Tag Archives: culture

“Society’s” Needs

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Linn-Mar Community School Board (the district is on the outskirts of Cedar Rapids, IA) member Rachel Wall thinks she knows more about what “society’s needs” are and what should be taught “society’s” children than those children’s parents do. She posted—and she was deadly serious—on Facebook

The purpose of a public ed is to not teach kids what the parents want. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client is not the parent, but the community[.]

That got her enough public pushback, including calls for her resignation, that Wall added a post that she actually insisted was clarifying:

This post has garnered much ire and although I thought the sentiment was clear, it is obvious that’s not the case. Please allow me to clarify. This post doesn’t say that parents don’t matter or that students don’t matter. It doesn’t say that parents shouldn’t be involved or that students shouldn’t be our focus. What it says is that public education is an ecosystem.

Public education is an ecosystem. And she gets to define who the members of her ecosystem are. They plainly do not include the parents. Parents are not, in her exalted view, part of society. Notice, too, that while Wall doesn’t say that parents and students don’t matter, she also doesn’t say that they do matter.

She’ll hear politely what parents say, and then she’ll proceed without further regard. Children are not to be educated, they’re merely tools with which Wall and her cronies intend to mold their version of community. That status as mere tool, of course, makes the children her focus. Who uses a tool without focusing on it?

Please allow me to clarify. Parents are society. Their children are tomorrow’s society. No one is better suited to determine the needs of society today and tomorrow than society’s members: parents today and tomorrow and today’s children grown into tomorrow.

All teachers are qualified to teach is the mechanics of how to operate in society—STEM materials—how we got here—the facts of history—and how we’ll interact with each other—political history and current civics.

Sadly, dangerously, teachers of Wall’s ilk are unqualified even for that, and district managers like Wall are unqualified for anything related to our children.

In Which the Vermont Supreme Court is Wrong

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Vermont’s State government enacted a law allowing non-citizens to vote in certain local elections. In particular, the law allows Montpelier and Winooski to change their charters so that non-citizens can vote in those municipalities’ elections. Suits ensued, and the matter wound up before Vermont’s Supreme Court.

That court then proceeded to rule in favor of the law, arguing in part

[W]e conclude that the statute allowing noncitizens to vote in local Montpelier elections does not violate Chapter II, § 42 because that constitutional provision does not apply to local elections.

The court, right after that claim, actually quoted that chapter and verse:

Chapter II, § 42 of the Vermont Constitution provides:
Every person of the full age of eighteen years who is a citizen of the United States, having resided in this State for the period established by the General Assembly and who is of a quiet and peaceable behavior, and will take the following oath or affirmation, shall be entitled to all the privileges of a voter of this state:
You solemnly swear (or affirm) that whenever you give your vote or suffrage, touching any matter that concerns the State of Vermont, you will do it so as in your conscience you shall judge will most conduce to the best good of the same, as established by the Constitution, without fear or favor of any person.

The court then went through a convoluted argument to claim that the text of this Chapter and Section does not say what it says.

It’s really cut and dried, and hung in the cold cellar. Only persons who are citizens and have met a couple of additional—not substitute—criteria are permitted, via the plain, obvious, and rational meaning of the State’s constitution, to vote in any election, at any level of jurisdiction, in the State.

The State’s Supreme Court…messed up.

The Vermont Supreme Court’s ruling can be read here.

Tabloid “Journalism”

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The New York Times insults it. On the subject of the current debt ceiling discussion, the NYT tweeted

You get an image because just hours later, the NYT cravenly deleted it, and replaced that tweet with this one:

The New York Times @nytimes · 23h
Raising the U.S. debt ceiling has increasingly been used as a political tool by Republicans, leading to intense showdowns in 2011, 2013 and, now, 2023.

But who’s behind the debt itself? Listen to today’s episode of The Daily.

This is the NYT changing what they claimed in order to be more Leftist-politically correct. Even worse, though, is that the “news” outlet deliberately deleted its original tweet IAW its penchant for trying to rewrite history and pretend it hadn’t done what it had done.

The NYT is exceedingly insulting to the tabloid journalism genre of which it tries so hard to be a member.

Dehumanizing Babies

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Florida has a law (HB5, Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality Act) banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Florida’s Governor DeSantis (R) has characterized the law as

protect[ing] babies in the womb who have beating hearts, who can move, who can taste, who can see, and who can feel pain.

Planned Parenthood and the ACLU have sued, claiming that the ban violates the Florida Constitution. The Florida Constitution, Art I, Sect 23, grants a right of privacy to every natural person. The only part of the Florida Constitution that directly addresses abortion is Art X, Sect 22, which authorizes the State’s legislature to enact laws requiring notification of a minor’s parent or guardian prior to termination of the minor’s pregnancy.

Whitney White, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project:

…we are dismayed that it has allowed this dangerous ban to remain in effect and to harm real people each and every day until this case is finally decided[.]

The State’s district-level judge, Leon County Circuit Court Judge John Cooper, siding with PP and the ACLU in issuing an injunction barring enforcement, wrote in part that (as cited by Fox News)

the Florida Constitution contains an explicit “right to privacy” that is “much broader in scope” than any privacy right under the United States Constitution. He further ruled that a 15-week cutoff for abortions is not supported by sufficient state interest.

Florida appealed the judge’s ruling and got the injunction lifted; the matter now is before the State’s Supreme Court.

It’s important to note that, both the ACLU’s and Cooper’s arguments can have legitimacy only by denying that unborn babies—especially after those 15 weeks—are not “real people,” are not natural persons. The only way in which the law’s abortion cutoff time is unsupported by sufficient State interest is by denying that unborn babies are not natural persons. After all, a core responsibility—a core duty—of the State government is to see to the safety and welfare of every “real” natural person in the State.

This is Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and a Florida judge shamefully denying babies’ personhood, shamefully dehumanizing babies, just because they’re unborn.

Time to Cut Turkey Loose

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Turkey—its President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, anyway—objects to the Swedish government decision to not investigate a Kurdish protest in Stockholm over the protestors having committed no crime. Erdoğan has been threatening to block Sweden’s accession to NATO (which requires unanimous consent of the members) if Sweden doesn’t treat the Kurds IAW Erdoğan’s demands, Swedish law be damned. The present case is no exception. Erdoğan’s panties are especially wedgied because the protestors hung his effigy from a lamppost in central Stockholm.

It’s time to be done with Erdoğan’s preciousness and his hurted feelings. Turkey needs to be removed from NATO altogether. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has shown himself, for long enough, to be no friend and to be an unreliable ally and NATO member. NATO needs figure out how to expel Turkey from NATO, and get it done.

And don’t worry about Turkey’s control of the outlet from the Black Sea and Erdoğan’s sub rosa support for Russia. The straits at both ends of that outlet are narrow and easily plugged if needs be.