New Variant of the “CRT-virus”: “Social-Emotional Learning” Shane Harris

https://amac.us/new-variant-of-the-crt-virus-social-emotional-learning/

Amid the national backlash over Critical Race Theory, gender theory, and other radical political and social doctrines being peddled in K-12 classrooms, parents are sounding the alarm over a new “variant” of left-wing instructional dogma: “social-emotional learning,” or SEL. While the term sounds innocuous enough, mounting evidence suggests that SEL curriculum is often simply a rebranding of the same dangerous and divisive ideologies that have dominated education headlines in recent months.

If you ask proponents of the concept, they’ll tell you that SEL is all about helping students grow into well-rounded adults who can manage their emotions and interpersonal relationships. Casel, one of the leading organizations that sells SEL programming to schools, defines it as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”

Much of the terminology that advocates of the doctrine use to promote SEL is drawn from the mental health field. The assertion is that when students are confident in themselves and their identities, they perform better in the classroom. As the Washington Post explained in a recent feature piece on SEL, “social-emotional learning seeks to treat children as human beings with feelings, life goals and even traumas, not just students learning to write essays and solve math problems.”

Will the U.S. Lead or Continue to ‘Lose Ground’? by Pete Hoekstra

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18398/us-lead-lose-ground

Today, Russia in Ukraine is the focus, but the aspirations of China and Iran must not be ignored.

The US must — in the best interests of the United States — immediately deliver the weapons Ukraine needs to forestall future predators such as China, Iran and North Korea. What happens in Ukraine does not stay in Ukraine.

The longer the US shilly-shallies, the longer urgently needed weapons fail to reach Ukraine, the more it invites other predators.

Ukraine must have — now – not only the weapons it needs to combat Russia’s carnage, weapons to “close the skies,” …such as S-300s and S-400s and Migs that the Ukrainians could pull over the border; it must also have heavy weapons — planes, tanks and long-range anti-ship munitions — that Zelenskyy is requesting to repel Russia’s assault to sever Ukraine from the Black Sea, and landlocking the country to suffocate all means of commerce.

One wonders, as Kasparov suggests, if the Biden administration secretly wants Putin, “the devil you know,” to win.

“Everything I hear from other NATO members is that the U.S. has become the obstacle, and an explanation is required. Allowing Mr. Putin to keep an inch of Ukrainian soil after bombing civilians should be unimaginable. Conceding large areas of eastern Ukraine to the invader in exchange for a cease-fire would only give Mr. Putin time to consolidate and rearm for next time—and there will always be a next time.” – Garry Kasparov, Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2022

Kazakhstan, too, had an inspirational leader, Serikzhan Bilash, willing to fight for freedom. Many in the media and the Biden administration have completely ignored him and the struggle of the people of Kazakstan.

Another rising voice of freedom is that of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the opposition in Belarus, who is fighting to keep her country on the side of freedom. She, along with Zelenskyy, and Bilash represent the dreams and aspirations of thousands, likely millions, of people within their homelands. They are risking everything for the ideals that America and the West claim to hold dear.

[S]upporting those leaders who are out front should be easy. Why is America not supporting them further? Why are Russia’s generals and military leaders not being threatened? Why are America’s attempts at sanctioning Russian energy and all of Russia’s oligarchs, their families and their businesses so incomplete and half-hearted?

There is no diplomatic way out of this war.

The U.S. not only needs to recognize the power of these defiant leaders, but do more—much, much more — to help them. That is what is in the strategic interests of the United States.

The world is seeing Vladimir Putin’s clear plan to reestablish the Russian Empire. It also is hearing rumblings from Asia about restoration of a Chinese dynasty, and in the Middle East, a return to when Persia — now an extremely different Iran — dominated the region.

For any of these empires to expand, they need to take control of other states or groups of people. Those states can either be overrun and annexed, or they can be controlled and remain smaller, more manageable political units. Today, Russia in Ukraine is the focus, but the aspirations of China and Iran must not be ignored.

MY SAY: THE AMERICAN LEFT AND ORBAN’S VICTORY

Hungarians have voted in an election that is, by every account, untainted but the American Left has its knickers in a knot over Orban’s “authoritarian” policies.   Hungary’s borders are protected. Parental rights are upheld. Anti-Semitic and xenophobic parties have lost. I take up no cudgels for Orban or his policies, but on the foregoing issues, our “progressives” live in glass houses..rsk

Hungary is illiberal within the normal illiberal standards of modern Europe.By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/hungary-is-isnt-the-best-worst-place-on-earth/

Hungary held an election yesterday — which probably came as a surprise to a number Americans who’ve been convinced that the small Central European nation functions as a totalitarian state. The bugbear of the American Left, and false savior of nationalist conservatives, Viktor Orbán, won his fourth consecutive term. Fidesz, his party, won two-thirds of Parliament against a cluster of center-Left, socialist, environmentalist, and hard-right-wing nationalist parties (Jobbik has only recently moderated from its xenophobic and antisemitic stances, allegedly).

Trying to decipher European parliamentary elections through the prism of American politics is a waste of time. Orbán ran on a traditionalist, socially conservative platform. A referendum on a law limiting the teaching of gay and transgender issues in schools passed; the EU opposes such limits. He leaned into anti-war rhetoric as well as anti-Brussels sentiment, though Fidesz has no plans to leave the EU. It recently instituted a significant minimum-wage increase, and its economic positions have as much in common with statist progressivism as mainstream conservatism.

The truth is, Hungary is illiberal within the normal illiberal standards of modern Europe. And that’s bad enough. Hungary is singled out for ridicule mainly because it declines to share the cultural values of the European Union or the progressive Left, especially pertaining to social policies and to the flow of Middle Eastern migrants into the European Union, which Fidesz aims to block. These positions, in the parlance of modern debate, are “anti-democratic.”

JULIE KELLY: A.G. MERRICK GARLAND FEELS THE HEAT

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/04/garland-feels-the-heat/

If Hunter Biden is in handcuffs before Donald Trump, the attorney general, who will turn 70 later this year, will wish he had opted for retirement.

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s swan song, we can presume, isn’t exactly turning out how he had hoped.

Appointed attorney general in 2021 as some sort of retaliation against Republicans for refusing to seat him on the Supreme Court in 2016, Garland, though largely a figurehead, is getting heat from members of both political parties—including the man who nominated him to serve as the nation’s top lawyer.

According to the New York Times, Joe Biden is displeased that Garland hasn’t yet charged the former president for crimes related to the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021. “[While] the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.,” the Times reported over the weekend. 

Although the Times attempted to portray Biden as hands-off when it comes to the business of his Justice Department, that is simply untrue. By repeatedly describing January 6 as an act of terror and comparing the protest, which resulted only in the deaths of Trump supporters, to 9/11 and other atrocities, Biden has signaled how he expects the Justice Department to proceed. His desire to see everyone from Indiana grandmothers to Donald Trump and his family behind bars hasn’t exactly been a secret.

As the chaos was still unfolding on the afternoon of January 6, Biden addressed the nation, blaming Trump for inciting “an insurrection” that “borders on sedition” while promising his administration would restore “the rule of law.”

The Left Attacks Florida’s New Parental Rights in Education Law Opponents spread misinformation about a common-sense law. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/left-attacks-floridas-new-parental-rights-joseph-klein/

Governor Ron DeSantis last week signed a common-sense law that protects school children from having to undergo sexualized classroom instruction at an impressionable age. The law also protects parents’ rights in deciding how their children are raised and educated. But the progressive Left believes that it is imperative to brainwash children early in LGBTQI+ dogma at school even if it means running roughshod over parental prerogatives.

“They support injecting woke gender ideology into second-grade classrooms,” Governor DeSantis said. “They support enabling schools to ‘transition’ students to a ‘different gender’ without the knowledge of the parent.”

The Parental Rights in Education law states: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

The law also requires, among other protections for parents, “school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child’s mental, emotional or physical health or well-being.”

Biden’s Budget Lies Claiming “fiscal responsibility” while racking up astronomical debt.Terrence P. Jeffrey

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/bidens-budget-lies-terrence-p-jeffrey/

“Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”

When releasing his fiscal 2023 budget proposal on Monday, President Joe Biden said this was something his father had told him.

He then made a claim about a “value” his budget proposal purportedly advances.

“The first value is fiscal responsibility,” Biden said.

That is a lie.

In his speech, Biden elaborated on this lie.

“The previous administration, as you all know, ran up record budget deficits. In fact, the deficit went up every year under my predecessor,” he said.

“My administration is turning that around,” Biden continued.

“Last year,” he said, “we cut the deficit by more than $350 billion. This year, we’re on track to cut the deficit by more than $1.3 trillion. $1.3 trillion. That would be the largest one-year reduction in the deficit in U.S. history.”

But what do the Treasury’s official numbers actually tell us about the recent history of federal spending and deficits?

In the first three years of the Trump administration, the deficit grew — but never exceeded $1 trillion. In fiscal 2017, it was $665,826,000,000. In fiscal 2018, it was $778,996,000,000. In fiscal 2019, it was $984,388,000,000.

To be sure, these were very high deficits. But they were less than what Biden has planned for post-COVID America.

The Magic Kingdom Supports Sexualizing Childhood A dangerous escalation in the decades-long ideological transformation of sexual mores. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/magic-kingdom-supports-sexualizing-childhood-bruce-thornton/

Once the epitome of childhood innocence and joy, the Disney Corporation has gone full “woke,” endorsing and supporting a dangerous grammar-school curriculum that exposes prepubescent children to inappropriate sexual information. Pressured by activists, including Disney employees, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek publicly renounced Florida’s recently passed Parental Rights in Education law––dishonestly labeled by critics the “Don’t say gay” law–– which forbids curriculum from kindergarten to third grade from including content on “sexual orientation or gender identity.” 

This assault on childhood innocence in the name of “tolerance” and identity-politics activism marks a dangerous escalation in the decades-long ideological transformation of sexual mores away from common sense, faith, and traditional morality. This escalation puts at risk children’s sexual development and psychological health by exposing them to materials and information they are not ready for, while sidelining parents’ responsibility and right to oversee this vulnerable period in their children’s lives.

This episode highlights several cultural and political developments that have been going on for many decades. The attempt to usurp parents’ right to raise their kids according to their morality and principles reflects the progressive technocratic hubris that they, rather than families or churches, are better suited for properly raising and educating children. The irony is, it hasn’t been science that supports that claim, but scientism: disciplines like psychology and sociology that oversimplify human nature and motivation, and impose ideologically loaded paradigms and practices on public schools.

Why don’t the media ever ask why previous IPCC predictions have been so wrong? By Jack Hellner

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/why_dont_the_media_ever_ask_why_previous_ipcc_predictions_have_been_so_wrong.html

Once again, the UN intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is warning that we are doomed by climate change.  The media, Biden administration, and the IPCC like to scare people. This article by Yahoo News senior editor Ben Adler does not answer simple questions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday released its latest report, which found that nations are falling short of their pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to avert catastrophic climate change. While the technology exists to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) of average global temperature increase — the goal that virtually every nation agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement and reaffirmed last year in the Glasgow Climate Pact — current policies put the world on a trajectory toward at least twice as much warming.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the report’s conclusion “damning.” The Working Group III report marks the end of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment, with strong words for countries that have failed to act on climate change.

“The jury has reached a verdict. And it is damning,” Guterres said in a statement. “This report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a litany of broken climate promises. It is a file of shame, cataloging the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.” (snip)

Without a dramatic shift in policy, Guterres warned, “We are on a fast track to climate disaster: Major cities under water. Unprecedented heatwaves. Terrifying storms. Widespread water shortages. The extinction of a million species of plants and animals.”

In 1989 the IPCC said we only had ten years left!

Senate Moves Judge Jackson’s Supreme Court Nomination to Floor after Committee Deadlocks By Caroline Downey

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-judiciary-committee-splits-on-advancing-judge-jacksons-nomination/

After the Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday in a split eleven-to-eleven partisan vote, the Senate chamber advanced her candidacy 53–47 Monday evening in a subsequent vote.

A simple majority of 51 votes was needed to advance her nomination, which Jackson garnered after Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney pledged their support, cementing a likely bipartisan confirmation.

Given that the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats is evenly divided in the Senate, Jackson’s prospects have been encumbered by a political tug-of-war, especially since both parties have the same number of seats on every committee. For the last two weeks, some GOP members on the committee have hammered Jackson on her record of perceived leniency on child-pornography cases during her hearings.