While many of us are heartened by the sight of young people becoming politically engaged following the recent spate of shootings, Rachel M. Cohen writes that the sight of students rising up against gun violence has alarmed right-wingers who see this a signs that public education is a breeding ground for dangerous ideas that are taking hold in the minds of young people.
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The Secular Social Justice 2018 conference last weekend was interesting, in that it highlighted the work of secular activists around the country who were working on various issues of importance. After a fiery opening address by Sikivu Hutchinson, we had an array of speakers who spoke on local community organizing, elimination racial inequality in the criminal justice system, disability rights, immigration issues, the war on drugs, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the role of direct action. The presenters were entirely people of color directly involved in this work, not academic types, and thus spoke from personal experience.
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While attention has largely been focused on other issues, there has been a major escalation in the conflict in Gaza where the Israeli military has used excessive force, including live ammunition, on unarmed demonstrators, killing many. For those who are unaware, Gaza is sometimes referred to as the world’s largest open air prison, a small piece of land blockaded on one side by Israel and the other by Egypt and with the Israeli government intent on punishing the people who live there for the ‘crime’ of electing Hamas as their representatives. This article describes the history of Gaza and how it came to be.
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This report from the BBC:
For the first time in at least 100 years, the US Cabinet has a bible study group. What do they learn? What does Donald Trump make of it? And why aren’t women allowed to teach?
Every Wednesday, some of the world’s most powerful people meet in a conference room in Washington DC to learn about God.
The location can’t be revealed – the Secret Service won’t allow it – but the members can.
Vice-President Mike Pence. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The list goes on.
In total, 10 cabinet members are “sponsors” of the group. Not everyone attends every meeting – they are busy people – but they go if they can.
Meetings last between 60 and 90 minutes, and members are free to contact the teacher after-hours. So who is the man leading the United States’ most-influential bible study?
Step forward Ralph Drollinger, a seven-foot tall basketball pro turned pastor. Or, as the 63-year-old describes himself: “Just a jock with some bad knees.”
The Atlantic magazine last month hired Kevin Williamson, formerly of the conservative National Review, as a columnist. I have long been aware of Williamson’s horrible views and was shocked that a supposedly liberal magazine would hire him but Goldberg has pretty conservative views too. For example, he was an enthusiastic cheerleader for the Iraq war.
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Is there anyone who is more misunderstood and persecuted than Sam Harris? Once again he charges that he has been unfairly maligned, something that seems to happen to him with remarkable frequency. The occasion this time was that he invited Charles Murray to appear on his podcast after the latter’s talk at Middlebury college had to be cancelled due to protests. The title of the podcast was Forbidden Knowledge, suggesting that Harris was giving a platform for ideas that are true but are too politically incorrect to be allowed to be expressed openly. What is this dangerous knowledge that dare not raise its head in public? It is the old idea that when in comes to intelligence, the black community just does not have it to the same degree as whites and that this largely explains the socioeconomic disparity between the two communities. (I wrote yesterday my views on Murray and the shoddy way that he exploits people’s racial prejudices about intelligence in pursuance of truly regressive social policies.)
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He takes a close look at the scandalous state of the immigration court system where justice is at the bottom of their priorities. Not providing even two-year old children with legal representation is just one of the many problems.
I had no idea that there are so many daytime TV shows that feature courtroom cases for the purposes of entertainment, as he shows in the introduction.
Teachers are finally taking action to protest the lack of investment in public education that has led to their low and stagnant salaries, lack of adequate supplies for students, and poorly maintained facilities. To add insult to injury, teachers are constantly vilified by right-wingers as lazy moochers who complain despite having cushy jobs and their summers off. Teachers have long been fed up with this state of affairs but now they are getting angry.
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So here we are again, debating the tired and discredited thesis propounded by Charles Murray and his late co-author Richard Herrnstein in their book The Bell Curve about the role of intelligence in socioeconomic success and as its pertains to race. These issues have resurfaced in a new book by David Reich and Murray has once again returned to the spotlight. Andrew Sullivan who, as then editor of The New Republic gave a huge amount of space to publicize that earlier book, has emerged to defend Murray’s ideas. Sam Harris has once again aligned himself with odious ideas and defends them as courageous truth-telling in the fight against political correctness.
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