Where do public school bureaucrats get the idea that they, not parents, have the final authority to decide, in some very sensitive areas, what is best for children? In Madison, Wisconsin, this attitude is some parents’ worst nightmare as teachers help children begin gender transitions without notifying their parents.

Fourteen Wisconsin parents, representing eight families, are bringing a lawsuit against the Madison Metropolitan School District. They are asking a state court to halt a district policy whereby teachers are instructed to assist and encourage students who wish to assume a different gender identity at school, while living as their biological sex at home.

In an affidavit he filed in Dane County Circuit Court, Dr. Stephen Levine, a distinguished fellow of the American Psychological Association, points out that this is the wrong way to treat troubled and questioning kids. “Extended secrecy,” he writes, “and a ‘double life’ concealed from the parents is rarely the path to psychological health. For this reason, at least,” he says, “schools should not support deceit of parents.”

Attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty are representing the parents. Digging in, the district stands by its policy as a way to fulfill its “responsibility to uphold the right of every child to be educated in a safe, all-inclusive, and non-discriminatory learning environment.”

Safe?

Variations of this policy exist in Michigan, New Jersey, and California. As of January 26, the official position of the California Teachers Association is that school clinics are needed, in part, so students can pursue gender transition. The Association made clear its goal is to “allow trans students to begin… hormone therapy without the consent of both legal guardians.” The idea is to remove what they call the “barrier of parental permission.” This would extend the freedom students currently possess to leave class without parental consent for birth control and abortions.

Educators have no business usurping parental authority to make these life-altering decisions.

Even though there is lots of evidence that violence is declining, many people don’t believe it. On my radio program, we have documented that the violent crime rate has dropped significantly over the last few decades. And if you want a longer look at the decline in violence over millennia, you could pick up the 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker.

Apparently, many people don’t believe it. That is why he spends a few pages in his 2018 book, Enlightenment Now, trying to answer some of the skeptical comments and questions. Here are a few of his responses.

Some wonder how you can say violence has decreased when we hear about school shootings and terrorist bombings. He points out that decline is not the same thing as disappearance. Something can decrease quite a bit without vanishing altogether. The best way to examine the level of violence is to look at the level today and compare it to the level in the past.

Others argue that all of these statistics mean nothing if you are one of the victims. That is certainly true. But it also means that you are less likely to be a victim. All the stories about civil wars, terrorist attacks, and other examples of violence make us feel like the world is more dangerous than it was in the past.

He has even heard people charge him with being naïve, sentimental, idealistic, and romantic because he says violence has gone down. He merely says, look at the data. To look at the data and still say that violence has gone up is delusional. To ignore the data and say that violence has gone up is to be a know-nothing.

This discussion about violence is yet another reminder that there is often a major difference between perception and reality. That is why we need to do good research and exercise discernment.

Nine years ago, I quoted historian Niall Ferguson in one of my commentaries. His book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, explained that western civilization succeeded because of six “killer apps—competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic.” These are the secret sauce of Western civilization.

Last week he explained this in a PragerU video with the title “Why the West Won.” Since you probably won’t read his book, I suggest you take five minutes out of your life to watch the video. Unfortunately, the ideas he shares in the video aren’t being taught in the universities today. Instead, professors criticize every aspect of our culture while ignoring what made Western Civilization successful.

These are the six killer applications. The first was economic and political competition. The second was the scientific method. All the major 17th century breakthroughs happened in Western Europe. A third application was the rule of law and representative government. This included private property rights and representation of property owners in elected legislatures.

The fourth was modern medicine. Nearly all the 19th and 20th century breakthroughs in health care were made by Western Europeans and North Americans. Fifth was the consumer society. The industrial revolution took place because there was both a supply and a demand. Sixth was the work ethic. Westerners worked harder and saved more of what they earned. This led to capital accumulation which in turn led to investment in the wonders of modern technology.

These six killer apps made the West successful and have now been downloaded to other countries as well. That is why the west won.

Kristen Day asked former mayor Pete Buttigieg an important question. She is the executive director of Democrats for Life. She explained that there are 21 million prolife Democrats and wanted to know if he would support “more moderate platform language in the Democrat Party to ensure that the party of diversity, of inclusion, really does include everybody.”

He was not interested in changing the language. None of the other Democrat candidates for president show any interest in returning to a more moderate perspective. Not so long ago, the platform followed the phrase used by Bill Clinton, who wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Alexandra Desanctis reminds us that eight years ago, the party removed the word “rare” from its platform. Four years ago, the party platform called for the repeal of the Hyde amendment, which has been added to spending bills on a bipartisan basis since 1976.

By the way, this shows the fallacy of the common statement by pundits that both parties have become more extreme. The Republican platform language on abortion hasn’t changed in decades. The Democratic platform became more extreme during each presidential election of the last decade.

The increased extremism on abortion may not help Democratic candidates. A recent Gallup poll discovered that nearly one-thirds of self-identified Democrats also describe themselves as pro-life. Even Democrats who don’t identify themselves in this way, still favor restricting abortion much more than these candidates would allow.

I doubt that the 2020 Democratic Party Platform will include moderate language. If anything, the platform will probably have stronger statements about abortion. The passage in the New York legislature of the Reproductive Health Act that allows late-term abortions illustrates the extreme party attitudes on abortion.

There was a time in the past when political leaders of both parties talked about the importance of religion in the founding of this country. Terry Jeffrey found a speech by an urban northeastern Democrat that illustrated this so well.

The candidate proclaimed that “a devotion to fundamental religious principles has characterized American thought and action.” He argued that the nation’s greatest leaders understood the “essential religious idea” of our founding. “Our earliest legislation was inspired by this deep religious sense,” he explained. “Our first leader, Washington, was inspired by this deep religious sense” and “Lincoln was inspired by this deep religious sense,” he continued.

Then his speech turned to a warning. He sensed that the very principles on which the nation was founded were being attacked. He warned that “these basic religious ideas are challenged by atheism and materialism: at home in the cynical philosophy of many of our intellectuals, abroad in the doctrine of collectivism, which sets up the twin pillars of atheism and materialism as the official philosophical establishment of the State.”

Near the end of his speech he said “we cannot assume that the struggle is ended. It is never-ending. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It was the price yesterday. It is the price today, and it will ever be the price.”

This was a rousing speech about liberty and religious ideals delivered by an urban northeastern Democrat who also warned that we face a struggle from secular materialistic enemies here and abroad. How did this candidate do after giving such a speech?

He was first elected to Congress and later elected to the US Senate. Fourteen years later, he was elected president of the United States. His name was John F. Kennedy.

His speech back then wasn’t that controversial. It was even prophetic. But I doubt it would it be permitted in today’s Democrat party.

At this point in the election season, it is difficult to predict what will happen once the votes are counted in November. The president could be reelected or defeated. Republicans might win back the House and keep the Senate. Or the opposite could occur.

It is likely that we will once again have a divided government like what we currently have. That will mean very little will get done legislatively. But it is worth explaining to the younger generation, that was not always the case.

Scott Morefield reminds us the President Richard Nixon appointed four somewhat conservative Supreme Court justices and 231 federal judges even though his party did not control either the House or Senate. President Ronald Reagan was able to get his signature Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 passed both by the Senate and a Democratic House controlled by Speaker Tip O’Neill. In fact, the two worked on other bipartisan bills.

Bipartisanship also worked the other way. Democrat President Bill Clinton reformed the welfare system with Republican help in the House. President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama each got two Supreme Court justices confirmed with bipartisan support and only a little opposition. And President Obama worked with Republicans to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

By now, you must be thinking “how things have changed.” President Trump was able to get a bill on criminal justice reform passed, and Congress reluctantly decided to pass a trade bill, after voting articles of impeachment.

The recent votes illustrate how things have changed. No House Republicans voted for impeachment. Every Senate Democrat voted to remove the president from office. In the past, even when we had a divided government, we still had some bipartisan votes. Those days seem long gone, and that is not good for the republic.

A new study about the state of the family leads to an unexpected conclusion. Researchers Wendy Wang and Bradford Wilcox studied trends in progressive California because, they write, “California has been at the vanguard of family change in America.” The study is titled: “State of Contradiction: Progressive Family Culture, Traditional Family Structure in California.”

Their surprising conclusion: California has “a higher share of stable, married families than the nation as a whole.” Drs. Wang and Wilcox found that 67% of “California parents are in intact marriages, compared to 63% of American parents.”

The study also confirmed what other research shows about the marriages of better-educated couples. In California, 80% of parents with college degrees are in intact marriages compared with 61% of parents who are not college-educated. In some of the wealthiest zip codes in the state, the divorce rate is effectively zero.

California elites, in Silicon Valley and neighborhoods surrounding Hollywood, are famously supportive of and even celebrate all kinds of lifestyles and family structures. Yet most understand that stable marriages foster stable families, financial security and flourishing children.

The Atlantic recently published a chronicle of the nuclear family in America by New York Times columnist David Brooks in which he points out that across the country “Among the highly-educated, family patterns are almost as they were in the 1950’s; among the less fortunate, family life is often in utter chaos.”

In his piece, entitled “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake,” he makes a convincing case that, as the extended family plays a smaller and smaller role in American life, the nuclear family becomes more “fragile. Better-educated and wealthier families can “buy” the help extended families used to provide.

Perhaps. But it’s also true that the Bible’s design for marriage with a mom and a dad raising their biological kids works. Better-educated parents, even if they’re progressives who think alternative families are fine for others, have somehow figured that out .

John Stossel says the problem is “bad laws.” Rafael Mangual describes it as the “overcriminalization of America.” Both are talking about the same problem and teamed up to produce a video that highlights an issue that needs to be addressed.

To put it simply, we have too many laws on the books, many of which are outdated and need to be removed. For example, there is a law in South Carolina that bans 18-year-olds from playing pinball. Taking a rake from New York to New Jersey is actually a federal crime.

Stossel pushes back on some of the examples in the video by pointing out that nobody goes to jail for silly or outdated laws. Mangual responds, “That doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem.” Compliance takes time, money, and effort. He then provides example where people were prosecuted.

A woman was prosecuted for sheltering animals during a hurricane. She said she was just trying to make sure these poor animals weren’t drowning. But North Carolina prosecutors filed criminal charges against her for practicing veterinarian medicine without a license.

In Kentucky, one man was giving eyeglasses to need y people who could not afford eye doctors. But the state officials told him that his act of compassion was a crime.

In these cases, you can see that part of the problem is that established businesses are using existing laws or getting other laws passed so they can push out competition. They have lobbyists and can use laws and bureaucratic regulations to give them a market advantage.

The bigger issue is that we have too many laws on the books. People commit crimes nearly every day without even knowing that they are doing so. State legislators need to focus some of their attention on existing laws that are outdated and unnecessary. Before they pass new laws, they should repeal the laws that we no longer need.

One weapon used by progressive activists is the “cancel culture.” It is an organized attempt to ruin your reputation or destroy your business. Vince Vaughn was the target of leftists because he was caught on camera talking to President Trump and shaking his hand. Another example was the attempt by students at Oberlin College to put Gibson’s bakery out of business. Vince Vaughn’s career will probably survive, and a court actually awarded the Gibson family millions from the school.

We might not fare so well if the progressive mob targets us. That would certainly be true if government or business starts working against you. A few years ago, I wrote of the Obama administration’s program known as Operation Choke Point. Pressure was put on banks to decline loans to gun manufacturers and other operations.

When the Trump administration put a stop to Operation Choke Point, progressive activists decided to start targeting banking institutions with smear campaigns so they would stop lending to businesses and industries they define as undesirable. That would not only include gun manufacturers but fireworks manufacturers, oil and gas companies, companies doing business with Israel, and just about any business owned by a conservative or Christian.

Bank regulations prohibit such discrimination, but that hasn’t stopped some of these activists from weaponizing these banks for their political purposes. That is why the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on the subject. The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee along with more than a dozen other US senators sent a letter of concern to regulators before the hearing.

These progressive activists have found a way to force their views on society without winning an election and without convincing Congress to implement their desires. We cannot let a liberal mob intimidate banks into denying credit to legitimate businesses and industry.

The impact of the big tech companies on this election may be more than we have ever seen before because so many Americans are on social media. Two-thirds (68%) of adults use Facebook and nearly three-fourths (73%) use YouTube. The percentages for those under the age of 50 are even much higher.

The tech companies have enormous power to select the information we read and share with others. Peter Hasson is the editor at the Daily Caller and also author of the book, The Manipulators. He provides an in-depth look at how big tech influences our political perspectives and decisions.

One way the tech companies have increased influence is through moderators. In the case of YouTube, there are more than 10,000 of them looking for inappropriate content. A memo at Google had the title, The Good Censor, and made the case that the Internet may have been “founded upon utopian principles of free speech” but then argues that free speech is no longer in vogue.

Two forms of censorship actually occur. The first is what can be described as “hard censorship” in which content is deleted and users are suspended. But the more insidious form is what could be called “soft censorship.” That is where these tech companies make content harder to find by pushing a link off the first page or first few pages. Hasson says that hard censorship is similar to tearing down a roadside billboard. Soft censorship would make the billboard difficult to see by erecting other billboards in front of it.

Also, these tech companies do feel significant pressure to censor from both external forces (like left-wing activists) and internal forces (from left-leaning employees). In the last presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton received 99 percent of all the political donations made by tech workers in Silicon Valley. That is why you need to get your news and information from more than just social media.