Townhall Review | Commentaries

So now we’re learning what the left means by “equity.” Seven high schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, have admitted they deliberately failed to tell some of their students they had been commended by the prestigious National Merit corporation. It was part of a new school strategy meant to provide “equal outcomes for every student, without exceptions.” 

The left’s concept of equity is crystal clear. Because not everyone can excel, no one will be allowed to.

It’s a fundamental assault on the American dream. The promise of this country has always been that you’ll be free to go as far as your hard work and talents can take you.

This premise no longer holds true when the left is in charge. Their vision is emblematic of the way Winston Churchill once described socialism: “the equal sharing of misery” … or in this case, academic mediocrity.

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The nation has, once again, maxed out its credit card. I’m referring to the $31.4 trillion dollar limit on gross federal debt.

A “debt limit crisis” is most definitely not a “crisis” in the sense of a sudden set of extraordinary and dangerous circumstances. It is, rather, a regularly recurring moment of American political Kabuki.

When power to raise the debt limit is divided between Democrats and Republicans, getting to an agreement can be tedious.

Congressional Republicans will triumph only if they can agree on a few reasonable demands—and then make those demands specific, understandable, and public; and repeat those demands again and again and again on every television set and over every radio show and podcast.

So: What’s the GOP’s ask? Spending cuts, cutting appropriations for the 87,000 new IRS staff agents, and a tangible commitment to a border wall are among the candidates but there is no consensus yet.

If they can get to that consensus without cutting defense spending, it would be an early win for the new House majority.

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Perhaps Joe Biden’s big mistake was announcing he’d run for reelection. Because that’s when all his troubles started.

Think about it. Apparently, he’s had all kinds of classified documents, stashed all over, for six years. Yet none of us knew about it. That happened only after Democrats overperformed in the midterms and Joe Biden then decided he hadn’t passed his expiration date after all.

The problem is that many in his own party don’t agree. They see Biden’s frequent confusion growing worse. They realize he might not have won in 2020 had he not been able to campaign from his basement.

But the biggest problem is that by running for reelection, Biden is blocking the rise of a new generation of Democrats.

Joe Biden was a compromise candidate from the start. Democrats rallied around him out of necessity. If he’s no longer useful, they’ll move him aside for the same reason.

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A million children have fled the public schools since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It’s not hard to guess why. During the pandemic, parents finally got a peek inside the schoolhouse doors, and what they saw was grim: too much wokeness, and too little learning. That, plus the shutdowns themselves—driven by teachers’ unions and extreme Covid policies embraced by many school districts, all contributed to the exodus.

There’s a warning here for the politicians. American parents aren’t pleased with the education their children are getting.

Legislators have two choices. They can fight the teachers’ unions leaders to try to fix the public schools. Or else they can pass legislation to offer poor and middle-class kids the same educational choice rich kids get.

The decision is theirs. But it’s clear the status quo simply isn’t an option.

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Finally cornered by the media over a scandal the White House hid before the midterms, Joe Biden claimed that he takes security “seriously” for classified material. Just how seriously? After the Department of Justice disclosed that Biden had kept classified documents in his garage, Biden told the media that it was every bit as safe as his Corvette. 

The Corvette standard had, until Thursday, been applied by the media. After Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel and detailed how the White House had slow-rolled the news of Biden’s violations of the Espionage Act, that standard began to change. Earlier reporting had been framed almost entirely around the usual “Republicans pounce!” narrative. 

Afterward, media outlets began to grudgingly note that the scandal was at least the same class as the one hyped up about Donald Trump – and that Biden and his team had hid it until well after the midterms. That’s not a Corvette standard; it’s a political car wreck, entirely of Biden’s own making.

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Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s triumph in gaining the gavel after 15 ballots was perhaps sweeter than anyone not named McCarthy knows—because it was so very hard to gain and because it was so long in coming. 

McCarthy’s road to victory began long before his first bid for the speaker’s gavel came up short in 2015. It began before McCarthy joined the House in 2007, and even before he was elected to the California State Assembly in 2002. Perhaps it began when McCarthy was still in college and he started as a staffer for Bill Thomas—the California Republican in the House for whom he worked for 15 years.

McCarthy won because enough Republicans know the value of their party, and the work that it takes to build it. 

As the new speaker distributes the fruits of his long struggle, McCarthy won’t be “punishing” anyone. He’ll be rewarding those who appreciate the value of political parties. 

The margins in the House are narrow. The challenges are great.

We wish Republicans and Speaker McCarthy well.

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Did a Russian troll-farm meme of Hillary Clinton arm-wrestling Jesus really cost her the 2016 election? After more than six years of unrelenting hysteria over “disinformation,” the Washington Post belatedly reported on a study that concluded what everyone should have known already. Data shows that Russian ‘interference’ via supposed disinformation didn’t impact voter choices—at all.

All of this irrational panic over a minor social media intrusion in a national campaign has done real damage to free speech. Congress demanded censorship from social media and tech giants, who saw this as an opportunity to interfere in American political processes for their own ends.

As Joseph Bernstein wrote in his 2021 book “Disinformed,” these warped incentives created a government-media industrial censorship complex—and it plagues us to this day, supported by mainstream media outlets who failed to ask the basic question of whether memes change voter decisions at any scale, let alone enough to decide a national election.

Shame on them all.

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The term “Potemkin Village” comes from 18th century Russia. Field Marshal Gregory Potemkin ordered the construction of pretty facades so Empress Catherine wouldn’t see the true, grim state of newly annexed Crimea.

How unfortunate the U.S. government has now stooped to the same technique. Before President Biden’s recent visit, border agents and local police cleared El Paso of homeless migrants living in the streets because shelters are full.

The cynicism is breathtaking. Pictures designed to bolster the president’s political fortunes don’t change reality. A humanitarian crisis is unfolding at the border. It’s controlled by the drug cartels bringing in the fentanyl that’s killing our young people. And a record two and a half million illegal immigrants breached America’s southern border last year.

To solve the crisis, President Biden needs to forget the Potemkin Village and the photo ops. Just restore the “remain in Mexico” policy, build the wall and renew our resolve. 

We’ll be watching.

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According to a number of news reports, CVS recently fired a nurse practitioner whose conscience prevented her from prescribing abortifacients to patients. 

CVS had previously offered her religious accommodation as appears to be required by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. She was considered a good employee and had recently received a performance-based raise. It is also reported that other nurse practitioners were willing to administer the drugs and so no patients were deprived of any services. 

So: Why the change? 

CVS was among the corporations pressured to cave into the abortion lobby ever since Roe vs. Wade was put in legal jeopardy. 

The firing was unnecessary and wrong—and it has brought legal exposure to CVS, now facing a lawsuit from the formidable Alliance Defending Freedom.

CVS should apologize and change its policy. Other companies should learn from their mistake.

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A hundred years from now, people will still be reading the works of Joseph Ratzinger, the man who went on to become Pope Benedict XVI, and was laid to rest last week.  
 
They’ll be reading him because he was one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in general, and perhaps the greatest Catholic mind of the past 50 years.
 
Benedict understood that the great challenge of our time is a battle of ideas. A battle of ideas about who and what God is, if God is; a battle of ideas about who and what man is, and what man’s place in the cosmos may be; a battle of ideas about faith and reason, and mankind’s ability to apprehend objective truth.
 
As brilliant as he was, he knew the thing that mattered most was friendship with God. His last words on earth were reportedly, “Jesus, I love you.”
 
May they be all of our last words as well.

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