Earlier this month Dr. Thomas Sowell published his book, Charter Schools and Their Enemies. It is an eye-opening look at the success of these schools and the growing criticism of them from the educational establishment and politicians in the Democratic Party.

When public schools and charter schools in New York are compared, you can see a significant difference. A majority of charter schools students tested proficient or above in the Language Arts test. Most of them were African American or Hispanic American. On the Mathematics test, 68 percent of charter schools had a majority of students testing proficient. By contrast, in the traditional public schools just 10 percent had a majority of the students testing proficient.

Thomas Sowell concludes: “In a realm where educational failure has long been the norm — schools in low income minority neighborhoods — this is success, a remarkable success. What is equally remarkable is how unwelcome this success has been in many places. What has been especially remarkable is that it has been the most educationally successful charter schools that seem to have drawn the most hostility, both in words and in deeds.”

Not all charter schools are successful. What happens to those that failed? Thomas Sowell reminds us that failing charter schools can have their charters revoked, thus cutting off access to public funds. That is a stark contrast to the many failing schools that continue to operate year after year without any improvement.

Charter schools have their critics because they represent a threat to the educational establishment and teachers’ unions. If more and more students leave the traditional public schools, there will be less revenue for the public schools. And reduced need for teachers means declining union dues to teachers’ unions. It’s easy to see why charter schools have become a political issue.

If you have ever read George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, you are familiar with the idea of newspeak. Examples would be: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” But if you look at the news media today, you would probably conclude that Orwell accurately predicted the future but was just off by about thirty-six years.

Gerard Baker believes “The News Media Becomes Fluent in Newspeak.” He acknowledges that we don’t have a “Ministry of Truth” here in America. But that doesn’t mean that newspeak isn’t alive and well in the news coverage we receive.

Consider the term “freedom.” Yes, we are told that free speech does exist on college campuses, but it is so narrowly defined as to not really be free speech at all. He refers to a letter circulated at Princeton University requiring all research and publications be submitted for approval to a special committee in order to root out anything that might be considered a “racist” thought.

How about the term “violence?” According to most of the mainstream media, smashing a statue or assaulting a police officer does not constitute violence if done by a progressive protester. One example he supplies is a BBC tweet that actually said that “27 police officers injured during largely peaceful anti-racism protests.”

By contrast, we have the example of Senator Tom Cotton who wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that suggested that US military could be used when violent protests have overwhelmed police and the National Guard. Staff at the New York Times were furious that his op-ed was printed and argued that his writing was actually a form of violence that must be prohibited from the newspaper.

We live in a world where words like freedom, violence, and racism have been redefined. So be on the lookout for newspeak.

Dennis Prager recently wrote a column presenting “5 Arguments Against America is a Racist Country.” His first argument was based on a previous column that asked, “If America Is So Racist, Why Are there So Many Race Hoaxes?” It’s a good question. If racism is as prevalent as activists want us to believe, you wouldn’t expect so many hate crime hoaxes based on race.

In many previous columns, I have written about the number of fake hate crimes. There are even websites devoted to the long and growing list of them. All of them come people trying to prove that this country is full of racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. In a number of cases, the perpetrators are merely trying to draw attention to themselves.

Dennis Prager provides a dozen examples of race hoaxes. Some are fairly well known like the allegations against the Duke lacrosse team back in 2006. Others are not so familiar. It was amazing to me how many of the examples he provided involved a “noose” hanging on a truck or around a university lamp.

Of course, we have the “noose” found in the garage of NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace that was merely a garage pull that existed long before he was assigned that garage. And there is the story of Jesse Smollett. He was supposedly attacked by people wearing MAGA hats, and he added a “noose” around his neck to make it even more convincing. The rope was purchased by his two conspirators a few days before.

You would think the Jesse Smollett incident would diminish the number of race hoaxes, but I found two more just the other day. A university student said he found a racist note on his car, but surveillance cameras only saw him near his car. An Oregon commissioner candidate claimed a racist note was put in his mailbox. Eventually, he admitted he actually wrote it.

Unfortunately, these race hoaxes keep coming week after week.

China has been in the news lately, and not just because of their mishandling of the coronavirus. A number of government officials have been warning of the danger China poses. And before we go any further, we are talking about the Chinese Communist Party and not the good people of China who have little control over what these communist leaders do.

FBI Director Christopher Wray gave a shocking presentation earlier this month in which he mentioned that nearly half of all the FBI’s current counterintelligence cases are focused just on China. He described China’s frequent counterattacks, predatory practices, and economic espionage that has resulted in “one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the Chinese leaders to back down in their military actions in the South China Sea. “The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire. America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources.”

Attorney General William Barr was not only critical of the Chinese government but of Hollywood and Big Tech for their cooperation with China. “I suspect Walt Disney would be disheartened to see how the company he founded deals with foreign dictatorships of our day.” Of course, he could also have added how the NBA came down on one general manager who posted a tweet supporting Hong Kong.

Daniel Blumenthal and Nicholas Eberstadt in a recent column argue that Communist Chinese Party “is far more powerful today than it was in Mao’s time.” That’s quite a statement, and reminder that we should ask political candidates if they believe China poses a danger to the US. Already, President Donald Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden have given vastly different answers to that question. This is an important foreign policy issue for our time.

Over the last few weeks, the term “Marxism” has been used quite a bit to describe the philosophy of both individuals and organizations. But what does this term mean? Marxists come in different variations. I saw that when I took a graduate level class on Marxism with students from different countries who were Marxist.

If there is one central, unifying principle, it is the writings of Karl Marx that is best articulated in The Communist Manifesto. Jon Miltimore reminds us in a recent column that Marx wanted more than the “Abolition of private property.”

He also wanted the “Abolition of the family.” His argument was that the bourgeois family was based on capital and private gain. He predicted the family would vanish once property was abolished.

Marx also believed that individuality was contrary to the equalitarian vision that he had for the world. He believed that individuality was a social construct of a capitalist society and also had to be abolished.

Nations also would be abolished. His argument was that the working man would have no country. As the proletariat grew in power, there would be no need for nations, especially since hostilities between people of different backgrounds would recede.
Marx also rejected the idea of eternal truths. He argues that the “ruling ideas of each age have been the ideas of the ruling class.” He predicted that “Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.”

Coupled with this idea is a belief that Marxism would abolish the past. Marx saw tradition as a tool of the bourgeoisie. In that society, “the past dominates the present.” Instead, “in Communist society, the present dominates the past.”

Karl Marx wanted to abolish the family, individuality, countries, eternal truths, and the past. That’s quite a list.

The headlines for a New York Times article said it all: “Churches Were Eager to Reopen. Now They Are a Major Source of Coronavirus Cases.” It’s a scary headline, that isn’t even close to being accurate.

Tim Challis in a blog started with the numbers in the story. It talks about 650 coronavirus cases from nearly 40 churches. That’s not many, especially when you realized that nearly half of the cases come from one church is Oregon, that was acting irresponsibly.

But put these numbers in context. There are 3 million coronavirus cases in America. The 650 listed in the article represents roughly .02 percent of the total. And the 40 churches mentioned seem very small when you assume that there are more than 300,000 churches in America.

Ed Stetzer went even further to list five issues with the New York Times article. First, churches have cooperated and have been remarkable partners. Second, hyperbole helps no one. Using words like “major” and “erupted” to describe 650 cases is obviously misleading.

Third, the article understated the obvious. A large number of infections are linked to one single church that ignored all the CDC guidelines. Fourth, this kind of article causes people to dismiss important information. He is a subscriber to the New York Times and believes that good journalism need context.

Finally, the article misses the point. If you read the article carefully you will come to the opposite conclusion of the headline. Sure, there are a few churches that have made bad decisions. But most churches seem to be acting responsibly in the midst of this pandemic.

Most readers probably just read the headline or maybe the opening paragraph. Others merely saw the link to the article in the Drudge Report with the ominous headline “Churches Now Major Source of Spread.” This was a classic example of “fake news.”

How should the academic world respond when a research study published in a peer-reviewed journal comes to a conclusion you wouldn’t expect? In the past, some might challenge the methodology or even consider doing a second study to see if the conclusions could be replicated.

The latest tactic is to bring pressure on the researchers and their universities so they will disavow their own study. That is what happened to professors at Michigan State University and the University of Maryland who studied police shootings. They analyzed 917 fatal police shootings of civilians to test whether the race of the office or the civilian predicted fatal police shootings. Neither did. Their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that once “race specific rates of violent crime” were taken in the account, they found no disparities based on race.

Heather MacDonald is a fellow with the Manhattan Institute, and has been a guest on my radio program. She has cited this study in his congressional testimony and also referred to their article in some of her writings. She even added that other professors also challenged the study design. The two professors in the original study concluded that even under the proposed study design, there was “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police.”

Given the current climate, you can imagine the amount of pressure they have been under. Earlier this month, the authors decided to retract their paper under the excuse that its conclusion had been misused. They specifically mentioned op-eds by Heather MacDonald.

This retraction illustrates what’s wrong with the academic world. No longer is the focus on finding the truth. Political consensus is already driving much of the research done in this country. Researchers will likely suppress any results that challenge the latest liberal, progressive narrative. Truth will be set aside.