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We’re back! For the most part anyway–Peter’s out, but Ricochet editor Bethany Mandel is a fitting sub for today’s education-oriented podcast. Our guest is Andrew Gutmann, the man who stood up to CRT pushers in his daughter’s school and became last year’s overnight sensation. (He’s also the co-host of Ricochet’s new podcast “Take Back Our Schools!“)
We go through the pandemic of cowardice which has infected parents and will leave children with indelible side effects. It might not be a fight they want, but retreat is not an option. Thankfully, Andrew and Bethany are here as backboned examples and to take us through our options. (As promised, treat yourself to Bethany’s County Council smackdown–and here’s the whole meeting, where she enters in at 3:00:52)
The hosts also go through yesterday’s dog and pony show; Sotomayor’s staggering misinformation; and they say farewell to Peter Bogdanovich and Sidney Poitier.
Music from this week’s podcast: What’s Up Doc? performed by Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan (Music by Carl Stalling)
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So it’s not the worst thing ever and not an attempt to take over the government. But it was still bad, and people who broke windows and whatnot should be punished.
Agreed.
Now can we have the same standard and punish the larger number of leftist protesters who had government support, meant to tear down the existing order by force, and did more violence?
A very good discussion. I appreciate Mr. Gutmann as a guest again and his insight. I don’t know if this is a valid concern, but I wonder how much it matters for kids to be taught classical subjects and core knowledge if society, or at least our institutions, don’t value them. Objectively they do, but if being hired or getting into a “prestigious” university depends more on how well versed a person is in woke ideology or CRT, then isn’t that more valuable to learn – is that the lesson now? It’s the same as the elitist pipeline: it doesn’t necessarily matter how much objective knowledge a kid has or what exactly they achieved, it matters more that they have a paper stamped with Yale or Harvard. I don’t think either of these are absolute, but in terms of our social and culturally influential institutions it seems to be moving in that direction. Thanks for another great episode and to @bethanymandel for filling in!
Great point. Perhaps it’s a valuable part of Turning Things Around if kids learn the core knowledge, enter a world in which it isn’t valued much, and wonder . . . why? And then apply it to their lives nevertheless. A solid knowledge of history is a good inoculation against the madness of the moment, and helps one navigate the daily passions with perspective.
It’s the same as the elitist pipeline: it doesn’t necessarily matter how much objective knowledge a kid has or what exactly they achieved, it matters more that they have a paper stamped with Yale or Harvard.
It matters to the rest of the credentialed class, and those who figure it’s a signifier of their class position to defer to the credentialed class. (Smart good people defer to Experts.) Personally, I have the opposite reaction. When I hear that someone was graduated from Yale or Harvard, I think . . . “And?” Unless they came out with a degree that prepared them to build bridges or fix hearts, I assume they spent four years huffing gas.
Thank you for this reply. It gives me hope.
A solid hour of discussion about charter schools. Masking. School choice. Teachers’ unions. Masking. Charter schools. Unions. And of course, unions and masking and charters and school choice.
What they barely touched on, though, was Critical Race Theory. Andrew tried bringing it up a couple of times but Rob — typically — did not want to talk about it. By now we know that Rob isn’t comfortable talking about CRT and when he does talk about it, it’s to essentially wave it away.
“The lives of affluent kids,” Rob declares on today’s podcast, “won’t really be affected by CRT.”
For Rob, Wokeness aka Critical Race Theory aka what John McWhorter refers to as the religion of Anti-Racism is a big deal but not, y’know, a HUGE deal. For Rob, the culture has bigger fish to fry.
One suspects that for Rob, the expansion of Wokeness into the culture is like ants at a picnic: A major annoyance, to be sure, but nothing we can’t live with.
Rob is an exceptionally bright and talented guy but his “whistling past the graveyard” attitude toward Ibram X. Kendi-style “Anti-Racism” is so naive that it almost beggars belief.
I thought this was really good. 18 minutes.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/07/29/exclusive-dr-james-lindsay-goal-crt-set-up-dictatorship-anti-racists/
It’s probably on SoundCloud as well. It might be on the Thursday or Wednesday Apple podcast of the show.
When I heard all of the mind-boggling ignorance from the Democrat Justices, I thought this is why more and more people are interested in anarchism. Michael Malice might be wrong about some things but you need to be able to explain it.
Then you combine that with my last two discussions with my brother-in-law, and it seems to me they just don’t give a damn about understanding public policy because it would cause so much cognitive dissonance. The only reason the Democrat party exists is to create more and more non-public goods and push things around with central planning. They have an edge if there is social chaos which they need to create if there isn’t enough of it. So they need to be ignorant of public policy and they need to invent social problems. That is my current analysis. The good news is I don’t think there’s anything to discuss with my brother-in-law anymore. lol
Mark Levin was tearing those guys apart last night in the first hour. The questions were so inappropriate because they were so policy oriented. That’s on top of the ignorance. We are so screwed.
Here are some more people you need to consider if they are wrong about anything and then you need to be able to explain it: Steve Bannon, Pat Buchanan, David Stockman, Hans Herman Hoppe, Murray Rothbard.
Everything Moves Towards Communism All Of The Time™
“We are not a nation of laws, we are a nation of political will.” — Steve Deace
It’s so obvious that we need to let “a 1000 charter schools bloom”. The aggregate value would go straight up.
I would like to see a survey of big city Democrat mayors that have only been lawyers and councilman. These people have no skill add this type of government. Minneapolis and Chicago are basically controlled by idiots.
In my opinion one of the problems with this country is we have never had an open, analytical discussion of the utility of non-technical education. When I got to college I was highly surprised at how many very smart people were really angry about being forced to take liberal arts courses and they thought you were really stupid if you didn’t agree with them.
This was a long time ago, but we had an economist that said the solution to bad public schools was to have good teachers that were sick of it effectively home school four kids at a time. The other thing is when you do it that way, it only takes 2 1/2 to 4 hours and then they have the rest of the day for learning technical skills or learning bourgeoisie crap like golf.
I think we can all agree Bethany pretty much ripped them a new one . . .
I posted this in the COVID-19 group. Really good.
I have been involved in schools a lot the last 2 decades. For those not involved the most important thing to know is: good families make good students and good students make good schools. An analogy for sports fans: Nick Sabin gets a winning team on signing day. He has better athletes and the season is just a formality.
Getting good families will take a generation and will be very hard. Leftists have been destroying families for 3 generations and we need to stop it and then reverse it. It will be a slog, but it is our moral obligation to try.
In my opinion, one of the under reported aspects of this is “full service schools”. The left wants to load up schools with all kinds of social services to compensate for bad families. They love it. The feds supposedly spend $30 million a year on this. I have no idea where it goes. In Minnesota, they usually fund it for two years and then it goes away.
Then there is the whole topic of you can’t feed children with welfare checks because the parents will spend it on drugs, so you feed them at school with a Soviet cafeteria. Everybody acts like this is the most normal thing in the world.
Behold the illogical rhetoric of the leftist ruling class on COVID-19. We are doomed.
You can’t make this up. The only reason we aren’t going in a bad direction, faster, is because of the second amendment.
****Update to #17***
If you don’t subscribe to Stephen Millers VersusMedia podcast on Patreon, you really should. It’s fantastic. And only $3/month.
I signed up because he does so much damage on Twitter. I mean he is the best. He just destroys what needs to be destroyed. I really think it’s money well spent. I don’t really like him solo broadcasting. It would be better if he was interviewed.
He’s all about taking the clownshow that is our current “journalism” media class to account.
I don’t think charter schools will improve too much for kids from messed up homes.
Possibly. But it seems possible that lots of kids who want a stable environment would appreciate a respite from domestic chaos, and take advantage of it. Beats the alternative, no?
I am not into destruction. I want creation.