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June 2021

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Backlash against Critical Race Theory Is Real By Charles C. W. Cooke

By on June 22nd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/the-backlash-against-critical-race-theory-is-real/

No matter how much progressives want to claim otherwise, parents are genuinely concerned about a divisive worldview being imposed on their children.
Returning once again to the shallow well from which she has pulled the majority of her journalistic water, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer suggested last week that the escalating pushback against critical race theory “has all the red flags of an dark money astroturf campaign.” We are stuck, it seems, in Stage One of the Kübler-Ross Scale of Progressive Political Grief.

If they wish to, figures such as Mayer can spend the next few years insisting that the resistance to critical race theory that we are seeing from parents across the country is little more than a mirage. Fingers firmly in ears, they can maintain that their detractors have invented the controversy from whole cloth, that an astroturfing effort by the Koch Brothers or the Manhattan Institute has tricked them, or that their objections ring hollow because they don’t know what critical race theory “actually” is. Sneering, scoffing, and laughing off the revolt, they can submit in anger that those complaining about the development are suffering from “white fragility” or are engaged in a “moral panic” or are just trying desperately to prevent their kids from learning about slavery and civil rights.

What they can’t do, however, is make any of that true.

Precision in language is important, and yet, after a certain point, it matters less what we choose to call a given trend than that we acknowledge that said trend exists. And mark my words: The backlash against critical race theory most certainly exists. It is being driven by real people, many of whom I have seen with my own eyes; it has been constructed atop a discrete and comprehensible set of objections; and it is being fought on behalf of a class of citizens — children — whose interests arouse the rawest emotions in all of politics. Those who dismiss this development too harshly or too pedantically do so at their peril.

What are the parents leading this charge angry about? In essence, they’re angry about the idea that any form of racial essentialism would be taught in schools. They’re worried by the prospect of their children — black, white, Asian, Hispanic, whatever — being told that, as the result of their immutable characteristics, they will play a fixed role within a fixed system within a fixed world.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Stand Up for Police—and for New York On the eve of a primary election, the city desperately needs responsible leadership. James Coll

By on June 22nd, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/stand-up-for-police-and-for-new-york?wallit_nosession=1

During the mayoral tenures of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, crime in every form plummeted throughout New York City. The mandate to clean up the mess that Gotham had become worked, and cops were proud to play a key role in removing the decades-old image of “the ungovernable city.” By the time I was sworn in as a New York City police officer in 1997, the city’s revival was well underway.

That year—with the city’s murder rate reduced 66 percent since the start of the decade—businesses were investing in the Big Apple, parks were transforming into green respites amid the concrete panorama, and Disney had arrived in Times Square, all confirming that New York had become a family-friendly place. The NYPD’s improved technology in tracking crime and maintaining public-order statistics allowed the department to allocate police resources more effectively, despite some drawbacks. Less measurable were the sweat, toil, tears, and blood—too much blood—that had been spent by members of the NYPD in serving the city. In the face of this enormous effort and sacrifice, all who took the time to notice witnessed the tangible result: every community in the city was safer than it had been.

That all began to change in January 2014, when Bill de Blasio, who had run a campaign highly critical of the police, became mayor. Throughout most of his mayoralty, de Blasio benefited from the NYPD’s continued success in keeping crime down, especially in his first term, under the guidance of Commissioner William J. Bratton. But he gradually shifted the public narrative from highlighting the success of the NYPD to vilifying the department. By 2020, especially in the aftermath of riots in June, the city’s crime rate was accelerating upward, even as more public officials portrayed the NYPD as an institution that could not be trusted, staffed by badge-wearing rogues serving a systemically flawed government.

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BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Books Are Already Burning The question is only: How long will decent people stand by quietly and watch it happen? Abigail Shrier

By on June 22nd, 2021

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-books-are-already-burning

Do you remember the names Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying?  I wrote one of my earliest New York Times columns about the bravery they displayed as tenured professors — words that do not typically appear in the same sentence  — at Evergreen State College. 

It was 2017 and the professors, both evolutionary biologists, opposed the school’s “Day of Absence,” in which white students were asked to leave campus for the day. You can imagine what followed. For questioning a day of racial segregation wearing the garments of social justice, the pair was smeared as racist. Following serious threats, they left town for a time with their children, lost many of their friends, and, ultimately, resigned their jobs. 

But they refused to shut up.

They started a podcast called DarkHorse, where they suggested in April 2020 that Covid-19 could have come from the lab in Wuhan — a position that made them a laughingstock among so-called experts more than a year before Jon Stewart talked about it on The Late Show.

Their willingness to challenge conventional wisdom and take on third-rail subjects has drawn them a large audience: Last month, DarkHorse had almost five million views on YouTube. But speaking freely has come with a price. The couple’s two YouTube channels have each received several warnings and one official strike, which the company says was because of their advocacy of the drug ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19. Three strikes from YouTube and a channel can be deleted. According to Weinstein, that would mean the loss of “more than half of our income.” 

How have we gotten here? How have we gotten to the point where having conversations about important scientific and medical subjects requires such a high level of personal risk? How have we accepted a reality in which Big Tech can carry out the digital equivalent of book burnings? And why is it that so few people are speaking up against the status quo?

I can’t think of a person better situated to answer these questions than Abigail Shrier, the author of today’s guest essay.

You may have heard of Shrier. She is the author of Irreversible Damage, which the Economist named one of the best books of last year, and a dogged journalist who has taken on the difficult and thankless subject of the enormous rise of gender dysphoria among teenage girls.

I say thankless because it’s hard to capture the decibel of the vitriol that has met her work. To give you a taste: one of the ACLU’s most prominent lawyers said that “stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.” (The subject of how the ACLU came to favor book banning is taken up brilliantly here.) And this is to say nothing of the personal defamation of Shrier’s character, smears that bear zero relationship to my courageous friend.

You do not need to agree with Shrier about whether or not children should be able to medically transition genders without their parents’ permission (she is opposed), or for that matter with Weinstein and Heying’s bullishness about ivermectin (I had never heard of of the drug before they put it on my radar). That’s not the point. The point is that the questions they ask are not just legitimate, they are of critical importance. Meantime, some of the most powerful forces in our culture are conspiring to silence them.

That is precisely the reason it is so important to stand up and say: no. To say: progress comes only when we have the freedom to disagree. To say: It is outrageous that tech platforms are censoring such debates and that some journalists are cheering them on. To say, in public: enough. In my case, that means making sure to publish those voices who have been shut out of so many other channels that ought to be open to them.

— BW

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Democrats Are Turning ‘Homeland Security’ Into A Political Weapon At the behest of partisan Democrats, the organization created to protect us all from another 9/11 will now turn its forces and energy on American civilians. By Bob Anderson

By on June 22nd, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/21/democrats-are-turning-homeland-security-into-a-political-weapon/

When a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence says directly into a camera that fighting terror may now mean arresting members of Congress, the blood sport of politics has been taken to a new and more dangerous level.

Speaking on MSNBC recently, Frank Figliuzzi opined to Chuck Todd that: “Arresting low-level operatives is merely a speed bump, not a road block. In order to really tackle terrorism … and this time domestically … you’ve got to attack and dismantle the command-and-control element of the terrorist group, and unfortunately, and I know this is painful to hear … that may mean people sitting in Congress right now, people in and around the former president.”

It is the stuff of banana republics when political opponents are locked up, and this was urged not by a fringe activist on an obscure YouTube channel, but by a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official on the second-most-watched cable news network, with no gasp from the host. Is this what “homeland security” has become?

Clearly, much has changed since 9/11, when President George W. Bush instituted a new office to “secure the United States from terrorist threats of attacks” that eventually became the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). With a $40 billion budget and more than 240,000 employees, it is now a behemoth eclipsed in size only by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

Although established with noble purpose, there is growing evidence that its focus has evolved in a direction those voting for its creation never imagined. Those with the secret clearances and shiny badges are increasingly scrutinizing our homeland, not for external attackers, but our own people.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Despite Vaccine Triumphs, Science’s Performance During the Pandemic Has Been Decidedly Mixed Charles Lipson

By on June 22nd, 2021

https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2021/06/21/despite-vaccine-triumphs-sciences-performance-during-the-pandemic-has-been-decidedly-mixed

While Western labs hit a home run, the public health community made unforced errors, and China threw deadly bean balls.

For the health sciences, these are the best of times and the worst of times. The best have been dramatic achievements emerging from American and European labs. The worst have been lab practices in China and the secrecy surrounding them.

The powerful tools developed by Western scientists were consistently used to save lives, most dramatically with the development of vaccines that have succeeded in suppressing the pandemic in those places where their use has been widespread. The same tools, in the hands of Chinese virologists, were used to experiment with deadly pathogens. We don’t know if they were trying to develop biowarfare agents or tools to combat future pandemics, and we don’t know crucial information about the origins and early spread of the virus because Beijing is hiding it.

We do know the deadly toll. According to Johns Hopkins statistics, there have been 177 million known cases of COVID-19 worldwide and 3.8 million deaths. Beyond that is the devastating impact on mental health, schooling and economic activity worldwide.

A third group of scientists, public health specialists in the U.S., falls between the best and worst. Tasked with immense responsibility and under intense time pressure, they achieved mixed results, at best, in their primary task: protecting Americans’ health and safety.

As we emerge from our bunkers, people naturally want to assign responsibility for the high costs they incurred. Were all those costs necessary? Could we have done better? Who deserves blame—or praise? Some have piled that blame on “science,” when they really mean mistakes by public health officials. Those same officials, hoping to escape responsibility, have depicted themselves as the very embodiment of modern science and technical proficiency.

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