowing key manufacturing industries to move overseas, primarily to access cheap labor and increase corporate profits. This has made us very vulnerable to foreign countries, some of whom are our adversaries like China, for products essential to our economy. The recent supply shortage showed how the lack of items like computer chips can shut down our economy. Recently, it was announced that U.S. Steel may be sold to a foreign country. Automobile and parts manufacturing is increasingly occurring in other countries. China, for example, is the major manufacturer of electric vehicles. Allowing key manufacturing to leave this country not only diminishes good paying jobs, but prevents us from converting these manufacturing capabilities to military needs (such as tanks and planes) as we were able to do in World War II. The solution is to identify essential manufacturing products and to prohibit their movement to other countries. Imposing high tariffs on foreign competition should also be implemented for these essential products/industries. Republican Senator Josh Hawley just introduced a bill to place a 100% tariff on Chinese made electric vehicles. A good start.

Any country that does not control its food production is vulnerable to outside threat. Currently there are over 3.5 million acres of agricultural land in American owned by foreign entities. This also includes food processing companies, like Smithfield, now owned by a Chinese company. Does China allow foreign countries to own their food production? Absolutely not. This problem is rapidly getting worse and needs to be stopped by legislation at the state and federal levels.

Another essential category of products are pharmaceuticals. As we found out during the COVID outbreak, many of our essential drugs are produced overseas;. again, many in China. Totally absurd.

Lastly, modern manufacturing capacity and product development are based on evolving, complex technologies. Our educational system is failing us by not producing sufficient numbers of science and technology graduates. We focus on gender studies and sociology, while other countries focus on math and science. This needs to change if we have any hope of competing in the modern world.

Before you can solve a problem, you have to recognize and identify the problem. Our country must refocus on making America first to ensure we can remain secure and independent through a strong economy.

It’s Time To Re-educate Our Children

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On Monday, The College Fix reported the following:

Nearly 90 percent of Ivy League grads support the “strict” rationing of gas, meat and electricity to fight climate change, according to a new poll.

The conservative Committee to Unleash Prosperity, in a survey that sought to measure the beliefs of “elites,” stated the findings reveal climate change “is clearly an obsession of the very rich and highly educated.”

“An astonishing 77% of the Elites – including nearly 90% of the Elites who graduated from the top universities – favor rationing of energy, gas, and meat to combat climate change. Among all Americans, 63% oppose this policy,” the organization reported.

The poll, released this month and titled “Them vs. U.S.: The two Americas and how the nation’s elite is out of touch with average Americans,” was billed by the committee as a “first-of-its-kind look at the views of the American Elite.”

They are defined as “people having at least one post-graduate degree, earning at least $150,000 annually, and living in high-population density areas (more than 10,000 people per square mile in their zip code).”

Another key finding is nearly six in 10 “elites” say there is too much individual freedom in America.

The report is based on two surveys of 1,000 elites conducted last fall.

Remember the song “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”? Maybe it should be rewritten to say, “Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Go to Ivy League Colleges.”

Individual freedom is what made America great. Individual freedom is what allowed these graduates to achieve what they needed to achieve to get into Ivy League schools.

The article concludes:

The “shocking” findings reveal “a wealthy, partisan elite class that’s not only immune from and numb to the problems of their countrymen, but enormously confident in and willing to impose unpopular policies on them,” argued Isaac Schorr in an op-ed Friday for the New York Post.

“It’s near impossible to behold the results and not acknowledge they’re indicative of a fundamental disconnect between two Americas,” he wrote. “That disconnect should be of as much concern to proud aristocrats as it is to the peasantry.”

The new poll results are reminiscent of another survey The College Fix reported on last summer which found two thirds of college students believe climate change is an “existential threat” to their generation; however, fewer than one in five were willing to give up their smartphones to help.

 

Common Sense Scores A Small Victory

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In many schools across the nation, teachers are told not to share information with parents if a child is identifying as a gender different from their birth sex. The child can change clothes in school and be addressed by their ‘new’ name. Teachers are specifically told not to share this information with parents. In California, two teachers were fired for telling parents.

On Thursday, Red State reported:

In December, our Jeff Charles brought you the story of how two teachers from the Escondido Union School District teachers were placed on administrative leave after they refused to hide the gender identities of students from their parents, citing their religious beliefs. The pair sued, and in September 2023, Roger Benitez, Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, issued a preliminary injunction against the district and barred it from enforcing such policies.

The “new policy appears to undermine their own constitutional rights while it conflicts with knowledgeable medical opinion,” he wrote. 

On Wednesday, Benitez weighed in on the matter again and told the school to get the teachers back in the classroom:

The order from Judge Roger Benitez says the teachers, who haven’t been allowed in their classrooms since last May, must be allowed to return by next Tuesday, Jan. 15. In September, Benitez blocked their employer, Escondido Union School District, from forcing them to comply with their policy to socially transition kids to different gender identities behind their parents’ backs.

“Both sides are expected to work in good faith going forward to resolve this matter,” Benitez wrote Wednesday. 

The article concludes:

The issue boils down to rights: whose should be primary, the parent’s or the student’s?

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution gives a lot of deference to parents regarding their children’s upbringing, education and care. But under California’s Education Code, students have certain privacy rights.

“That is the crux of the issue — what is more superior, a child’s right to privacy or a parent’s right to know about their child’s life?” said Jillian Duggan-Herd, a family law attorney.

More and more parents around the country are sounding off and making themselves heard, declaring that the answer is simple: the parents should parent, not the government, not schools. In my view, official policies at schools or businesses or government agencies requiring employees to lie or misinform are quite simply unethical, regardless of what subject they’re instructed to be dishonest about. 

Families are one of the foundations of our society. To exclude parents from such an important issue in their child’s life is to undermine that foundation.

Who Is UNRWA?

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On December 27th, Zero Hedge posted an article about The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) .

The article reports:

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was originally a small agency mandated to provide basic humanitarian relief for Palestinians, including a vote for renewal every three years. Seventy-three years and four generations later, and with more than 30,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $1 billion, it has astonishingly become one of the largest UN agencies.

The article notes:

In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, UNRWA has, in fact, long been operating as the de facto government. By providing the residents of the Gaza Strip with various services, UNRWA exempted Hamas from its responsibilities as the governing body, such as creating a working economy that would pay for education and healthcare, and allowed it, instead, to invest resources in building tunnels and manufacturing weapons. If UNRWA were not there, Hamas would have been forced to fill the vacuum and, for example, build hospitals and schools and find solutions to economic hardship, including unemployment and poverty.

As senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk said, in explaining why no cement could be spared from terror tunnels to build bomb shelters for Gazan citizens:

“The tunnels were built to protect the fighters of Hamas from [Israeli] airstrikes. As you know, 75% of the residents of the Gaza Strip are refugees. It is the responsibility of the United Nations to protect the refugees.”

Hamas was effectively saying: We are responsible for what happens underground, while UNRWA is responsible for what happens above ground.

In addition to evolving into a monster-sized agency, UNRWA has also morphed into a very costly incubator for terror. UNRWA-run schools emphasize and promote the “right of return,” a euphemism for flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians and turning it into a Muslim-majority Islamist state backed by Iran.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Is there any doubt that we need to stop supporting the United Nations? American taxpayer dollars are funding terrorism.

This Might Backfire

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On Thursday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about President Biden’s new plan to forgive student loan debt.

This is the headline from the article:

American workers – are YOU happy to pay $1,800 EACH to wipe the student debt of the privileged elite who’ll earn $52,000 a year? Because BRAD POLUMBO reveals that’s your bill for desperate Joe’s naked bribe for votes

The article reports:

‘Congratulations! I erased your student loans. Now will you vote for me?’

That’s what President Biden should have said in an email to more than 800,000 student loan borrowers – because his latest scheme to ‘forgive’ some of their $1.78 trillion in outstanding debts is nothing more than a bribe.

‘Your student loan has been forgiven because of actions my Administration took to make sure you receive the relief you earned and deserve,’ read the White House message sent to in-boxes on Tuesday.

Gee – Democrats are so generous with other people’s money.

What had these lucky few done to ‘earn’ and ‘deserve’ this multi-billion dollar ‘relief?’

Very little.

In a bit of bureaucratic sleight of hand, Biden and his dutiful ministerial assistants transformed an obscure Education Department repayment program into a brand new entitlement program.

The monthly payments of hundreds of thousands of borrowers will be capped at five percent of discretionary income, and if they pay these tiny installments for 10 to 20 years their entire remaining loan will be wiped away.

This move is aimed at college students and graduates ages 18-34. This is a demographic that is not generally supporting President Biden.

However, according to the Census Bureau, only 35 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 vote, and 48 percent of people between the ages of 30 and 44 vote. Almost 60 percent of people between the ages of 45 and 64 vote, and 66 percent of people over 65 vote. It is quite possible that those over the ages of 45 learned critical thinking in school–something that is rarely taught now. If the people over 45 realize that they are paying for this student loan forgiveness program, it is very possible that they will turn out to cancel the votes of the younger people benefitting from the program. It is also possible that those in the age group that will benefit will include enough people who didn’t go to college that are angry about paying for someone else’s education that they could not afford for themselves.

At any rate, please follow the link to read the entire article. It will be interesting to see if this actually works or backfires. Meanwhile, we should mention that it is entirely unconstitutional.

An Interesting Fact About College Protests

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On Thursday, Hot Air posted an article about the pro-Palestine protests that are happening at some of our elite colleges.

The article notes:

TV host Mike Rowe said that eight years ago, he was switching the news channels on his television and saw several college students setting fire to the American flag and dancing around a pile of burning flags. They were telling reporters in interviews they were disgusted with Old Glory and “fearful” of the flag.

“It wasn’t lost on me in the moment that all of these events were happening at what is considered the best of the best elite universities across the country,” Rowe told me. Among supposedly non-elite students, though, the situation wasn’t and isn’t as bad.

Rowe said it didn’t take long for him to figure out why those “elite” students drew those conclusions about Old Glory: The idea of associating fear with the flag came from the very people who were supposed to be instructing these privileged students.

Rowe said the evidence was crystal clear when Jonathan Lash, then the president of Hampshire College, chose not to assure the students that no country offers more liberties to their people and therefore there was nothing to “fear” from the flag. Instead, he spoke up in ways they understood to validate their fears.

“Lash actually removed any traces of the American flag from the campus and said in a statement that removing the flag from the campus ‘will better enable us to focus our efforts on addressing racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and behaviors,’” Rowe explained.

Lash, a former Peace Corps volunteer, federal prosecutor, Harvard graduate, and president of a Washington-based environmental think tank, left the college in 2018. Hampshire College, under Lash in 2015, was one of the first elite schools in the United States not to accept SAT scores from applicants, in part because Lash said SATs were strongly biased against students of color.

The article notes that Mike Rowe has observed that these protests are not happening in community colleges and trade schools. Generally speaking, students at those schools are concerned with graduating and making a living–they are not from homes that guarantee their future.

The article concludes:

The Department of Education tallies show there are nearly 4,000 colleges and universities across this country with 40% of their students holding some type of job while attending school.

In contrast, there are just a little over 1,000 community colleges and 7,407 trade and technical schools as of 2022 with 80% of those students employed while attending school in the former.

Rowe said that when the protests at the elite universities started to unfold after the Oct. 7 massacre, he wondered what seemed so familiar. “And the answer isn’t because it’s familiar in terms of bad behavior. It was familiar because it’s another thing that never happens at schools where people go to learn a skill.”

Unfortunately, the students at the elite colleges often go into politics and attempt to shape national policy.

Let’s Teach Our Children To Be Successful

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On November 21, The NC Family Policy Council posted an article about the keys to help our young people become successful adults.

The article notes:

While some of these trends have been beneficial (I’m personally a fan of working remotely), not all of these have been good for our society. Many of the values that the parents of these two generations have tried to pass on have instead been tossed to the wayside. Principles like the importance of getting a good education, waiting until marriage to have children, or getting a good job have been ignored more and more.

While the long-lasting impacts of these lifestyle changes are yet to be seen, researchers Wendy Wang and Brad Wilcox have confirmed that these “traditional” values are actually beneficial for individuals, giving them the information to build what they’ve termed the “Success Sequence.”

The Success Sequence

The report from Wang and Wilcox states that Millennials are most likely to live an economically successful life and avoid poverty if they follow these three steps:

    1. Graduate from high school or get a GED by their mid-twenties;
    2. Work full time;
    3. Marry before having children.

This sounds an awful lot like what my generation was told growing up. Here’s the evidence for their model:

    • 97% of Millennials who follow this sequence are not poor when they reach adulthood. The link remains strong when this cohort of young Americans reaches their mid-30s.
    • 94% of young adults from lower-income families who followed the success sequence are not poor.
    • 95% of young adults from non-intact families who followed the success sequence are not poor.
    • The poverty gap between college and high school graduates is small among those who followed the success sequence.

Correcting For Disadvantages

What is interesting is that this works across all of the variables that are often cited as reasons for people to be economically disadvantaged, including race, gender, parents’ low economic status, not receiving a college degree, and being from a non-intact family. The poverty rate for adults between the ages of 32 and 38 after completing each step is well under 10%, even for those experiencing the disadvantages mentioned above.

These are the values the parents of the baby boomers taught their children and grandchildren. It’s time to go back to those values.

The article includes a video summary:

Common Sense

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On Saturday, Breitbart posted the following headline:

Netanyahu Opposes Biden: No Way Palestinian Authority Runs Gaza Again

No kidding.

In August 2005, Israel evacuated (some forcibly) it’s citizens from the Gaza Strip and turned the territory over to the Palestinian Authority. Since that time many thousands of rockets and mortar shells have been fired from the Gaza Strip onto southern Israeli towns and villages, terrorizing and destabilizing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens. It became very obvious very quickly that the Gaza Strip was not going to be a peaceful partner to a two-state solution. I can’t imagine any country in the world putting up with a neighbor who is constantly raining rockets down on its population. If Mexico were lobbing rockets into Texas on a regular basis, would America tolerate that? Then why do we expect Israel to tolerate it? Israel has been more than patient with its terrorist neighbor, and that patience probably would have continued were it not for the events of October 7.

The article at Breitbart notes:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his opposition Saturday night to a proposal by U.S. President Joe Biden to restore control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority (PA) once Hamas is removed from power and destroyed.

On Saturday, Biden published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he supported Israel, though once again joining the Israeli cause to the Ukrainian one, putting Hamas and Russia in the same category as enemies of the United States.

Biden also reiterated his support for a “two-state solution” as the only answer to the conflict, and added: “As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.”

However, Netanyahu emphatically rejected that idea.

The article concludes:

Despite the loss of U.S. aid under the Taylor Force Act, which President Donald Trump signed in 2018 to prohibit taxpayer dollars from funding the PA as long as it continues “pay-to-slay,” the PA has not changed its policy.

The PA also continues naming public parks and monuments after terrorists, and Palestinian educational materials are frequently filled with anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda.

The PA ran Gaza from 1994 to 2007, when it was ousted by Hamas in a violent coup. Rocket attacks against Israeli civilians began years before it was ousted, and especially from 2001 onwards, despite a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and civilians in 2005.

The Palestinian Authority may look better on the surface than Hamas, but they are cut of the same cloth. As long as the schools in the Gaza Strip continue to educate children to grow up and kill Jews, the Gaza Strip cannot be trusted as a peaceful part of a two-state solution.

 

Board of Education Resolutions 

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Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D    

As I have mentioned in prior articles, the local Boards of Education are the only elected body that we have direct influence over when it comes to our county public school systems. The State Board of Education is made up of appointed members. It is incumbent on us to make sure that the local Boards of Education members know how we want the schools to operate. We can let them know by attending the Board meetings, contacting individual board members, or by formal resolutions directing them to take specific actions.  An example of the latter is the four resolutions that will be presented to the Craven County Board of Election on Thursday November 16 at their public meeting.    

The four resolutions consist of the following:  Resolution #1:   Removing identity focus (i.e. Critical Race Theory) from the curriculum in the schools in all grades. Removing all books, etc., that advocate CRT.  American is not a racist country and should not be portrayed as such. People should be judged by the content of their character and achievement and not their ethnic/racial identity.  Resolution #2:  Removing Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) teaching and practices from the schools. DEI is based on Marxist principles that advocate equal outcome instead of the American principle of equal opportunity. This teaching not only breeds distrust and hostility between the races, but undermines the notion that everyone should strive to achieve their best and should be rewarded appropriately.  Resolution #3:  Removing transgender instruction. The notion that any student can choose their gender rather than live consistent with their gender at birth is destructive and amounts to child abuse.  All children should be addressed by the pronoun consistent with their biological gender at birth and any child exhibiting gender confusion should be referred to their parent(s)–not to school counselors.  Resoution #4:   Climate Change. Children in public school are being indoctrinated with the unproven belief that climate change is being caused by man’s burning of fossil fuels and that the earth will become uninhabitable if drastic action like wind and solar are not implemented. This has become the ideology of the Left and anyone challenging their radical beliefs is labeled a “climate denier”.  This resolution would require that both sides of this issue be covered as part of regular science classes and not used as indoctrination. The climate has never been static and has always been changing. They are frightening our children with their unproven ideology. 

Most clear thinking conservatives will agree that the above issues need to be removed from the public schools. They represent a communist inspired threat to our way of life and American values. The public schools should be focusing on doing a better job teaching traditional academic skills.  For example, the recent report about the Craven County Schools showed that 57% of students are not reading at expected grade level and a whopping 65% are not achieving at the expected grade levels in math. Meanwhile, it is costing the  taxpayers close to $12,000 per year per student. It is high time that the Board of Education force the school administration to focus on improving academic performance and stop indoctrinating our children.  If you agree you should let your Board member know. It should be noted that these four resolutions were drafted by the Craven County 20th Republican Precinct, and endorsed by the Craven County GOP Executive Committee and the Craven County Republican Men’s Club.     

Hope For Education In Texas

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On Sunday, Just the News reported that the Texas Senate has passed two education bills that will increase funding for public education and expand school choice.

The problem in public education is not entirely due to funding. In 2013, AEI posted the following graph:

As someone who graduated from high school as part of the largest high school graduation class in American history, I understand the need for buildings, teachers, and administrators. I went to three different junior high schools as the community was building schools to accommodate the baby boomers as they went through high school. I was part of the first high school class in my high school to graduate on single sessions in a long time, and even at that, there were almost 1,000 students in my graduating class. However, we are no longer seeing the student population growth that we saw in the 1960’s. I am all in favor of keeping the number of teachers high–smaller classes are a good thing, but it is time that we took a serious look at cutting the number of administrators.

Just the News reports:

SB 1 creates education savings accounts of up to $8,000 per student and gives Texas families “the power to determine the best school for their child, with their tax dollars,” Creighton (Senator Brandon Creighton) explains.

Creighton said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote that, “Senate Bill 1 is not merely legislation, it’s a pledge to Texas parents, a testament to our trust in their decision-making capabilities and investment in the dreams of our young Texans respecting their individual specific education needs.”

After more than eight hours of debate, the Senate passed SB 1 by a vote of 18-13. Sen. Robert Nichols, R–Jacksonville, was the sole Republican to vote against it.

The bill heads to the House Education Opportunity & Enrichment Committee.

SB 2 allocates record funding for public school education, including increasing the basic allotment for per-student funding and giving raises to teachers across the board.

It passed nearly unanimously by a vote of 30-1. It was received in the House but has not yet been assigned to a committee.

Let’s free education in America!

Training the Sheep

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

Freedom is not a permanent state in any society. It is better visualized as something that has to be nurtured and defended constantly if it is to survive. The Founding Fathers recognized this truism. For example, Benjamin Franklin when asked what type of government had been created by the newly written Constitution, he replied: “A constitutional Republic if you can keep it.” Sadly, recent actions by the Biden regime raise the question of whether we are going to show the courage to fight for freedom or act like sheep.

The expansion of the welfare state and people’s willingness to be on the government dole, which would have been rejected by prior generations, shows that many Americans do not treasure their independence as much as we once did. All government handouts come with strings attached that limit our freedoms. Federal government funds provided for Medicaid expansion recently moved many states, including unfortunately North Carolina, to accept increased government control of our healthcare.

The use of fear by the Biden regime resulted in many people caving to the curtailment of their freedoms during the COVID outbreak. Similarly, they are using the fear of catastrophic climate change to get people to accept restricted freedom and a reduction in their standard of living. For example, recently proposed, impossible to achieve, restrictions on emissions from internal combustion engines will effectively result in only the production of electric vehicles by 2032. Freedom of choice is eliminated when the government allows only one option. That is also the case with gas stoves and other household appliances. The regulatory agencies are increasingly the way the Biden regime is controlling our lives and curtailing our freedoms.

Freedom of speech is the basis of all our freedoms. As the revelations made by the Republican controlled House have shown, the Biden regime, with the assistance of the FBI and the DOJ, colluded with platforms like Facebook and Twitter to interfere and block our freedom of speech. Questioning vaccines or man-made climate change were enough to get one blocked on these internet sites. Now, they have gone so far as to charge former president Trump with multiple criminal offenses because he dared to express his opinion that the 2020 election results were fraudulently obtained. Say something the Biden regime disagrees with and you are blocked on social media, or now, potentially indicted for a crime! If it can happen to an ex-president it can happen to all of us.

The youth of this country are being indoctrinated with the Marxist agenda. Make no mistake about it. This not only occurs at all grade levels in our public schools but also in our public libraries. Recently, I was in the public library in Boone, N.C., and observed a group of children on a scavenger hunt. The theme was the coming man-made climate catastrophe. The library staff conducted this program. No balanced information was given about the evidence that climate change is continuous and is caused by natural phenomena. Of course not!

Although the young people in our country seem oblivious to their loss of freedoms, we older people know better and must step up to fight against the Biden regime. Contact your elected officials and tell them you want the regulatory excesses stopped and the agencies that promote them de-funded. We must show them we are wolves not sheep!

Mental Health Services in Schools

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

I have a Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology, a career as Mental Health Director for the NC Department of Correction, and have worked with a variety of clients and families in private practice. I want to offer my opinion concerning whether mental health counselors and service providers should be added to the staff of the public schools in North Carolina (an idea currently being encouraged by the Federal Department of Education). As usual, the federal government is providing start-up funds to initiate this effort.  Remember what President Reagan warned us about– that we should beware of any time the federal government says they are here to help. I am opposed to this for the following reasons 

First, public schools are already facing many challenges in meeting their primary function of academic education. Adding another responsibility, such as providing mental evaluation and services, is a totally unnecessary complication to their primary function. Second, schools should establish clear rules for expected behavior for all students and enforce those rules. Parents should be expected to make sure their children can demonstrate those essential expected behaviors. Otherwise, not only will that student not learn properly, but will disrupt the learning of other students. Remedial conduct training may be required before an unruly child is assigned to a regular classroom. Learning self- discipline and obeying authority are the keys to academic success and in life after school. Third, students, who are suspected of having mental health problems, that fact should be brought to the attention of the parents and the parents provided with information about the availability of mental health evaluation and services in the community such as the county mental health center. The decision and responsibility to seek these services should remain with the parents. Fourth, mental health problems rarely, if ever, manifest themselves only in one phase of a child’s life. The idea that a true mental disorder will manifest itself solely in school is incorrect. Fifth, the idea of attributing unacceptable behavior in school to a mental disorder is counter-productive to learning self-control and discipline.   There are far too many students placed on medication now instead of being trained in proper school conduct. 

Instead of putting mental health clinics in the schools, it would be better if schools would remove unnecessary distractions like cell phones and over-reliance on computers and return to more traditional means of teaching. I am afraid that we have abandoned effective instructional techniques in favor of non- proven so-called modern approaches. Using mental health intervention, especially with medication, puts the blame on the student and not the educational process.  It also moves the responsibility for one’s conduct from the student to a mental disorder that of course cannot be their fault or that of the parents. 

 

Securing A Good Education For Our Children

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On Saturday, Just the News posted an article about Moms for Liberty’s idea to help parents gain more input into their children’s curriculum.

The article reports:

“We’re launching something on Monday called ‘The Parent Pledge,’ and that’s something that elected officials and candidates can take,” Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Justice announced during a wide-ranging interview Saturday on the John Solomon Reports podcast.

“It just says that they recognize parental rights are fundamental rights, that parents have that fundamental right to direct the education, the medical care, the moral and religious upbringing of their children in their character development,” Justice explained. “And that the government needs to know their place and that they will stand against government overreach.”

The article concludes:

Moms for Liberty has been starting chapters across the country and establishing political action committees to challenge the stranglehold teachers unions have long maintained on public education.

“These unions realize that they’re losing their grip and their hold on public education,” said Justice, citing Florida Democratic nominee for governor Charlie Crist’s selection of a “union boss” as his running mate. “And now they’re looking to assert themselves and really show their real true political colors at higher levels of government so that they can strongarm people into doing what they want. But parents aren’t going to let that happen.”

The voices of parents were loudly heard in the recent Virginia election for governor. When one candidate essentially stated that parents should not have input into what is being taught in schools, he lost the race. Since taking office, Governor Youngkin has respected the rights of parents and has undone some of the more radical legislation signed into law by his predecessor. Since the advent of the U.S. Department of Education, student test scores have fallen consistently. It’s time to decentralize education, abolish the Department of Education, and give parents a voice in their children’s education. Education should be local–all localities have different needs. When we tried to standardize the teaching of mathematics and language arts, the scores trended downward. It’s time to go back to the time when our students were learning the skills they needed to become useful citizens of America.