indoctrination

Unethical Quote of the Week: SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

 “Public schools, this Court has said, are “at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny.” … They offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society. That experience is critical to our Nation’s civic vitality. Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs. Today’s ruling ushers in that new reality.”

—-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting (ignorantly as usual) in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, the 6-3 ruling in which the Court held that schools have to give parents the option of having their children absent themselves from lessons that are adverse to the family’s’ religious beliefs.

Ethics Alarms already weighed in on this case earlier here, but I neglected to focus on the full calamity of the Wise Latina’s sinister dissent. The flood of incompetent, woke garbage spewing from her colleague Justice Jackson of late has raised a lively debate over which of the two women was the worst DEI appointment. Obama picked Sonia before DEI was a thing, so maybe Jackson, Biden’s selection, wins by default; still O made it clear that it was Sotomayor’s ethnicity and gender and not her legal acumen that got her the “historic” seat on the Court.

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Mahmoud v. Taylor: No, LBGTQ Indoctrination Is Not The Theory of Evolution

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

…and shame on the three Progressive, woke Justices who are implying that it is.

24-297 Mahmoud v. Taylor (06/27/2025), just handed down by the Supreme Court, should have been an easy 9-0 decision. Sadly, the three female radicals on the Court (I once had high hopes for Justice Kagan, who’s not, you know, an idiot like the other two, but she clearly has been brain-washed with Clorox or something, so the tally was 6-3) opposed the holding that families choosing not to have their children exposed to pro-gay, bi-, trans, etc propaganda in their public school classes have a right to do so. (At least the majority didn’t say parents have an obligation to do so, which would have been my position.)

The decision declared illegal a Maryland school board’s decision to deny opt-outs for religious students during such scintillating in-class readings as “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” a story about a child’s gay uncle marrying a man, and “Pride Puppy,” an alphabet primer about a dog who gets lost at a gay pride parade. Incredibly, the lower court and Court of Appeals had sided with the school against a group of Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox parents who argued that the school board’s lack of an opt-out policy breached their right to exercise their religion under the First Amendment.

“The Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion,” Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote for the conservative majority. “[F]or many people of faith across the country, there are few religious acts more important than the religious education of their children…In the absence of an injunction, the parents will continue to be put to a choice: either risk their child’s exposure to burdensome instruction, or pay substantial sums for alternative educational services.”

To read the hysterical dissent from the three knee-jerk progressives, SCOTUS just returned to the bad old days of Tennessee v. Scopes (1925), when a state made it illegal to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution because it contradicted the Bible (as Clarence Darrow showed by making a monkey out of William Jennings Bryan on the witness stand, Darwin didn’t and doesn’t).

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The Significant Thing About The SCOTUS Oral Argument in Mahmoud v. Taylor Is That The Three Liberal Justices Were Too Biased To Recognize The Obvious…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

…Which is that there are no good reasons at all to expose elementary-school-aged children to LGTBQ literature and propaganda. This is depressing. While the Supreme Court conservative Justices have shown themselves capable of ruling against extreme right-wing agenda items when the law dictates, the Three Progressive Sisters on the Court increasingly seem incapable of anything but lockstep wokism.

During nearly two-and-a-half hours of oral arguments last week regarding the case of a group of Maryland parents who sued Montgomery County (Maryland) to be able to pull their elementary-school-aged children out of instruction that includes LGBTQ themes, a clear majority of the Justices indicated that they had the better argument. That is that the local school board’s refusal to give them an opt-out violates the family’s religious beliefs and therefore their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion.

I find it annoying that the case has to rest on Freedom of Religion at all: why shouldn’t any parents be able to decide that they don’t want their children introduced to these topics before puberty, or exposed to indoctrination on subjects that only parents should handle, within the family?

The parents in the case include Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, who are Muslim, Melissa and Chris Persak, who are Roman Catholic, and Svitlana and Jeff Roman, who are Ukrainian Orthodox and Roman Catholic. (Having some Scientologists and Evangelical Christians would have been nice…)

In 2023, the Montgomery County School Board in one of the most Democratic counties in the nation was flushed with the Democratic Party’s totalitarian vigor, and announced that it would no longer allow parents to excuse their children from instruction using LGBTQ-themed books. The parents argued in federal court that the board’s refusal to allow them to opt their children out violated their rights under the First Amendment to freely exercise their religion, since it stripped them of their ability to instruct their children on gender and sexuality and to control how and when their children are exposed to these issues. How radical of them!

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Ethics Dunce (Again): Georgetown Law Center Dean William Treanor

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[Psst! It’s Georgetown University Law Center, not “school.” The Hill and other lazy publications keep calling it the law school, which was what the institution’s name was before it moved from the Georgetown campus (in Georgetown, a picturesque section of D.C.) to Capitol Hill near all the courts, including the Supreme Court. If you saw the place, you would know that “center” is an appropriate description. The name was the inspiration of then Dean Paul Dean, visionary, a respected lawyer and talented fund-raiser. He was also a good friend of mine as well as a cherished mentor]

William Trainor has been criticized on Ethics Alarms before notably during this fiasco, when he punished an incoming faculty member, Illya Shapiro, for daring to question Joe Biden’s wisdom of narrowing his choice of Supreme Court nominees to fill a vacancy to women of color, the same criteria that worked out so, so well with Kamala Harris. Following the lead of his radically indoctrinated students (it’s supposed to be the other way around), the GULC dean suspended Shapiro pending…well, something, and then after letting him twist slowly in the wind for months, finally let him back into the fold whereupon Shapiro quite properly told him to take his job and shove it, as I would have under like circumstances.

There were other instances when Trainer allowed his institution to be more woke than responsible; he is largely the reason my Law Center diploma is turned face to the wall in my ProEthics office. Here is an episode that didn’t directly involve the Dean but that occurred on his watch.

Now comes another skirmish. Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sent a letter to GULC last month asking if the Law Center had eliminated its commitment to DEI. “At this time, you should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship, or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered,” Martin wrote.

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American Students Are Falling Behind In Basic Academic Skills: How Can This Kind of Curriculum Be Justified?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

A news article in today’s New York Times [Gift link!] begins thusly:

“Late last fall at the Hugo Newman School in Harlem, two social studies teachers handed out pages of hip-hop lyrics to their seventh graders, and then flicked off the lights. The students appeared surprised. They had been studying ancient matriarchal societies, including Iroquois communities that had women as leaders. Now, their teachers were about to play the song ‘Ladies First’ by Queen Latifah and Monie Love. The teachers instructed their students to highlight any lyrics that reminded them of the Iroquois women, who were known as the Haudenosaunee Clan Mothers. Although they did not know it, the middle schoolers were in the midst of their first lesson of ‘Black Studies as the Study of the World,’ a curriculum that rolled out in September and is now available to every New York City public school.”

“In New York, we are trying our best to be Trump-proof,” the Times quoted Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the New York City Council, as saying in a recent interview. “We are doing everything we can to protect the curriculum.”

The obvious question is “Why?” Protect the curriculum from straightforward standards that ensure that the average student leaves high school with the core skills necessary for success in work and life? By its very nature, bombarding middle school students with lessons on “matriarchal societies”—an elective college course if there ever was one—is political in both nature and intent.

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Is “The Three Amigos” Really Racist, or Have I Just Been Brainwashed?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I am proud to say that I thought “The Three Amigos” was a largely unfunny and lousy movie when I saw it the first time…this, despite the fact that I generally admire John Landis as a director of comedies (he will always have a place dear in my heart for directing “Animal House”), and although I generally appreciate the talents of the movie’s stars, Steve Martin and Martin Short (Chevy Chase not so much). For some reason it has been showing repeatedly on MGM+ of late, and upon re-watching the thing after my sock drawer was in order, I found another reason to hate it other than its annoying tone and its predictable gags. This time around, the film seemed egregiously racist.

Oh no! Have 40 years of relentless bludgeoning by political correctness, hyper-sensitivity and wokism taken over my brain? When I first viewed the film (which Wikipedia tells me was ranked 79th on Bravo’s list of the “100 Funniest Movies,” a factoid that only reaffirms my long-standing belief that Bravo is useless), that thought never occurred to me for a second.

One of many films that borrows heavily from the Western classic (and ethics movie) “The Magnificent Seven,”—others include “A Bug’s Life” and “Battle Beyond the Stars” along with a pretty bad remake, with Denzel Washington standing in for Yul Brenner—“The Three Amigos” (the film’s score is by the same composer who scored “The Magnificent Seven”) tells the tale of three incredibly white silent movie stars who end up rescuing a town of substantially helpless and poor Mexicans. The town’s tormenter is “El Guapo,” the evil leader of the most ugly, stupid, dirty and brutal band of Mexican bandits in silver screen history. All right, maybe the Mexicans in “The Wild Bunch” are worse, but the white guys in that bloody film are hardly what you’d like to see your daughter bring home to meet the family either. Naturally the three white guys prevail, despite their collective IQ of about 210, for an average of 70 each (it actually breaks down to 85 for Martin’s character, with Short at 70 and Chase at 65).

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Ethics Dunce: The Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

If the administrators at the insanely expensive school (the parents of 1,700 students pay tuition for all grades of $65,540 a year) are not embarrassed by that headline, they should be. Morons.

The school told families this week that “students who feel too emotionally distressed” after the election can get excused from classes, and—I find this incredible—psychologists will be available during the week to provide counseling for the tender souls who have presumably been told by their teachers and parents that they will be sent off to work camps and their parents will be executed in Trump wins.

The message to parents “acknowledges that this may be a high-stakes and emotional time for our community. No matter the election outcome will create space to provide students with the support they may need.” Excused absences will be allowed on Wednesday or whatever day the election results are announced for those students who are unable to “fully engage in classes.”

Any student who doesn’t immediately recognize this as a “Get Out Of School Free” ticket is too dim-witted to be in school.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Why does a public school herd its students into campaign events — replete with student musicians repurposing the school’s fight song to support a political candidate? It’s compulsory schooling and compulsory participation in politics. The purpose is openly political.”

Bloggress Ann Althouse, criticizing a Harris campaign stop at a high school in Georgia.

I am inclined to agree with Althouse and see this as totalitarian-ish indoctrination, but only because the public schools have been tending increasingly that way in recent years. It’s possible, I think, that the motivations of the teachers and the school were not partisan but educational. In a healthier era when parties didn’t try to demonize each other, a chance to experience a Presidential campaign up close would have been regarded as unique teaching opportunity. I know that in 1960, when I first began my obsession with U.S. Presidents, I would have loved to be in the middle of a candidate’s visit, and which candidate would have mattered to me not one whit.

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I’m Curious: What Would You Call The Results of This Newsbusters Study In Addition To “Unethical”?

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Newsbusters has the results of a study it performed to examine the political orientation of Late Night TV Guests. It isn’t a surprise to me in the least, yet seeing the results still gave me a jolt. As I write this, I am trying to figure out what this obviously intentional practice of the networks and entertainment industry is, exactly. But first, the study…

It tallied the guest appearances on five daily late night comedy shows: ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. The period examined was the nine months from October 2, 2023, to June 27, 2024.

In that period, progressive/Democrat guests outnumbered conservative/Republican guests 137 to 8, or 94% to 6%. If you just count partisan officials, the count was 34 Democrats to 5 Republicans.

Colbert—naturally—had the greatest cumulative discrepancy at 14-1. The Jimmy Kimmel balance count was 7-0. Seth Meyer’s was 3-0, and Jimmy Fallon, who is mostly apolitical (except in his monologues) was 1-0. Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show came in at 9-4.

In the category of journalists and celebrities, the slant was 104 progressives to 3 conservatives.

Colbert was again the most biased at 34-0. The Daily Show was second in bias at 29-1. Meyers had a 21-0 progressive imbalance, Fallon’s was 11-1, and Kimmel’s was 7-1. No journalists from conservative publications or platforms were allowed: here are the outlets represented:

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Hey Douthat! How About Coming Right Out and Stating That U.S. College Students Are Indoctrinated into Radical, Progressive, Marxist Ideology?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Talk about burying the lede.

Sort-of conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat issued what might have been a useful column, What Students Read Before They Protest, about the reasons why students at Columbia and other “elite” educational institutions are demonstrating in favor of Hamas, terrorism, anti-Semitism, and wiping Israel off the face of the earth. But Douthat, who can write clearly and forcefully when he wants to (or, I suppose, when his woke and biased editors let him) instead buries his own objective in foggy rhetoric, Authentic Frontier Gibberish and equivocation to such an extent that 1) few will have the patience to read it and 2) the importance of his point is diluted and lost.

This is how Jonathan Turley used to write until he was red-pilled.

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