Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Category Archives: Education

64 Years Later, What Has The John Birch Society Done?

This article, written by the Communications Director of the John Birch Society, Paul Dragu, deserves widespread circulation. It appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 26, 2022:  

 

Modern man is simply being played for a sucker by an immoral gang of sophisticated criminals. These cunning megalomaniacs seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of the human race…. Although they now occupy most of the positions of great prestige and influence in Washington, London, and Paris, as well as in the educational, financial, and publishing circles of the whole world, their power rests entirely on bluff, pretense, and deception. Their success and their purposes are contrary to the whole current of human history. They are sitting precariously on the gigantic powder keg of all honest human emotions. Despite their arrogant assurance on the contemporary scene, they are well aware that sooner or later, the whole flamework of their cruel power will be blown pieces by a mighty uprising of the incalculable forces of man’s moral principles, love for freedom, and common sense. How soon that day of delivery comes will depend on you.

— Robert Welch, December 1958

On December 9, 1958, Robert Welch of Belmont, Massachusetts, gathered eleven successful and patriotic men in a quiet Indianapolis home to announce that he would forego retiring and dedicate the rest of his life to fighting the tyrannical forces trying to destroy America and establish a one-world totalitarian government. To do this, he was going to create an organization unlike any other. He wanted to know if they’d join him.

That was the birth of The John Birch Society.

Welch, who had worked many years as a successful executive for his brother’s lucrative candy company, James O. Welch Company, was a wordy man, attributes tragically considered liabilities in today’s distraction-filled, fast-paced society that is in dire need of truth and understanding. He spent two days explaining the gravity of the communist conspiracy, part of a larger “Master Conspiracy,” he would explain. The transcript of that two-day presentation was published as The Blue Book, now in its 25th printing.

Communism had by that point officially blanketed with equal misery, tyranny, and poverty at least half the planet. Furthermore, Welch warned, communism had subversively infected the U.S. government. His insistence on the large degree of communist influence within the government would over the years serve as a lightning rod for smears and ridicule from corporate media journalists with their heads in the clouds. However, time — which made possible the declassification of documents such as the Venona cables — have unfortunately further vindicated Welch. The Venona operation was a U.S. Army intelligence program set up in 1943 to decrypt messages sent by Soviet spy agencies. According to historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr who read and analyzed the cables, by 1948 the “Soviets had recruited spies in virtually every major American government agency of military or diplomatic importance.”

Little has changed in the news business. Today’s regime propagandists by and large continue to deny our nation’s tyrannical march, yet they’re different because they do so while being trampled over by it.

After the Indianapolis meeting, Welch and his co-founders wasted little time getting to work. JBS began creating chapters the following month and in two years’ time the organization would explode in membership and influence. By 1961, chapters had formed from sea to shining sea, as patriotic Americans of all walks of life joined to reverse the fast-spreading disease of collectivism. JBS established its own book publishing house and set up bookstores all over the country to circumvent the publishing gatekeepers. This was in addition to the magazine Welch had started before JBS, American Opinion. Members worked to create understanding of the collectivist threat and an influence that would steer the nation toward freedom. Birchers passed out magazines, informational pamphlets, and books. They met regularly and recruited others and launched letter-writing campaigns. Many would even run for local office and win.

And all these book-reading, pamphlet-distributing, letter-writing patriots were getting things done. Americans were learning about the statist threat, they were joining in the fight against collectivism and government centralization, and they became part of a group who understood that behind the attempt to destroy our successful Republic stood a conspiratorial push for an oppressive New World Order, one that would crush the human spirit with the boot of tyrannical oligarchical rule.

It didn’t take long for JBS’s meteoric rise to incite a response from the forces it threatened. Beginning in 1961, corporate media — the propaganda arm of the Insiders — launched a nonstop, merciless, mostly fact-free onslaught at the JBS. Interestingly, corporate media attacks resembled to a tee the exact strategies the communist hierarchy in Moscow created to be used against the growing anti-communist grassroots movement in the United States. Psy-op expert and former OSS agent Edward Hunter revealed this in 1961 to the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws. In the coming years, media mouthpieces would smear Birchers as right-wing extremists, Nazis, fascists, antisemites, bigots, and racists, all despite blatant evidence to the contrary but all according to communist-devised strategies. The JBS has always opposed government centralization and all collectivism, which includes fascism; and JBS members, leaders, and sponsored speakers have included people of various colors, races, and religions, including Jews. The media painted a profoundly false picture of the JBS, a distortion each subsequent generation of reporters has largely perpetuated.

The attacks against the JBS became so intense that Welch asked the government to investigate his organization, confident it would vindicate it. In 1963, the California Senate Subcommittee on Un-American Activities released the results of an investigatory report on the JBS. It concluded that the organization comprised patriots of various colors and religions and nothing subversive or bigoted existed about the JBS. It also documented that JBS had chapters that were racially integrated. This was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.

But the fact-finding report did not curb the attacks. Even so-called conservatives got in on the act, including William F. Buckley and his National Review magazine. The neocons at National Review — the magazine included members with at one point had ties to communist organizations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the CIA — peddled the narrative that America’s decline was the result of bumbling liberalism and gross stupidity as opposed to an intentional, orchestrated dismantling. Welch and JBS members, however, knew better.

National Review went after Welch in 1962 with infelicitous articles about him. Then in 1965 NR went after JBS members because they followed Welch, whose great sin was believing in conspiracies. NR especially took issue, like the rest of media, with Welch’s belief that General Dwight Eisenhower had wittingly or unwittingly served the goals of the communists. Welch was inclined toward the former, that Eisenhower consciously served the communist agenda. Welch’s unpopular, hard-to-swallow thesis, which remains controversial to this today and is still being used as a cudgel against the JBS, was eventually printed as the book The Politician.

Sixty-four years have passed since Robert Welch launched the JBS. The organization, typical of one that has endured so long, has gone through changes, trials, and triumphs. But through it all, we have remained consistent in our mission, “Less Government, More Responsibility and – with God’s Help – A Better World.”

Decades after that fateful meeting in Indianapolis, Welch was asked to name one of JBS’s most significant accomplishments. “Surviving,” he replied. While this may seem a flat and inapplicable answer, JBS survival, we believe, is the difference between complete global tyranny and the world in which we live today. JBS members have foiled plans for regional alliances such as the North American Union. They have fought tooth and nail to prevent the destruction of the Constitution via an Article V Convention. They’ve worked since the ’60s to stop the nationalization of local police. JBS has also been credited by its enemies as the most effective organization to besmirch the angelic goals of the Agenda 21/2030 plan and derail it from burrowing into American communities.

But our greatest contribution has been education. Sixty-four years later, we’ve arrived at point in time in which we are on the brink of majority knowledge of the maniacal conspiratorial elite class. During all our years, from 1959 to 2022, Birchers continued living up to Mr. Welch’s mantra — “education is our total strategy, and truth is out only weapon.” They have distributed millions of magazines, books, pamphlets, and videos. We’ve even met visitors from the other side of the planet whose eyes were open after reading our materials. We’ve published and distributed some of the most important books on the Conspiracy, including None Dare Call It Treason by John Stormer, The Invisible Government by Dan Smoot, None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen, The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, and Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes by Alex Newman. Our affiliate magazine, The New American, and its predecessors, Review of the News and American Opinion, have influenced more people than today’s efficient surveillance apparatus could track. We’ve also started a K-12 school, FreedomProject Academy, to raise up the next generation of patriots. And we recently revived a tool that can revolutionize the political makeup of the United States – the Congressional ScorecardThe Scorecard uses seven key votes to measure how well – or badly – every U.S. congressman, Republican or Democrat, adheres to the U.S. Constitution. This tool is now being expanded to include state legislatures. The Scorecard omits the need to decode politicians’ political rhetoric and goes straight to the fruit they bear via their legislative votes.

In short, JBS has prevented the destruction of America. If it weren’t for the JBS, we believe the world the globalists seek to install — one in which you will own nothing and they everything — would already be reality. If, however, we would’ve had more “pullers at the oars,” as we’ve always sought to recruit, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now in, either. Inflation is robbing us, our elections are a mess, government is collaborating with corporations to silence and manipulate us, and our rogue intelligence agencies run illegal operations against its own citizens.

However.

It is not unreasonable to argue that we are in better position than we were in 1958, if for no other reason than that more people know what’s going on than ever. You cannot address a problem you don’t believe exists. Birch education has converged with reality. Covid tyranny revealed that there indeed exists a totalitarian-minded managerial class seeking to render us subservient cattle citizens of their global oligarchical government. It showed that despite endless talk of “democracy,” the West is not only not immune to tyranny, but plans to weaponize its exclusively advanced technology to injure, control and enslave all humanity.

A giant is awakening. There are plenty of signs. An overwhelming majority of Americans now reject the experimental concoctions they tried to jab into all of us. The propaganda and censorship collaboration between government and Big Tech is coming to light faster than we can keep up with. Corporate media trust (and subscriptions) is plummeting while that of “alternative” media is skyrocketing. Government school indoctrination continues to lose its influence as parents are pulling their children out by the droves. Election chicanery has been exposed and Americans won’t rest until our elections are restored.  This is why the Biden regime has tried to nationalize elections. And patriotic Americans are working in a plethora of ways to raise awareness and change their communities, the key to national restoration.   And politically speaking, the America First takeover of the GOP is within sight.

In an August 1815 letter to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams ruminated on the War of Independence. “What do we mean by the Revolution? The War?” Adams asked rhetorically. “That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People….”

Why is there such an intense effort to propagandize and censor us?

Because they are afraid of you. They know that when enough Americans wake up, the jig is up. During that fateful meeting in 1958, Robert Welch said this to his future co-founding members:

“Truth, reality, human instinct, and the overwhelming weight of human desire are on our side. We have these points in our favor against a Conspiracy that must depend on falsehood, cunning terror, utilized by less than 5% of the population.”

Biden’s “Parents Council” Quietly Disbanded Following Uproar

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 12, 2022:  

Succumbing to political pressure, public exposure, and legal threats, the Biden administration last week quietly axed its ultra-left “National Parents and Families Engagement Council.” Its announcement was simple: “The Department [of Education] has informed plaintiffs [in a lawsuit against the agency] that it is immediately and permanently disbanding the Council, and that the Council will not hold any future meetings.”

The Council, formed in June, faced resistance from the very beginning: There were no parents invited onto the council, nor were any “family organizations” representing parents concerned about how their children were being indoctrinated in the public schools.

Instead, 11 of the 14 groups making up the council were left-wing, anti-parental-input collectivist ideologues.

The lawsuit said the council violated rules that required it to be “fairly balanced”; that the council violated rules of transparency, holding private meetings without prior public notice or public input; and that the council was designed from the beginning to fly under the radar, thus avoiding any meaningful oversight by Congress.

Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools, immediately saw the danger:

Over the past year, the Biden Administration weaponized the federal government against parents who were peacefully and passionately exercising their rights to speak at school board meetings and to be involved in the education of their children.

 

This new “parents council” is nothing more than a public relations mirage, behind which are the same cabal of activist groups that created the very problems that parents have been working to fix at the local level.

 

We’re not fooled, and neither will the parents that wake up every day ready to fight for their children.”

Betsy DeVos, the former education secretary under President Trump, was also among the first to see the fraud and the danger. She called it “laughable”:

I think it’s a very laughable attempt to address what is a very glaring — clearly glaring — issue: parents across the country are upset for a variety of reasons … [and] they want to have control of their children’s education….

 

So, it’s just incredible to me that they would now set up something called a parents’ council and then populate it with individuals from all the alphabet soup organizations that … protect the system and the status quo.

Among those “alphabet soup organizations” is the National School Boards Association, or NSBA, that supported Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland when he proposed going after parents who disrupted school-board meetings, calling them “domestic terrorists.”

There was Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (“No Justice, No Peace”).

And there was the National Parents Union, headed up by a liberal union activist with a long history with the SEIU, the nation’s largest labor union. She saw the opportunity present in the council to mold, shape, and change the educational culture into the Marxist model. She called it “an opportunity … the education system in this country needs bold changes … [the committee is] ready to get to work and have their struggle and solutions heard in the halls of Washington, D.C.”

The final straw was likely the letter from Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that was sent just days before the ax came down. Joining with a number of his senatorial colleagues, Cassidy wrote to DOE Secretary Miguel Cardona:

[Your] department has filled the Council with organizations that have limited, if any, engagement at the local level. Most, if not all, of these organizations are liberal advocacy groups that seek to nationalize our education systems….

 

The Department’s failure to include anyone with a diverse set of parental, or even political, perspectives, makes the Council void of any balance.

Some are calling this dismissal of an odious Marxist government agency a “sweeping victory,” a “significant victory,” and so on. It is not. It is merely a temporary setback to Marxists and communists who know that the real target for their collectivist agenda is the students.

Homeschooling Surge Continues as States Relax Rules

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 28, 2022:  

The surge in homeschooling, aided and abetted by the pandemic, continues.

The pandemic revealed to many parents for the first time just what sort of socialist and cultural indoctrination their children were being subjected to in the public schools. The school shooting in Uvalde, Texas; the increase in the use and sale of drugs on campus; the imposition of CRT in place of real American history; bullying; and — oh yes — poor academic performance — all have figured into the new educational equation.

Initially, the number of students leaving public schools during the first year of the pandemic was staggering. At one point, instead of just three percent of all students being schooled at home, that percentage tripled. Among black families, it quintupled.

In Texas, for example, the percentage of students being homeschooled during the 2019-2020 school year was estimated to be 4.5%. The very next year the percentage nearly tripled, to 12.5%.

That surge continues thanks not only to the results being enjoyed by those homeschooled students in terms of educational excellence, but also to the homeschool movement itself.

Taking Texas as an example, opting out of public schools is fairly simple and mostly unregulated. If a child is moving out of a public school, the parents are required to notify the local school district. The state then only mandates that the child’s learning at home be in a visual format (workbooks and online courses) and that the curriculum include reading, grammar, math, and what Texas calls “good citizenship.”

South Dakota has taken notice and relaxed its home schooling rules. Efforts of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) paid off with the passage of Senate Bill 177, which ended the requirement that homeschool students take standardized tests. Prior to that, if a student failed the tests, the state had power to intervene.

An HSLDA attorney celebrated the victory:

It was a big win for parental rights. It cut out unnecessary regulation and streamlined the process so parents can invest their time in providing the best education they can for their children.

Similar victories or relaxations have occurred in Virginia, Illinois, South Carolina, Iowa, Idaho, Mississippi, and Utah, according to a study by The Epoch Times:

Beyond requirements that homeschooling parents teach a few core subjects like math and English, they are free to pick the content.

Another factor favoring homeschooling is flexibility. Homeschooling mom Kim Quon of Missouri reported to The Epoch Times that after finishing the required classes — usually from 8:30 to noon on weekdays — her children “had a lot of time left in the day to explore their own interests.”

And Quon had plenty of help from online sources:

I’m not a college graduate. So you don’t have to be a brainy person to homeschool your kids because there are so many resources and people available to help.

For another homeschooling mom, Linda McCarthy of Buffalo, New York, the decision to homeschool was easy. In the public schools,

There are kids who don’t know basic English structure, but [the schools] want to push other things on children, and it can be blatant. But it can be, and mostly is, very subtle, very, very subtle.

 

So we were ready to pull [our children out] and will never send them back to traditional school.

The continuing growth of the homeschooling movement is especially encouraging to those involved in the freedom fight. Abraham Lincoln said: “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

Eric Metaxas frequently voices his support for the homeschooling movement as being fundamental in the freedom fight, as does David Davenport, a fellow at the Hoover Institution: “If you are concerned about the direction of America, it is time to do something about the study of civics, which is the real long-term solution.”

Parental Rights Groups Chalk Up Victories in School Boards Across the Country

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 14, 2022:

 

Recent elections have revealed the increasing momentum of parental rights, anti-CRT, and anti-LGBT groups in electing traditional-values candidates to school boards across the land.

The Minnesota Parents Alliance (MPA) lauded their efforts following the recent elections in that state:

Despite the negative headwinds against conservative candidates nationally and in Minnesota, school board candidates backed by the upstart Minnesota Parents Alliance had a very good election night.

 

Forty-nine candidates running with the official MPA endorsement won election to the school board last night, a tremendous accomplishment for an organization that was founded just nine months ago.

 

Dozens of other candidates who received support from MPA such as campaign training, technical assistance, and educational resources also cruised to victory. In fact, 22 out of 38 candidates who attended one of the MPA campaign schools won their elections.

 

Several more winning candidates throughout greater Minnesota benefitted from online access to MPA training sessions and support.

The 1776 Project PAC told the Christian Post that their efforts “from November 2021 to November 2022 … flipped 100 school board seats across the country.”

Specifically, the PAC-endorsed candidates won school-board seats in Pinellas County, Flagler County, Indian River County, and Volusia County in Florida. All four of its endorsed candidates in Brandywine, Michigan, won school-board seats there, while three of its endorsed candidates won seats in Carroll County, Maryland.

The PAC-endorsed candidates also won seats in Bedford, Virginia; Alliance, Ohio; and Bentonville, Arkansas. In Frederick County, Virginia, two of the group’s endorsed candidates won.

These successes followed similar victories last year, when the 1776 Project PAC saw four candidates win school-board seats in New Jersey, three in Ohio, and four in Virginia. It touted a 70-percent success rate for its candidates in Kansas, and a 100-percent success rate in Colorado last year.

Moms for Liberty (MFL), founded in late 2020, now boasts 100,000 members in 195 chapters in 37 states. Part of its mission is to abolish critical race theory and “The 1619 Project” from the public-school curriculum. Of the more than 270 MFL school-board candidates the group endorsed in 2022, over half won their respective races. In the past, conservative, traditional-values candidates would capture less than 30 percent of those seats.

The Christian Post recorded MFL’s remarkable successes:

Moms for Liberty indicated that all three of its endorsed candidates won school board races in Ocean City, New Jersey; five of its eight endorsed candidates won seats on the school board in Charleston County, South Carolina; six of its supported candidates emerged victorious in school board elections in Berkeley County, South Carolina; and four seats on the school board in New Hanover County, North Carolina, went to candidates the group supported.

 

Moms for Liberty touted additional victories in Rock Hill School District and Fort Mill School District in York County, South Carolina; Tipton, Indiana; and Iredell, North Carolina. Two of the three candidates supported by the group to serve on the school board in Shelby County, Tennessee, won their races, as did the organization’s chosen candidates in Pulaski County, Arkansas; Brevard County, Florida; Collier County, Florida; Lee County, Florida; Manatee County, Florida; Pasco County, Florida; and Volusia County, Florida.

 

According to unofficial results, the candidate endorsed by Moms for Liberty also emerged vict.orious in a school board race in Laramie County, Wyoming, as did two out of three candidates it supported in Natrona County, Wyoming. In Harford County, Maryland, unofficial results show three of the four candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty winning their races.

 

In Baltimore County, Maryland, one out of the group’s three preferred candidates appears to have prevailed, while one of its four endorsed candidates appears to have won in Talbot County, Maryland.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis lent his credibility to several races in his state after signing into law the Parental Rights in Education Act earlier this year. All six of the school-board candidates that he endorsed won their races.

In Maryland, 25 socially conservative school-board candidates won seats in 14 counties.

In Texas, 10 Republicans were voted onto the Texas State Board of Education, while just five Democrats won seats there.

Thanks to the Covid infringements, parents have recently become aware of the infiltration of foreign ideologies into public schools, and the move to restore traditional education programs is now gaining traction.

If the results from the last two years are any indication, the restoration of “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic” in place of LGBT, CRT and Project 1619 Marxist history is well underway.

Average American’s Cultural Values Shifting From the Bible to “Feelings” and “Government”

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 2, 2022:  

In the latest America’s Values Study by the Cultural Research Center (CRC) at Arizona Christian University (ACU), nearly 4,000 American adults were asked: “Regardless of your religious faith, America’s foundation for determining right and wrong should be (choose one): the Bible, what you feel in your heart, or majority rule.” Four out of ten chose “feelings,” while just 29 percent said the Bible. The other 29 percent said they’d just go along with what everyone else thinks is right and proper.

Two-thirds of the segment that identified itself as “SAGE Cons” — Spiritually Active, Governance Engaged Conservative Christians — told the CRC that the Bible was their primary source for their moral foundation. Among those who attend “an evangelical church” the Bible is the firm foundation for just 62%, while for those attending a “mainline Protestant church,” the Bible drops to 36% as their arbiter of morality.

Among those who attend a Catholic church, 46 percent think it’s “what you feel in your heart” that’s determinative of what’s right and wrong.

The nine moral values making up what the CRC calls “traditional American Values” are integrity, justice, kindness, non-discrimination, trustworthiness, freedom of expression, private property ownership, the opportunity for individual growth, and self-control.

Pollster George Barna, who heads up the study for ACU, lamented:

If you consider the list of factors that are gaining acceptance as “traditional moral values,” with the public unlikely to turn to churches or the Bible to define values such as integrity and justice, that responsibility is likely to fall on the shoulders of government.

 

Given how government leaders have been aggressively redefining other terms and concepts in recent years, recasting previously unthinkable behaviors as normative, one can barely imagine what our future moral code will look like with the government leading that redefinition process.

In other words, left to his own devices, mankind will shortly descend into a vast cultural wasteland ruled by a tyrannical government. Noted Barna, “Americans have become comfortable with the idea of being the arbiters of [their own] morality.” This is reflected in the current belief system being taught in public education: truth is relative to time, place, and circumstance; and one’s “truth” will vary from another’s, with each being equally acceptable.

Although more than 70 percent of those polled say they support those traditional moral values, that’s misleading. Substantially less than half of them claim that “Biblical morality” is one of their core values. They are, wrote CRC president Len Munsil, “running on just the fumes” of the values expressed as absolute in the Bible. He added that “people are now more likely to take their moral cues from government laws and policies than from church teachings about Biblical principles.”

The CRC’s vision for America’s future is surprisingly hopeful:

America seems to be in a freefall — morally, politically, culturally — our founding values and the biblical worldview seemingly fading forever.

 

But at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, we believe there’s hope — that cultural transformation is possible.

They’re doing something about that “freefall”:

Our mission starts with educating ACU students with the biblical worldview, so they understand and live according to God’s truth.

 

We believe the next generation, transformed and equipped, can influence every area of culture: business and education, government and politics, information and news media, science and technology, arts and entertainment, churches and families.

The school boasts a current enrollment of more than 900 students from 40 states and 25 countries, who are taking advantage of 18 academic programs encompassing more than 40 areas of study. It is ranked the No. 1 university in Arizona by College Consensus, and ranked a “Best College” by U.S. News & World Report.

CNN’s White House Correspondent John Harwood Just the Latest to Exit the Liberal Network

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 5, 2022:  

Friday’s exit of CNN’s longtime White House correspondent John Harwood should have caught no one by surprise. He is just the latest, with many more to come.

On Friday, at the end of his last show, Harwood said:

Personal news: today’s my last day at CNN. Proud of the work. Thanks to my colleagues. I’ve been lucky to serve the best in American media — St. Petersburg Times, WSJ [Wall Street Journal], NYT [New York Times], the NBC family, CNN. Look forward to figuring out what’s next.

The exit of key CNN personnel began even before the influence of John Malone, the network’s new head, began to be felt. Last December the network’s “evening star,” Chris Cuomo, was fired for his involvement in his brother Andrew’s sexual harassment scandal that cost him his job as governor of New York.

Following the merger of AT&T with Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this year, Malone’s influence as a board member began to be felt. At the time of the merger, which brought CNN under Discovery control, Malone made his displeasure about CNN’s left-leaning profile known. In an interview on CNBC following the merger, he said:

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.

In February, after the merger, CNN’s president Jeff Zucker was shown the door and replaced by Chris Licht.

A few months later CNN’s heavily promoted streaming service, CNN+, was shuttered after the $300 million investment resulted in just 10,000 subscribers in its first month of operation.

And last month, Brian Stelter and his program, Reliable Sources, were terminated, followed by CNN’s longtime legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Licht, whose background includes stints at MSNBC and CBS, informed CNN staffers that there was a new sheriff in town, and to get used to it:

Sadly, too many people have lost trust in the news media.

 

I think we can be a beacon in regaining that trust by being an organization that exemplifies the best characteristics in journalism: fearlessly speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo, questioning “group-think” and educating viewers and readers with straightforward facts and insightful commentary, while always being respectful of differing viewpoints.

 

First and foremost, we should, and we will be advocates for truth.

How, exactly, Licht plans to do this is unclear, given his liberal bias that has catapulted him to the very top of the mainstream media. Jon Nicosia, a former managing editor at Mediaite and a former breaking news editor at DCExaminer, predicts that the first thing Licht will do is continue to excise far-left liberals from top positions. In a series of tweets, Nicosia spelled out who’s next to leave CNN:

Once the coming shakeup at CNN is done, don’t expect John Berman, Alisyn Camerota, Jim Acosta, Brianna Keilar, Jake Tapper, John King, and Don Lemon to still be at the network OR have their current show assignments….

 

The final “stay or go” has not been finalized and more names will be added….

 

Stelter was a “go” because [quoting one of his CNN sources] “he was seen as working against current management’s goals. Leaking, stirring dissatisfaction internally … he started believing he was the only thing between ‘democracy’ and anarchy.”

Malone is described as a libertarian, serves on the board of the conservative Cato Institute, and donated $250,000 (he’s reportedly worth $9 billion) to help fund Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. Hiring a liberal to drain the liberal swamp at CNN may not be the best answer, but ridding CNN of the worst of the voices there (who steadfastly continue to call themselves journalists and not propagandists for the Left) is a good start.

New Polling Shows America Becoming Less Liberal

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, August 25, 2022:  

Over the last five years, the number of voters identifying themselves as “liberal” has dropped from more than a third to just a quarter, according to Morning Consult. This international polling firm surveys tens of thousands of people every day to get their opinion on everything from the Wells Fargo fraud to politics.

In 2017, 34 percent of those polled claimed they were either “very liberal,” “liberal,” or “somewhat liberal.” Five years later, that number has dropped to 27 percent, a 20 percent decline. As Eli Yokley, a senior reporter at Morning Consult, expressed it: “The left is losing the battle for the minds of the American electorate.”

The shift is happening across nearly every demographic. The share of black Republicans identifying themselves as “conservative” jumped from 37 percent to 58 percent, while Hispanic Republicans declaring themselves as conservative rose from 48 percent to 66 percent.

The share of young people — ages 18-34 — who identify themselves as liberal has dropped more than any other age group. And, even more surprising, the share of Democrats identifying themselves as liberal dropped from 60 percent to 55 percent.

Buried in the study was additional cause for optimism: The share of those who declared themselves as “moderate” in their politics, along with those who really don’t know what they are, has grown from 30 percent to 35 percent.

That’s the third of the electorate who typically carry the day in elections. If efforts to educate that large swath of moderates or “don’t knows” back to America’s founding principles are even modestly successful, then the American Republic has an increasingly favorable chance of being restored.

The jump in homeschooling during the Covid-inspired public-school shutdowns is cause for optimism. Best estimates are that, before Covid, about three percent of school-age children were being homeschooled. During the shutdown that percentage jumped to nearly 20 percent, and has fallen back only slightly since then.

On average, homeschoolers not only learn better (outpacing their compatriots in public schools), but also are more politically active once they graduate. And most homeschool agendas reflect Americanist values.

One of the key players in the campaign to educate on Americanism is The John Birch Society. And one of its most effective tools is “Overview of America,” hosted by John McManus, former president of the Society.

It clarifies, in less than 30 minutes, just what “liberal” and “conservative” labels really mean — or don’t mean. The presentation also lays to rest the false narrative of “right” and “left” in politics.

The shift in voters’ attitudes reported by Morning Consult is a welcome sign. It reflects not only the “awakening” of many to the threat of tyranny stalking the nation, but also the decades of real education on why America is unique in all of human history. More and more people are seeing through the false promises of liberals, who, according to Merriam-Webster’s definition, “believe that government should be active in supporting social and political change,” and conservatives, who only “want lower taxes and more personal freedom.”

The war for freedom is far more than that, though, and it’s encouraging that some who used to call themselves liberal are backing away from the label because of the dangerous and freedom-threatening policies being imposed on the country in that name.

Florida School District Places an AR-15 in Every School

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, August 18, 2022: 

A spokesman for the Indian River County School District in Florida told a local news outlet last week they had installed enhanced safety measures at the start of the school year:

In addition to the safety measures our local law enforcement agencies have placed on our campuses to ensure the safety and security of each student, teacher, and staff member on campus, we are blessed to have highly trained law enforcement officers assigned to each campus.

 

One Student Resource Officer/Deputy is at each of our 13 elementary schools and 4 middle schools, and 3 SRO/SRD’s are at each of our traditional public high schools.

The enhanced “safety measures” include providing each school with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle available instantly in the event of a threat. And the local sheriff warned potential shooters they are prepared to meet any threat. Said Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers:

If they’re coming at us with an AR-15 we’re gonna return with the same or greater firepower….

 

If something were to happen … [the resource officers] would have ready access to that AR-15 and their shield to be able to respond immediately….

 

Our folks are there to protect the kids. Our folks are bringing guns, they’re the good guys. When bad guys show up with guns, they’re gonna find our guns.

 

They’re gonna find out that we’re well prepared and that we’re prepared for that threat. Us bringing guns to campuses only keeps the schools safer.

 

We’ve seen what’s happened in Parkland. We’ve seen what happened in Uvalde. Our folks are not gonna stand by and wait for something bad to happen to kids in Indian River County….

 

Our folks are not gonna be running backwards to get a shield, running backwards to get a rifle. They’re gonna go directly at the threat and the teams that come in behind them can bring in that additional gear as they’re responding.

The National Rifle Association noted, “Our banks, airports, baseball games, office buildings, movie stars, politicians – they’re all more protected than children at school,” and applauded the school district’s move, saying:

Hats off to Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers for doing what’s right and protecting students!

 

Parents want to drop off their kids at school and be assured they are safe.

The move by the Indian River County School District, with more than 15,000 enrolled students, has national political implications. First, it burnishes the reputation of the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who has consistently supported the Second Amendment. And it’s a direct challenge to the current anti-gun agenda at the federal level with its recent move to infringe further on Second Amendment rights.

This is to say nothing about dampening any enthusiasm a criminal might have for seeking a school with armed student resource officers and deputies protecting the little ones. Seeking unarmed potential victims, those miscreants will be forced to look elsewhere lest they find armed resistance determined to neutralize their threat.

Hats off to the Indian River County School District for doing the right thing.

As Public-school Enrollments Drop, So Do School Budgets

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 2, 2022:  

Public schools are opening across the country but, as The New American has reported, many students aren’t returning. And that, as the Associated Press noted, is causing many public schools major budgetary difficulties.

In Houston, for example, 11,000 students haven’t returned, forcing the district to cut $60 million from next year’s budget.

In Olathe, Kansas, 800 students haven’t returned, forcing the district to cut 140 jobs.

In Albuquerque, so many students are being homeschooled that the school district is facing a budget shortfall of $25 million. In Minneapolis, the school district has lost more than 4,000 students, resulting in a budget deficit of $27 million.

In Lawrence, Kansas, school officials are being forced to deal with a $7 million shortfall, while in Des Moines, 1,600 students haven’t returned, causing a $9 million deficit.

Strategies for dealing with these shortfalls range from laying off substitute teachers and aides, merging upper and lower age classes, cutting athletic and other budgets, closing schools altogether, and some districts are even selling school buildings to raise revenue to cover the deficits.

The one exception is Florida, where the influx of young families has offset the loss to homeschooling. As Jazz Shaw, writing for Hot Air, noted:

School enrollment is actually up in the Sunshine State and school revenue has increased with it.

 

Could that be because of the state’s policies requiring schools to involve parents in decisions affecting their children? Could it be the fact that so many people fleeing failing cities in blue states are heading for Florida? It’s probably a combination of both.

Although many districts are blaming Covid shutdowns, that is likely only a partial answer. Many public schools have turned from education centers to indoctrination centers, and parents were shocked to learn just what their students were being subjected to. As Keri Ingraham noted in the Washington Examiner:

[Homeschooling] parents were especially delighted to have their children escape the far-left political indoctrination that dominates today’s K-12 public education classrooms (the daily promotion of the LGBT agenda, critical race theory divisiveness, and woke academics).

 

Their children have been freed from the political agenda of teachers’ unions and school personnel using them as pawns in their power plays.

In addition, as public schools attempt to implement “equity,” they have cancelled TAG (talented and gifted) programs and honors classes.

Those being homeschooled often get better educations. As homeschooling parents have learned, their youngsters become motivated to learn more as their learning styles are recognized and teaching strategies are tailored to fit them.

Instead of sitting at a desk for six hours a day, homeschoolers enjoy field trips, socialization with other homeschoolers, and an agenda more in line with what their parents believe is the best for them. The recovery of family time is a bonus.

In just one year, the percentage of students being homeschooled across the country jumped from three percent to nearly 12 percent. And as that option becomes more widely recognized as viable and financially attractive, its growth is likely to continue apace.

Parents who have enrolled their youngsters in Freedom Project Academy, an online classical education program affiliated with The John Birch Society, have been delighted with the change:

This is our first year with FPA and we’re extremely happy. You have a wonderful program and my children are learning more than they ever have in a public school setting.

 

We can’t wait to register for next year!

And:

[Our son] is thrilled and oozing with confidence. As an FPA student, he has learned how to learn. He has been surrounded by teachers that care and willing to give him a second chance while expecting him to rise to the challenge.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

And:

This is our first year at FPA. We were a little anxious to move our kids to a private online school. As the school year started our anxiety was relieved quickly. FPA does an excellent job with the classroom environment.

As English King Henry VI said in the Shakespeare play Henry VI, “Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.”

Covid may have been a “ill wind” indeed, but it is resulting in the happy exit of millions of young students from public schools and into true learning experiences that can only bode well for the future.

Homeschooling Surge From Covid Is Permanent, Says AP

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 19, 2022: 

Following what the Associated Press (AP) said is “the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen,” homeschool parents “continue directing their children’s educations themselves.”

Prior to Covid, about three percent, or two million, young people were being homeschooled, according to the Census Bureau. That number tripled during the 2020-2021 school year, said AP, and fell off only slightly the next year.

The media outlet blamed the initial increase on the Covid shutdowns but had trouble dealing with the reasons homeschool parents are staying with the program. It gave three reasons: “health concerns, disagreement with school policies, and a desire to keep what has worked for their children.”

But, as Jazz Shaw, writing for Hot Air, explained, there is much more behind the move than just a “disagreement with school policies.” Parents, once forced to see exactly what their children were being taught in public schools, were aghast. Wrote Shaw:

I would imagine that a much bigger factor is the realization by many parents that too many public schools simply don’t do a very good job, despite the endless amounts of money that state and local governments flush into them. This is particularly true in more economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, where graduation and college acceptance rates remain unacceptably low.

 

On top of that, there is obviously a growing realization among parents that the nation’s public schools have largely turned from being centers of education to centers of indoctrination.

 

Doing away with honors programs (because they are supposedly racist) and adding in highly sexualized “gender awareness” programs isn’t helping matters either.

 

For every parent who learns that the school told their children “don’t tell your parents,” there are probably a dozen more families pulling the plug on public schooling.

 

And as an added bonus, children being educated at home don’t need to put on a d**n mask.

AP learned from the Census Bureau that black families have benefited the most from the surge in homeschooling: “The proportion of Black families homeschooling their children increased by five times, from 3.3% to 16.1% … while the proportion about doubled across other groups.”

Parents with children in public schools are learning the real purpose of public schools: socialization and integration. Said the late Horace Mann, a 19th-century politician known for his support for public schools, “Public Education is the cornerstone of our community and our democracy.” He knew, of course, that the Founders never intended to establish a democracy but took pains to avoid one by instituting a constitutional republic instead.

John Dewey, another educational “reformer” living at the same time as Mann, was more blatant about the real purpose of public schooling: “A socialized mind … is the method of social control.”

As Briana Brockbank wrote in Family Today:

Home education allows parents to adapt the curriculum to the student’s needs. Also, parents have a say in how the student will learn and what they will learn.

David Harper, principal of Freedom Project Academy, an affiliate of The John Birch Society, took it to another level. In a conversation with The New American, he said, “We teach our students how to think, not what to think.” He went on to say that his online program teaches students critical-thinking skills, how to defend positions, and how to present ideas, all based on a classical education model.

One parent’s testimony reveals just how effective Freedom Project is:

I would like to thank the faculty and staff of Freedom Project Academy for equipping my children with strong academic courses taught from a Christian worldview by teachers who integrated their faith in their teaching and their rapport with their students.

 

My daughter, a former FPA student, just graduated from Eastern Nazarene with a BS in Business and a minor in Biology. My son will graduate FPA this year and head to Florida Polytechnic University.

 

My deepest appreciation to everyone at FPA!

In the past two years, according to Harper, online enrollment at FPA has doubled, and enrollment for the 2022-2023 school year, which opened just two weeks ago, is ahead of schedule. For more information, go to https://fpeusa.org.

Second-grader Chastised for Preaching the Gospel to her Classmates

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 9, 2022:  

A second-grade student attending North Hill Elementary School in Des Moines, Washington, has been sent to the principal’s office 10 times since the first of the year for witnessing to her classmates on the school’s playground.

When the parents contacted the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), the public-interest law firm sent a letter to the principal reminding him of the student’s First Amendment-protected rights, and suggesting that unless the harassment stopped they would be filing suit.

The principal responded by telling ACLJ that the student was scaring her classmates with talks of Satan and hell. She offered religious tracts which some of her classmates took home with them, resulting, as the public-relations officer for the school district told CBN News, in “Multiple parents complain[ing] about their children coming home with religious pamphlets.”

The PR officer filled in the blanks: During playtime the student would stand on a playground table and preach the Gospel. School officials told her she couldn’t “tell other children they’re going to hell and that [she] must stop distributing what the school considers to be unacceptable religious materials.”

The principal said she would be allowed to distribute religious materials but only if the staff decides they’re appropriate.

The ACLJ was astonished after learning from the parents that their daughter was being stopped at the schoolhouse door and having her backpack searched for those “unacceptable religious materials”:

We were astonished when we were first contacted by a second-grade student’s parents who said their little girl had been sent to the principal’s office at North Hill Elementary School no less than 10 times since January 1st for witnessing to classmates on the playground.

 

But it only gets worse. Not only were they scolding her for talking about Jesus to her classmates outside of instruction time, but they were stopping her at the entrance to the school every morning to inspect her backpack and remove any Christian tracts!

 

Her mother witnessed this exchange one morning when dropping her daughter off and immediately confronted the principal. The principal told her that her child is not allowed to pass out tracts or crosses to students because it is upsetting parents, and the school wanted her to confirm that there were no tracts in her daughter’s backpack every morning before dropping her off from now on.

 

Christian tracts were being treated as contraband, as if speaking about Jesus were an illicit drug.

The ACLJ is prepared to defend the student if the school doesn’t back down, declaring that Supreme Court precedent supports her right to share the Gospel with her classmates:

It is well-settled Supreme Court precedent that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969). [Under that ruling] students are free to express their religious views while at school, which includes sharing Bibles, Christian tracts, and crosses.

Since 1969, Tinker has often been cited in cases such as this one. Although the court at the time of the ruling was considered one of the most liberal in judicial history, the majority opinion, penned by Justice Abe Fortas, is comforting:

First Amendment rights … are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

 

This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years.

In this constitutional republic, wrote Fortas, freedoms come with certain inevitable risks. The alternative is tyranny where no expression outside of what the state declares is allowed:

In our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression.

 

Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble.

 

Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear.

 

Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the views of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance.

 

But our Constitution says we must take this risk … and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom — this kind of openness — that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputatious, society.

If the Highline School District, where North Hill Elementary School is located, decides to accept ACLJ’s challenge, it will have to show that the student’s behavior “materially and substantially interfere[s] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school,” according to the Tinker ruling.

ACLJ has given the school district until March 14 to respond. The New American will report on any developments in the case.

Former NBA Player Receives Human Rights Award for Calling Out NBA and IOC

This article was published by TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, February 23, 2022:  

Enes Kanter Freedom, a Swiss-born Turkish-American professional basketball player, received the “2022 Courage Award” from the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy (GSHRD) on Tuesday. The award came a week after he had been released by the Houston Rockets.

Freedom was pleased to receive the award and not surprised at the sudden ending of his successful 11-year professional basketball career. His pointed criticism of the NBA over its selling out to China, as well as his sharp disagreement with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the same reason, all but guaranteed his departure from professional basketball.

He told the GSHRD audience,

I want to say thank you to [the GSHRD] for its support and for shining a global spotlight on human rights abuses in China. I hope this encourages other athletes to stand up for what is right.

 

Despite China’s propaganda, the regime does not represent the Olympic values of respect and friendship. It’s a brutal dictatorship that oppresses its people.

 

Freedom has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on shining his own spotlight on those abuses for at least the last 10 years.

As his professional career took him from teams such as the Houston Rockets to the Boston Celtics, he became more and more aware not only of those abuses, but also the complicit and deliberate support being given to China by the NBA in spite of those abuses.

Born in Switzerland in 1992, Enes Kantor (his name given by his Turkish parents) moved back to Turkey. When he became a naturalized U.S. citizen last November, he added “Freedom” to his name.

When Freedom addressed the Committee on Present Danger: China in Washington last week, he called out the NBA:

You can talk about all the social justice, all the injustices happening around the world. But when it comes to China, you cannot speak up.

 

If you do, then you have to face the consequences.

His move from innocence to awareness began in 2018 while hosting free summer basketball camps. It was at one of those camps when a mother approached him and challenged him “in front of everybody,” saying “You call yourself a human rights activist, when your Muslim brothers and sisters [the Uyghurs in Western China] are in concentration camps and getting tortured and raped every day.”

“I was shocked,” said Freedom. “I couldn’t say anything.” Then he made a promise to look into the atrocities. What he found changed his life and ultimately ended his professional basketball career: the China Tribunal, an NGO in London looking into forced organ harvesting in China, found that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was committing ghastly crimes of harvesting organs from imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners — an atrocity that had been doing on for more than two decades — and harshly oppressing the minority Uyghur Muslim population in the Xinjiang province.

He began to speak out, quietly at first, using his shoes as billboards for his complaints: “Free Tibet” and “Save Uyghur” among them.

ESPN took note of Freedom’s campaign, televising a documentary on him in 2019 called Enemy of the State. A year later he took on Chinese Communist dictator Xi Jinping, calling him “a brutal dictator.” In retaliation the Chinese government stopped streaming all Boston Celtics games.

In November 2021, he was interviewed by Fox News and CNN where he advocated the boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Last week, just before being released by the Houston Rockets, Freedom was interviewed by The Dispatch, a conservative-leaning investigative journal. His host, Danielle Pletka, asked him about any pushback the NBA had been giving him due to the airing of his grievances against it:

I talk about Turkey and the problems are happening in Turkey for 10 years. I did not get one phone call.

 

I talk about China [and in] one day, my phone was ringing once every hour.

 

The first game I wore my Free Tibet shoes — I’m sure you guys know the shoes and designs that we come up with — in half time, my manager messaged me and said, “Every Celtics game is banned in China.”

 

It took them 24 minutes, because one half is 24 minutes, to ban every Celtics game in television over there in China.

 

I was shocked. I was like, that clearly shows one more time that there’s [a] dictatorship over there.

Pletka asked if money had anything to do with it. Freedom responded:

Yes, that’s the biggest part of it. I mean, I’ll give you an example from the NBA. There are more people watching the NBA last year in China than the American population. Over 400 million.

 

Every year, the revenue is $5 billion. I think people can be thinking, “First of all, that’s not my country that I’m going to talk about, and the stuff that I will talk about is not going to change anything. So why would I put myself in a situation like that?”

Why would he? He virtually guaranteed his sudden turning away from the spoon that was feeding him millions of dollars every year. He said:

All the gold medals in the world [speaking about the Winter Olympics] that you champion is not more important than your morals, your principles, and your values. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth selling your morals to a country like China.

 

I mean, especially when you say an athlete, right? [We] have a huge platform to inspire and affect so much, especially our young generation. Because everything now, social media and everything we do, becomes a conversation. They even follow what we eat, what we wear, what we do and stuff. So, I feel it’s a huge responsibility on our shoulders.

Pletka asked him about the Winter Olympics as pure propaganda. Freedom responded:

First off, people need to understand, the IOC, International Olympic Committee, is scared to talk about human rights because they know China is one of the worst in this regard. They will rather take China’s [money] than talk about values. The reality is, the people need to understand, the IOC is in bed … with the Chinese government. They do not care about human rights. They care about publicity and money.

 

I mean, they just organized [the Olympic] games in a country where there is press brutality, torture, mass arrest, execution, labor camps, religious suppression, and pretty much genocide. Pretty much genocide.

 

So, I feel like we should definitely call out the IOC because they are part of the problem, and they’re helping [the] Chinese government to spread their propaganda.

Does he have any regrets over his activism ending his career? Said Freedom:

I’m just going to go out there and just say it like it is and expose them any way I can.… this is bigger than NBA and basketball. If that is the reason that I am not going to be able to play basketball again, then you know what? Oh, well. I can look back at least and say I did the right thing.

Ousted San Francisco School Board President Blamed Her Loss on “White Supremacists”

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, February 18, 2022:  

In a remarkable fit of outrage, Gabriela Lopez complained on Twitter on Thursday about being unceremoniously ousted as president of San Francisco’s Unified School District board earlier in the week:

So, if you fight for racial justice, this is the consequence. Don’t be mistaken, white supremacists are enjoying this. And the support of the recall is aligned with this.

A twitter follower called her out for her extraordinary lack of awareness as to the real reasons why she and her two compatriots was booted:

Your tweet reflects a major lack of awareness. Over 70% [73.86%] of the [146,432 who voted in the recall election, or 108,148] voters chose “yes” on the recall, in a city already extremely diverse.

 

They can’t have all been mass-duped. Isolating and labeling these people as bigots or enemies of racial justice won’t help you out.

Washington Post journalist David Weigel, who has been following the recall effort closely, agreed: “The ‘yes’ vote for recall was racially diverse … the ‘white supremacist’ charge just didn’t convince anyone.”

Even the editor-in-chief of the far-left Mother Jones chimed in, claiming that her ouster had nothing to do with any “white supremacy” conspiracy funded by Trump supporters or conservative billionaires. It had everything to do with her incompetency. Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffrey reviewed the vast “array of irritants” that led to the ouster not only of Lopez but also board members Alison Collins (78 percent to 22 percent) and Faauuga Moliga (71 percent to 29 percent).

First, San Francisco schools stayed closed due to the pandemic far longer that most other school districts in the country. The board consequently spent little time planning on how to reopen them, dismaying parents with students being required to stay at home.

Second, rather than planning for reopening the schools, the board decided unanimously to rename 44 of them. Their ideological screen excluded any historical figure who had “engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or who oppressed women, inhibiting societal progress; or whose actions led to genocide; or who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Those figures included U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Also included were two-time Secretary of State Daniel Webster, Paul Revere, and Francis Scott Key, the author of the “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

This move so outraged even the liberal parents living in San Francisco that the board was forced to cancel its plans. Lopez made half an apology, claiming that the board’s plans to rename the schools began in 2018 “with a timeline that didn’t anticipate a pandemic. I acknowledge and take responsibility that mistakes were made in the renaming process.”

And then there was the kerfuffle over painting over a mural done in 1930 in one of the schools depicting snippets of George Washington’s life experiences. The board considered them racist and voted to paint over the mural. This so alienated art historians, the local NAACP, and other liberal elites that the board at first backtracked and then decided that rather than paint over the mural it would order that the mural be covered instead. The cost was $815,000 when the board was running a deficit in excess of $125 million.

The board decided to intervene in the admissions process of Lowell High School, one of the highest-rated public schools in the country. As Jeffery noted: “Admission was determined by ‘merit,’ i.e., GPA. Lowell was also overwhelmingly Asian American (the biggest group) and white.”

This the board couldn’t abide and voted to change Lowell’s admission practice to a public lottery instead, in order to make the student body more “representative” of the community, regardless of ability. What really set off the parents was that the board “rammed through [the] change without allowing for public input, apparently violating state sunshine provisions and triggering … lawsuits,” according to Jeffrey.

Back in April of last year an enterprising individual uncovered some “anti-Asian” tweets issued by one of those ousted on Tuesday, Alison Collins. One of them read, “Where are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump? Don’t Asian Americans know they are on his list as well?”

The board issued a vote of no confidence as a result, and Collins filed suit claiming that her First Amendment rights had been violated. The suit was for $87 million. Happily, a judge threw out her lawsuit but only after the board had spent $400,000 of taxpayer monies defending themselves against it.

In June 2020, the district’s school superintendent, Vincent Matthews, tried to intervene and asked the board to bring in an outside consultant to help them deal with some of the real issues. But the board declined after learning that the consultant had once worked for a charter school.

As Jeffrey concluded, Tuesday’s vote had nothing to do with “white supremacy” but “a vote against incompetence.” Voters, she wrote, “felt like the board was playing politics, very ineptly.”

Mayor London Breed now has the opportunity to put the board back on track when she installs her own candidates to replace those booted on Tuesday. As for the other four board members? They won’t be eligible for their own recall vote as they haven’t been on the board long enough.

Three San Francisco School-board Members Fired in Tuesday Recall Election

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, February 16. 2022:

The efforts of two frustrated San Francisco parents with students in the city’s Unified School District to recall three school board members were rewarded handsomely on Tuesday: All three members they targeted were unceremoniously and overwhelmingly bounced from the board on Tuesday.

Results announced two hours after the election was over led one of the three, Faauuga Moliga, to concede defeat immediately. Concessions by the other two, board member Alison Collins and board president Gabriela Lopez, are expected shortly.

Nearly 80 percent voted to recall Collins, 75 percent voted to recall Lopez, and 73 percent voted to recall Moliga.

One of the prime drivers behind the recall effort, single parent Siva Raj, rejoiced: “It’s the people rising up in revolt … saying it’s unacceptable to abandon your responsibility to educate your children.”

Instead of focusing on reopening the schools following the pandemic, the board last year went “woke.” It renamed a third of the schools in the district, removing names honoring historical figures such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Patrick Henry, and John Muir, since those men “inhibited societal progress” during their lives.

The board ordered admissions policies at the high-performing Lowell High School to be replaced with a lottery to force the school’s student body to appear more diverse. The previous admissions policies were based on grades and test scores, which led to a high percentage of students from Asian ancestry attending Lowell.

The board, facing millions of dollars in cost overruns, spent $1 million on painting over an historic, 80-year-old mural at one of the schools that depicted the life of George Washington.

The ouster was helped along by support from the city’s mayor, London Breed, who also celebrated the removal of the three: “The voters of this city have delivered a clear message that the school board must focus on the essentials of delivering a well-run school system above all else.”

The recall effort was also aided by support from the San Francisco Chronicle (which claimed that the three “failed miserably” in their jobs) and the San Francisco Examiner (which said the board “put political grandstanding ahead of progress for children” and turned the actions of the board into a “national laughingstock”).

Mayor Breed will now, with the assistance of the two parents behind the recall effort, name three replacements.

The success sets the stage for another high-profile recall effort culminating in June: that of George Soros-backed District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Boudin’s administration has been a disaster thanks to his moves to end incarceration for minor crimes such as shoplifting and ending cash bail. So outrageous has been his performance that 59 attorneys in his office have either quit, have retired, or have been fired.

Voters have no excuse. They knew of his radical background — his parents were members of the domestic terrorist group Weather Underground and he worked closely with the late Venezuelan dictator Hugh Chávez as public defender and translator — but, with Soros’ funding, he was elected anyway.

Boudin has all but sealed his fate by first declaring that he would charge looters of Union Square retail shops with felonies and then letting them off after charging them with misdemeanors instead. As Monica Showalter noted at American Thinker: “He’s got the cops mad at him. He’s got the people in his office mad at him. He’s got the press mad at him. And he’s certainly got the voters mad at him.”

The momentum is all in voters’ favor. As Ballotpedia reported, in 2021 there were 529 elected officials who faced a recall effort. In 2022, as dissatisfaction mounts among voters, that record is likely to be broken.

San Francisco Voters Poised to Recall Three School Board Members Today

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, February 15, 2022:  

Voters in the progressive vanguard city of San Francisco are voting today to oust three of the seven board members of the city’s Unified School District. All seven are far-left liberal Democrats, but only three are currently eligible for recall. The others haven’t served long enough to qualify for recall.

Otherwise, it’s likely that all seven would be replaced in the recall election taking place today in “The City by the Bay.” Those removed today will be replaced by other Democrats named by Democrat Mayor London Breed.

It’s not about ideology. Most of the 80,000 citizens who signed the petition putting Gabriella Lopez, Alison Collins, and Faauuga Moliga on the recall ballot are political liberals, proud that their city is in the vanguard of liberal, progressive policies being pushed by the far left. It’s that the board has just gone too far, even for San Francisco.

The rumblings of discontent began more than a year ago, following a nine-hour board meeting during which the board members all but ignored the issue of closed schools negatively affecting the learning and education of students. Instead, the meeting focused on the renaming of 44 schools in order to fit the agenda of the day: Any historical figure that ever once evinced any sort of “white supremacy,” “racism,” or “discrimination” was to be banished. Anyone whose name adorned a school that, in retrospect, “inhibited societal progress” was to be dropped down the memory hole.

They would include Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and even Senator Dianne Feinstein!

 

Defenders of that insanity claimed that Washington owned slaves, that Lincoln facilitated the slaughter of Native Americans, and that Feinstein once replaced a Confederate flag that had been vandalized back in 1984.

 

Even far-left Matt Gonzalez, chief attorney for the city’s Public Defender’s Office, had enough of this foolishness. He expressed his support for the removal of the three members in The Epoch Times by explaining that their zeal to be politically correct had exceeded their understanding of history, including the case of Abraham Lincoln:

Abraham Lincoln’s name was deemed worthy of removal because his administration continued to implement discriminatory 19th-century policies against Native Americans.

 

He is also implicated in failing to intervene in the death sentences imposed by the U.S. Army against many Native Americans for hostilities against white settlers during the Dakota War in Minnesota in 1862.

 

Lincoln did assert his power to commute the sentences of 264 individuals, and one of the condemned captives was granted a full reprieve. However, 38 captured Native warriors were executed after Lincoln chose not to intervene.

 

While the criticism against Lincoln is grounded in fact, we should hesitate to require purity among anyone [who] might be honored with public recognition, otherwise we might be left without anyone who would qualify. In Lincoln’s case his Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves and his role in preserving the Union is what we honor when we name a school after him.

 

I question whether this school board can fairly consider historical facts when making such decisions.

That’s a fair question. In the board’s desire to rewrite history by removing the names of many of its most famous and influential figures from schools, it has gone beyond what even liberal San Franciscans can stand.

The board excoriated the highly-regarded Lowell High School, one of the highest-performing schools in the district, over its admission standards. Those policies have resulted in nearly half the student population being of Asian descent. This is anathema to the liberals running the show as this is disproportionate to the district’s overall student population.

Naturally, the recall efforts are being funded by conservative “billionaires,” “right wingers,” “Big Tech,” and “Trump supporters,” claimed Frank Lara, vice president of the United Educators of San Francisco, which has opposed the recall efforts.

But even that is a lie. Supporters needed 51,325 signatures per board member in order to set up the recall election. Each received more than 80,000. As Gonzalez noted, “It is not reasonable to dismiss these San Franciscans as all Republicans or conservatives — or to use the spectre of the GOP to detract from the issue here.” It’s much more reasonable, he wrote, that the pending ouster stems from “the dissatisfaction of residents … with the performance and decision-making of these officials.”

The vote taking place today in San Francisco isn’t over ideology, per se. It’s over ideology run amok. As Jeremy White wrote in liberal Politico, today’s recall election is “a stark warning that public officials can veer too far left even for proudly progressive voters to tolerate.”

The results of today’s recall election are expected to be announced by the end of the week.

Top Virginia Officials Join Parents in Suing Loudoun School

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, February 4, 2022:  

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, his Attorney General Jason Mirares, and the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Jilian Balow asked a court on Wednesday to allow them to join the parents suing the Loudoun County School Board.

The parents complain that their students attending Loudoun County public schools are still required to wear masks all day (including during sporting events). This, despite Youngkin’s executive order freeing them to allow their students to go maskless if they so desire.

On his first day as governor, Youngkin signed nine executive orders, one of them directly repealing an order issued by his predecessor, Governor Ralph Northam, commanding all students be masked as part of the protocol adopted by the state to mitigate transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

As Youngkin explained:

Recent government orders requiring virtually every child in Virginia wear masks virtually every moment they are in school have proven ineffective and impractical. They have also failed to keep up with rapidly changing scientific information….

 

[While a] universal masking requirement in schools has provided inconsistent health benefits, the universal requirement has also inflicted notable harm and proven to be impracticable. Masks inhibit the ability of children to communicate, delay language development, and impede the growth of emotional and social skills.

He reminded parents that they have the right, under the Code of Virginia, “to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child,” adding:

Permitting parents to make decisions on where and when to wear masks permits the Commonwealth’s parents to make the best decision for the circumstances confronting each child. Parents can assess the risks and benefits facing their child, consult their medical providers, and make the best decision for their children based on the most up to date health information available.

He then declared that the previous mask mandate was void, and that parents “may [now] elect for their children not to be subject to any mask mandate in effect at the child’s school or educational program.”

 

He further declared that school boards may not inflict special demands on parents requiring them to justify their decision not to have their children masked.

 

This so rankled the Loudoun County School Board that they decided, despite the evidence and the new order from Youngkin, to declare that any student violating the district’s commands for all-day, full-time masking would be suspended.

Here is an excerpt from the letter sent to parents from the Loudoun County School District:

Students who willfully continue to refuse to [wear a mask] as required by Loudoun County Public Schools will be suspended from school [and that] a student who is suspended because of non-compliance with [the mask mandate] may return to school only when they agree to [wear a mask] throughout the entire school day and at all indoor school-related events.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares explained why he supports the lawsuit filed by the parents:

Parents know what is best for their children and should be able to decide if their children wear a mask for eight hours a day. For this reason, the Attorney General, Governor, and Superintendent of Public Instruction are seeking a motion for temporary injunction and a motion for temporary restraining order.

What’s galling most to the tyrants running the public schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, is the whole idea that parents — supposedly uneducated and untrained in how children ought to be taught — now have the power to decide for themselves what’s best for their children.

The Circuit Court for Loudoun County will decide the matter.

Rasmussen: Majority of Americans See Mainstream Media as “Enemy of the People”

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 26, 2022:  

When Rasmussen Reports polled 1,000 likely U.S. voters earlier this month, it asked three questions:

  1. Do you trust the political news you are getting?
  2. How serious of a problem is “fake news” in the media?
  3. Do you agree or disagree with this statement: The media are “truly the enemy of the people”?

The results should be greatly comforting to those involved in the freedom fight: 580 of those polled agreed that the members of the mainstream media (i.e., The New York TimesThe Washington PostTime magazine, ABC News, CNN, etc.) are in fact enemies of the people.

Half the battle is knowing who the enemy is. Or, as Sun Tzu expressed it, “If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.”

Noam Chomsky, a media researcher and a specialist in propaganda tactics used by media, provided insight into the enemy camp in his 1997 article “What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream?”

He wrote:

The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says, “Notice to Editors: Tomorrow’s New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page.”

 

The point of that is, if you’re an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don’t have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don’t want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is….

 

These are the stories that you put there because that’s what the New York Times tells us is what you’re supposed to care about tomorrow.

Just who are the “elite media”? Chomsky answers:

What are the elite media, the agenda-setting ones? The New York Times and CBS, for example.

 

Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on.

Is every writer, every journalist, every news channel host in on the scam? Chomsky replies:

When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony Lewis [a former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the New York Times] or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, “Nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure.”

 

Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing.

In his book, “Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda,” Chomsky describes how the public is deliberately and intentionally manipulated and controlled; how the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. He reveals how the mainstream media focuses on “controlling the public mind” and not on informing it.

He leaves open, however, the question of just who sets the agenda. One of the primary “agenda setters” in the United States has been the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Established in 1921 following the failure of the League of Nations, the CFR’s purpose is to “awaken America to its worldwide responsibilities.” It has succeeded by infiltrating the mass media, think tanks, universities — every part of the culture that controls the conversation.

Richard Harwood, a former senior editor for the Washington Post, wrote back in 1993 that the CFR is “the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States.” He explained:

The membership of these journalists in the Council, however they may think of themselves, is an acknowledgment of their active and important role in public affairs and of their ascension into the American ruling class.

 

They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the United States; they help make it. They are part of that establishment whether they like it or not, sharing most of its values and world views.

The tentacles of the CFR, and its sister groups the Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission, are exposed here. Members include Bill Moyers, Tom Brokaw, George Stephanopoulos, and Dianne Sawyer. Major newspapers infiltrated by the CFR include, in addition to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Associated Press, Reuters, and the L.A. Times.

Mainstream magazines also hawking the official line include TimeNewsweekU.S. News and World ReportReader’s DigestAtlantic Monthly, and Forbes. Publishing houses also caught in the CFR web include MacMillan, Random House, Simon & Shuster, and McGraw-Hill.

The CFR has also insinuated its members into the Brookings Institution, the RAND Corporation, the Foreign Policy Association, the Hudson Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the United Nations Association.

Nor is it surprising that the CFR has enormous influence of the nation’s banking system, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. It also has influence in the insurance industry as well, including the Equitable, New York Life, Metropolitan, and Prudential.

If, as Sun Tzu said, half the battle is knowing your enemy, the other half is enlisting in the fight. See jbs.org for details on joining the John Birch Society in its epic 60-year educational effort to expose the enemy, rout him, and then begin the process of restoring the American republic to its former glory.

After all, if Rasmussen is right, then more than half of likely voters are open to the invitation now that they have been awakened.

The Staggering Irony of the Launch of the James Webb Space Telescope on Christmas Morning

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 27, 2021:  

The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope from the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) launch site in French Guiana on Christmas morning was breathtaking. A joint venture involving NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), it was the culmination of decades of work and the investment of billions of dollars.

The irony of the launch on the day when Christians celebrated the birth of their Savior, Jesus Christ, was also breathtaking. But NASA and the media covering the launch missed the connection altogether.

Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator exulted:

The James Webb Space Telescope represents the ambition that NASA and our partners maintain to propel us forward into the future.

 

The promise of Webb is not what we know we will discover; it’s what we don’t yet understand or can’t yet fathom about our universe….

 

It’s a time machine. It’s going to take us back to the very beginnings of the universe. We are going to discover incredible things we never imagined.

The telescope, riding on the Ariane 5 rocket, is headed nearly a million miles into space. Its destination is L2, the “second Lagrange Point,” which is described as “a wonderful accident of gravity and orbital mechanics … the perfect place to park the Webb telescope in space.” It’s one of six such known “accidents,” where gravity from the sun and the Earth will allow it to stay in a fixed position, requiring a minimal amount of energy to keep it stable for at least the next 10 years.

CBS News said the telescope “will attempt to capture starlight from the first galaxies to be born in the fiery crucible of the Big Bang.” It added:

The telescope is optimized to capture images of the first stars and galaxies to begin shining in the aftermath of the Big Bang, light that has been stretched into the infrared portion of the spectrum by the expansion of space itself over the past 13.8 billion years.

 

That light can’t be seen by the iconic Hubble, which Webb will eventually replace. Hubble was designed to study visible light wavelengths but even so, it has detected galaxies dating back to within a half billion years of the Big Bang.

 

Webb should be able to push several hundred million years beyond that, detecting light that began heading out when the universe was just 200 million years or so old. That’s the era when the cosmos first emerged from the hydrogen fog of birth and starlight began traveling freely through space.

 

The long hoped-for baby pictures of the universe are expected to shed revolutionary light on the formation and evolution of galaxies, the supermassive black holes that lurk at their hearts and the life cycles of stars, from birth to the titanic supernova blasts that cooked up most of the elements in the periodic table.

NASA itself described the mission:

  • To search for light from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the Universe after the Big Bang;
  • To study the formation and the evolution of galaxies;
  • To understand the formation of stars and planetary systems;
  • To study planetary systems and the origins of life.

Dr. Wernher von Braun, the chief architect for the Apollo Saturn V rocket for NASA, had a vastly different view of what the Webb telescope might find. In a letter he wrote to the California state Board of Education in 1972, he said:

In response to your inquiry about my personal views concerning the “Case for Design” as a viable scientific theory for the origin of the universe, life and man, I am pleased to make the following observations.

 

For me, the idea of creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all.

 

In the world around us, we can behold the obvious manifestations of an ordered, structured plan or design. We can see the will of the species to live and propagate.

 

And we are humbled by the powerful forces at work on a galactic scale, and the purposeful orderliness of nature that endows a tiny and ungainly seed with the ability to develop into a beautiful flower.

 

The better we understand the intricacies of the universe and all its harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based.

 

While the admission of a design for the universe ultimately raises the question of a Designer (a subject outside of science), the scientific method does not allow us to exclude data which lead to the conclusion that the universe, life and man are based on design.

 

To be forced to believe only one conclusion – that everything in the universe happened by chance – would violate the very objectivity of science itself.

 

Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?

In his new book, The Biblical Structure of History, Dr. Gary North notes that humanists now rule the world of science:

They do not believe in the sovereignty of God. They have constructed a narrative of the history of the universe that explicitly denies any purpose whatsoever.

 

Cosmic evolution is purposeless. It has no design. Out of the cosmos came life about 4.5 billion years ago, we are assured. Then came mankind about 2.5 million years ago….

 

Humanists have substituted their doctrine of the sovereignty of man for the Bible’s doctrines of the sovereignty of God. This underlies all of their historical narratives.

 

There are major conflicting humanistic historical narratives, but they all agree on this point: man proposes, and man disposes.

They are without excuse, says the Apostle Paul. Writing to Christians in Rome, he said:

The wrath of God is being revealed from Heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

 

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

It will take six months for the Webb telescope to become fully operational, revealing more and more of the wonders of God’s creations that the Hubble telescope has already revealed. One wonders just how long it will take for the Bill Nelsons of NASA, ESA, and CSA to discover that while in the process of looking for the beginning of the universe, they are stumbling over it.

NYU Professor Exonerated After Being Charged With Teaching “Dangerous Misinformation”

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 13, 2021:  

Last week, officials at New York University relented and exonerated Professor Mark Crispin Miller over the school’s claims that he was teaching his students “dangerous misinformation” about the efficacy of masks during the COVID-10 pandemic.

The exoneration came with a warning, however: NYU suggested that he might need to “reconsider his teaching style” and perhaps to “even get some coaching.”

This for a man who has been with NYU since 1997 and, consequently, is a fully tenured professor there. He has been teaching a course on propaganda there for 20 years, which is one of the most popular classes on campus.

In September 2020, Professor Miller thought the issue of masking would make a great issue to study as there was so much conflicting information floating around about the efficacy of masks in reining in the spread of the virus. He told his students:

You would want to read all the scientific literature on masking.

 

It may interest you to know that all the randomized controlled trials on masking in hospitals have found that masks are not effective barriers against respiratory viruses. You would want to read all those studies.

 

And you would also then want to read the more recent studies finding otherwise.

He also advised his students to look for financial connections between the authors of those studies and the pharmaceutical industry as well as the Gates Foundation. He even provided Internet links to studies that had been censored for exposing information that didn’t fit the popular narrative.

That’s real teaching, and not indoctrination. He asked his students to do their research on both sides of the issue, to review and analyze what they found, and then to use their critical thinking skills to come to an educated and well-informed opinion on the matter. And then be prepared to defend their conclusions in class. He didn’t interpose his personal opinion, leaving the students to come to their own conclusions. This often led to lively discussions during his classes.

Julia, a student who hadn’t attended his first class, was outraged. She tweeted:

I hope NYUniversity/NYUSteinhardt agrees that this professor should not be trusted with educating and advising students, and I hope they take immediate stops to relieve him of these duties.

In response, Miller’s department head wrote: “Julia, thank you for reporting this issue. We as a department have made this a priority and are discussing next steps.”

The “next steps” included sending an e-mail to his students (while excluding Miller from the e-mail) suggesting that, said Miller, “I had given this class dangerous misinformation, and [then] included a list of links to studies recommended by the CDC, calling them authoritative, and then ending by warning them to wear their masks on campus, as if I had told them not to.”

This was followed by 25 of Miller’s colleagues writing a letter to the dean, who then ordered an investigation before even talking to Miller.

When he learned that the university had relented and concluded that he hadn’t violated any of the university’s rules, Miller said:

Here I was accused of bullying my students into agreeing with my crackpot views.

 

Well, several students who defended me actually said that my classes were unusually tolerant and open and that I do not punish anyone for disagreeing.

 

And I do not hold the party line on any issue, whereas other professors at NYU, specifically in my department, do precisely that.

 

They hold forth with all kinds of social justice pieties, and the students are intimidated, and [consequently] they censor themselves, and they are afraid to disagree.

Professor Miller has taken the next step: He is suing 19 of his “colleagues” who ganged up on him for libel.

Unrepentant School Board President Ousted Over Dossier on Opponents

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 17, 2021:  

During an emergency session on Monday evening the Scottsdale (Arizona) Unified School District’s governing board demanded that its president, Jann-Michael Greenburg, resign. When he refused, the board replaced him with another board member by a vote of 4-1. Greenburg’s was the only dissenting vote.

Accused of having access to a Google drive on his computer that the Scottsdale Independent (IN) called “The Greenburg Files” containing 160 pages of private background information on some 47 parents, Greenburg tried to distance himself from the impending vote by opening the meeting:

I am reassured [that] the Scottsdale Police Department is investigating this matter.

 

There appear to be bad actors involved and I am confident our law enforcement will quickly resolve these issues.

He added:

I strongly support the investigations that have been announced both publicly and privately, and I hope that, at the conclusion of those investigations, we will have all the facts so that we can make a decision that is in the best interest of our district on this matter.

His denial of any wrongdoing fell on deaf ears. Not only did the board vote to replace him with another board member to complete the balance of his term, the board also demanded his resignation. They also demanded the resignation of the school’s superintendent and two other board members who were alleged to have known about the Google drive but did nothing about it until a parent discovered and exposed it. They all refused to resign.

Following the meeting, school superintendent Scott Menzel also tried to distance himself from the inflammatory Google drive:

The focus of the Governing Board should remain solely on improving educational opportunities for each and every one of our District’s 22,000 students. The decision this evening ensures that with new leadership this will be the top priority….

 

The existence of these files is disturbing and unacceptable. The Board, in fulfilling its duty, has the obligation to be honest, fair, caring, and respectful.

 

Further, it must avoid conduct that creates the appearance of impropriety of conduct unbefitting a public official.

More than 100 parents attended the emergency meeting, most of whom likely were among the more than 1,500 parents who signed a petition demanding that Greenburg resign.

The petition concluded:

His [Jann-Michael’s] actions have made it unequivocally clear that he is unfit for public office.… We stand together in requesting the immediate termination of Jann-Michael Greenburg as SUSD Governing Board President, and we further demand his resignation as an SUSD Governing Board Member.

They got half of their wish on Monday night: Greenburg is no longer president, but remains on the board. The police are continuing their investigation into the matter. And Greenburg is likely, when all is said and done, to face legal sanctions. An attorney following the matter said that the former school board president likely violated numerous laws, including Arizona’s Parents’ Bill of Rights and other state and federal laws “prohibiting both intimidation generally and voter intimidation in particular.”

Amy Carney, a mother of six and a candidate for the governing board, said the file was retaliation over her objection to the board’s policies concerning masking and the teaching of Critical Race Theory:

I’d call this retaliation.… The list of parents targeted in the drive appears to be anyone who has spoken out about anything against our district, publicly or online.

Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann