Townhall Review | Commentaries

The state of California is now considering an ethnic studies curriculum for the public schools—and we should all take notice.

For decades, California has had an outsize influence on such things as curriculum and textbooks because if a textbook is adopted in California, it’s likely also to be adopted elsewhere.

I knew this proposed curriculum would be bad. But it’s even worse than I imagined.

Capitalism is presented as racist.

The English language is re-tooled. The word “history,” for example, is abandoned because it contains the oppressive word “his”—which is too rigid, representing a “gender binarist” approach to telling history.

Academic disciplines are turned upside down and inside out.

The proposed curriculum itself makes it very clear what the objective is: the absolute social transformation of the United States.

In essence, we’re looking at not only a new curriculum, but the rewriting of history, and a redefining of reality.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recently, Democrat presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, decided to try his hand at Bible application. He argued that the federal government should prohibit any wage lower than $15/hour.

And he quoted the book of Proverbs: “Whoever oppresses the poor taunts their maker.”

When it comes to failure, that’s what we call a two-fer: It was both bad theology and bad economics.

First, bad theology: The Bible is a very long book and it does not specify a specific wage level, ever. The New Testament parable of the workers seems to argue in favor of mutually agreed upon wages, not mandated wages.

And then we have Mayor Pete’s bad economics: There is no doubt that a $15/hr. minimum wage would create a spike in unemployment, and the hardest hit would be the children of the working class and the poor.

Let’s hope the nation is not fooled by either bad economics or bad theology.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the most important and helpful statements made in the aftermath of the recent horrific mass shootings came by way of the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal.

The article is entitled, “The Killers in Our Midst.” The shootings, they write: “are horrifying assaults on peaceful communities by disturbed young men. American politics will try to simplify these events into a debate about guns or political rhetoric, but the common theme of these killings is the social alienation of young men that will be harder to address.”

They point to the fact that this is not a new reality, it is not a reality now that spans several presidential administrations, including presidents of both parties. The motivations of the killers, they observe, are “often too convoluted to sort into any clear ideology.”

So what we’re facing is a cultural crisis, a spiritual crisis, and it begins, as we know, in the human heart.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recently our nation was traumatized by two mass shootings. Predictably, these acts of evil were immediately ransacked by media commentators, politicians and candidates in search of political ammunition. Left-of-center media started in immediately after the El Paso massacre, blaming President Trump and Fox News. But in less than 24 hours, another mass shooting occurred in Ohio which appears to have been committed by someone of the Left, and of course, conservative media was quick to point that out.

Let me suggest that instead of using this to point the finger at hyperbolic rhetoric from the “other side,” we’d do well it to point the finger at hyperbolic rhetoric in general.

You don’t have to look too long at cable news and social media to see our cultural affinity for overheated rhetoric.

Extremism mixed with mental illness is a toxic, and even lethal cocktail.

Let’s let the measured rhetoric start with us.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China recently claimed that it was the United States that instigated the waves of pro-democracy protests that have washed over Hong Kong in recent weeks. It’s a ridiculous claim, but unfortunately suggests the possibility that Beijing is foreshadowing a military intervention in Hong Kong to maintain control.

The commander of China’s military outfit in Hong Kong recently said, in fact, that it was “determined to protect national sovereignty, security, stability, and the prosperity of Hong Kong.”

It wouldn’t be the first time that China has used force in this way. Many of you remember the brutal repression in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Tibet was invaded in 1950. And, more recently, we’ve’ seen the crackdown on Uighur Muslims in western China.

Hong Kong has been an important center of both commerce and freedom, just a few miles from the Chinese mainland. Whether that will continue is a serious question that we all should be concerned with.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The horrific shooting in El Paso shows the folly behind glib, simplistic explanations for deadly violence. Twenty-two deaths in this single incident nearly equals the 23 victims in all El Paso murders last year. For more than a decade, this border metropolis of 680,000 has been one of America’s safest cities—despite widespread fire-arm ownership in Texas and limited gun regulation, exposing the illogic behind leftist attempts to blame deadly incidents on law-abiding gun owners.

Meanwhile, El Paso’s population is 82 percent Latino, with its low crime history undermining demagogues who connect Hispanic immigration with high levels of violence. In fact, three of the safest big cities anywhere—El Paso, San Jose and San Diego—each have disproportionately huge Latino populations, while cities with the highest murder rates—St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, Detroit and Cleveland—have at most 7 percent Latino population, less than half the national average.

We must reject simplistic and false explanations in order to responsibly address murderous gun violence.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Twenty of the Democrats vying to be our next President finished two nights of debates, where it became very clear that the energy of the party was behind policies that would push America to the far left—making the Democrats of the past look like conservatives.

Several leading Democrats—including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders—endorsed single-payer health care plans that would kick over 160 million Americans off the private health coverage they currently have and enjoy. Still others, like Julian Castro and Cory Booker, called for decriminalizing the act of crossing the U.S. border without authorization. And Warren led the charge for a multi-trillion dollar plan to forgive student debt.

Meanwhile, President Trump is gleefully waiting—essentially unopposed—to run against one of these Democrats next year. He’ll make the election a contest between socialism and capitalism. And I have a pretty good idea of which side of that argument will emerge victorious.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amazon recently announced that it will no longer sell books by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi and others which help people deal with unwanted same-sex attraction.

With this, we’ve crossed a new boundary in the no-longer latent authoritarianism of the sexual revolution. In Judaism and Christianity, your nature is defined by God. In ancient Greek thought, it was defined by nature. Our modern on-going sexual revolution threw all of that aside and said that you define yourself, your will decides your identity.

But now even that restraint is being thrown off, and a one-way door is erected in its place. If you want to self-identify as gay, you can, and help is available. But if you want to self-identify as straight, the help window is slammed shut.

Amazon is moving in a chilling direction: from online book seller to online book censor.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most leaders of the Jewish community reacted with appropriate indignation to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez using the terms “concentration camps” and “never again” to compare Trump’s border policies to Hitler’s holocaust.

 An LA Times Op-Ed, however, outrageously supports her with the headline: “I’m Jewish and I don’t say this lightly: ‘Never Again’ is right now in America.”

 The opinion piece by David Ulin shrugs at the fact that the two key purposes of Nazi concentration camps—providing slave labor and perpetrating mass killing—have never been witnessed at border detention facilities. 

 Nazis ripped millions from their homes against their will, but today’s asylum seekers left home by choice to find refuge in America. But failure to welcome all-comers hardly amounts to Nazism. To claim otherwise distorts the true nature of the Holocaust and undermines our ability to resist real fascist dangers should they ever arise. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Older Americans face a housing crisis—and Congress has an opportunity to do something about it.

No: Retirement savings reform is not a hot topic for journalists, but it’s one of the few areas where Democrats and Republicans in Congress and President Trump could pull off some bipartisan reform when legislators reassemble in September.

Older Americans on fixed incomes face a housing crisis, and one part of that solution is retirement reform.

When Congress gets to gets back to business in the fall, they ought to consider how to help seniors stay in their homes as incomes decline or stop but mortgage payments stretch out into the future.

Retirement reform could allow seniors to pay off all or part of their home mortgage debt with money saved in their own retirement accounts without triggering taxes on the money used to do so.

Congress has an opportunity to take a big step toward solving one part of this problem.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.