Andy Ngo on Christmas Parade Car Attacker

 Andy Ngo on Christmas Parade Car Attacker

Liberals Pounce on Andy Ngo for Posting Inconvenient Facts on Suspect in Waukesha Car Plowing Massacre

National School Boards Label Concerned Parents as Domestic Terrorists!

 NEWS & POLITICS

Concerned Parents Are 'Immediate Threat' Says National School Boards Association President—Some Are Even Domestic Terrorists!

BY GWENDOLYN SIMS   

It’s completely understandable that many parents around the country are fed up. They’re fed up with not only the onerous and arbitrary pandemic-related safety measures but also the racist and radical left-wing ideologies being forced upon kids in our taxpayer-funded schools. America’s parents are concerned and pushing back.

 What’s not so understandable (unless you’re a leftist) is the reaction to the pushback by those in the top echelons of our educational system. Case in point, on Thursday, National School Board Association (NSBA) president Viola Garcia sent out a hysterical—yet revealing—letter not to school board members or parents, but to the president of the United States, Joe Biden.

After fawning all over Biden’s “leadership to end the proliferation of COVID-19,” Garcia proceeds to ask “for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.” The letter cites several articles describing hostile behavior at school board meetings and other events as evidence of an “immediate threat.” And who does Garcia and the NSBA say is perpetrating this nationwide “immediate threat”? Why America’s concerned right-wing parents, of course.

It’s revealing this letter was sent to Biden and not local school boards or local law enforcement. Why would Garcia feel so entitled to contact the president? Could it be she believes Biden owes the left something after supporting his basement-dwelling campaign? Does Biden owe the teachers’ unions and other numerous educational associations something? Is it payback time?

 Tellingly, Garcia writes that “attacks against school board members and educators for approving policies for masks to protect the health and safety of students and school employees” are also “because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula.” She deceptively claims that “critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class.” Tuned-in parents know CRT is taught in public schools but that it has simply been renamed “ethnic studies.” Just ask the teachers’ union.

Related:  Teachers’ Union Commits to Shoving Critical Theories Down the Throats of Students and Parents Nationwide

Like a good little leftist, Garcia throws in the obligatory placation for free speech. “Local school board members want to hear from their communities on important issues,” claims Garcia. “However, there also must be safeguards in place to protect public schools and dedicated education leaders as they do their jobs.” However, also like the left, everything she writes afterward negates that placation. You see, free speech is all well and good until parents don’t agree with the job the school board is doing; then it’s time to sic the feds on them for speaking up while labeling that speech “threats” and “violence.”

 “Now, we ask that the federal government investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials,” writes Garcia, “through existing statutes, executive authority, interagency and intergovernmental task forces, and other extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of our children and educators, to protect interstate commerce, and to preserve public school infrastructure and campuses.” Calling for the federal government to use vague “other extraordinary measures” to “investigate” parents sounds pretty intimidating and threatening to me, Ms. Garcia.

Not only does Garcia, blame parents for “threats and intimidations” instead of her own failed leftist school boards, but she also raises the crazy bar to high by equating upset parents’ attempts to speak at school board meetings as “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” She even calls for numerous federal law enforcement agencies to target those parents.

“NSBA specifically solicits the expertise and resources of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center regarding the level of risk to public school children, educators, board members, and facilities/campuses,” Garcia writes. “We also request the assistance of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to intervene against threatening letters and cyberbullying attacks that have been transmitted to students, school board members, district administrators, and other educators.”

  Instead of writing a letter to villanize taxpaying parents who don’t agree with leftist policies of leftist school boards, Garcia should wake up and realize that she and her leftist cronies have poked the wrong bear.

I have news for the left: Engaged and concerned parents speaking at a school board meeting are not “domestic terrorists.” Our children do not belong to you. We see you and we see what you are trying to do. The pushback will continue no matter how many letters you write.

I'm (kind of) changing my mind about CRT. -TANGLE 6-8-21

 

I'm (kind of) changing my mind about CRT.

The critical race theory debate continues.

Isaac Saul Jun 4

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, ad-free, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum — then “my take.” This is a free look at one of Tangle’s subscribers-only Friday editions.

Today’s read: 9 minutes.

Sometimes, you get it wrong.

Every day, I publish anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 words in Tangle. A good bit of that writing is my own opinion — either in “my take” or in answers to reader questions. And in those writings I’ve repeatedly heralded the capacity of some people to have their minds changed by new evidence or new arguments, and yet I too rarely demonstrate that exercise for my readers. 

I’d like to give it another swing today.

Last week, I wrote about the fight over critical race theory. If you missed that piece, I’d suggest reading it now. But if you’d rather not, I’ll briefly summarize it:

Critical race theory is an academic movement that recognizes systemic racism in American society and examines how that racism impacts the law, institutions and outcomes. It argues that many social problems are influenced more by racial inequity in societal structures than individual or psychological factors. CRT teaches that racism is an everyday experience for people of color, and that white supremacy maintains its power through our systems of government and law.

Many race-related movements, organizations and ideas have grown out of CRT. One of them, today, is the anti-racism movement, which often leans on the teachings of CRT for historical perspectives. Although the two are distinct, they’re conflated all the time. CRT teachings, however, are not just having a resurgence in academia, but are spreading to the corporate world, social clubs, your social media feeds, and into K-12 schools as well as colleges and universities.

In response to CRT “infiltrating” some schools, Republicans have proposed (and in some cases passed) a wave of restrictive legislation across the United States. Some have framed it as “bans on critical race theory teachings,” while others have described the legislation as protecting children from being compelled into self-loathing over their race.

Last week, after summarizing competing arguments from each side, I essentially took the position that banning anything in academic settings was bad, that states were overstepping, summarized positive experiences I’ve had in engaging CRT ideas, wrote that these bills banning its teaching were solving for a problem that doesn’t currently exist (i.e. CRT in K-12 schools is not common), and wrote that U.S. education could improve by engaging in honest conversations about race — and our country’s history with it — more often and not less often.

---

After writing that piece, I was inundated with emails — from liberals, conservatives, Black school teachers, white school teachers, historians, Constitutional scholars, and just your average parents with kids moving through their public school systems all over the country. I even heard from a couple of K-12 students.

Their emails provided all sorts of different arguments, evidence, and pushback on what I had written (many, too, wrote supportively of my position — which is why I feel especially compelled to “update” some of what I wrote here). Many, many good points were made, and I’d like to address and integrate them here into my own thinking.

First, the left’s view was not properly represented. Many people felt that the “what the left is saying” section was misleading or at least incomplete. They rightly noted that I did not include a single piece of liberal dissent on CRT, despite the fact its presence in schools — and its resurgence more widely — is something many prominent liberals also object to. John McWhorter, for instance, wrote a whole book about the flaws of anti-racism work and critical race theory. I also did not include any dissent from Black thinkers or people of color, when McWhorter is hardly alone. I’ve referenced many of those thinkers before in this newsletter — Richard Loury, Coleman Hughes, Kmele Foster, Thomas Chatterton Williams, etc. — and at least one of them should have gotten space in last week’s edition. 

There are also progressives who have called out their peers to do more to fight back on critical race theory in schools, while some Democrats worry that arguing America is racist to its core is simply a bad political play. And there are polls that have shown a combination of Americans simply not knowing what critical race theory is or being opposed to ideas — like the concept of white privilege — being taught to young kids (a note of caution that some of these polls are being conducted by overtly political groups).

Finally, quite a few people on the left have written about the way critical race theory — and some of the ideas born out of it — have harmed Asian Americans. I, regretfully, did not include any of these voices in my original piece.

The bills banning CRT are doing more than “solving a problem that doesn’t exist.” If I could take back a single sentence from my original piece, it’d probably be this one: “Not only that, but most of these bans are solving a problem that doesn’t currently exist.”

There were two reasons why this was a bad argument. The first one is that, even if critical race theory was not particularly common in K-12 schools, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth addressing before it becomes one. If you’re working from the place where you see CRT as a dangerous school of thought, or being applied in dangerous ways, then it’d be a bizarre and silly thing to say that we should wait until it’s a problem to address it. Framing it as solving a problem that doesn’t exist, rather than a worthwhile preventative measure, was an unfair way to raise the issue.

Second is that, based both on my reader responses and some of the supporting evidence they sent in, I think it was unfair of me to say CRT is not common in our schools. The truth is I don’t know how common it is. My writing cited the work of Christopher Rufo, who has been logging some of the more bizarre and troubling applications of anti-racism or CRT in schools. But plenty of parents (parents of color and white parents!) also wrote in with stories about their kids, some in elementary school, being needlessly “segregated” during school hours, or being shamed for the crimes of their ancestors, neither of which are healthy or productive applications of critical race theory to me.

And it’s clear it’s not just them. Teachers and parents have both — in recent months — started publicly objecting to the way “critical race theory” or anti-racism is being taught in schools. More specifically, that any dissent has been stifled, that young students are being shamed for their intrinsic characteristics (like their whiteness), and that it’s harmful to many Black students to teach them they are disadvantaged at a young age. All are strong, valid critiques.

Not all the bills are the same, and generalizing them misses the mark. One other mistake I made in my original piece was not being more intentional about parsing out the specifics of these bills. Bari Weiss hosted two conservative thinkers, David French and Christopher Rufo, on her podcast for a fascinating and illuminating debate about these bills. The conversation showed that there is some division on the right about this as well. It also drove home two other important points:

One, a lot of these bills — both proposed and passed — are vastly different, and it would have been worth my exploring how in greater detail. A New Hampshire proposal, for example, was so broad as to seemingly prohibit the discussion and debate of divisive topics. It has since been updated, and now explicitly protects the teachings of something like critical race theory. “Nothing in this subdivision shall be construed to prohibit racial, sexual, religious or other workplace training based on the inherent humanity and equality of all persons,” the bill now says, and continues; “Nothing in this subdivision shall be construed to limit the academic freedom of faculty members of the university system of New Hampshire and the community college system of New Hampshire to conduct research, publish, lecture or teach in the academic setting.”

But the bill also says:

No public employer, either directly or through the use of an outside contractor, shall teach, advocate, instruct, or train any employee, student, service recipient, contractor, staff member, inmate or any other individual or group, any one or more of the following…

That an individual, by virtue of his or her age, sex, gender identify, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive whether consciously or unconsciously.

The problem with a bill like this is how it splits hairs so closely. For instance, I don’t think anyone is “inherently” racist or sexist, and I agree that shouldn’t be taught to kids (though I do think inquiring about such a question in high school or college is fine). I also think there is a fascinating and important discussion to be had about whether we all carry unconscious racism or sexism — and I think it’s okay to be exploring those ideas in school. So by the letter, this bill may not be an issue, but it’s also running so close to a prohibition on teaching controversial ideas that it still concerns me (so that part of my position hasn’t really changed).

The second thing I was reminded of by Rufo and French’s debate was that there is another free speech angle to this, which is that some students are being compelled to say things they may not believe. There are entire books and legal cases about this, but the simple point is your free speech rights protect you not only from being silenced by the government, but also from being compelled by the government to express something. If public school teachers, who are government employees, are, for instance, forcing white students to express their status as oppressors, that becomes a serious issue. My previous writing didn’t address this at all.

French, a former lawyer who (like me) has serious concerns about these Republican bills, made the point that such an instance could be grounds for a lawsuit, even if a bill to try to prevent those instances was misguided and redundant. Rufo disagreed, strongly, that these bills would be shot down as unconstitutional. Which brings me to another point… 

Voluntary vs. mandatory. Quite a few people took issue with my personal story about my positive experience with critical race theory, only to note that there was a difference between me voluntarily engaging these ideas and students being forced to engage in them. In other words: school is compulsory in America. And if students are being forced to go to school, and teachers at that school are teaching critical race theory as “truth,” then these students are effectively being indoctrinated.

I don’t find that argument particularly convincing, namely because I think the overwhelming number of teachers are making good-faith attempts at providing a holistic look at issues of race, law, history, etc. However, I do think it’s a good critique of my argument to note that comparing my voluntary participation in certain anti-racism workshops as an adult is not the same as K-12 kids facing mandatory teachings on CRT in public school.

States have a right to do this. This was more of an omission than anything else. A lot of people wrote in to note that determining what curriculum should or shouldn't be taught in public schools is actually a primary responsibility of the states. So again, if you’re working from the position that CRT is dangerous, or that it is being applied in damaging ways, it would be a dereliction of duty for state legislators not to do anything about it.

This, too, is a sound argument. It’s quite possible that some states are going to ban certain kinds of practices in schools and others won’t, and even if I disagree with that, it’s part of life in America that individual states will address these issues differently. To put a fine point on this, a few readers noted that when I disparaged my high school education in Pennsylvania for omitting so much history, they said the education I received sounded nothing like the one they received — i.e. they were taught all about race, slavery, indigenous people and the crimes of European colonizers, and that the fact I wasn’t was more of a reflection of Pennsylvania’s education system than of American education as a whole.

---

Putting a pin in it. There are two things I want to dig my heels in on, even after reading all your feedback and continuing to look into these bills for the last week.

One, I do not think critical race theory is particularly dangerous on its own. On the contrary, it’s a really valuable and important piece of academia. Like any critical theory, it has its flaws, but in simple terms, it really is just an academic theory that explores the way race (and racism) are embedded in our society’s laws and structures. One issue with writing about CRT is that it seems to mean something different to everyone. To me, CRT is about an academic exploration of the very real and very important ways race impacts different facets of society, and has throughout our history. That is a fairly innocuous thing. To someone else, CRT might be about a return to segregation, race essentialism, and the practice of defining everyone and everything first and foremost by their race. I’d argue that my definition is far closer to the truth, and the latter is about how sloppily “anti-racism” work is being applied by (I hope!) well-intentioned teachers in our schools.

Two, on the whole, I still believe these bills banning CRT are more dangerous than helpful. I haven’t seen one yet that I’d personally vote for. If K-12 students are being taught that they are inherently inferior, superior, or racist, based on their race — or otherwise being compelled to espouse those ideas — they are already protected by our country’s laws. And they can use those laws to seek recourse. On the contrary, some of these bills, the ones that are overly simplistic and broad, have already resulted in the cancellation of a university summer class, while teachers are expressing new fears about addressing issues of race because of this legislation (this was something many teachers expressed to me privately, too).

The things I got wrong and omitted — and the arguments that moved my position — were more about my own naivete about the impact some of this is already having. I shouldn’t have generalized all these bills as equally dangerous or counterproductive. Some are closer to being redundant than radioactive, simply restating prohibitions that already exist on defining anyone by their race, gender, or religion.

I was also wrong to frame the issue as being beyond the power of the states; I was wrong to say that it solved a problem that didn’t exist, or that even if that was true, that made the bills unworthy of our time; I was wrong to frame it as a purely right vs. left issue when a lot of liberals are rightly opposed to the ways CRT or anti-racism is being handled in schools; I was wrong not to acknowledge that CRT has been criticized loudly and effectively by plenty of people of color; I was wrong not to spend more time fleshing out the differences between CRT itself (which, again, I find innocuous) and how CRT is being applied in public schools across the country (which, again, I sometimes find inappropriate).

So what’s there to do? That’s a better and more difficult question. I don’t have a clear, clean answer, but I think continuing to highlight instances where CRT teachings go too far in schools is a good start. I also think engaging the criticisms of CRT, and ensuring they are part of any discussion about CRT in schools, is critical (if you’ll excuse the play on words). And perhaps most importantly, I think we need to continue to avoid the trap of race essentialism — of assuming our Black neighbors have some monolithic opinions on race and politics or that our white neighbors are all thoughtless oppressors.

This debate has illuminated the fact that neither one is true, and that the continued pursuit of nuance, as well as the open debate about challenging ideas born from theories like CRT, are our best chances at moving the country forward in a positive way.

George Floyd - African American Iconic Hero

 According to the Socialist Democrats and their leftist media groupies, until the end, George was a model citizen.

 

 After 6 burglaries, 3 car thefts, multiple illegal trespasses, an ongoing cocaine and alcohol addiction, committing 2 violent home invasions, 3 armed robberies, dealing Fentanyl and Meth, passing counterfeit money, beating 4 victims senseless and being arrested 23 times since 1998, George Floyd hasn't committed a crime in over a year now!

BUT IT DID NET HIS FAMILY $27 MILLION!

Portland Oregon: This Man is a Joke

 This Man is a Joke

Democrat Portland Mayor ‘Done’ With ‘Anarchist Mob,’ Begs Public To Help ‘Unmask’ Rioters

In an address late Friday, Democrat Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler extended a city-wide state of emergency and begged for Portland residents to assist law enforcement in “unmasking” and identifying members of the “self-described anarchist mob” that have rioted through the city nearly every night since last May.

GK CHESTERTON: The Apostle of Common Sense.

 REMEMBERING G. K. CHESTERTON: The Apostle of Common Sense.

Progress isn’t anything!

Progress, Chesterton pointed out, isn’t anything. You can’t be for progress unless you’ve defined the thing towards which you are progressing. Otherwise progress is simply a comparative for which we have not established the superlative.

 The Progressives, according to Chesterton, were only interested in “going on towards going on.” 

Their notion of progress was based on a rejection of the past, a hatred of history, and a breaking of the commandment that tells us to honor our father and mother. 

Tradition means giving a vote to our ancestors. It is, Chesterton said, “the democracy of the dead.” Letting our ancestors have a vote is only common sense, whereas voting on behalf of our ancestors is election fraud.

For those who would measure progress by technological innovation, Chesterton responded that, in spite of our faster cars and communication, “the mere strain of modern life is unbearable.” The world has become abnormal. We no longer desire normal things: normal marriage, normal ownership, normal worship, or even life itself.

Chesterton is considered a conservative these days, but in his own day he called himself a liberal.

 He felt that a liberal was someone who believed in freedom. 

But, just as Ronald Reagan said that he didn’t leave the Democrat Party, it left him; Chesterton said, “I am the last liberal.” He was alienated from Britain’s Liberal Party when he discovered its stealth and corruption, but also when he realized that the Liberals were not interested in liberty or justice; they were only interested in getting reelected.

Chesterton also lived during the period that one of the greatest stolen bases by the American left occurred: embarrassed by the disastrous presidency of Woodrow Wilson, 

they swapped out the word “liberal” for “Progressive.”

26Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll   

G

Corporate Leftist Media Rewarding Riots?

 ANTIFA - Get's Paid to Lead Assault on Capital

American Greatness 2/18

Black Lives Matter, Antifa March Through DC, Chant ‘Burn It Down’ (Sat Feb 6)

 

Black Lives Matter, Antifa March Through DC, Chant ‘Burn It Down’

BY JACK PHILLIPS

 

February 7, 2021 Updated: February 7, 2021

 

biggersmaller 

Print

Black Lives Matter protesters and Antifa agitators marched through Washington D.C. on Saturday and threatened people as they ate dinner, according to video footage and reports.

“Burn it down” is what the demonstrators said. “We are here tonight because black lives matter,” members of the far-left group also said. “Despite black lives mattering, black people are still dying at the hands of the police paid for by our tax dollars.”

Other video footage uploaded by independent journalists on the scene showed Antifa types fighting with police officers, who were trying to keep them away from restaurants. Some, who were clad in all black, could be seen holding the red-and-black Antifa flag.

At one point, police in D.C. were seen forming lines around outdoor diners to separate them from the demonstrators and agitators.

Anti-police protests and riots have been a constant presence in D.C. following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last May.

About 26,000 National Guard members were sent to D.C. to provide enhanced security following the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. Officials later said that about 5,000 Guard members would stay in the city until mid-March.

The Epoch Times reached out to police in Washington D.C. about whether there were any arrests made.

Andy Ngo, an independent journalist who chronicled Antifa’s actions across the United States, told the Epoch Times last week that the notion Antifa is merely an ideology is false. Ngo said the group is “more than an idea. It’s also a movement.” It has networks, while some of them are organized into formal organizations, he said.

Some have noted that the continuation of Black Lives Matter protests and Antifa riots is a signal that there is a growing schism within the American left. Seattle, Portland, and other cities have seen occasionally violent demonstrations after the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden.

Also in January, demonstrators swarmed and attacked an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility—a frequent target during the Trump administration in Portland—which triggered a federal response.

True Goals of ANTIFA - Andy Ngo

 Andy Ngo: Antifa Goals

Mo Brooks Tweet - on DC RIOT

 Mo Brooks@RepMoBrooks (Congressman)

·
Please, don’t be like #FakeNewsMedia don’t rush to judgment on assault on Capitol. Wait for investigation. All may not be (and likely is not) what appears. Evidence growing that fascist ANTIFA orchestrated Capitol attack with clever mob control tactics.

Evidence follows:

2. Congressman told me he was warned on TUESDAY by Capitol Police officer that intelligence suggested fascist ANTIFA was going to try to infiltrate the Trump rally by dressing like Trump supporters.

3. Capitol Police advised TUESDAY that it best not to leave Capitol complex.

4. Evidence, much public, surfacing that many Capitol assaulters were fascist ANTIFAs, not Trump supporters.

Again, time will reveal truth. Don’t rush to judgment. Don’t be fooled by #FakeNewsMedia whose political judgment drives their reporting.

My view: fully prosecute all!

https://twitter.com/RepMoBrooks/status/1347171350641831936

(1/2) Part of text I just sent to media person: “In the past, when citizens of a Republic lose faith in their ability to guide the destiny of their country via the election process, they have been FORCED by that country’s rulers into a box and FORCED to chose from any of

(2/2) 3 bad options:

1. Flee (emigrate).

2. Submit.

3. Fight back with violence.

THAT is why we must fight for honest & accurate elections.

We don’t ever want citizens in America feeling they have been forced into the aforesaid box, with 3 bad options.