Citizenship

A Hanlon’s Razor Challenge: Is The Decline Of History Literacy Among U.S. Students Due To Malice Or Incompetence?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[I apologize for using that Sam Cooke song to introduce this topic, as it is lazy and obvious, but 1) we don’t hear enough of Sam Cooke, one of the many great voices of the Fifties, and 2) I’ll always take a video over a picture, and I’ll always choose a song over just words.]

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released last week showed that about 40% of eighth graders scored below the basic level in U.S. history in 2022, compared to 34% in 2018. Only 13% of students performed at or above the “proficient” level in U.S. history. In addition, Eighth graders’ average civic scores decreased by 2-points compared to 2018, the NAEP results show. They are comparable to results from 1998, which is the first assessment year for civics under the current framework.

Why this should surprise anyone is a mystery. Although the decline is being attributed to the pandemic and the beyond idiotic (but politically unavoidable) lockdown, it has been clear for years that indoctrination according to partisan and woke agenda items had taken priority over teaching history and civics as the teaching ranks have become increasingly populated by ideologues and proto-Marxists who themselves don’t know much about history. It is deemed more important today to teach children that they are either the victims of systemic racism or complicit in it as well as the complex joys of alternate sexual orientations rather than the content of the Constitution, the U.S. role in winning World War II, or the issues underlying the Civil War.

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Ethics Quote Of The Day: Ethics Villain Dr. Anthony Fauci

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Man, I think, almost paradoxically, you had people who were on the fence about getting vaccinated thinking, why are they forcing me to do this? And that sometimes-beautiful independent streak in our country becomes counterproductive.”

—Dr. Anthony Fauci, major architect of the Wuhan virus lockdown catastrophe, in a discussing how the government’s dictatorial vaccination policies caused a drop in pubic trust of all vaccinations.

I have a lot to write about Dr. Fauci’s long interview in the New York Times, as well as some of his other jaw-dropping comments last week, but I’m lacking time and energy right now, and this quote demands immediate attention.

Fauci, who used his reputation and influence to trap the United States into a disastrous course of action that caused lasting harm to the nation, its culture, its economy, its children and society, articulates above the totalitarian’s lament about the United States of America. We are hearing this a great deal of late, as the Democratic Party, now the locus of totalitarian aspiration here, is increasingly open and candid about what so many of its leaders hate about America. Too many people just refuse to take orders from the smarter, more virtuous, more social justice-minded in power. Clearly, something needs to be done about it.

There’s nothing paradoxical about the phenomenon Fauci’s whining about at all. The lying, manipulation, false “facts” and abuse of authority used by health officials, Fauci prominent among them, eventually became apparent. Americans, who call themselves that rather than United Kingdom citizens because a nation was organized around the bold theory that the people—not kings, not unaccountable groups, not “experts”— have the right and duty to decide what’s in their best interest, returned to core values. Millions of people moved here to embrace the new experiment, and as a result, the independent streak is more deeply embedded in the culture than our native fans of dictatorship seem to comprehend. Decades of indoctrination from the now fully complicit news media and most of the education sector have weakened it and threaten it, but like the flag over Fort McHenry, it’s still there.

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Comment Of The Day: “I THOUGHT This Issue Would Eventually End Up At The Supreme Court, And Here It Is!”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Now that the question of whether Donald Trump was violating the First Amendment when he blocked nasty commenters on his tweets (like every other Twitter-user could do) has some distance from the reflex “That asshole! Serves him right that the courts stopped him” response from the Trump Deranged, the issue has sparked some varied and interesting commentary. Yesterday’s EA post sure did; I even managed to trigger a violent argument between two long-time esteemed commenters here.

I remain very ambivalent on the issue. Here is Rich in CT’s Comment of the Day raising a parallel that is one of the reasons.

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I serve on a local board, and in Connecticut at least, there is no inherit right for the public to speak in any particular forum (during the conduct of official business). If comments are allowed, it is up to the discretion of the board (pursuant to applicable bylaws), and they can be limited to a specific topic to help the board make a lawful and effective public policy decision. Disruptive comments can be barred. My board has never had to remove a disruptive individual, but we have that right if needed as they speak as our guests.

We’ve had heated exchanges, and have had to frequently warn the public that comments must remain on topic and civil. Allowing uncivil comments, in fact, can create a “hostile forum” that can potentially bias the commission again a particular applicant. Courts can vacate decisions made during such conditions, and made adjudicate the application itself, taking the decision completely out of the commission’s control.

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Oh For God’s Sake…A 6th Grader Should Know This Law Is Unconstitutional, And The Texas Senate Doesn’t? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Texas Senate Bill 1515, introduced by Sen. Phil King (R-Weatherford), an ethics dunce, is on the way to the Texas House for consideration. Given the degree of right-wing derangement in Texas, a fair match for Woke Derangement in California, New York and other states, it’s a better than an even bet that public schools in Texas will be required to prominently display the Ten Commandments in every classroom starting next school year. Next up, I suppose, will be a Texas law requiring citizens to say the Lord’s Prayer every morning and to pass a yearly Bible literacy test or be forced to wear sack cloth and ashes. There is no chance, zip, nada, uh-uh, zippo, that the Ten Commandments law survives a legal challenge. None. That is not, as Mona Lisa Vito states under oath in “My Cousin Vinny,” an opinion. It’s a fact.

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Assessing Blame For The Fetterman Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

It is nearly a year since Senator John Fetterman’s May 2022 stroke. Despite the stroke’s seriousness, the fact that his recovery was not merely incomplete but in question, and the risks to his health, Fetterman continued his campaign to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Elected over GOP challenger Mehmet Oz, Ftterman too office in January and quickly ended up in the hospital again, this time for clinical depression, a common aftereffect of a stroke as life-threatening as his was. Yesterday he returned to the Upper Chamber to chair the Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

It did not go particularly well. Fetterman still has trouble speaking and reading; indications are that complete cognitive recovery from his health crisis may be unattainable. Naturally, the right-wing media is, as politely as it can, hurling “I told you sos.” Columnist Stephen Kruiser snarked this morning,

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From Chicago: Today’s “It Isn’t What It Is!” Moment Of Delusion…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The impetus for this indignant and ignorant rant is Walmart’s announcement that it is closing 4 of their 8 stores in Chicago, including the one at issue. In announcing the move, Walmart explained,

The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years. The remaining four Chicago stores continue to face the same business difficulties, but we think this decision gives us the best chance to help keep them open and serving the community.

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A Show Of Hands On The Trial And Conviction Of Douglass Mackey

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Douglass Mackey was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn last week of Conspiracy Against Rights during the weeks before the 2016 election by circulating false and misleading tweets that, I think it is fair to say, were aimed at tricking naive, stupid or ignorant Hillary Cinton voters into failing to cast valid votes. The verdict followed a one-week trial before United States District Judge Ann M. Donnelly, and now Mackey faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

This is an immediate and significant law vs. ethics conundrum.

Mackey was part of an apparently loosely organized effort by Trump supporters in 2016 to use misleading and false tweets and memes like those above to fool Hillary Clinton supporters into believing that they could vote for the Democrat in the Presidential election via text messaging. The question raised by the conviction is whether such internet-based election dirty tricks actually violate the federal civil rights statutes. The relevant one in this case makes it “unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).”

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Ethics Dunce And Weenie Of The Month: Scholar And Author Mary Eberstadt

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Bullies have a right to protest, but that right doesn’t extend to dragooning others into untruths—including the untruth that people who join a hateful mob have any intention of listening to a speaker in the first place. They don’t, and the rest of us are under no obligation to help them live that lie by playing along.

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Eberstadt, recently the writer of “Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics “was scheduled to give a speech about her book’s thesis at Furman University today. Prior to her scheduled appearance, the South Carolina campus was festooned with protest fliers. The online student newspaper accused Eberstadt of perpetuating “dangerous myths.” Letters denigrating Ebestadt’s character and demanding that credit for attending her speech be denied were sent to the university’s Cultural Life Program.

So she bailed out, ran away, and capitulated to the mob. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Eberstadt complained that though the odds of physical violence being inflicted on her if she appeared were low, they were not“not non-existent.” She defended her flight from conflict by writing in part,

Bullies have a right to protest, but that right doesn’t extend to dragooning others into untruths—including the untruth that people who join a hateful mob have any intention of listening to a speaker in the first place. They don’t, and the rest of us are under no obligation to help them live that lie by playing along.

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So John Connolly Secretly Undermined U.S. Efforts To Get Iran To Return Its American Hostages In 1980…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

As we continue to debate what constitutes stealing a Presidency, Ben Barnes, a former close associate of the late John Connolly—Texas Governor, Democrat-turned-Republican, the man wounded during the assassination of President Kennedy and Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan—revealed this week that he believes he took part in a secret mission by Connolly to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s re-election. Barnes says that Connolly went to “one Middle Eastern capital after another” in the summer of 1980, telling regional leaders to get a crucial message to Iran’s leader that the nation should not release the 52 U.S. citizens taken hostage from the American embassy until after the election, which Reagan would win and proceed to give Iran “a better deal.”

The New York Times has the details here in (for a change) straightforward reporting. As we all know, Reagan won, and won handily. Nobody can know if the hostage crisis was the reason for Carter’s defeat; after all, Jimmy was not having a very successful term in any respect. Nor, apparently, does anyone know if Connolly’s alleged message ever was relayed to Iran, or if it was, whether it had any influence on Iran’s actions.

The Times makes a strong case that Barnes is telling the truth, though Barnes has no diaries or memos to corroborate his account. For one thing, there is no reason for him to make the story up. For another, the Times spoke with four living individuals who confirmed that Barnes, who is now 85, shared the story with them years ago. Another part of the account that tends to make his tale credible is that William J. Casey, the chairman of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was involved. Casey was a shady figure, and his participation in a scheme like this would be in character. Still, there is no evidence besides Barnes’ word.

Ethics Observations:

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Ethics Conundrum: Is Teaching That Communism Is Evil History or Indoctrination?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

All of the turmoil over public school indoctrination of students regarding such matters as climate change, systemic racism and LGBTQ normalization naturally raises the question of whether there are legitimate topics for indoctrination in the United States. Should students be taught, for example, that democracy is good? That the Bill of Rights are crucial to the united States’ culture? That capitalism works/

What about teaching students that Communism, at least in its execution, is a dangerous and deadly ideology? Is that a fact?

I was prompted to consider this issue after reading NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd’s characteristically inarticulate objections to Gov. DeSantis signing a bill last May designating November 10 to be set aside for teaching Florida students at all grade levels “about the evils of communist regimes throughout history.”

“I don’t know if DeSantis is going to be talking to swing voters, here’s like one of the things he said in Vegas yesterday; take a listen to this,” Todd like said prior to playing like a clip of the Republican touting his program. “You know, …it’s sort of like, look, being a Floridian, I sort of know what he’s trying to play there and all of that. I went to Florida public schools we were taught this: It was called history. It just seems like a weird politicizing—you know he’s going out of his way to politicize something.”

Isn’t it amazing that NBC has employed an individual presiding over an iconic news show who speaks that way on live TV?

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