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July 2021

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A Major Education Realignment in the Works? Schools are out for summer, and the fall holds many questions for education in America.   By Larry Sand

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/02/a-major-education-realignment-in-the-works/

According to data released by Education Week, America’s government-run schools lost almost 1.3 million students this year. (Delaware, Illinois, and North Carolina didn’t supply enrollment statistics, so the true number is probably somewhat higher.) The downtick was due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its overwrought response, including draconian lockdowns and subsequent forced digital learning—mostly occurring in school districts with strong teachers unions.

While undoubtedly some of the “missing” kids will return when schools open their doors in August and September, to be sure many will not. And for those who don’t, increasing numbers will have more choices than ever.

As EdChoice Director of Policy Jason Bedrick notes, 14 states have enacted 18 new or expanded educational choice policies so far this year. Additionally, it’s expected that six additional states will usher in new or expanded choice programs. On a national level, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has introduced the Children Have Opportunities in Classrooms Everywhere Act, which would “modernize how, and to whom, we distribute our K-12 resources.” Lee explains that his bill “would allow low-income families with children in grades K-12 to apply for federal education funds that they can choose to put toward the public schools in which their children are enrolled or toward an education savings account, known as a 529 account.” (Education savings accounts [ESAs] allow parents to pull their children from a public school and receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts with restricted, but multiple, uses.)

Additionally, homeschooling has been booming. The Census Bureau reports that between 2012 and 2020, the number of homeschooling families remained steady at around 3.3 percent. But by May 2020, about 5.4 percent of U.S. households with school-aged children reported they were homeschooling. And by October 2020, the number jumped to 11.1 percent.

Many polls reflect the fact that the ZIP-code-mandated education system just isn’t cutting it anymore for many Americans. The American Federation for Children reports that 65 percent of voters support school choice, with 69 percent of blacks and 67 percent of Hispanics in favor, according to just-released survey results. An EdChoice poll shows that when given a fair description of school choice types, a great majority are in approval. For example, 80 percent of black and Hispanic parents support ESAs, and 76 percent of white parents are in favor.

Even in California, where the private option is nonexistent, things are happening. In a recent poll, voters were asked if they’d approve a ballot initiative establishing ESAs, and a majority said they would. In fact, 54 percent of voters said they’d vote “yes” if given the chance, while only 34 percent said they’d vote “no.” Support among black and Latino voters was even higher, with 71 percent and 66 percent respectively in favor. Toward that end, the California School Choice Foundation will be sending an education freedom initiative to Sacramento for title and summary in July.

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How Thomas Jefferson and a Conservative Rabbi helped write Israel’s Declaration of Independence In honor of July 4th — How the American Declaration of Independence shaped Israel’s Daniel Gordis

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://danielgordis.substack.com/p/how-thomas-jefferson-and-a-conservative?tok

Why is God not mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence? Does it have to do with the passionate ideological secularism of most of Israel’s founders? For those familiar with America’s Declaration, God’s absence from Israel’s feels all the more peculiar, given how often “Nature’s God,” the “Creator” and “Supreme Judge” are found in the Declaration of Independence of the United States.

There’s an urban legend of sorts which claims that God isn’t entirely absent from Israel’s Declaration, and that the final paragraph is, in fact, a nod in God’s direction. According to this tale, the secularists, the Bible-loving-but-God-rejecting David Ben-Gurion chief among them, were adamantly opposed to including in the Declaration a God they were certain did not exist (but Who, they nonetheless believed, had given the Land of Israel to the People of Israel). But religious Zionists, it is said, wouldn’t cave on that point, so a compromise was reached. The Declaration would include the phrase “Rock of Israel”, taken from the morning [shacharit] liturgy. The secularists could interpret “Rock of Israel” as the strong arm of the Haganah, the vital spirit of the state-builders or however they wished, while the religious signers could be comforted by the fact that just as “Rock of Israel” means “God” in the liturgy, so too, it (for them) meant God here, too.

It’s a great story, ubiquitously repeated almost anytime one discusses the Declaration of Independence. The only problem with it is that it’s totally false.

So, in honor of America’s celebration of its independence this weekend, here’s a brief and more accurate version of what happened, including the fascinating way in which Thomas Jefferson and a Conservative rabbi were actually responsible for the inclusion of “Rock of Israel” in Israel’s Declaration.¹

It turns out that the American declaration of independence was the subject of its own push-me-pull-you of secularism versus theology tension. Thomas Jefferson, who was the author of the DoI, apparently wanted the declaration to read near its end, “And for the support of this Declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Some of those early American theists, though, religious in some vague sense but not passionately theological, felt that God ought to make an appearance at the end, just as God, Creator and Judge appear earlier. So Jefferson added the phrase “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” into the phrase above, so that the version we have all inherited reads “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

One hundred and seventy-two years later, David Ben-Gurion was getting ready to do more or less what Thomas Jefferson and his compatriots had done. He was going to declare independence from the British and would found a country. The British were going to be leaving on May 14 and among many other decisions (including whether to declare a state, as we discussed in an earlier posting, “The National Liberation Movement of the Jewish People”) and preparations, a Declaration had to be written. The task was eventually passed down to one Mordechai Behm, who had formerly worked as a lawyer for the British Mandatory authorities, but had then left to join his father’s thriving law practice.

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Incommensurability in 2021 American Politics  The two, incommensurable, political paradigms of pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary America coincide with two different comprehensions of human nature. By Kenneth Levin

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/02/incommensurability-in-2021-american-politics/

The ubiquitous term “paradigm” and the concept of “paradigm shifts,” were popularized by the historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. He used them to characterize, roughly, a scientific theory’s fundamental elements and the changes in fundamental elements that occur with scientific revolutions and changes in theory. 

Another term popularized by Kuhn is “incommensurability.” Kuhn argued that scientific revolutions do not entail simply the accumulation of additional knowledge of the natural world but entail a recasting of the world, looking at the world in a fundamentally different way. A pre-revolutionary theory, say the Earth-centered cosmos of Ptolemaic astronomy, and a post-revolutionary theory such as Copernicus’ model of the Earth revolving around the sun, propose, in their ramifications, such different understandings of the world as to be in large part beyond shared comprehension, i.e., to be “incommensurable.”

Many view the political divide in today’s America as just a variation on the types of divisions that have always characterized American politics. That perspective is reflected, for example, in the not uncommon anticipation that the Biden presidency would entail a return to “normal.” It is seen as well in calls for, and expectations of, greater bipartisanship in Congress. But the radical agenda put forward by the progressive wing that has seized control of the Democratic Party from its former liberal leadership, and the perspectives on the nation’s past and its proper future that underlie that agenda, are no variation on past political differences. They are, rather, a revolutionary break from the past. That it is a break led and promoted by major institutions in the wider society, most notably academia (and championed by other institutions such as mainstream media, much of corporate America, cultural elites and the social media behemoths), render it that much more potent a force. 

The following list of the policies promoted in this radical agenda, and comparison of those policies to consensus perspectives traditionally shared by Americans despite political differences, illustrate how far this new agenda is from the latter. It illustrates as well why the understanding of the nation and the vision of its future embraced by these two camps—would-be post-revolution America and pre-revolution America—are incommensurable.

One: To Keep the Constitution or Replace It?

The Constitution, of course, is the foundation of the American social contract, defining the structure of the federal government, its relation to state governments, the responsibilities of both, and the freedoms of citizens. All federal and state officers take an oath to support the Constitution, as do all immigrants going through the naturalization process, and embrace of the Constitution has been seen virtually since its ratification as defining as well the common bond among the nation’s citizens. This continues to be the case today, except now there are vocal groups with significant followings in political circles, academic and media circles, and elsewhere that wish to dispense with and replace the Constitution. They note that its authors were exclusively white males, that a substantial number of them were slave owners, that the text, while looking forward to slavery’s demise, in various ways made accommodations for the interests of the slave owners in order to assure the establishment of the federal system.

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Classroom Censorship Comes to the University of Oklahoma By Kiara Kincaid

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/classroom-censorship-comes-to-the-university-of-oklahoma/?utm_source=

An on-campus workshop instructed faculty in how to suppress unwelcome speech.

Late last month, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) obtained a video recording of an “Anti-Racist Rhetoric and Pedagogies” workshop that was presented to faculty in the English Department at the University of Oklahoma. Originally held in April 2021, this hour-long workshop was intended to teach instructors how to eliminate racist comments and shut down unwanted speech in the classroom without fear of administrative repercussions. The tactics and guidelines set down in the workshop are so broad that they threaten basically any speech that those who might apply them dislike.

Assistant teaching professor Kelli Alvarez led a presentation titled “Setting an Anti-Racist Tone,” in which she describes the expectations she sets for her classes each semester. In her class, students are to avoid “derogatory remarks, critiques, and hate speech” in the classroom and in their writing (18:10). She also has her students read “When Free Speech Becomes Unfree” by Ibram X. Kendi. According to Alvarez, the premise of the article is that “there’s no such thing as free speech” and that someone is paying for what we say, emotionally and physically.

In the workshop, Alvarez continued with the false claim that hate speech is not protected by the Constitution, and failed to cite any Supreme Court case that supports this argument. Instead, she encouraged instructors to tell their students, “No, you don’t have the right to say that. Stop talking right now.” She maintained that students can and should disagree with one another. But if their disagreement is “rooted in the oppression and denial of humanity and someone’s right to exist,” it is not allowed. That would be denying someone “their basic human rights” and “human dignity,” which is “not conducive or productive.”

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‘The Noblest, Happiest Page in Mankind’s History’ When America began. James Freeman

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-noblest-happiest-page-in-mankinds-history-11625222292?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Several years back your humble correspondent observed a diverse crowd standing in a long line on a hot summer day. The large gathering of patient people spoke with accents representing many places in the U.S. and various countries around the world. They were all happily waiting to see—not a competition or a performance or a famous work of art—but simply a room with wooden tables and chairs. As physically unremarkable as the room was, visitors reaching the end of the line were not disappointed. Many wore expressions of joy and wonder because they knew what had happened in that room in a brick building on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. Independence Hall is the place where America’s founding document was created 245 years ago this week. Eleven years later, delegates meeting in the same room created the U.S. Constitution.

As for the Declaration of Independence that we celebrate this weekend, in 1926 President Calvin Coolidge came to Philadelphia to celebrate its 150th anniversary and said:

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.
If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. But remarkable as this may be, it is not the chief distinction of the Declaration of Independence. . .
It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world.

Harvard history professor David Armitage wrote in the Journal in 2014 that “the Declaration’s influence wasn’t limited to the American colonies of the late 18th century. No American document has had a greater impact on the wider world.” He added:

As the first successful declaration of independence in history, it helped to inspire countless movements for independence, self-determination and revolution after 1776 and to this very day. As the 19th-century Hungarian nationalist, Lajos Kossuth, put it, the U.S. Declaration of Independence was nothing less than “the noblest, happiest page in mankind’s history.”

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Indicting the Trump Organization Years of investigation and prosecutors come up with a small tax case.

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/indicting-the-trump-organization-11625264755?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Democrats of all stripes have devoted years to investigating Donald Trump and finding very little. The latest example is Thursday’s indictment of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer for classifying employee benefits as business expenses rather than compensation.

Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr. and New York Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed millions of documents and years of tax returns, and that’s all they’ve come up with. The indictment lists 15 criminal counts, including second degree grand larceny. But the evidence in the indictment boils down to misreporting compensation to the Internal Revenue Service and New York tax authorities.

Prosecutors allege that Allen Weisselberg, the 73-year-old accountant and CFO, received as much as $1.76 million in compensation over a 16-year-period—for cars, an apartment rental, and tuition for Mr. Weisselberg’s grandchildren at a private school—in a way that kept them off the books for tax purposes. The indictment says he avoided paying $901,112 he owed in taxes and collected federal and state tax refunds of $133,124 he wasn’t entitled to.

If true and willful, this is rotten behavior. But it isn’t Teapot Dome, and disguising compensation as expenses is far from unusual in corporate America. It’s typically handled as a civil matter and settled with the payment of back taxes, interest and fines. It is rarely the basis for a criminal indictment.

The prosecutors are throwing the book at Mr. Weisselberg to get him to turn state’s evidence against the former President. The same goes for the highly unusual decision to indict the Trump Organization, which is presumably intended to squeeze its business prospects. Notably, neither Mr. Trump nor his children who run the business were charged.

The political motives at work are transparent. Mr. Vance has pursued Mr. Trump and his tax records for years, even as street and violent crime proliferates in New York City. Ms. James campaigned on a promise to shine “a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn.” She all but promised a selective prosecution—that is, pick a target, then search for a crime to allege.

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In Italy, Relief and Dread as Tourists Return The pandemic cost Italy billions in lost revenue from tourism, while giving residents of popular destinations like Rome and Venice a chance to have their cities to themselves By Mattia Ferraresi

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-italy-relief-and-dread-as-tourists-return-11625232372

“It’s time for you to book your holidays in Italy,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi told international visitors in May, hoping to revive a tourism sector that contributes 13% of Italy’s GDP. In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic put an end to most international travel, the country’s tourism revenue dropped by about $113 billion, and things are still far from back to normal.

“Italians go to the beach or the mountains during the summer, and in those areas, things are getting slightly better,” said Giuseppe Roscioli, a hotel owner in Rome and president of the local arm of the hotel lobby Federalberghi. “But historic cities are suffering the most.” The association has used the word “devastation” to describe what the hospitality business is going through. “Half of the hotels in the city are now closed, and most of them won’t reopen until next spring. I am afraid we will be back to the pre-Covid levels only in 2024,” Mr. Roscioli said.

‘Tourism is undoubtedly precious for our community, but at the same time it’s destroying its social fabric.’

— Pierpaolo Capovilla

The inconvenient truth is that ordinary Italians loved having their cities to themselves during the pandemic, finally free from the incessant flow of tourists. The Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso has noted that in the modern world, even a tourist doesn’t like being identified as just another member of the visiting pack: “He enjoys watching tourists, and even bemoaning them. He wouldn’t want to be confused with them.” So one can imagine how the residents feel in a city like Venice, where 75% of businesses revolve around tourism.

“Needless to say, the pandemic is a terrible tragedy, but as a Venetian, I can’t deny that I enjoyed that tourists suddenly disappeared,” said Pierpaolo Capovilla, a musician and artist who has been living in Venice for more than 30 years. “Tourism is undoubtedly precious for our community, but at the same time it’s destroying its social fabric, and it’s pushing regular people away,” said Mr. Capovilla, recalling that before the pandemic the number of visitors in Venice had reached “a distressing level.” Meanwhile, the city center, where 50,000 people currently live, is losing about 1,000 residents each year.

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Is Harvard Sacrificing Science for Wokeness? Christopher Sanfilippo

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/06/30/is_harvard_sacrificing_science_to_wokeness_783577.html

There is a cultural shift underway affecting all aspects of American life. Though hard to define, it usually takes the form of an emphasis on what is known variously as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory, wokeness, anti-racism, and the like. Several scholars and writers have been raising the alarm about its anti-intellectual and illiberal aspects. Heather Mac Donald has shown how it has permeated the university. Is there reason to be suspicious?

One might suspect that the new ideology only affects intrinsically political areas of study, such as Government and History. But in fact it has infected every area, even science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Below is a sampling of new policies at Harvard that reveal how this ideology is affecting STEM education.

A few clicks away from the homepage of Harvard’s prestigious medical school, one finds among their “anti-racism initiatives” the following: “We will develop new classes for master’s and PhD students to acknowledge the ways in which racism is embedded in science.” What in the world does it even mean to say that racism is “embedded” in science? It has been pursued, certainly, by flawed people—but science is the pursuit of universal truth. It cannot itself be racist. At best, such classes will simply be a waste of time. At worst, as the language above suggests, they will attempt to indoctrinate students by teaching them that they, and the medicine they practice, are inherently racist.

Not even mathematics, the most rigorous and least ideological of the STEM disciplines, is unscathed. Harvard’s math department is currently implementing suggestions from last year’s town hall concerning “diversity and anti-oppression.” It is suggested to no longer require the GRE for graduate admissions, and, shockingly, to “reform Math 55 culture and content” for the sake of “promoting equity.” Now, Math 55 is known as the hardest undergraduate math class in the country—some years more than half the class does not finish. The rationale underlying these suggestions is unmistakable: there are not enough women and minorities succeeding in the department, so let us lower the standards to make our classes and programs more diverse. Such thinking has become disturbingly common. It’s both condescending and an open admission that diversity is more important than rigorous education. Is it lamentable that some years Math 55 has no women? Perhaps. But that is preferable to encouraging students to take it who may not succeed or lowering the standards for all.  

A final example, this time from the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). Buried on the 17th of the 37-page SEAS Strategic Plan for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging it is recommended that a “comprehensive training program” be created for all members of SEAS to address “bias, privilege, inclusive leadership, gender identity, etc.” including inviting speakers and in-house training. But what does this have to do with engineering? Naturally, they neglect to mention the cost of such a program or how it advances the core mission of SEAS.

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Byron York: A new get-Trump committee?

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-a-new-get-trump-committee

A congressional investigation is a fact-finding enterprise. The members aren’t neutral finders of fact — they are Republicans and Democrats who often fight over the subject and scope of the investigation. But the idea is to find facts.

Now take a look at the new Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, created this week in a nearly party-line vote in the House. Even before the investigation begins, the chairman of the committee, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, has already found all the facts he needs to find former President Donald Trump guilty of incitement. We know because Thompson has said so, over and over again, in a lawsuit blaming Trump for the riot.

In February, Thompson, acting in his personal capacity, filed suit against Trump, presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and the groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Whatever its title, the suit is about Trump; the other defendants are just supporting players. Trump is named 126 times in the document, versus 40 for Giuliani, 47 for the Proud Boys, and 18 for the Oath Keepers. In other words, the suit is about Trump.

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Thompson begins with the declaration that Trump and the others “conspired to incite an assembled crowd to march upon and enter the Capitol of the United States for the common purpose of disrupting, by the use of force, intimidation and threat, the approval by Congress of the count of votes cast by members of the Electoral College as required by Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.” The suit says Trump created a “unified plan” to incite and then carry out the riot — the suit calls it an “insurrection” 12 times — with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers the junior partners doing the actual fighting. Thompson asks a judge to declare Trump guilty of violating 42 US Code 1985, the law covering “conspiracy to interfere with civil rights.”

So now the same Representative Thompson is leading the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. He has already decided who to blame — the task now is just to formalize the verdict.

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A Mobster and Turkey’s Arms Shipments to Jihadis by Burak Bekdil

By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17430/turkey-arms-shipments-jihadis

Erdoğan’s government claimed the cargo was humanitarian aid to Turkoman locals in Syria but then filed criminal charges against the editors Cumhuriyet, for being members of a “terrorist organization,” espionage and revealing state secrets…. The prosecution asked for life sentences for two Cumhuriyet editors. Since then, Can Dündar, then-editor-in-chief, has been living in Germany in exile.

At the beginning of May, Sedat Peker, a convicted Turkish mob boss and a fierce supporter of Erdoğan — until now — began posting videos on social media in which he made uncorroborated accusations of corruption, murder and drug-running against top politicians.

After weeks of silence, Erdoğan… ordered prosecutors and judges to investigate and establish that all of Peker’s claims were lies and a smear campaign against his government. Who will trust the independence of a legal probe when the president has already ordered its verdict?

On January 19, 2014, the Turkish Gendarmerie command in southern Turkey searched three trucks heading for Syria. Accompanying the trucks were Turkish intelligence officers; the trucks had a bizarre cargo: In the first container, were 25-30 missiles or rockets and 10-15 crates loaded with ammunition; and in the second, 20-25 missiles or rockets, 20-25 crates of mortar rounds and anti-aircraft ammunition in five or six sacks. The crates had markings in the Cyrillic alphabet. One of the drivers testified that the cargo had been loaded onto the trucks from a foreign airplane at Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport and that, “We carried similar loads several times before.”

It was evident that the arms were bound for jihadists fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regional nemesis. Nearly two years later, Erdoğan would almost confess to the arms shipments. “What does it matter,” he said in November 2015, “if it [the cargo] was arms or not?”

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