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Posts tagged ‘families’

The Best Thing Trump Can Do for Teachers and Kids Is Shut Down the Education Department


By: Jim Pillen | March 17, 2025

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/17/the-best-thing-trump-can-do-for-teachers-and-kids-is-shut-down-the-education-department/

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It’s beyond time to return education decisions to the states and restore local control, giving families more freedom.

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Think about the three people who affected you the most growing up. For a lot of us, I’d bet at least one is a teacher or coach. It speaks to the influence and importance schools can have on our lives and education. Teachers are difference makers who help us, as parents, educate and develop our kids. But just as we don’t need Washington to tell parents how to parent, we don’t need federal bureaucrats telling our schools how to teach. Many classroom decisions are best left up to our leaders at the local level. 

Last week, the Trump administration, under the leadership of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, announced it is following through with a campaign promise to rethink the size and scope of the Department of Education. I think it’s beyond time to return those powers and decisions to the states and restore local control, giving families more freedom.

Since the Department of Education was formed as a standalone department in 1980, we’ve seen its budget and workforce bloat — but we haven’t seen improved outcomes for students, parents, or teachers. We clearly aren’t getting what we’re paying for. 

For a decade, I served on the Board of Regents for the University of Nebraska system, getting into the weeds of education policy and decision making for our state. One of the philosophies I brought with me from that experience into the governor’s office is that we need more accountability in government.

Just like a teen staring at a phone screen, too often the U.S. Department of Education’s bureaucracy has been distracted from its mission, and American education has suffered for it. We can’t predict the future, but we have to change something. Our kids’ education is too important for us to keep pursuing mediocre results that cost us billions.

For starters, American taxpayers shouldn’t be funding controversial culture wars through our schools. We should expect that our investment will be spent on teaching kids the essentials: math, reading, science, and civics. 

There is a simpler, better path forward. By sending education back to states, we let those nearest to the student have the biggest influence. This is a pro-kid, pro-parent, pro-teacher, pro-school position. No matter the style of schooling families choose — public, private, homeschool, or hybrid — our lessons should be focused on helping our youth succeed, and you don’t need federal government mandates to do that.

In Nebraska, I know the type of people who serve in our schools. Our teachers devote their lives to our kids. We’re human, and we’re not going to get things right 100 percent of the time, but I’m confident in our ability to lead and ensure we’re addressing the needs of our students, teachers, and schools. 

Because technology and research constantly change the way we learn, educators must be able to move fast in the classroom in ways some faraway cubicle worker in Washington can’t. Teachers and administrators are closer to the action and better prepared for this type of work. 

In my state, we’re leading by making localized decisions: We’re rethinking how we invest and fund K-12 schools, raising awareness and doubling down on special education opportunities, and working with students and schools to ban the distraction of cell phones bell-to-bell.

Secretary McMahon’s stated goal is to make the state of education in America “freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.” That’s a mission all of us should be able to get behind because there’s no politics in it.

Let’s focus more on how to help the teacher in the classroom who is giving our kids this week’s spelling test. Let’s figure out ways to better support dynamic, inspiring lessons. Let’s support the guidance counselor who is helping our students navigate adolescence while they make big, life-long decisions.

Let’s let our country’s kids — and education — reach the world-changing potential they have. That should be the American tradition. The Department of Education just needs to get out of the way.

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Education, Political

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Politicians Won’t Fix America’s Child Deficit, But Churches Can


By: Nathanael Blake | August 26, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/08/26/americans-forfeit-hope-by-forgoing-families/

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As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris race for the presidency, their boosters are insisting the stakes couldn’t be higher for the future of our nation. But Americans have already given up on the future and are demonstrating this despair in the most fundamental way: Americans are not begetting more Americans. 

The birthrate in the USA has hit another record low. Though the U.S. is not yet at complete demographic collapse (e.g. South Korea or Japan), American fertility is still way below replacement rate. Regardless of whom voters choose in November, they are already issuing a vote of no confidence in the future by literally refusing to beget people to live in it.

Collapsing fertility will cause a plethora of problems — good luck sustaining economic growth and paying for entitlement programs with an aging, shrinking population. Importing high levels of immigrants to maintain workforce levels is beset with its own difficulties. But highlighting the challenges of a future with few children will not encourage people to have more kids; people will not decide to breed just because it might boost GDP in a few decades. Indeed, dwelling on the problems of a below-replacement world might even be counterproductive from a pro-natal standpoint, as it just reinforces anxiety about the future.

Neither candidate can fix this. Harris may be trying to float on a media froth of “Joy!” but the DNC’s celebration of sterility and abortion, including Planned Parenthood providing not just free vasectomies but even free abortions right outside the convention, is perhaps the most grotesque example of baby-hating anti-natalism ever in American politics. And though the GOP might look better by comparison, Trump has been stampeding the GOP away from social conservatism (to say nothing of his personal example).

Politicians are not going to save America from despairing self-extinction. And tempting as it is, we cannot just blame them for the failures of American men and women to form stable relationships and have children together. Yes, there have been unfavorable cultural, economic, and political forces, but though these may be mitigating factors, they do not negate personal responsibility. Americans have chosen the decline of America.

However, there is an upside to this, which is that we can improve matters without relying on politicians. Yes, political action is important; policies from taxes to education to housing and more matter enormously to family formation and flourishing and thank God for the people doing good work on these issues. 

But we should not sit around waiting for government to fix everything. It is not just that even well-intentioned and generous pro-family policies have often proven disappointing but that individual choices still matter. People can choose to prioritize family life even when culture, policy, and the economy make it difficult. 

However, we need more than just exhortations to individual virtue: We need the help of others. Fortunately, government is not the only domain of collective action. As the process of family formation — from dating to raising children and sustaining a marriage — is breaking down to the point of incomprehensibility in much of our culture, America’s churches in particular have an opportunity to step into the gaps left by the fraying bonds of family and community. 

Men and women need guidance in coming together to form and sustain marriages. Likewise, it is not good for parents to have to handle child-rearing all by themselves. It does take a village — but the government, and especially the federal bureaucracy, is a behemoth, not a village. 

As important as help, from meals to rides to babysitting and beyond, can be, churches can provide that which is even more valuable: instruction, examples, belonging, and love. This community is what will actually make people want to marry, have children, and stay married while raising their kids well. Pundits worrying about the long-term political and economic implications of declining marriage and low birthrates won’t actually do it. What will work is if people believe in family life as important to what it means to live well and if they believe it is not only desirable but also attainable. For this, they need examples and assistance.

To be meaningful, pro-natalism has to mean more than just pumping out babies for the future of the nation. Rather, it must explain why babies are good in themselves and why marriage and parenthood are the vocations to which most of us are called and which we should joyfully embrace. Indeed, this will likely be one of the church’s most effective means of evangelization. Amid our cultural and relational wasteland, it will increasingly fall to the church to teach people how to live well despite the troubles of this life. And valuing babies’ overindulgence, ambition, and avarice is a good place to start.

Even the best efforts may not be enough to save our nation. But it is clear that there is only hope for our nation’s future if citizens place their hope in something greater than America.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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ABORTION/PRO LIFE, Family, Political

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CHILLING: Biden’s DOJ May Be Working With Leftist Group to Silence Parents Again, America First Legal Warns


By: Tyler O’Neil / @Tyler2ONeil / August 03, 2023

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/03/is-bidens-doj-working-splc-demonize-parents-america-first-legal-demands-answers/

Merrick Garland in a suit with President Joe Biden towering over him
America First Legal is demanding documents from the Department of Justice related to the Southern Poverty Law Center and concerned parents. America First Legal is probing to see whether the DOJ had any role in the SPLC targeting of parental rights groups or if the DOJ is planning to use the SPLC to intimidate parents into silence. Pictured: Attorney General Merrick Garland listens as President Joe Biden appears behind him via teleconference on Aug. 3, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A conservative group is demanding answers about whether the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden is repeating its 2021 strategy of targeting concerned parents after the Southern Poverty Law Center just added concerned parents to its “hate map.”

SPLC staff have met with Biden at the White House, and the administration has adopted the “book banning” rhetoric many activists use to slam parents concerned about sexually explicit books in school libraries.

“The Biden administration, including the Department of Justice, has demonstrated that it will work with outside political organizations to trample on the rights of parents who exercise their constitutional rights by speaking out on the woke takeover of America’s public schools,” Ian Prior, senior adviser at America First Legal, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday.

“The SPLC’s move to designate parent organizations as ‘hate groups’ is eerily similar to the activities of the National School Boards Association in the fall of 2021, and America First Legal intends to fully investigate any coordination between the SPLC and the Department of Justice,” he added.

America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act request, asking the DOJ to turn over documents related to the SPLC and SPLC staff.

Prior had referred to a letter from the National School Boards Association to Biden, in which the school board group likened parents who protest school district policies to domestic terrorists. The letter encouraged Biden to use the Patriot Act against those parents. Later documents revealed that the White House had worked with the school boards association to draft the letter. The DOJ issued a memo urging the investigation of concerned parents, following the letter.

The DOJ ultimately rescinded the memo, and the National School Boards Association apologized for the letter. But, as The Daily Signal recently reported, recent developments suggest the SPLC may be fulfilling the association’s role in another round of attacks on parents.

On June 6, the SPLC added parental rights groups such as Moms for Liberty to its “hate map,” branding them “anti-government extremist groups” and part of an “anti-student inclusion movement.”

The SPLC attacked parental rights groups for opposing the leftward lurch in education that the SPLC itself supports—transgender lessons, sexually explicit books in school libraries, and critical race theory, which frames America as an institutionally racist country and blacks as inherently oppressed. The SPLC advocates such education through its Learning for Justice program.

As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC routinely brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as “hate groups.” It tars religious freedom organizations, such as Alliance Defending Freedom, as “anti-LGBTQ hate groups,” and that smear inspired a gunman to target the Family Research Council for a terrorist attack in 2012.

Two days after the SPLC released its “hate map” and list of “hate groups” for 2022, the White House on June 8 released a strategy “to Protect LGBTQI+ Communities.” That strategy cites “federal threat monitoring” showing that LGBT individuals face threats “increasingly tied to hate groups and domestic violent extremists.” The Biden administration’s strategy also announced that the DOJ will take “an all-of-Department approach to protecting LGBTQI+ rights,” touting the DOJ’s United Against Hate initiative.

If in fact they are “United Against Hate”, then why are they united around only one group of people? If you are united against hate, shouldn’t you be united against all hate, regardless of political affiliation?

The strategy also aims to “shield LGBTQI+ Americans from book bans,” announcing that the Department of Education would seek to counter efforts by parental rights groups such as Moms for Liberty to protect children from sexually explicit books in school.

Biden personally met with SPLC staff six times since January 2021, according to White House records, and SPLC staff attended White House meetings at least 11 times in that same period. America First Legal cites these and other pertinent facts in its Freedom of Information Act request.

The legal organization cites Daily Signal reporting on the chilling threats Moms for Liberty has received after the SPLC attacked the parental rights group. Moms for Liberty received various threats, including messages such as “I will personally eradicate you from Massachusetts,” and “piece of s— fascists like you deserve to be dragged against a wall and force-fed hot lead. Eat s— and die.”

“At the behest of its leftist teacher union allies, the Biden administration has weaponized the federal domestic intelligence community and law enforcement to intimidate parents, deter them from protecting their children, and undermine their First Amendment rights,” the request notes.

America First Legal is asking the DOJ to hand over records of meetings with SPLC staff, particularly the staffers who meet with Biden officials at the White House, records of communications with SPLC staff, all records relating to the SPLC’s 2022 “hate” report, and all communications referencing SPLC, Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, and terms related to parental rights.

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Political

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The Left Has Effectively Banned Christian Kids from Public Pools, Libraries, And Summer Camps


POSTED BY: JOY PULLMANN | MAY 23, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/23/the-left-has-effectively-banned-christian-kids-from-public-pools-libraries-and-summer-camps/

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Forcing children to sleep and undress next to kids of the opposite sex effectively puts up a ‘Christian kids need not apply’ sign on public recreation activities.

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This spring I got an email from 4-H, a club I participated in as a child, effectively communicating that my Christian family need not apply to summer camps and other activities sponsored by the quasi-public organization. (County governments often sponsor 4-H activities.) This email was signed by a 4-H staffer who put pronouns in his signature and told me, “Youth are assigned cabins based on gender indicated on the 4-H camp application and registration,” suggesting children were roomed by gender identity rather than sex.

Naturally, I was concerned that my tween daughter and son might be roomed overnight with an emotionally disturbed camper or counselor if I enrolled them in this camp. Based on numerous reported stories, I know that if this did happen, the camp likely would not even tell me, so I’d only hear about it after the fact from my kids. When I emailed again to confirm I was understanding this correctly, the staffer refused to answer definitively whether campers could be placed in private facilities such as bedrooms and bathrooms with transgender individuals. That’s an unacceptable risk to children’s well-being, as well as a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Given how socially contagious LGBT identification is, it’s not just about transgender issue but also exposing children to sexual information and pressures far earlier than they are ready. Hand in hand with grouping children by gender identity is forcing conversations about what that means, which pushes children earlier and earlier to declare and investigate sexual behaviors. This is destabilizing to their identity, not “affirming” it.

Given 4-H national’s commitment to the toxic “diversity, equity, inclusion” ideology, the fact that my Christian kids now cannot equally access lots of their programming due to 4-H’s choice to sexualize their activities was no surprise. But I still wanted to see in writing that my red county in my red state was indeed giving tax breaks and other government privileges to an organization that might room children overnight with troubled people of the opposite sex against their parents’ will. The answer is yes. (Thanks, Republicans!)

Everywhere We Go, Someone Wants to Talk Dirty to My Kids on the Public Dime

It’s not just places kids get naked. It’s everywhere. I cannot take my children to the public library anymore, either, because the shelves are so full of pornographic and hostile books that it’s not a safe place for them. There, too, self-righteous LGBT activism has resulted in effectively banning my children from yet another public place and weaponizing my own tax dollars against my children’s safety. The shelves and displays in our library are full of books telling my children lies such as that “men can become women” and “some boys have girl brains” and “gender is a social construct.” I’m happy to have these conversations with my children when they are ready, but I know my six-year-old, and he is not ready. My eight-year-old is not ready, and neither are my 10- and 11-year-old, frankly. It’s grotesque and evil to put books at their eye level that deliberately aim to confuse them about something so deep and important. To do this is to usurp not only my parental wisdom and authority over my own children but to usurp my children’s right to an innocent, emotionally secure childhood.

It Won’t Happen, And When It Does, You Bigots Will Deserve It

These all prove that rapidly rewriting American laws to ignore sexual differences has effectively banned Christian families from equal participation in public facilities and activities. It’s not just Christian families, it’s any family that thinks it imprudent to lodge their sometimes-undressed daughters with an emotionally traumatized male at summer camp or to obtain swimming lessons at a public pool. This all descends from the massive bait and switch inherent to the LGBT policy agenda. We were told it was only about extending government sanction to what consenting adults do behind closed doors. We were told it was about allowing people to visit loved ones in hospice and inherit without legal difficulties. It wasn’t going to affect our families, remember?

Anyone who raised concerns about how calling sexual activities that cannot create a family “marriage” would affect children, faith, and families was smeared as a know-nothing bigot. Anyone who wanted to logically think through how legally equating men to women in the social keystone of marriage would have a domino effect on many other laws and social arrangements was also smeared as a hateful bigot, all the way up to highly intelligent and reasoned Supreme Court dissents. It’s the same toxic play we’ve seen work ever since: Anyone with a contrary opinion or even unanswered questions is not engaged, but simply smeared.

Men and Women Are Different, And That Matters

The fact is that equating homosexual relationships to marriage very often requires explaining adult sexual behaviors to tiny children. Erasing the differences between the sexes in marriage also leads irrevocably to erasing the differences between the sexes everywhere else, from bathrooms to pools to summer camps. Breaking down all sexual differences also results in discrimination against religious expressions that acknowledge men and women are different, and these differences are divinely ordered.

Thus upending the natural sexual order has resulted, not in the falsely promised “equality,” but in simply flipping which social system will rule. For what we were prevented from discussing or even seeing was the fact that these two regimes — treating the sexes as different and complementary versus seeing them as neutered and interchangeable — are mutually exclusive.

You cannot have both transgender swimmers and single-sex sports competition. You cannot have both the sexual profligacy pushed by the dominant LGBT activist class and protect children from sexualized childhoods and predatory social situations. You must have one or the other.

In the absence of clarity about this reality combined with effective use of power on reality’s behalf, abrasive, antisocial activists have fully taken over every public space. Any further sorties are merely tinkering around the edges of their all-encompassing kingdom.

Children Are No Longer a Protected Class, They’re Targets for Groomers

So instead of achieving equality, what we have really achieved is the subversion of children’s developmental needs to adult desires. Instead of equality, we have replaced legal preferences for the only sexual arrangement that produces the most stable future citizens — lifelong married biological parents — with legal preferences for sexual arrangements that harm children and send religious folk to the back of the public bus.

Therefore, all who believe in protecting children from marinating in sexual imagery and ideas everywhere they go are the new underclass in our political regime, and in many cases no Republican officials will even recognize our legitimate concerns, let alone fight for our daughters. That’s certainly the case here in Indiana, where Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb won’t sign bare-minimum legislation protecting girls’ sports and nobody is even talking about making our libraries, camps, and pools safe for families (even though that’s one of the few value-added policies a state like Indiana can offer its citizens).

Many of our major public and private institutions are making the public square completely hostile to a happy childhood and faith. Their “solution” to alleged bigotry was institutionalizing actual bigotry. “Our kind” aren’t wanted in “their” territory, you see. Maybe we would be allowed to have separate pools and summer camps funded by our own money, as long as the ACLU doesn’t sue them out of existence like they do Christian hospitals and foster care agencies.

What we weren’t told was that letting homosexuals out of the closet would require stuffing all the children and Christians inside.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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Family, Political, Spiritual

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Will A ‘Parental Bill Of Rights’ Finally Enforce Government School Transparency?


Reported BY: RICH CROMWELL | FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/10/will-parental-bill-of-rights-finally-enforce-government-school-transparency/

mom holding kid's hand walking into school

The response to Covid-19 has accelerated a growing divide between parents and schools, which is mostly to say between parents and teachers’ unions. From denying students the ability to learn in-person to forced masking to teaching divisive, historically inaccurate curriculum based on critical race theory (CRT), the trend has been to sideline parents from their children’s educations.

In response to this, states are taking action to ensure parents remain the primary decision-makers for their kids. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a parents’ bill of rights in June 2021. Missouri is considering a similar proposal and in Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued 11 executive orders on his first day in office, two of which were related to education. Indiana is considering a parents’ bill of rights as part of a push to banish despicable materials that kids shouldn’t be taught.

At the national level, Sen. Josh Hawley has also proposed a Parents’ Bill of Rights, although so far it has not gained any traction. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, now president of Young America’s Foundation, declared “2022 is the Year of the Parent.” In other words, there’s a growing appetite among parents to take a more active role in education, whether through supporting legislation to empower them or taking the initiative to join their local school boards.

On Thursday, January 20, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott added Texas to the list of states attempting to tackle the divide when he announced his own Parental Bill of Rights, which will be voted on and perhaps enshrined into Texas’ constitution in January 2023. The initiative consists of seven points clarifying the fact that parents, not school boards or unions, are in charge of their kids’ educations.

In announcing the proposal, Abbott said, “The role of parents is being diminished by government itself across the U.S. Parents are losing a voice when it comes to their children’s education and health matters. Many parents feel powerless to do anything about it. That must end … Under the Parental Bill of Rights, we will amend the Texas Constitution to reinforce that parents are the main decision-makers in all matters involving their children.”

A key point in Texas’ proposed amendment, which could serve as a model starting point for other states reads, “Expand parents’ rights to access course curriculum and all material that is available in any education setting for their student through online posting and other methods so parents know what topics will be taught.” While Texas parents can currently get those materials, it requires an information request rather than the click of a mouse.

Submitting an information request is an unnecessary burden, particularly in an age in which schools are teaching children to be racists, encouraging them to be climate change alarmists, and pushing ludicrous and dangerous ideas about changing your sex or being “two-spirit.” Granted, two of those occurrences are from California, a state parents should just move away from rather than attempt to reform.

Even in Texas, though, there are leftist salvos in the culture war. Just last October, a mom in Keller, who with her husband had moved their family from California to avoid such things, discovered their new town’s library was offering a book featuring graphic depictions of oral sex. Parents in Leander, a town north of Austin and part of its greater metropolitan area, also discovered books with depictions and illustrations they don’t want their children to have access to without their permission.

While all these initiatives are worthy ideas, and Abbott’s proposal is the strongest yet, the jury is still out on whether they will resolve the issues parents are seeing with schools.

For starters, parental bills of rights require parents to actually be involved, which doesn’t always happen, even in the age of Zoom schooling. As a result, these various bills, amendments, and executive orders could result in nothing more than “won’t somebody please think of the children” activity. As the great men’s basketball coach, known for also educating his players, John Wooden said, “Never mistake activity for achievement.”

Elected officials such as Abbott, DeSantis, and Youngkin may be leading the nation on this front, but they’re doing so in response to their constituents. Youngkin’s victory was likely sealed, in fact, when his opponent Terry McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Given that Youngkin’s implicit message is “Stop messing with our kids, you freaks!,” the tide on parents shipping their kids off to school and hoping for the best seems to be turning.

Parents’ bills of rights could still turn out to be gimmicks, an activity that doesn’t lead to achievement, but our kids’ educations are not the government’s job. But at least for those of us who do send our kids to government-run or -funded schools, such measures offer us a way to take more charge and ensure that we approve of what’s being taught in the classroom and offer recourse for times when we have legitimate criticisms.

The work is still up to us parents, but governors and legislatures can give us the tools we need to do that work more effectively.

Richard Cromwell is a writer and senior contributor at The Federalist. He lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, three daughters, and two crazy dogs. Co-host of the podcast Coffee & Cochon, you can find him on Facebook and Twitter, though you should probably avoid using social media.

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Education, Political

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Kendall Qualls Op-ed: It’s Time for Black Americans to Embrace a Post-Racial America


Commentary BY KENDALL QUALLS | DECEMBER 27, 2021

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/27/its-time-for-the-black-community-to-embrace-a-post-racial-america/

This is the least racist period in the history of our country. If black Americans want to address disparity, we must start with the black nuclear family.

In some respects, I feel as if we are living through a time like Charles Dickens, “The Tale of Two Cities,” of which he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”

We are bombarded with messages claiming America is overflowing with systemic racism and white supremacists. Even the National Council on Family Relations now labels the traditional two-parent family an extension of white privilege. 

If you listen exclusively to the news media, the entertainment industry, and the academic-industrial complex, you will be surprised to learn this truth: This is the least racist period in the history of our country.

Having lived in the Jim Crow south, my parents and grandparents would have loved to have grown up in the America I grew up in. A large percentage of the country has been operating in a post-racial America for many years. Across our nation, people have been interacting with each other with respect, dignity, and compassion regardless of race. They have been judging people by the content of their character.

We can pass laws that allow me to enter the front door and reserve a room in any hotel in this country, but we can’t pass laws to force people to open their hearts and their homes to people who don’t look like them. But that is precisely what Americans have done for decades. So how do we explain the differences in the realities on the ground and what we hear in the media?

My family is a classic example of the “best of times – worst of times” and of the disparity between reality and rhetoric. My children, who are now adults, grew up in a two-parent family.  They had their challenges, but they also had stability, unconditional love, and clear boundaries.

Unfortunately, there is a stark contrast with their cousins on my side of the family.  Of my four siblings, my children are the only ones who grew up with both a mother and father in the home. As a result, the lives of my siblings’ children have been interwoven with trauma and tragedy.  

How do we explain these differences? Was it systemic racism built into American society? Or was it something else? We have two tales from the same family with the same skin color, yet the disparities are quite broad. 

On the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, I was five years old. At that time, nearly 80 percent of black children were born into two-parent families. Sadly, in my lifetime, we have seen the black community transform from 80 percent two-parent families to 80 percent fatherless homes without one national initiative to reverse the trend.

If the American black family was a spotted owl or a gray wolf, it would be on the endangered species list. Instead, what has happened to the American black family is nothing short of a cultural genocide.

This is not the dream King had in mind, and it has been a nightmare for children born during this period. The black community has been used as a political pawn for 50 years.

Therefore, I have taken on this crusade to begin a transformation back to cultural roots in the black community and reverse a trend that has devastated generations of families, including helpless children born into situations not of their own making.

I know from personal experience that this country is not systemically racist. My parents and grandparents lived through systemic racism. I did not. 

Unfortunately, my siblings made different decisions in their lives. All four of them used drugs and three were incarcerated. Far worse, their children were left to be raised without fathers in their lives. Theirs are the stories of many families ravaged by the lack of father involvement, personal responsibility, faith, and most importantly, hope. 

I mourn deeply for what has happened to their lives. My children live in wide disparity from their own cousins, and it is not because of the color of their skin. 

To be clear, we do have racist people in our country that do bad things to people, but the country is not systemically racist. To put it another way: If you look for racism in this country, you’ll find it. If you look for opportunities, you will find them 100 times over.

How do we resolve this “Tale of Two Cities,” the 80 percent fatherless homes and the chronically low graduations rates for black high school students? Ironically, the power to change ultimately lies in the hands of black Americans. I would like to direct the following comments to black Americans throughout the country.

For far too long, we have watched our black communities destroyed from within. As a community, we are worse off now than we were before the Civil Rights Era. 

We have it within our power to move forward and begin a transition of healing and growth that is long overdue. And we do not need government help or funds to accomplish this transformation.

We are missing out on opportunities in this country to which we are fully entitled as American citizens, opportunities that seem to be clearly visible to nearly everyone except native-born black Americans. Many of us are blinded by tears of anger, mistrust, and misunderstanding that lead to decisions that are not in our own best interests. 

Today, black American citizens who have legally immigrated from the Caribbean Islands and African countries like Nigeria earn significantly higher incomes than native-born black Americans. They achieve higher levels of education. They are living the American dream civil rights leaders desired for us. 

Many of these new citizens came to the country with intact families, which helped with their achievement and integration. Another reason for their success is they have not been indoctrinated by years of anti-white, anti-American, and anti-capitalist hatred.

Now more than ever, it is imperative that we reconcile with the past sins of our nation, re-establish two-parent families, and rebuild our culture and join other Americans around the “Table of Prosperity” as fellow citizens of this great country. How do we get started?

I believe it starts with tapping into the strengths of our cultural roots, which are linked to our Christian faith. Forgiveness is the cornerstone of Christianity. Just as God extends forgiveness to us in Christ, we are called to forgive others.

As we forgive the country for the sins of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and many other forms of bigotry that followed, the heavy burden of bitterness, anger, and resentment will be lifted from our shoulders. Our eyes will be opened so we can clearly see the path forward allowing us to focus on what is best for our future and the future of our children. 

To forgive is an act of strength, not weakness, and we must begin the healing and strengthening process in our communities. This is our Prodigal Moment. It is time to come home.

Now, to all Americans: Our shared history transcends political parties, race, religion, and class. It is a shared humanity that binds us together like the intertwined roots and branches of trees in a dense forest. 

Organized groups are igniting forest fires to divide and destroy our unique American culture.  It’s imperative that we not only extinguish their efforts, but foster a new movement that nurtures, unites, and strengthens us as Americans, regardless of race, for generations to come.

Kendall Qualls is the president of TakeCharge, which strives to unite Americans regardless of background and to inspire black and other minority communities to take charge of their own lives and not to rely on government and politicians for prosperity. He has been married for 35 years and has five children.

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Obamacare’s Secret Is Out


http://blog.heritage.org/2013/10/15/obamacares-secret-is-out/

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Timing is everything. And just as Congress’s focus seems to be drifting from Obamacare’s ravages on the economy, Americans are learning the reason this law’s implementation was postponed until after the presidential election.

That reason is becoming clear as person after person opens the mail. Insurance costs are going up. For many, not just going up—skyrocketing.

Ross, a married father of three small boys in Florida, tells us his insurance will be going up $525 per month. “I feel completely helpless,” he says.

Kevin, who also has three small boys, just found out his wife’s individual health insurance premium will be jumping from $79 per month to $311.82 per month.

“For whom exactly is the Affordable Care Act making care affordable?” asked Kevin, who lives in Alabama.

>>> Read here about how to send us your insurance hikes

But this isn’t all. While people are receiving notices that their premiums are going up or perhaps their health plans are being discontinued, there’s a secret in Obamacare’s exchanges, too.

One of the reasons the Obamacare website has been so slow and glitchy? It requires people to enter personal information before they’re able to see insurance plan options. Health and Human Services does this so that if you’re eligible for a subsidy, you won’t see the true cost of your health plan.

Obamacare is laden with mandates that are driving up the cost of health insurance. And it didn’t stop with the original law. Federal bureaucrats are continuing to write more Obamacare regulations. One estimate is that these paper pushers have added 30 words of regulations for every word in the original law.

No small tweak to Obamacare can fix this. No small tweak can give relief to these hard-working dads who are supporting their families and getting the wind knocked out of them by hundreds of dollars in insurance hikes.

If Congress does anything less than defund Obamacare, it is turning its back on all of these suffering Americans.

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