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Ruth King

Critical Race Theory: The Enemy of Reason, Evidence, and Open Debate By Peter J. Wallison

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/critical-race-theory-the-enemy-of-reason-evidence-and-open-debate/

How this pernicious ideology rejects rational inquiry and objective truth.

O n September 22, 2020, President Trump issued Executive Order 13950, “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping.” The order contained the kind of emotionally charged language about critical race theory that is seldom seen in these legalistic documents: “This ideology is rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.”

The order quoted from training materials being used by government agencies and from statements of the agencies themselves, such as this from the Treasury Department: “Virtually all White people, regardless of how ‘woke’ they are, contribute to racism.” The department, according to the order, “instructed small group leaders to encourage employees to avoid ‘narratives’ that Americans should ‘be more color-blind’ or ‘let people’s skills and personalities be what differentiates them.’” Trump’s order was revoked by President Biden on his first day in office.

By this time, however, the ideas that had prompted Trump’s concerns had already begun to disturb the lives of the American people who encountered them. In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada on December 20, 2020, Gabrielle Clark, the mother of William Clark, a twelfth-grader in a Nevada charter school, complained about the school’s refusal to accept her son’s objection to what was being taught in a recently revised civics course. Ms. Clark, a widow, is black. Her son’s father, however, was white, and her son was light-skinned enough to be considered white.

In her complaint, Clark stated that a new curriculum at William’s school “inserted consciousness raising and conditioning exercises under the banner of ‘Intersectionality’ and ‘Critical Race Theory.’” “The lesson categorized certain racial and religious identities as inherently ‘oppressive,’ . . . and instructed pupils including William Clark who fell into these categories to accept the label ‘oppressor.’”

Despite Clark’s and her son’s objections to what he was being required to admit about himself and his racial heritage, the school insisted that he take this course and gave him a failing grade — imperiling his chances for college admission — because of his refusal to admit that he harbored the views that were being pressed upon the class.

Biden’s plan to revolutionize America on a slim majority is downright delusion By Rich Lowry

https://nypost.com/2021/04/26/bidens-plan-to-revolutionize-america-on-a-slim-majority-is-downright-delusion/

There’s believing your own news releases. And then there’s believing your own delusions of grandeur. 

Joe Biden should look at the mirror every day and see a president elected on the basis of the unpopularity of his predecessor at a time when the country was slammed by a once-in-a-century pandemic. 

Instead, by every account, he sees a transformative leader with a mandate to change America as rapidly and irreversibly as possible. 

As the news site Axios noted, Biden wants his next 100 days to be “more audacious” than his first 100, as he seeks “to re-engineer the very fundamentals of America — inequality, voting rights and government’s role in directing economic growth.” 

Oh, is that all?

Biden’s drive to make himself the next FDR and erect a massive progressive edifice on the slightest of political foundations is monumentally arrogant and almost certainly bound to fail. 

New York Times ‘buried’ bombshell that John Kerry told Iran about Israeli covert operations in Syria

https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-buried-bombshell-kerry-iran-israeli-operations

‘At best, this shows that Kerry is enormously and irresponsibly indiscreet; at worst, he’s exposing American intelligence to an enemy in order to attack an ally’

The New York Times is taking criticism for “burying” a report that former Secretary of State John Kerry told Iran that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times.

The story focuses on leaked audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaking candidly about Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful branch of Iran’s Armed Forces and a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. However, 21 paragraphs into a 26-paragraph story, the Times dropped a major revelation.

“Former Secretary of State John Kerry informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment, Mr. Zarif said,” Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi wrote.

Kerry has denied the claims in the story, calling them “unequivocally false.”

Kerry, now President Biden’s special climate envoy, served as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017, where he was instrumental in brokering the Iran nuclear deal. The deal was heavily opposed by Israel, with whom Kerry has frequently sparred.

The New Antiracism Is the Old Racism Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/25/the-new-antiracism-is-the-old-racism/

What will be the future of the mass hysteria spawned last summer? No one knows. 

But its destination, if unchecked, will be ethnic tensions and sectarian strife at best akin to those in Brazil and India—or at worst Lebanon, Syria, and Rwanda. 

Until just a few years ago, racial differences, according to polls, were more or less receding. Intermarriage between racial groups is at historic highs. 

But by 2014-2015, with the birth of Black Lives Matter, its courting by the Obama Administration, and the emergence of the electronic social media mob and cancel culture, such progress seems to have ended. We have ceased seeing race as increasingly incidental, rather than essential to who we are. 

The benchmarks of the Black Lives Matter and affiliated woke movements are overt racism, systemic untruth, and the hypocritical privilege of their elite architects.  

We are now well beyond the race-based set-asides of the last 50 years, predicated on the evolving concepts of proportional representation and disparate impact. These multitrillion-dollar endowed Great Society principles eventually mandated that admissions and hiring reflect the proportional ethnic and racial makeup of the population. 

All that is now ossified and considered not enough. In its place is a damnation of all things “white” with a new definition of diversity as simply all those, without any other affinities, who claim to be bound proudly together by being nonwhite.

Antiracist Racism

Indeed, it is startling how abruptly our frenzied elites have renounced assimilation (a word now banned by the Biden Administration in matters related to immigration). Integration is also passé‚ at least for those not rich.

Ironies abound. Recently, in the state of Washington, something called the African American Reach and Teach Health Ministry (AARTH) adjudicated vaccination appointments on the basis of race only. I suppose if a 75-year-old indigent white widow showed up, she would be turned away on the basis of her “unearned privilege”—or the organizers say could be put on a “standby list”?

Black intellectuals now use the stereotypical language of the old Jim Crow segregationists. Some vie in an apparent contest to see which woke trailblazer can be crowned the most overt racist antiracist. 

Andrew Cuomo Made $225,000 and Is Top-Paid Governor Ever By Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/04/26/andrew_cuomo_made_225000_and_is_top-paid_governor_ever_774227.html

With a $225,000 salary, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the country’s highest paid governor.

That’s as he collects $4 million for writing a book during the Covid-19 pandemic about his graceful leadership during the pandemic — allegedly with the help of his staff, possibly violating labor laws against using public resources for personal gain.

And it’s as he is fighting sexual harassment allegations and scandal from misleading the public about how many people died from Covid in nursing homes.

But the $225,000 is not even his top pay.

In 2018, The New York State Commission on Legislative, Judicial, & Executive Compensation gave the legislature and the governor pay raises.

At the time, state lawmakers made $79,500 and Cuomo made $179,000.

Cuomo’s salary was increased to $200,000 in 2019, $225,000 in 2020 and $250,000 in 2021. But in November 2020, he deferred his latest raise, keeping his salary at $225,000, still the highest in the nation.

When awarding the raises for lawmakers, the commission in 2018 stipulated that the raise would limit outside income to no more than 15 percent of their legislative salary.

John Kerry, Enemy of Israel By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/john-kerry-enemy-of-israel/

Let’s pause to reflect on how monumentally stunning it is that the former U.S. secretary of state allegedly tattled on Israel to Iran.

W e know now that former secretary of state John Kerry isn’t merely a critic of Israel; he is an adversary. In leaked audiotapes obtained by the U.K.-based Iran International, as reported by the New York Times, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a supporter that the former secretary of state had informed him about “at least” 200 covert Israeli actions against Iranian interests in Syria. Zarif listened to this information in “astonishment.”

It’s predictable, perhaps, that the Times glides over this remarkable exchange in a single-sentence paragraph that is submerged near the bottom of the piece. (I guess it’s better than the Washington Post, which doesn’t even mention the interaction.)

A high-ranking American official feels comfortable sharing this information with an autocratic adversary — a government that’s murdered hundreds of Americans, regularly kidnapped them, interfered with our elections, and propped up a regime that gasses its people — about the covert actions of a long-time American ally. What else did he tell Zarif? The Times doesn’t say.

The New UN Ambassador’s Misguided Shot at America By Lawrence J. Haas

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-un-ambassador%E2%80%99s-misguided-shot-america-183555

More than once of late, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has declared that America’s “original sin” of slavery “weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.”

The problem isn’t just that Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career diplomat who served as President Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, is wrong about the nation’s founding.

Nor is the problem just that she stated her views not only before the United Nations General Assembly but also before the National Action Network of the Rev. Al Sharpton – who, over the years, has used inflammatory anti-Jewish rhetoric, promoted black teenager Tawana Brawley’s fabricated story that she was raped by white men, was sued successfully for defamation, and has not always paid his taxes.

The greater problem is that in promoting her views, Thomas-Greenfield seems oblivious to the broader challenges that America faces on the world stage at this precarious moment for freedom and democracy.

No, America is not perfect, and yes, America has struggled mightily with race from its earliest days. Slavery was central to the southern economy through two-thirds of the nineteenth century; a civil war that ended slavery was followed by the legalized bigotry of Jim Crow; the civil rights movement triggered a violent white backlash; and racism remains deeply embedded in the hearts of all-too-many Americans.

Temple University Speaker Calls For Israel To Be Replaced Moshe Phillips

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/335878/temple-university-speaker-calls-for-i

Last week, the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History and Congregation Rodeph Sholom of Philadelphia invited Joyce Ajlouny to share her hate of Israel. During the April 20 event, titled “The Weaponization of Discourse: Where is the Line Between Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitism on Campus?”, Ajlouny asserted that she favors “a secular, democratic state” — which, in plain English, means the elimination of Israel.

Why did the Feinstein Center and a prominent synagogue give Ajlouny a platform, knowing that she was almost certainly going to engage in such anti-Israel libels, since she has been saying the same things for decades? Ajlouny is, after all, executive director of the American Friends Service Committee (the foreign policy arm of the Quakers), which has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

In the event, Ajlouny began by accusing Israel of being “created on a false premise of a land without people, through ethnic cleansing, massacres, and forcing over 700,000 Palestinian to flee.” She said Israel governs through “an apartheid system.” She declared, unequivocally, “I am an anti-Zionist.”

Professor Kenneth Stern of Bard College, the event’s other panelist, responded by calling her rant “incredibly moving” then emphasized that Arabs and Israelis “need coexistence.” Ajlouny replied, “I would like to have coexistence in one secular democratic state, but that is a subject for another discussion.”

Ajlouny, who has lived most of her life in Ramallah and has been a public advocate for the Palestinian Arab cause for decades, knows full well that the term “one secular democratic state” is the longstanding PLO motto for eliminating Israel and replacing it with “Palestine.”

The Blame Israel First Policy

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-blame-israel-first-policy/91484/

Must Israel hold its fire against Iran in order to make it easier for President Biden to rejoin a nuclear deal that the Jewish state opposes? That is the question that is coming into focus in the wake of the explosion at the Natanz nuclear site and of what the Times is calling “shadowy naval skirmishes” in Mideast seas. Mr. Biden seems to think Israel is obligated to stand down while he pursues his appeasement of the ayatollahs.

That question also confronts an Israeli security delegation that is due in Washington today to air its objections to an entente with Iran, with whom we’re in what are called “indirect talks” at Vienna. On Friday the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked whether the delegation — led by the director of Israel’s legendary Mossad — is likely to change the administration’s position. “No,” she answered.

The idea that Israel must stand down amounts, in our view, to a kind of political supersessionism. Mr. Biden seems to believe that his diplomatic ambitions in respect of Iran ought to trump — forgive the expression — Israel’s interests. “Israel’s relentless attacks on Iran may endanger Biden’s diplomacy” is the headline over an editorial in the Washington Post earlier this month. Scant hint that the danger might come from Iran.

The Post does acknowledge that Mr. Biden “doesn’t have much room to pressure” Prime Minister Netanyahu for restraint. It reckons, though, that Mr. Biden “should persist with his diplomatic strategy — and hope that the Iranian regime chooses to make a distinction between Israel and the United States.” It is a blunt call to put daylight between America and one of its closest allies. Call the policy “blame Israel first.”

Inside the growing underground network of parents fighting ‘anti-racism’ in NYC schools By Dana Kennedy

https://nypost.com/2021/04/24/how-parents-are-fighting-critical-race-theory-in-nyc-schools/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

Until last summer, Harvey Goldman had no idea that his 9-year-old daughter was learning about George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter as well as her own “white privilege” at the $43,000-per-year Heschel School in Manhattan.

Now he’s part of an underground network of parents in NYC and around the country, many of whom are left-leaning, fighting what they believe is the undue focus on race by schools as part of the new “woke” culture.

Many are reluctant to identify themselves publicly for fear of being labeled racist. But more are coming forward after Andrew Gutmann, the father of a 12-year-old girl at Manhattan’s posh Brearley School, wrote a scathing screed to administrators about their “anti-racism” obsession and went public in The Post last week.

Goldman, a businessman, was shocked by the amount of negative and inappropriate “anti-racist” dogma he said was being aimed at his fourth-grader and her classmates. But when he reached out to the school with his concerns, administrators were “arrogant and dismissive,” he told The Post.

Then he sent the school a letter.

“First and foremost, neither I, nor my child, have ‘white privilege,’ nor do we need to apologize for it,” Goldman wrote last September. “Suggesting I do is insulting. Suggesting to my 9-year-old child she does is child abuse, not education.”

In response, the school suggested Goldman take his daughter out of the school, he said. So he did. The family moved to Florida where his daughter is enrolled in a public school that he vetted beforehand to make sure critical race theory (CRT) was not part of the curriculum.

Heschel administrators did not respond to messages from The Post.