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Author Archives: theartfuldilettante
Leaving Public Education: A Way to Shield your Children from Critical Race Theory
The introduction of politicized education ideas like “critical race theory” into the curriculum of government schools is a major reason for American public school systems’ decline. In many schools, political agendas have been crowding out what many parents understand as the primary purpose of schools — educating students in core subjects such as reading, mathematics, and science.
US government data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicates that, as of 2019, only 37 percent of American high school seniors were proficient in reading. The results drop to 24 percent in math and 22 percent in science. The root of the problem is government’s near monopoly of education that means there is little to no incentive to stop federal, state, and local “educrats” from imposing the latest education fads on students. Any attempts by government to “fix” education, such as No Child Left Behind or Common Core, inevitably fail.
The replacement of education with indoctrination is one reasons many parents are pulling their children out of public schools to homeschool. Of course, one main reason for the growth in homeschooling is the covid lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates. Restrictions at schools have been especially absurd since children have tended to be in little danger from covid.
Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states. However, the authoritarians who believe children’s education must be controlled by “experts” are constantly trying to undermine homeschoolers. Sometimes homeschoolers’ enemies are aided by well-intentioned homeschooling supporters. For example, there is a bill pending in the Alabama state legislature that would make homeschoolers eligible for taxpayer funding. Homeschooling advocates supporting this bill forget that government funding is inevitably accompanied by government control. Thus, any homeschooling family that accepts government money is inviting the government to tell them how to educate their children. Further, some school districts use truancy laws to harass homeschoolers. States also make parents prove homeschool students are receiving an education that meets state standards.
Fortunately, as homeschooling has become a more popular choice, many new resources have become available to aid parents who desire to homeschool their children. Among these resources is the Ron Paul Curriculum.
Students using my homeschooling curriculum can attain a superior education in comparison to standards set by politicians or bureaucrats. Instead of indoctrinating students with instruction in subjects including critical race theory, my curriculum provides students with a solid education in history, literature, mathematics, and the sciences. It also gives students the opportunity to create their own websites and internet-based businesses. The curriculum is designed to be self-taught, with students helping and learning from each other via online forums.
Starting in fourth grade, students are required to write at least one essay a week. Students are required to post their essays on their blogs. Students also take a course in public speaking.
The curriculum does emphasize the history, philosophy, and economics of liberty, but it never substitutes indoctrination for education. The goal is to produce students with superior critical thinking skills who can thrive with their individuality.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
No !–by Ayn Rand
Then I saw what was wrong with the world, I saw what destroyed men and nations, and where the battle for life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality—and that my sanction was its only power. I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it. Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-immolation to provide them with the means of their plan—so throughout the world and throughout men’s history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collectivized countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values—the impotence of death. I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win—and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was “No.”
— Ayn Rand
Tyranny Won’t End Until You Eliminate the Tyrants
A tyranny does not stop being a tyranny because the tyrant chooses, on a whim, to stop enslaving you, or to enslave you a little less.
If a tyrant loosens your chains, or gives you a little extra food in your prison cell, you’re not suddenly free.
If he releases you from prison but retains the means and moral authority (in his eyes) to bring you back to prison any time he feels like it, you are not free.
We wouldn’t call a child molester no longer a molester if he abstained from violating children for a year, or two or even ten. A serial killer is still a serial killer in between sprees.
We would not call a spouse abuser a reformed man when, after beating his wife to a pulp on Tuesday, he brings her flowers on Wednesday. We would not say the abused spouse was a victim of abuse on Tuesday, but now is just fine on Wednesday.
This is the kind of emotional unintelligence that keeps people slaves. I see it happening now, and it’s both a sad and painful thing to watch. Tyrants have got you exactly where they want you.
Don’t kid yourself that the lifting of mask mandates in some states means anything at all. At best, it only means the tyrants are giving up a little of their power for now in order to retain their power — and abuse it even more — down the road. TRANSLATION: DemComs actually ARE a little worried about being slaughtered in upcoming elections.
Until or unless tyrants are hauled away, prosecuted and punished for everything they have done, and kept away from ever having any kind of power over others again, you are not free.
Until the moral (as well as legal) principle is established and upheld — that YOU are sovereign over your own life, including your own body — you are not safe, and you are not free.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Ridding the Military of the Unvaccinated
Why is the Pentagon — under Biden regime control — dismissing all service members who won’t get vaccinated?
Is it really about health? Of course not. The great majority of people who got the vaccine are still getting COVID; and the current version of COVID is much less severe than the first (keeping in mind that the first version also had a 99 percent survival rate).
It’s not about health.
It’s about politics. More specifically: It’s about conformity to the political views of the regime in power.
By definition, the service members dismissed for not getting the vaccine are overwhelmingly Republican voters. They are probably Trump supporters. They surely still believe in the Bill of Rights, including individual sovereignty over one’s body — the things that previous generations of soldiers fought for, and they are also willing to fight and die for.
By ridding the military of all such “deplorable” soldiers, the military achieves its goal of a woke, leftist, “Democrat”, blindly conforming service pool.
This has real-life consequences. At some future time when the government seeks to use the military to enforce something that millions of citizens don’t wish to do — submit to medical treatment, give up their carbon-based fuel cars, surrender their guns, surrender their religious or philosophical beliefs — then you have a military willing to open fire on that noncompliant population.
Think of it this way: If YOU were a dictator, you would want a military to enforce your will, wouldn’t you? Would you prefer a military with uniform allegiance to your Party and political point-of-view, or a military with a diversity of viewpoints?
We will see how well this works out in practice. But you can be sure that’s the goal.
What else could the goal be? It’s certainly not the health and well-being of soldiers.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Joe Rogan did it To Himself
But as much as CNN tried to resurrect its lead character – who was banned from social media and largely off the grid for the year – his absence clearly showed the network was a one-trick partisan pony. Ratings fell 90 percent overall when comparing January 2021 to January 2022. That’s hard to do.
Which brings us to the events of this week: Zucker released a statement saying he had to resign because of a consensual affair with a female executive named Allison Gollust. WarnerMedia apparently has a rule against this, so Zucker – instead of a slap on the wrist for a benign offense – simply had to go abruptly.
Nobody believed this excuse. Turns out they may have had plenty of reason to be skeptical.
Per several reports, Zucker and Gollust allegedly advised then Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) – the older brother of then-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo – on what to say during his COVID-19 daily briefings in the spring of 2020. They also reportedly told Cuomo how to respond to and how to criticize then-President Trump, to make it more compelling TV. (Gollust is a former communications director for Andrew Cuomo.)
Let’s unpack all of this:
In the spring of 2020, the country was in a horrific place. Businesses shut completely; people were scared. There were no COVID therapeutics, no vaccines. Hospitals were overwhelmed, thousands were dying each day. If ever there was a time for news organizations to educate and inform the public, this was it.
Instead, Zucker apparently believed it was the perfect time to exploit the situation for political gain and to help the network’s ratings.
Andrew Cuomo benefitted from briefings that made him appear to be the adult in the room regarding COVID and Trump appear to be the villain. Cuomo got a $5.1 million book deal as a result.
Chris Cuomo and Zucker/Gollust/CNN benefitted from marathon interviews with Cuomo’s governor/brother, which didn’t touch the governor’s alleged nursing home scandal. Ratings soared.
So, was Zucker’s departure simply about a consensual relationship with a co-worker? One might be forgiven for questioning that.
Moving forward, what’s next for CNN when the company falls under the Discovery Channel umbrella later this year? Let’s hear from its soon-to-be largest shareholder, John Malone of Liberty Media.
“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” Malone said in an interview that recently aired on CNBC.
The collapse of CNN is now complete: Nine-out-of-ten viewers, gone. Its top-rated anchor, Chris Cuomo, gone. Its network president, gone. Its integrity in shambles.
Oh, and new management coming in that is signaling big-time changes … changes that may bring CNN back to the proud network it once was before Jeff Zucker destroyed it.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
CNN’s Collapse is now Complete
It all began 42 years ago — Ted Turner’s creation of a 24/7 news network that would exist on something called cable TV. Few believed it could succeed.
And, for its first decade, CNN largely chugged along but wasn’t seen as a game-changer or a true competitor to big broadcast news entities based in New York in the form of CBS, NBC and ABC. That all changed when war broke out between the United States and Iraq in 1991.
On the night war exploded over Baghdad, CNN was the only news organization that was able to broadcast from the city under siege as the U.S. onslaught began, all courtesy of the CNN team’s ability to convince the Iraqi government to grant them a line out of the city to broadcast, one that the competition could not secure.
“How CNN Won the War” was the glowing headline from the Washington Post on a story that perfectly chronicled the events that led to CNN officially becoming a major player. And off it went.
Until 2002, CNN was No. 1 in the cable news race. But competition that hadn’t existed before ended its dominance forever, primarily in the form of Fox News and, to a lesser extent, MSNBC. Despite the ratings results, CNN continued to carry itself as a credible, facts-first network of integrity that leaned heavily on solid reporting with a sprinkling of opinion and infotainment mixed in via programs such as “Larry King Live” and “Crossfire.”
In 2013, the network hired former NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker to take the reins as ratings continued to be below average at best. This gave Zucker a mandate to radically change the network from its journalistic roots of more than three decades — the months-long wall-to-wall coverage of a missing Malaysian airliner being an early example.
But two years later, the move to insert heavy doses of partisan opinion into its news reports only accelerated when Donald Trump – a Zucker hire at NBC for “The Apprentice” – jumped in to the 2016 presidential race. At first, CNN bear-hugged Trump’s every move. (Hillary Clinton’s giving a speech somewhere? Screw it. Let’s show an empty Trump podium with chyrons stating “Trump to speak soon” instead.) The real estate mogul’s 17 Republican challengers never had a shot; Trump blotted out the sun in terms of media coverage on his way to winning the nomination.
At that point, Zucker and CNN began to worry. Because while it was a ratings boon for the network to make Trump the centerpiece, there was growing concern that the guy could actually beat Hillary and become the nation’s 45th president. So Zucker unleashed the hounds, but it was too late. Trump would go on to shock the world in November 2016.
Undeterred, CNN decided there would be no honeymoon period for the new president. Talk about Russian collusion handing Trump the White House began even before the inauguration. And after the nonstop Trump-bashing, Harvard University concluded that CNN led the way, along with Zucker’s former home of NBC, in giving Trump 93 percent negative coverage in his first 100 days.
For the next four years, CNN served as the leading media resistance to Trump, throwing objectivity out the window. And after Joe Biden got elected, the network cheered the new president as it had throughout the entire campaign while still making Trump a prime centerpiece for over-the-top negative coverage despite his being out of office.
But as much as CNN tried to resurrect its lead character – who was banned from social media and largely off the grid for the year – his absence clearly showed the network was a one-trick partisan pony. Ratings fell 90 percent overall when comparing January 2021 to January 2022. That’s hard to do.
Which brings us to the events of this week: Zucker released a statement saying he had to resign because of a consensual affair with a female executive named Allison Gollust. WarnerMedia apparently has a rule against this, so Zucker – instead of a slap on the wrist for a benign offense – simply had to go abruptly.
Nobody believed this excuse. Turns out they may have had plenty of reason to be skeptical.
Per several reports, Zucker and Gollust allegedly advised then Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) – the older brother of then-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo – on what to say during his COVID-19 daily briefings in the spring of 2020. They also reportedly told Cuomo how to respond to and how to criticize then-President Trump, to make it more compelling TV. (Gollust is a former communications director for Andrew Cuomo.)
Let’s unpack all of this:
In the spring of 2020, the country was in a horrific place. Businesses shut completely; people were scared. There were no COVID therapeutics, no vaccines. Hospitals were overwhelmed, thousands were dying each day. If ever there was a time for news organizations to educate and inform the public, this was it.
Instead, Zucker apparently believed it was the perfect time to exploit the situation for political gain and to help the network’s ratings.
Andrew Cuomo benefitted from briefings that made him appear to be the adult in the room regarding COVID and Trump appear to be the villain. Cuomo got a $5.1 million book deal as a result.
Chris Cuomo and Zucker/Gollust/CNN benefitted from marathon interviews with Cuomo’s governor/brother, which didn’t touch the governor’s alleged nursing home scandal. Ratings soared.
So, was Zucker’s departure simply about a consensual relationship with a co-worker? One might be forgiven for questioning that.
Moving forward, what’s next for CNN when the company falls under the Discovery Channel umbrella later this year? Let’s hear from its soon-to-be largest shareholder, John Malone of Liberty Media.
“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” Malone said in an interview that recently aired on CNBC.
The collapse of CNN is now complete: Nine-out-of-ten viewers, gone. Its top-rated anchor, Chris Cuomo, gone. Its network president, gone. Its integrity in shambles.
Oh, and new management coming in that is signaling big-time changes … changes that may bring CNN back to the proud network it once was before Jeff Zucker destroyed it.
Joe Concha
Watch “Victor Davis Hanson | The Failure of Globalism” on YouTube
It’s Time for Patriotic Freedom Lovers to Become MEAN
The problem with liberty lovers and patriots is that we are not MEAN enough.
Our opponents are vicious; and mean. After all, they’re totalitarians. Totalitarianism is based on BRUTE FORCE. The initiation of brute force is wrong; it’s mean.
I’m not suggesting we respond by becoming totalitarians. I am suggesting we respond in a way fitting to the threat.
For starters, this means: Being willing to morally shame them. Why? Because they are shameful. Forcing people to endure experimental medical treatments is vicious. It’s insane. Forcing people to force their children to endure experimental medical treatments is, if anything, worse. Ditto for lockdowns, masks and all the other things that our state, local and federal governments now do without hesitation.
Too many of us are willing to criticize these people in private, or in our own minds, but not to their faces. And, more importantly, too many of us are too frightened to tell people in our communities and families that we believe what they’re supporting is SHAMEFUL.
Seeking conflict for its own sake is not healthy. But conflict is unavoidable. Conflict has found US — like it or not. We have lost our liberties. Even if the experimental vaccine doesn’t end up killing millions of people, it’s not the point. The point is that we have now established the principle that we must put into our bodies whatever the government tells us to put into our bodies — simply because the government says so, and mislabels it “science.”
That is not America. That is not a free country. It’s shameful beyond words. It’s shameful beyond anything that went on at the time America was first founded. Today’s tyrants in California, New York, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan and Minnesota make the British royal tyrants of 1776 seem like nothing. And today’s tyrants are just getting started. We know that because of 100 percent of their actions, daily. We know that because they tell us so, and they laugh and sneer as they do it.
It’s beyond masks and vaccinations. Those are not trivial things. But the principle has been established that government may do whatever it wishes, whenever it wishes to whomever it wishes. A third of our population is irredeemably lost. These are the true blue leftists who watch nothing but MSNBC and who dominate not only the deep blue states, but the whole culture. Another third of the country are genuine patriots, and they will (I still believe) reach a point of no return, and will turn on the present, rotten-to-the-core establishment in government and culture. The middle third worry me. These are the people who know the ends and means of the totalitarians are wrong, but are afraid of being shamed. These are the people who must learn how to become MEAN. And we have to support them in that quest.
This is no time for kindness to your fellow man — not if your fellow man hires government thugs to place a gun at your neck or a boot on your throat. Get it through your heads: THIS is what they’re doing. Virtually every government in human history has been authoritarian, to one degree or another; since the 20th century, we have seen the unspeakable brutality of totalitarian governments. All of the evidence tells me that today’s leftists are WORSE than anything we have yet seen in all of history.
Stop being nice. Stop worrying about what others think of you. Stop caring what people who wish to annihilate your liberty for their own neurotic (or psychotic) reasons think. What they think does not matter. What matters is that we stop them. Now.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Is there such a thing as Racism ?
Racist. No word has such power. It can end careers, embitter families, and provoke amazing displays of cowardice. But the word means nothing anymore. It’s doubtful if it ever did.
Until recently, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had a definition of racism most Americans would probably agree with: “Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.”
Even this definition has problems. Few say that one race is inherently “superior or inferior” to another, even though races do differ in average intelligence and in broad psychological traits. A person’s success or failure often depends on intelligence, which can be measured by IQ and standardized test scores.
Who we are is not a product of voluntary choice. Our inborn characteristics shape us, and race is one of them. If “racists” are people who recognize this, then they are the ones who see reality clearly.
Race realists and white advocates aren’t “racist” when we talk about scientifically demonstrable racial differences, but defending the term is like slugging the tar baby. Sam Francis wrote:
“Racism,” therefore, is a term originating on the left, and has been so defined and loaded with meanings the left wants it to have that it cannot now be used by the supporters of white racial consciousness for any constructive purpose. Anyone who uses the term to describe himself or his own views has already allowed himself to be maneuvered onto his opponents’ ground and has already lost the debate. He may try to define the word differently, but he will need to spend most of his time explaining that he does not mean by it what everyone else means. As a term useful for communicating ideas that the serious supporters of white racial consciousness wish to communicate, the term is useless, and it was intended by those who developed it that it be useless for that purpose.
Fortunately, the ADL has changed the definition of racism, so we never have to worry about it again.
The new definition is “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”
This is bewildering. It means the Chinese could exterminate blacks in their country and not be racist, if they are privileging Asians but not whites. Blacks who set out to murder the first white they find can’t be racist. Only whites (or, presumably, non-whites who fight for white supremacy) can be racist.
If racial differences in achievement are caused by “institutional racism,” whites can be racist without even trying. This is “racism without racists,” at least under the old definition of “racist.” The new definition fits better with the conventional wisdom that all whites are racist. Racism practically defines “whiteness.”
But what’s a “socially constructed racial hierarchy”? We still need a way to tell “people of color” from “white people.” There must be a physical difference — something not socially constructed — or we can’t victim from oppressor.
Some people find this confusing. Whoopi Goldberg does. She recently said on The View that the Holocaust was not about race, but “man’s inhumanity to man.” “This is white people doing it to white people,” she said, “so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves.” In later comments on Stephen Colbert’s talk show, Miss Goldberg said that “as a black person,” she thought of “race as something I can see.”
Jews, to her, are white, but apparently she got it wrong. Actor Michael Rapaport complained, “It was only about race. It was about kill the Jews, exterminate the Jews. ‘They’re not white, they’re Jewish.’ ” ABC suspended Miss Goldberg from her show for two weeks, despite her groveling. Would she have got the same treatment if she had just said she thinks Jews are white – without mentioning the Holocaust?
Many blacks lump Jews in with whites, especially because Jews historically ran shops in black neighborhoods. Blacks also commit crimes against Jews in places such as New York City. Do they attack Jews because they think they are white or because they are Jews? Because they’re both?
It’s all so confusing.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 