PETE SMITH: AN ARTIST IN FULL

          On August 7, my remarkable younger brother Pete Smith passed away at 72.  A superb and original artist, a selfless humanitarian, and a dependable resource for the downtrodden, Pete will be painfully missed by all who knew him -- young and old, rich and poor, liberal and conservative.

     After graduating from Lower Merion High School in Philadelphia's Main Line suburbs -- which would be his lifelong "stomping grounds" -- Pete bypassed the normal family college route to follow his natural artistic (and "free spirit") inclinations (his mother, Marion Cruice Smith, also received a fine arts education, but marriage and four children largely curtailed her artistic ambitions).

    After developing his art skills at Philadelphia College of Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts -- and a few years in the School of Hard Knocks -- Pete embarked on a versatile art career which left his mark in homes, storefronts, countless commercial establishments, and galleries throughout the Philadelphia area and beyond (as far, indeed, as the Roman suburbs of Italy!).  

                                 Pete making Mural Magic

    Perhaps Pete's most enduring legacies are the magnificent murals that have enlivened numerous storefronts, restaurant walls, athletic facilities, and private homes from the Main Line to South Jersey to Northern Virginia.  The hallmark of his murals was the bold use of color, coupled with sometimes humorous caricatures of his patrons and their families.  Some of his murals embodied the technically difficult and eye-deceptive Trompe-l'oeil technique.  His mural subjects ranged from a raucous portrayal of the Philadelphia Flyers "Broad Street Bullies" on a basement rec room wall in Downingtown to a picturesque Irish tavern townscape overlooking a living room fireplace in Fairfax County, Virginia.

    Pete's life's work was hardly confined to the genteel, but often unprofitable, province of fine art.  His rougher jobs included steel mill work and swimming pool maintenance, as well as all varieties of external and internal house painting.  But even his house painting ventures included an artistic element; he was a master of the difficult "faux finish" technique, a beautiful example of which graces this writer's dining room.

    Later in his career, Pete was free to turn to what he described as his artistic "first love" -- "painting people," as he put it.  His portrait work culminated in a remarkable feat of skill and character-capturing -- a portrait series he entitled "90 Studies in 90 Days."  These 90 insightful portraits captured the unique qualities of celebrities, family members, and friends, actually accomplished one-per-day over 90 days.  The subjects ranged from Mick Jagger to Princess Grace (who was Pete's second cousin), to various colorful Main Line characters, to his lovely wife, Kathy Williams.  All 90 portraits were displayed at a well-attended Main Line exhibition, where critical reaction was enthusiastic and sales were brisk.

    Although Pete's art career left a great mark in itself, it was probably secondary to his legacy as a genuine humanitarian.

    Pete was very open about the severe substance problems that plagued his younger adult years.  After matters came to a head, he experienced a personal epiphany, which led him to a successful and total renunciation of alcohol and other substances that lasted for the duration of his life!  The sheer will power that sustained this total abstinence for some 40 years, in a society and family whose social occasions were liberally lubricated with strong spirits, is admirable and remarkable indeed to one who personally observed it.  

    Pete was critically sustained in this discipline by his lifelong association with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).  No matter where he traveled, he would always find his way to an AA meeting, no matter how obscure the location.

    But Pete was far from a passive member of AA.  With his patient and flexible personality, and his profound commitment to the philosophy of day-by-day reaffirmance, he became something of a guru and crisis counselor to those who had reached the point of desperation from their insidious addiction.  

    Friends and relatives of those who had reached the end of their addiction rope would often refer them to Pete, and he would never fail to lend his counsel and encouragement against the dead-end of addiction despair.  Just in the few days since Pete's departure, mourner after mourner has testified to his successful, or at least helpful, intervention on behalf of relatives or friends who had reached the depths of addiction despair.

    In short, Pete's humane engagement in encouraging and assisting the addicted has earned him the enduring gratitude of not only the hundreds he has assisted, but the larger number who were so glad to have a patient and reliable soul to whom they could turn in their time of crisis.

    Notwithstanding his errands of mercy in the dark world of drug addiction, "Uncle Pete's" bright side stands out more strongly in our remembrance.  No one loved children more than Pete, and the kids completely reciprocated.  He doted with deep affection on his grandchildren, and their visitations toward the end will arm him with fond memory on the other side.  When he would visit my family on vacation at our mutually beloved  Ocean City, NJ, he would always bring a box of donuts from the legendary Dot's Bakery, to the delight of my sugar-hungry grandchildren.  A visit from Uncle Pete was always a special treat, and few things make me sadder than that we will have no more.

    But Pete shares the very special blessing that attends those who have left their beautiful art behind them.  His paintings and murals still beautify the homes of his wife, his siblings, and countless other family members and friends.  Indeed, the only "personal property" which my own children dispute among themselves as part of their potential inheritance is an Ocean City boardwalk shorescape, in the style of Mondrian, which "Uncle Pete" bestowed on us years ago.

    Though Pete is now gone, he lives on in his very special art and a humanitarian legacy that few can equal.

    RIP Pete.

GARLAND'S LAWLESS TOTALITARIAN TACTICS TO SUPPRESS AN ANGRY PARENT UPRISING

      Parents nationwide are belatedly waking up and vigorously resisting the poisonous programs being inflicted on their children in our public schools.  But Biden's ruthless Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has begun to employ totalitarian measures worthy of Stalin and Mao to suppress this righteous democratic movement.  Garland is now labeling justifiably restive parents as "domestic terrorists" and marshalling the collective resources of the FBI and the nation's U.S. Attorneys in an unprecedented governmental assault on the right of parents to protect their children from educational abuse.  The aroused parents, however, have no plans to submit to such blatant fascist oppression.

                                             

      Garland sets DOJ's sights on soccer mom "domestic terrorists"
     

                                    * * *

     Probably the most serious and pernicious problem now infecting the schools is the deliberate oppression of white children in the name of leftist canards such as "white privilege," "white supremacy," so-called Critical Race Theory (CRT), and the fraudulent "1619 Project" (designed to portray our Founding Fathers as racist villains).  These programs, adopted and enforced by leftist school boards and allied teachers unions, inflict an enormous emotional and psychological toll on white children by shaming and bullying them for the crime of being white.  It is remarkable that these programs have not yet been successfully challenged in court on the grounds that they create a racially oppressive educational environment in violation of Titles VI and IX of the Civil Rights Act and other antidiscrimination laws.

     This phenomenon is poisonous and widespread and must be stopped.  Fortunately, however, thousands of parents throughout the country are beginning to recognize this menace and raise their voices (often in public school board meetings) to protect their children.

     Elsewhere, many school systems are requiring young K-through 12 school children to wear uncomfortable and confining masks all day in school, purportedly to prevent further spread of Covid-19.  These requirements are mindless, unscientific, ineffective, and gravely harmful to the children, and are opposed by many parents for that reason.  Governments and boards imposing these ludicrous policies refuse to undertake, let alone to follow, the cost-benefit analysis which would expose them for the follies that they are.  Young school children are not vulnerable to Covid like the elderly (let alone to serious consequences from it), but they are vulnerable to the psychological, sociological, and educational harms caused by covering their young faces with creepy, germ-laden, and dehumanizing masks throughout the school day.  But the school systems that enforce these mask mandates simply don't care; they prefer to wallow in the empty virtue-signaling of Covid fanatacism.

     A further educational atrocity embraced by various state and local governments and school boards is the assault on merit and superior attainment by some categories of students, particularly in the science, math, and STEM subjects.  It is hard fact that Asian-American students, and to a lesser extent white students, vastly outperform black and Hispanic students in these fields.  As one result of this, the former cohorts far surpass the latter in admissions to selective magnet schools emphasizing STEM curricula (such as Fairfax County, Virginia's, illustrious Thomas Jefferson High School).   Similarly, young Asian-Americans' superior academic performance has enabled them to gain a disproportionate share (relative to their percentage of the overall student population) of admissions to elite universities -- although the adoption of extreme racial preferences for blacks and other minorities by many such universities is now artificially (but intentionally) suppressing and reducing their Asian-American admissions.

     In response to these circumstances, various state and local governments are taking outrageous measures to narrow the so-called "gap," or level the academic playing field, as between primarily Asian-Americans, on the one hand, and primarily blacks, on the other.  On a broader level, they are actually eliminating advanced math and science courses in many schools because blacks and Hispanics do not pursue or qualify for such programs to the same extent as Asian-American or white students.  Additionally, the necessarily demanding standards for admission to elite magnet and STEM schools like Thomas Jefferson are being eliminated or diluted for the sole purpose of increasing the admission of black and/or Hispanic students who otherwise could not meet those standards, and reducing the admission of Asian-Americans who do meet those standards.  

     In short, excellence in public education is being deliberately abandoned in order to appease the political demands of the race-obsessed left.  And this comes at a time when our education standards urgently need to be strengthened in the face of global surveys consistently demonstrating that the students of East Asian nations (including China) are vastly outperforming American students, especially in STEM fields.

                                              * * *

     Rightfully aroused parents are now (if belatedly) rising up to oppose these pernicious policies and programs in school board hearings, legislative settings, and other public forums.  In the face of arrogant disregard for their concerns by many school boards and other educational agencies, justifiably irate parents have actually raised their voices, and maybe even occasionally shook their fists, in the time-honored (and constitutionally protected) tradition of "robust and wide-open debate" repeatedly enshrined in the Supreme Court's First Amendment decisions.

     Lamentably, however, the Biden Administration and many state and local governments have little sympathy for parental concerns regarding the educational welfare and well-being of their children.  So far from lending any support to such parental concerns -- some of which are based on legal and constitutional violations of their children's rights -- the Biden totalitarians and many state and local governments have turned against the nation's concerned parents and actually threatened them with investigation and prosecution for the crime of rising in defense of their children.

     The most egregious and disgusting example of this outrage is the recent announcement by Biden's Stasi-like Attorney General, the odious Merrick Garland, that the federal government will investigate and pursue these aroused parents as though they were "domestic terrorists."

     Characterizing legitimate parental complaints as "harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school board members," Garland issued a deeply menacing totalitarian decree on October 4.  Garland's decree announced nationwide deployment of the FBI and the Justice Department's Criminal, Civil, and National Security Divisions, as well as all the Department's U.S. Attorneys, in a totalitarian investigation and persecution of parents who vigorously defend their children's educational safety against the dangerous abuses of the radical educational policies described above.  Relatedly, a telephone hotline is to be established facilitating the reporting of allegedly excessive protests and similar parental misbehavior (undoubtedly by leftist "citizen snitches").

     A more outrageous and oppressive abuse of governmental authority would be difficult to imagine.  When issued by the man who is responsible for the enforcement of the nation's constitution and laws, this complete subversion of law, truth, and justice is doubly distressing.  Garland's decision and directive reflect a complete corruption and distortion of the actual facts at hand.

     In fact, if any offenses requiring DOJ investigation are occurring in this context, it is not the vigorous exercise of First Amendment rights by rightfully angry parents.  Rather, it is the cultivation of a racially hostile education environment through the shaming and oppression of white children by accusing them of  collective "white privilege;" declaring them guilty of bogus "white supremacy;" and in some cases even forcing them to confess their racial guilt in exercises of self-criticism reminiscent of Maoist China's Cultural Revolution.  

     The creation of these conditions in various public school systems violates the anti-discrimination prohibitions of Titles VI and IX of the federal civil rights acts.  These are the kind of blatant illegalities that the Justice Department should be investigating and prosecuting.  Instead, Merrick Garland and his DOJ and FBI jackboots are marshaling their enforcement resources against the concerned and frustrated parents whose children are the victims of these race-based educational abuses.

     Moreover, Garland's claim that it is the frustrated parents' protests against school system abuses that may violate federal law is a complete perversion of the actual truth.  On the contrary, Garland and his DOJ/FBI minions have studiously ignored actual conspiracies to suppress civil rights engaged in by the proponents of the above-described educational abuses.

     A prime example occurred in March of this year in Loudoun County, Virginia.  When various parents expressed concern about the dangers and fallacies of the so-called "equity" and diversity programs (including CRT propaganda) being inflicted on their children, the leftist proponents of these programs quickly conspired to suppress the incipient protests.  A group of current and former teaches, officials (apparently including the county prosecutor), and other activists, employing a 624-member Facebook group, compiled a list of those parents suspected of disagreeing with the racialist programs.  The evident purpose of the undertaking was to infiltrate the protesting parents, expose and shame them publicly, and even to use hackers to suppress the objecting parents' communications.

     The malicious campaign by the Loudoun educational leftists presents a textbook example of the kind of criminal conspiracies to suppress the exercise of constitutional rights prohibited by18 USC sec. 241and civilly actionable under 42 USC sec. 1985.  Section 241 applies when "two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person" in the exercise or enjoyment of their constitutional rights -- including the rights of free speech and assembly and to petition the government for redress of grievances.  

     Needless to say, the Biden/Garland Justice Department neither noticed nor responded to this patent conspiracy to suppress parental protests.  On the contrary, they have declared war on the parental and student victims of these systemic educational abuses and openly allied the federal government with the perpetrators of these educational outrages.

     If there were any doubt as to the lawless malice of Garland and his legal dragoons at the Justice Department and the FBI, Garland's marshaling of the full panoply of federal enforcement resources to persecute the justified protest of student parents should remove it once and for all.

CONFRONTING CRITICAL RACE THEORY IN OUR SCHOOLS

      The insidious and divisive doctrine of Critical Race Theory ("CRT") has been rapidly imposed on the classrooms of schools throughout America, with little or no input or approval from the parents of victimized schoolchildren.  

     Originated by radical leftists and afro-racists, the doctrine is premised on the canard that American is a racist nation and that white persons (including entirely innocent children) are racists who must continuously make amends for the "white privilege" that exists only in the fictional America lurking in the twisted minds of the left.  Young schoolchildren throughout America are the victims of this ideological distortion of school curricula, including the shaming and bullying of bewildered white children who are forced to acknowledge the fictitious white privilege that have never experienced in fact.

     Better late than never, American parents and many state and local governments have finally started to push back against this toxic and demoralizing academic fraud.  Some states and counties have passed laws or regulations to ban CRT or comparably racist programs from the public schools, recognizing that they are harmful for children of all races and present a false and subversive portrayal of American History.

                                                 

Under CRT, Jefferson and his fellow Founders would be benched as accused racists

     Meantime, however, the Biden Administration is not only embracing CRT, but seeking to use federal educational grant authority to enforce its adoption by federal schools nationwide. The Department of Education (DOE) is currently considering a rule for "Proposed Priorities:  American History and Civics Education."  Under the cover of seemingly innocuous objectives such as "culturally responsive teaching," DOE is actually seeking to impose both CRT and the equally false and divisive "1619 Project" (desribed below) on public school curricula using the coercive power of federal grantmaking authority.

     Embedded below are the written comments submitted by SR editor G. C. Smith, opposing this radical and divisive proposal and explaining some of its dangers and fallacies.  Hopefully, many other concerned citizens, parents, and groups will take a similar stand against CRT, both in this rulemaking and in other legislative and regulatory forums.  Whether such opposition will be successfully in the current DOE rulemaking remains to be seen, but we expect that growing citizen opposition to CRT indoctrination will ultimately halt and reverse its infestation of our nation's classrooms.

Comments on Docket (ED-2021-OESE-0033), Dept. of Education

Proposed Priorities:  American History and Civics Education

             These comments are submitted by George C. Smith, a retired attorney who has served in both the Department of Justice/Office of Legal Counsel and the Senate Judiciary Committee.  I am also the grandfather of nine youngsters who would be affected by this unsound and divisive proposal.

             My comments are mainly addressed to Proposed Priority 1.  I emphatically reject the false premises of the Proposal and strongly oppose their content, promulgation, and adoption.

             If adopted by our schools, the proposed priorities and strategies (which aim to impose the doctrine of Critical Race Theory and the so-called “1619 Project” under various euphemisms) would not only expose children to a false and racially biased portrayal of U.S. history, civics, and government; but would entail the ideological and cultural shaming, and resultant bullying, of entirely innocent white children (and other affected children as well, such as East Asians) by school authorities and teachers.  This kind of in-class humiliation of white children, comparable to the kind of ideological self-criticism demanded by the Red Guards in Maoist China, is already being perpetrated under the doctrine of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its variants in various public schools.   This divisive approach will also injure the interests of children of all races, including blacks, by poisoning the educational atmosphere with falsified and racially divisive programs and policies.   

      The Priorities proposed under this Proposed Rule would expand and reinforce such wrongful and divisive practices using the compulsion of federal grant making and funding authority, and codify them as official federal education policy.   They should be abandoned in their entirety.

             Although the Proposed Priority is couched in deceptively innocuous language (there is nothing objectionable in encouraging diverse viewpoints in curricula, for example), this bureaucratic jargon obscures the true object of imposing the distorted and racially divisive CRT theory, along with the fabricated and misleading historical approach of the so-called “1619 Project.”  When the true object and effects of the Proposed Priorities are identified, it becomes evident that they are not only harmful and divisive as a matter of policy, but could easily entail unconstitutional (e.g., coerced student and teacher speech violating the First Amendment and racially discriminatory educational practices violating the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clauses) and unlawful (e.g., creation of a racially oppressive educational environment in violation of federal civil rights statutes) effects.

             The Priorities’ “Background” section exposes its radical and racialist ideological foundations and purposes.

             First, the PP sets out, and is grounded upon, the false premise that the United States is a racist nation immersed in “systemic racism” which can only be rectified by what it refers to as a government imposed “racial equity” agenda, “including in our education system.”  This premise is false and conclusory.  It is nothing more than an ideological canard.  Even President Biden and Vice President Harris recently and expressly agreed with Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) that America is not, in fact, a “racist country.”  The fact, for example, that the federal and state governments have adopted and imposed racially preferential programs for blacks (and other minorities) in education, employment, housing, agriculture, and other areas since the late 1960’s and onward in itself negates the premise of “systemic racism.”

            Secondly, the Priority invokes the so-called “1619 Project” as the kind of material that should be used “in the teaching and learning of our country’s history.”  In short, the distorted, misleading, historically inaccurate, and ideologically motivated writing of a radical NY Times reporter is proposed to supplant the distinguished and scholarly historical writings that have long and rightly recognized the world-changing greatness of the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution (e.g., James T. Flexner’s “Washington:  The Indispensable Man”).  The 1619 Project falsely denigrates the American Revolution itself, and the greatness of the ideas, ideals, and courage of the heroes who founded the Nation that introduced and refined the principles of liberty, rule of law, and equality before the law that ultimately resulted in the defeat of slavery in the Civil War and the subsequent enactment of laws establishing the great principles of equal protection under the law and nondiscrimination.  Adoption of the 1619 Project (or its equivalent) as the model for history education in our schools, as implicitly advocated by the Priority, would result in an insidious and misleading distortion of American History indicting our Founding Fathers and their successors as nothing more than racist oppressors.  Our schools would be induced to supplant history lessons with ideological indoctrination.

             Thirdly, the Priority favorably invokes the views of the radical racialist extremist Ibram X. Kendi in advocating the incorporation of misnamed “anti-racist practices into teaching and learning.”  Unfortunately, the code-word “anti-racist” does not comport with its seemingly neutral and unobjectionable phrasing.  Under Kendi’s approach, any policy or practice that does not produce so-called “racial equity” violates the anti-racist principle.  But the “racial equity” advocated by Kendi and other radical CRT advocates does not mean the equal protection enshrined in the Constitution (which Kendi considers racist) or the equal opportunity enforced by our civil rights statutes.  Rather, it demands government-enforced equal outcomes and the elimination of all inter-racial gaps in educational, professional, or economic areas of activity, regardless of actual merit or aptitude.  Relatedly, Kendi asserts that all performance and achievement discrepancies between racial groups are the result of “racist policies.”  This is demonstrably false, and flatly inconsistent with the equal protection and equal opportunity standards of our Constitution and laws, which are premised on equal opportunity rather than equal results.  Such flawed and invalid views should not be embraced as a premise of the Proposed Priorities.

             Finally, it is evident that the Proposed Priority would shift the emphasis in history and civics education in our schools from an objective and fact-based review of our Nation’s history --including recognition of its unmatched accomplishments in pioneering the principles of a constitutional democratic republic -- to an ideologically driven and unbalanced obsession with the unfortunate racial problems that have undoubtedly marred our history.  While history courses should surely address those problems thoroughly and critically, they should also include balanced coverage of the extensive and far-reaching laws and programs devoted to rectifying those problems, including the innumerable remedial federal and state civil rights laws enacted and expanded since the 1960’s.  It is evident, however, that the Proposed Priorities tied so closely to Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project, and other extreme ideological approaches would provide instead an imbalanced, divisive, and educationally disruptive approach.

Virginia Bans Death Penalty but Leaves Prison Workers to Face the Consequences

      The Virginia legislature has just abolished the state's death penalty, which had been in place for the entire history of the commonwealth. Once the governor signs the abolition legislation, as he surely will, Virginia will become the first southern state to ban capital punishment.

     Virginia's abolition of capital punishment did not respond to any strong public demand for such action, with the latest Gallup poll showing that 55% of Americans still support the death penalty for murderers.  Releasing vicious murderers from the just punishment for their crimes would certainly rank near the bottom of Virginia citizens' concerns in these times of economic and social despondency.

     But Virginia is now a one-party, left-wing state; Democrats now control both houses of the state legislature, all three of the state's executive positions, its federal congressional delegation, and both of its U.S. senate seats.  Consequently, the "progressive" automatons in the Virginia legislature can pass any extreme leftist bill they want, regardless of popular preferences; conservatives and Republicans simply have nowhere to turn in Virginia, since their Democrat "representatives" scornfully disregard whatever hapless opposition they might raise against such bills. Death penalty abolition was merely the latest exercise of the leftist tyranny that now governs Virginia.

     The repeal was surrounded and "justified" by the usual fusillade of falsehood and fraudulence, including the canard that "innocent" citizens are the frequent victims of erroneous capital convictions (convictions that are obtained only after the most rigorous and demanding procedures, standards of proof, and appellate scrutiny that can be devised by the leftists who dominate the legal and judicial establishments).  And, like the "usual suspects" of Casablanca fame, the virtue-signaling repeal advocates dragged out the persistently repeated fiction that the death penalty is discriminatorily imposed against blacks, when (as SR has repeatedly demonstrated) the opposite is the case.

     During the last three reported years (2016-18), for example, 43 whites were executed compared to 16 blacks (see BJS, Capital Punishment 2018, Table 12) -- even though blacks commit about 50% of the murders which alone can justify the death penalty under Supreme Court precedent.  Nonetheless, the Virginia democrats invoked the ACLU's demonstrably false claim that "people of color" constitute "55% of those currently on death row across the country."  Had the legislators seen fit to devote two minutes to on-line research to verify such claims, they could have learned that, on the contrary,  whites constitute 55.9% of those on death row, with blacks constituting only 41.6% (Id., Table 5).  Needless to say, however, the Virginia democrats had no interest in learning such inconvenient truths.

                                                

   Virginia dropping death penalty leaves prison guards to deal with the charming inmates so mercifully spared

     Nor did they consider what may be the most cogent, but least publicized, argument for retaining the death penalty, especially in the case of the most brutal and violent murderers.  This is the principle of specific deterrence -- i.e., the indisputable fact that brutal killers who are executed can never again murder or brutalize anyone. Period. 

     The significance of this factor was ironically underscored in a seemingly unrelated report published on the same day as the Virginia death penalty story. That report concerned the murder of an Indiana prison official by an inmate who had been spared the death penalty for prior murders -- to the extreme cost of the prison personnel charged with his supervision and maintenance.

     Death penalty abolitionists blithely discount the significance of this issue, apparently believing that life imprisonment is a sufficient punishment and deterrent for even the most heinous and menacing murderers -- think of the fictional Hannibal Lecter or, more seriously, his numerous real-life counterparts.  They also seem to believe that incarceration for life or its equivalent in a high security prison disposes of any argument that the unexecuted killer will no longer pose a fatal threat.  They are very wrong.

     In the recent Indiana case, the inmate was serving a 130-year sentence at a so-called "maximum security" prison for a triple murder in 2002.  Such prison security apparently proved inadequate, however, when the prisoner fatally stabbed one corrections officer and seriously injured another.  Had this inmate been sentenced to death and executed, the prison officials charged with his confinement health and maintenance would have been spared their own murder or maiming.  

     The Virginia legislators and governor who abolish the death penalty can pat themselves on the back and smugly walk safely away from the consequences of their virtue-signaling.  Not so, however, the corrections personnel who are left with the guarding, supervision, maintenance, feeding, and health care of the often dangerous and menacing monsters whose lives are spared by abolitionists.  It bears emphasis, moreover, to note that there is no remaining legal deterrent for inmates serving a life sentence in a state that has abolished the death penalty, other than possible solitary confinement (which some of such freaks might prefer).  The recent murder of prison officials in Indiana is merely the latest demonstration of this grim reality.

     The risk of harm or death to prison personnel is not the only reason why the specific deterrence of capital punishment was wrongfully overlooked by the Virginia legislature and governor.  As SR has demonstrated in a prior post, murderers spared the death penalty can and do escape from prison and expand the danger they present from prison personnel to the general populace.  The notorious 2015 escape of two convicted murderers in anti-death penalty New York, which endangered countless citizens and necessitated an enormous expenditure of state and federal personnel and financial resources, provides further emphatic proof that death penalty abolition entails costs and risks that legislatures like Virginia's cavalierly ignore, with potentially fatal consequences to the innocent.

     Thus, after the Virginia legislators and governor finish congratulating themselves for their "compassionate" abolition of the death penalty, prison guards, health care and food service personnel, and other corrections officials will be left to face the grave risks posed by the continuing care and feeding of society's most menacing murderers.  Perhaps exposing the legislators to the serious daily risks faced by the forgotten prison personnel would give them the perspective they lacked when they extended their misguided compassion to the Hannibal Lecters of Virginia.

U.S. Racial Obsessions Preclude Global Parity in Math and Science

     In an article posted in 2018 ("East Asia Defies Diversity Delusion"), SR reported how East Asian youngsters were trouncing their global peers (including the U.S.) in math and science performance measures.  The article further explored how countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were excelling in these and other measures of civilizational progress despite, or perhaps because of, their extraordinary ethnic homogeneity and corresponding lack of the diversity so highly valued in the U.S.

     The latest surveys by the Program for International Studies Association (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss) again confirm that the East Asian STEM juggernauts -- Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and 4 China Provinces -- continue to vastly outperform other nations in math and science student performance, including the U.S.

     In the 2019 PISA Survey, for example, the East Asian nations took the top seven slots, with the U.S. ranked a lowly 37th.  In science, the U.S. ranked 18th, again badly trailing the East Asian nations as well as such western nations as Estonia, Finland, and Canada.

     In the face of these dismal global rankings, one would expect the U.S. would adopt stringent measures to bolster its youngsters' math and science performance.  On the contrary, however, U.S. education policy makers and governments seem determined to lower or eliminate standards of educational performance excellence in the interests of race-based affirmative action and proportional representation goals.  Global competitors such as China may be excused if they collapse in hysterical laughter at America's ludicrous, self-defeating educational priorities.

     As a prime example, U.S. school districts are in the process of subverting one of the few great successes in American secondary STEM education, the science and technology magnet school.  And they are doing so as an abject concession to bald racial politics, rather than for reasons of educational excellence.

     The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology ("TJ") in Fairfax County, Virginia, has been repeatedly rated the Number One high school in the United States, public or private. It is a public magnet school which, until this year, based admission on a rigorous series of competitive tests.  TJ is exactly the kind of school the U.S. needs to become more competitive with the East Asian and other educational paragons in the STEM fields.  Moreover, its student body has been about 79% minority, which one would think would favorably impress the educational bureaucrats and bean-counters.  Alas, however, TJ's minority students are predominantly Asian (i.e., about 70% of its students), which is apparently the "wrong" minority for Fairfax County's race-obsessed educational establishment.

                                             

The Model STEM School that Fairfax County Would Perversely Subvert

    One would think that the Fairfax County government and education officials would be extremely proud of a school that has been such a success as to be ranked number one nationally, and leave it well enough alone.  On the contrary, the inept, race-obsessed Fairfax County school authorities are instead calling for "agressive change" and insisting that TJ's admissions policies be "dramatically altered" in order to assure greater representation of blacks and Latinos, regardless of their ability to meet TJ's rigorous standards of admission.  

     Indeed, Fairfax County has forced TJ to eliminate its longstanding and deliberately demanding admissions test.  The same or similar dilution of admissions standards has been ordered for Virginia's 18 other magnet STEM schools.  Further, a similar race-based deconstruction of heretofore demanding magnet schools is occurring elsewhere in the nation, such as at New York City's Stuyvesant magnet high school.  

     In the case of TJ, at least, a group of stalwart parents is suing to prevent the fatal deterioration of the model school their children worked so hard to enter and experience.  They recognize that diluting TJ's admission standards will ultimately weaken the school's educational quality.  As one exasperated parent explained, "You cannot lower the standards of admission without lowering the standards of the curriculum."

     Sadly, the Fairfax parents are unlikely to prevail in their lawsuit and the exasperated parent's prediction is likely to prove true at TJ and other magnet schools similarly compromised:  the lowering of standards to assure enhanced representation of favored minorities will necessarily subvert the rigorous math and science curriculum.  And the U.S. will continue to lag ignominiously behind nations that would never compromise their educational standards for such misplaced priorities.

     Unfortunately, the movement to undercut the excellence of our leading magnet schools is not the only example of a disturbing trend towards sacrificing excellence in order to reduce or eliminate the so-called racial or ethnic gap in the educational attainments of American students.  

     An ultra-radical movement attacking the very concept of objective and accurate answers to math and science questions has surfaced in "progressive" educational circles, based on the ludicrous notion that such an objective focus is an outgrowth of the canard of "white supremacy."  It is difficult to imagine an educational approach more perfectly designed to exacerbate the performance gap that now exists between U.S. and East Asian students in math and science.

     This movement has been most prominently manifested in something called "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction."  This Equitable Math concept is being promoted by an educational organization, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  

     The Pathway approach seeks to eliminate such concepts as classroom discipline and "paternalism," requiring students to show their work, and, perhaps most outlandishly, the value and importance of correct or objective answers to math problems.  It ascribes these evils of the educational system to the leftist's bogus shibboleth of "white supremacy."  As the Pathway document states:  "White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when: The focus is on getting the ‘right’ answer. The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so. Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”

     Ominously, the outlandish Pathway approach has not been confined to the abstract precincts of educational think tanks and journals.  The Oregon Department of Education, for example, has promoted a variant of the Pathway to Equitable Math in order to "dismantle racism in math."  Unsurprisingly, left-wing Seattle has followed suit, with a similar movement to integrate ethnic studies into its math programs.

     It is difficult to exaggerate the utter stupidity, venality, and sheer educational destructiveness of these programs and policies.  

     Perhaps the most telltale indication of their profound confusion is ascribing the focus on correct answers and rigorous objectivity in mathematics to "white supremacy."  The ethnically homogenous East Asian nations that so consistently and emphatically outperform predominantly "white" nations (not to mention nations of all other races) in producing correct answers to math and science questions would no doubt beg to differ with this peculiar notion.  If reaching such correct answers is an outgrowth of "white supremacy," how explain the fact that youngsters of the East Asian races reign supreme in these fields?

     The answer, of course, is that the rigorous pursuit of accurate and correct answers to objective math and science questions is not a function of race or ethnicity but rather of mental discipline, study, hard work, and determination.  If American educators seek to obscure this reality in their obsession with achieving delusional ideals of racial and ethnic parity they will not only undercut overall educational excellence in the U.S., but subvert genuine efforts to enhance the education of the very groups they seek to assist.

     

A BIDEN-HARRIS "WIN" WOULD BE THE ILLEGITIMATE PRODUCT OF A CORRUPT MEDIA/CULTURAL/POLITICAL CABAL

      Even as we write, the Democrat-controlled partisan election machinery in urban strongholds is busily seeking to nullify the astounding victory that President Trump and his determined supporters justifiably earned on November 3.

     Fraudulently post-marked and otherwise manufactured post-election mail-in votes; ineligible alien voters who vote anyway; votes cast in the name of deceased and otherwise ineligible "voters" by Democrat poseurs; voters registered and rounded-up by illegal and otherwise improper means; and boxes and batches of "votes" inexplicably discovered by Democrat election "officials" after the vote (and particularly as long as the Republican retains a close lead) are only some of the nefarious devices the Democrats will employ to offset the lead President Trump earned on the actual election day.

     Whether this chicanery will be sufficient to give the Biden-Harris ticket an ill-gotten election "victory" yet remains to be seen.  If it is, the nation will be saddled with a demonstrably corrupt, dementia-incipient, left-wing puppet president who is likely to be replaced in the middle of his term by an even further left-wing, racialist radical who will divide the country even more profoundly than the bitter split that presently prevails (if that is possible).

                                              

      Biden Family Corruption:  The MSM Dare Not Speak Its Name

     Even aside from the depressing spectacle of corrupt vote-counting manipulation, however, an ultimate victory for the Biden-Harris ticket would be delegitimized by the grotesque, anti-democratic confederacy of powerful media, communications, digital, bureaucratic, and cultural forces that consciously combined to enable that victory.

     From the outset of his presidency, Mr. Trump faced the ruthless and relentless opposition of the mainstream media outlets (MSM), the omnivorous social media monsters (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like), the entertainment and professional sports culture, the professional polling industry, and even the very search engines and browsers (mainly Google and its Chrome browser) that too many people increasingly rely upon to inform themselves.  (Note:  even as we type this, a quick detour to check a fact on the Free Republic conservative website finds the Chrome browser bogusly warning that the longstanding and reliable Free Republic web site is "not secure"!).

     As the 2020 election approached, the general anti-Trump opposition of these forces evolved into a more specific and purposeful campaign to support and assist the Democratic Party in its efforts to win that election, at the Presidential, congressional, and state levels.  As much as the election and vote count manipulation presently in progress, the unholy cabal of TV news, social media, pollsters, medical institutions, and other left-dominated institutions have corrupted and distorted the 2020 election to a degree that will render a potential Biden-Harris "victory" blatantly illegitimate.

     In reality, for example, the major television news outlets (CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC) became nothing less than propaganda and press agents for (and allies of)  the Democratic Party.  Day after depressing day, these fraudulent news programs reported or fabricated stories exclusively critical of President Trump, while perversely suppressing all stories adverse to the Biden-Harris ticket or other Democrat/Leftist interests or their allies.  

     Every remotely ill-advised tweet or statement by the President was distorted for the worst and blown out of all proportion.  At the same time, factual stories that would be harmful to Biden-Harris or other Democrat/Left interests were simply ignored or relentlessly suppressed.  For example, the media ruthlessly suppressed, minimized, or outright distorted the Democrats' (notably Kamala Harris's) approval and encouragement of the violent anti-police and anti-white riots that plagued city after American city over the past several months.

    Perhaps most notoriously, as the election approached, all MSM outlets, major newspapers, and other dominant news/information outlets deliberately and corruptly suppressed the appalling Biden Family corruption epitomized by the foreign financial mis-dealings of Biden's son, Hunter, and Biden's own apparent receipt of improper financial benefits from those wrongdoings.  Had that grotesque scandal been reported by the MSM, the newspapers, and on social media with anything approaching their zeal in reporting even fabricated wrongdoings by Republicans, a significant number of voters would have been shocked into either withholding their vote for Biden or even switching to Trump.  In an election as close as this one, even a moderate impact on voters (the minimum effect that honest reporting of the Hunter/Biden Family scandal would have caused) would have been sufficient to tip the outcome decisively in  Mr. Trump's favor.

     Other instances of the Democrat/Left institutional cabal's unified anti-Trump campaign are legion.  The TV, digital, and newspaper media remorselessly manipulated the Covid-19 crisis in a manner that was deliberately and effectively adverse to President Trump's political standing and re-election chances.  When defenders of the Democrat/Left's grotesque obsession with inflating the impact of the Covid epidemic were charged with exaggerating both the Covid death rate and its actual harm to normal persons (as distinct from infirm elderly people already in morbidly ill health), they would reply, "What possible motive could there be for doing that?"  The accurate answer was both simple and obvious:  The creation, amplification, dramatization, and obsession with a purported national Covid-19 catastrophe would be devastatingly injurious to what had, pre-covid, been one of the most astonishingly successful economies in U.S. history; and consequently would severely undermine President Trump's popularity by deliberately and falsely placing the blame on him for the Covid crisis.  

     There can be no doubt that the television media, the social media giants, and major newspapers, and their Democratic/Leftist confederates acted in unison in an effort to destroy the Trump presidency by fraudulently making Trump a convenient scapegoat for the Covid-19 woes -- problems which were predominantly stoked by those cabalistic elements themselves rather than by anything done or not done by Trump or the GOP.  It was Democratic governors, mayors, and secretly Democrat bureaucrats who acted together to devastate the U.S. economy, education system (at all levels), normal social activity, recreation, and virtually all positive aspects of U.S. life in a grotesquely exaggerated and utterly unreasonable lockdown of the Nation in order to minimize the risk to a very small, and already medically compromised, segment of the population.  Yet they collectively placed the blame on the President for devastating economic and social consequences that he was fighting a lonely battle (together with a few admirable Republican governors, like Kristi Noem of South Dakota) to forestall!

     The media/Democrat/cultural cabal that combined to subvert the Trump presidency from day one also corruptly manipulated racial divisions in order to inflict further political damage on the President.  They deliberately distorted the various incidents where arrest-resisting black perpetrators were shot by harried police officers to create the false canard of so-called "systemic racism" and a fabricated "epidemic" of racist police forces; and then perpetrated a coordinated fallacy that Mr. Trump was somehow to blame for this manufactured crisis due to his insufficient submission to the outrageous demands and false charges of afro-racist agitators.

     These are only a few egregious examples of how the media/political/cultural cabal, exercising near totalitarian ' power and control over the flow of political information in America, were able to distort and manipulate the political environment to a degree that rendered Mr. Trump's re-election almost impossible.  But I stress "almost." 

     Despite this cabal's effort to depress and discourage Trump-inclined voters from voting by, inter alia, presenting a grossly false impression that Trump's re-election prospects were hopeless, the vast majority of those voters scoffed at this media fallacy and rallied to the President's support -- both in amazingly crowded rallies and with a remarkable turnout on election day.  

     Even more importantly and admirably, the President himself never wavered in the face of this totalitarian media/cultural/political confederacy.  His amazing demonstration of grit, energy, fortitude, and remarkable political courage in his closing barnstorm of multi-state rallies inspired his supporters to carry him to what, in an honest and unmanipulated election environment, would have resulted in a clean and clear-cut victory.

     Alas, however, the election environment was not, and is not, honest and unmanipulated, let alone uncorrupt.  

     The manipulation of information, the suppression of significant truth, and the deliberate blockage of the free flow of information by the TV, social media, newspaper, and cultural cabal of anti-Trump elements was "worthy" of the most egregious totalitarian excesses of Soviet Russia and Maoist China.  Pravda, Izvestia, Xinhua, and the People's Daily would all be proud of the political atrocities and manipulation perpetrated by CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, New York Times, Facebook, Twitter and the other anti-democratic elements joined in this totalitarian cabal to nullify President Trump's re-election effort.

     Let us hope, notwithstanding the ongoing post-election manipulation and fraud, that they will fail.  If not, however, they will have produced a grotesquely compromised Democrat administration that lacks fundamental legitimacy.

THE STAGGERING STUPIDITY OF WHITE SUBURBAN BIDEN VOTERS

     The proliferation of blue-white Biden-Harris signs on the prim lawns of $750,000 Fairfax County homes proclaims the staggering stupidity of their affluent white owners.  Some of these suburban sycophants, moreover, are determined to remove all doubt as to their self-destructive derangement by posting additional signs declaring their fawning solidarity with the so-called "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) movement -- which emphatically condemns as racism any ameliorating concession that White Lives (such as the lives of the feckless sign-posters' own white children) also matter.

     In this Northern Virginia suburb and in similar coastal American suburbs, millions of currently comfortable white suburbanites, and especially those of the notorious liberal "soccer mom" variety, are determined to engage in the equivalent of class and ethnic suicide by voting for a Democratic ticket that is openly and emphatically hostile to their interests and, more particularly, the interests of their own children.

                                                                         

                    Suburban Biden Voters:  "Clueless" as the Valley Girls           

     Although there are many issues on which the Biden-Harris ticket has staked out positions hostile to middle-class suburbanites -- like higher taxes and abolition of private health insurance options -- the 2020 Democrats have been especially radical in their advocacy of policies on race and law enforcement that are harmful to all Americans, but especially to white suburbanites.  Yet millions of these electoral sheep seem prepared to empower the very forces that are determined to shatter the quality of their own families' lives.

     An especially striking proof of the Democrats' abject subordination to the primacy of prejudicial racial preference in their policies and programs came at the very outset of Joe Biden's presidential campaign.  He openly and proudly declared that his choice of a vice-presidential candidate would be limited to black females.  The deliberate limitation of the prospects for a party's vice-presidential candidate (a person who could easily become President, especially in the case of a doddering geriatric Presidential candidate like Biden) to members of a specified race is outrageously ill-considered and -- well, racist.  Yet such a limitation surprised no one, because the Democrats' and Mr. Biden's subordination to the pressures of racialist radicals was so well known that it was taken for granted.

     Biden's selection of the ultra-radical Kamala Harris (see SR's post on Harris's radical racialism here) as his vice-presidential candidate left no doubt where the Democrats were headed on race and law enforcement issues:  complete subordination to the destructive agenda of the BLM movement and other radical racialist and anti-law enforcement elements.  Harris, after all, has openly encouraged and endorsed the incendiary BLM/Antifa riots that she and her party are pleased to portray as "peaceful demonstrations."  To note that such a surrender to the interests of rioting radicals is inimical to the well-being of law-abiding suburbanites, of all races, is to merely state the obvious.

     The Democrats' divisive and destructive racial agenda begins with their unqualified embrace of the spurious canard of so-called "white privilege."  This is the very center piece of their radical racial policies.  The Democratic Party, including the Biden-Harris ticket, believes that all white Americans are the beneficiaries of this fictitious "white privilege" and are therefore obligated to accept the burdens of purported "remedial" policies in everything from employment to education to housing to entertainment and more.  The multi-millions of poor, lower-, and middle-class whites who have struggled for a decent living, often unsuccessfully, throughout the nation's history will be surprised to discover that their difficult and sometimes miserable lots are now portrayed as a "privileged" existence owing to their being white.

     One part of the Democrats' program to rectify "white privilege" is to obliterate prosperous and peaceful suburban neighborhoods as we know them.  That is why President Obama weaponized federal housing policy to impose race-based federal zoning preferences on suburban neighborhoods deemed insufficiently "diverse" by race-obsessed bureaucrats.  One aspect of these policies would be to force the construction of anomalous multi-family housing projects in the midst of green single-family neighborhoods.  President Trump has acted to nullify this destructive and unwarranted housing policy.  The Biden-Harris ticket, however, would not only maintain it, but intensify it on ideological steroids.  

     So suburban supporters of the Democrat ticket are effectively inviting the regulatory degradation of the very neighborhoods they have chosen to live in.  

     Another neighborhood issue for clueless suburban Biden voters to consider is related to the epidemic of BLM-Antifa riots in the past year, triggered by the misrepresentation of police measures that sometimes result in the injury or death of black (and white) criminal suspects and perpetrators.  Although most of these riots were focused on cities like Portland and Seattle, other violent riots spread to more suburban locales, like Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Further, riot leaders have overtly threatened to bring more of their violent actions into suburban neighborhoods.  Yet these are the very activists that Kamala Harris has warmly endorsed and encouraged.  How white, or black, suburban voters can reconcile voting for Biden-Harris with their own family interests is beyond rational comprehension.

     White suburbanites supporting the Biden-Harris ticket are also endorsing their obligation to pay so-called "reparations" for the Southern States' practice of slavery that was forcibly terminated through a Civil War in which hundreds of "privileged" white Union infantry soldiers gave their lives.  The reparations that Kamala Harris and the Democrats propose would, inter alia, transfer payments from entirely innocent lower- and middle-class whites to middle- and upper-class blacks who suffered nothing from slavery, but who have benefitted greatly from what is now over 50 years of affirmative action and other racial preferences.

     When asked back in 2019 whether she was for or against reparations, Harris initially responded that her feelings on the question were "complicated."  Anyone who interpreted that as a suggestion that Harris might have qualms about reparations, however, would be promptly disillusioned by the radical senator's explanation that the "complications" she referenced were based on her view that "mere" monetary reparations would not be sufficient, let alone unwarranted.  Rather, the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate said that "[F]rankly, I don't believe that writing a check is gonna be enough."  Instead, Harris envisions an open-ended program encompassing reparations for blacks in the fields of education, home ownership, health outcomes, and presumably any other area in which a government controlled by Democrat reparationists can act.

     How or why white suburbanites -- or, indeed, any reasonable American citizen -- would seek to elect a candidate who espouses such destructive, divisive, and grossly unjust policies lies beyond the realm of rational explanation.

     Suburban supporters of the Biden-Harris ticket are also endorsing the continued corruption of their children's education in what remains of their neighborhood public schools.  As part of their determination to "rectify" the shiboleth of white privilege, Democrats nationwide have sought to interject grossly distorted courses on "systemic racism" and the supposed flaws of our Founding Fathers into the required curriculum of our elementary, secondary, and college level schools.  Outrageously, this process has already begun, but the election of the Biden-Harris ticket would emphatically accelerate and intensify this distortion of our education system.  Instead of receiving a sound fundamental education in math, science, and genuine American history, children and young people will be relentlessly indoctrinated with the false notion that our nation's greatest founders and leaders, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were nothing more than incorrigible racists.

     One could continue indefinitely with the catalogue of Democrat policies that are patently inimical to the interests of suburban families and their children -- not to mention the Nation as a whole -- but time and space are limited.  But the catalogue would be remiss without noting the Democrats' continued and relentless commitment to racial and ethnic preferences, under the guise of affirmative action, in critical areas such as education, college admissions, employment, and promotion.  

     Although America's Constitution, laws, and general public opinion are all firmly committed to equal opportunity and nondiscrimination in all of these areas, the Democrats and their presidential ticket emphatically reject that sound and fair standard.  Instead, they demand the perpetual imposition of strict racial preferences without regard to whether those measures are needed to redress any actual discrimination.  That is why, as a prime example, universities throughout the nation continue to discriminate against white, and especially East Asian, applicants in their admissions policies, in complete disregard of the constitutional requirement for equal protection explained in authoritative Supreme Court decisions.  

     Significantly, Harvard University's egregious discrimination in favor of Blacks and Latinos, and against Asians and Whites, is presently being challenged in court by Asian students with the backing of the Trump Justice Department.  If elected, a Biden-Harris administration would not only withdraw support for this meritorious lawsuit, but undoubtedly encourage Harvard and all other colleges to continue discriminating against Asians and whites in the guise of affirmative action and "diversity" policies.  

     In short, suburban Biden supporters are voting for policies that will sacrifice their children's right to equal opportunity in seeking the college of their choice on the altars of white privilege reform and racial preference.

     Considering all the above and more, the motivation of white suburban voters in supporting the Biden-Harris ticket remains a profound mystery.  The election of that radical ticket would consign the children of these misguided voters to a dismal and disturbing future of subordinate status in the nation's policies and programs.