The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1443960
C-6 Wednesday, Januar y 19, 2022 The Press-Dispatch OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg Dusting off Dr. King's great message We celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the third Monday of January — this year, Jan. 17. On Aug. 28, 1963, King delivered one of the great speeches in Amer- ican history, popularly known as the "I Have a Dream" speech. It is a speech that must be dusted off and studied anew today, because it con- tains the very message that our na- tion sorely needs to hear and digest now. A message that has been trag- ically lost and buried and replaced with great and destructive distor- tions. Two things jump out when reading through that speech. One is how this Black preacher captured in his words that day the heart and soul of America. Second, how King's great message that day stands in total contrast to the rhetoric peddled by today's pro- gressives as the remedy to our ra- cial strife. The indictment of the woke move- ment is that America is the problem. King offered up America as the solution. He talked about the "magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence." "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" The problem, as King explained, is not America or the eternal truths that were brought to bear in its founding. The problem was the failure of the nation to live up to the challenges of its great founding principles. This was the heart of King's mes- sage that day. He appealed to the nation to real- ize the dream of its founding fathers. Not to crush it and bury it, as we hear today. The problem is not white people. "The marvelous new militancy ... must not lead us to a distrust of all white people," he said. And, of course, the most memora- ble and oft-quoted line of the speech, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." What has happened instead? Where has this great message of King gotten lost? In the name of racial justice, our race campaigns today are defined by selection and placement based on race, based on the color of skin, and not based on the content of char- acter, as King implored the nation to do. King's speech is divided into three parts. Part one is an appeal to the nation to live up to its great founding prin- ciples. Part two is an appeal to Black Americans to rise up and act accord- ingly in the noble cause of the pursuit of liberty and justice. Let's not drink "from the cup of bitterness." Part three is an appeal to the ide- als of the Christian soul of the nation. He quoted the prophet Isaiah that "the crooked places will be made straight ... and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." Biblical truths and ideals have been sadly lost to wokeism, which has for all practical purposes become a religion in itself. Let's honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. now, as we come out of COVID-19 and enter 2022, by revis- iting and taking to heart the great truths he spoke on that summer day in Washington, D.C., 1963. Great truths that have very sadly been cast to the side and replaced with the re- ligion of politics and power. Let us honor King by seeing Amer- ica as he presented it then, as em- bodying the ideals of a free nation under God. And then we can join hands and sing, as King appealed, "the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." Star Parker is president of the Cen- ter for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show "Cure America with Star Parker." Money for indoctrination Glenn Youngkin recently was elected Virginia's governor partly because he promised to ban teach- ing of CRT. CRT stands for critical race the- ory, which argues that every Amer- ican institution upholds white su- premacy. Before Youngkin's surprise victo- ry, the media mocked him for com- plaining about CRT. NBC's Nicolle Wallace said it isn't even taught in public schools. "That is like us banning the ghosts! " she laughed. She is wrong. In my new video, journalist Asra Nomani reveals some rather creepy CRT lessons that are taught in ma- ny schools. Nomani filed Freedom of Informa- tion Act requests that forced school districts to reveal how they pay con- sultants to spread critical race theory. "We found 300 -plus contracts," says Nomani. "Every day, I'm get- ting a new contract. For them to de- ny it is just part of their campaign." A CNN guest, history teacher Ke- ziah Ridgeway, admits that CRT in- fluences how some teachers teach. "That's a good thing, right? " she says. "Because race and racism is literally the building blocks of this country." Really? The building block? No! America does have a long, nasty history of racism. Some racism per- sists. But it's not the "building block." "They want to look at all of society through issues of race," complains Nomani. That's "propaganda that's claiming our children." "Claiming the children? " I push back. "That's exaggeration." She pulled out some of the chil- dren's books that are now part of the curriculum at some schools. "Woke Baby" teaches kids to be "a good revolutionary." "A Is for Activist" reads like a union recruiting manual. "M is for 'Megaphones Marching.' ... Hooray! It Must be May Day! " "Not My Idea" calls "whiteness" a deal with the devil. It portrays a white person with a pointy tail and goat hooves and tells children that they sell their souls because "white- ness" gives them "stolen land" and "stolen riches." The author, Anastasia Higginboth- am, says, "I made a book for white children that encourages them to connect with their heartbreak about racism." Nomani says, "Just imagine if a black child was to get a book that said 'blackness is a bad deal? ' ... Shame is used as a lever of control over people. It should not be done with children." "America has a history of racism," I say. "We have to confront it," she says. "But America does not have a monop- oly on racism. I come from a nation of people of 'color,' and they are racist." India, her home country, had a nas- ty caste system for generations. Slavery began in the Middle East. It thrived in A frica long before slaves were brought to America. Ameri- cans (along with Brits, the French and Mexicans) actually helped end the practice. But today American students think America invented slavery. This is "state-sponsored indoctri- nation," says Nomani. "It is a bigotry that they are teaching. ... It's just so immoral. I am a brown Muslim wom- an, an immigrant in America. I know more freedoms in this country than I could in any Muslim country in the world." "But they're not in a Muslim coun- try," I point out. "They're in America, and there is still racism here." "But to suggest that this is all of America is as racist and bigoted ... as being racist and bigoted against peo- ple of color," she responds. People need to care about this, says Nomani, "because it's the tax- payers that are funding this." Some conservatives want to ban the teaching of CRT. That's not a good idea. Government shouldn't be banning ideas or taking choices away from teachers. Bans shield students from important topics. A better solution is legalizing school choice. Let parents take our tax money to a school we choose. John Stossel is creator of Stossel TV and author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." It started in Chicago, where an in- credible 91% of union teachers vot- ed to go on strike and refused to do what they get paid to do, which is teach. Then the union walkouts spread to Maryland, New Jersey and California. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a liberal Democrat, has attacked the Chicago teachers unions for "hold- ing kids hostage." She is right. Why doesn't she call a state of emergency and disband the union to save the children from the union ter- rorists? Or tear up the contract be- cause the unions have violated it? If she did, she would be a hero. President Joe Biden keeps talking about how much he and his fellow Democrats in Washington care about "the children." Uh-huh. He has cor- rectly stated that there is no health reason for closing schools. But in this latest episode of union child abuse waged against our school- age children, he does nothing. May- be that is because more than 90 % of the tens of millions of campaign dol- lars donated by the teacher unions go to Democrats. It is time for a Ronald Reagan mo- ment. In the first year of his presi- dency, in 1981, he fired thousands of illegally striking air traffic control- lers. He broke the back of a militant union that put public safety at risk by refusing to show up to work. The air- lines continued to operate, and the havoc that the unions were trying to impose on our national transporta- tion system was averted thanks to Reagan's bold decision. The nearly incontrovertible ev- idence shows that school closures have no positive effect on the spread of COVID-19. Many studies have shown that keeping children at home can increase the spread when students and teachers not in school are instead in the com- munity, where infec- tions spread more quickly. A Journal of Global Health system- atic review of 90 studies found that "opening educational establishments may not predispose children and ad- olescents to a higher risk of SARS - CoV-2 infection compared to adults. On the contrary, children and ado- lescents were more than 2-fold great- er risk of infection in household and community settings than in schools. The school attendance may serve as a protective factor, which reduc- es children's chances of community contacts in a relatively isolated envi- ronment during school hours." But the emotional and educational progress to children from school clo- sures can be devastating. McKinsey found that students ended the last school year, on average, five months behind in math and four months be- hind in reading. Another study from the Ohio State University found that "districts with fully remote instruction experienced test scores declines up to three times greater than districts that had in-per- son instruction for the majority of the school year." The left loves to talk about social justice and income inequality. How- ever, the children most adversely affected by the school lockdowns are poor, of a minority and below the median aca- demic achievement. For top-achieving motivated students, remote learn- ing can work just fine. For those who need schools the most, the un- derachieving, online learning is basi- cally the same as no schooling. What is to do? It is time for a na- tional revolt against the evil empire of teachers unions that has become the worm in the apple of our educa- tion system. How outrageous it is that parents, taxpayers and politi- cians have to beg teachers to teach. The fact that more than 9 in 10 Chi- cago teachers don't want to teach tells us of the dismal quality of the people we are putting in front of our children. What is the solution? First, if teachers walk out on our children, they should be fired and banned from ever teaching in a public school again — just as happened with the illegally striking air traffic control- lers. Second, this is a school choice moment for America. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has correctly issued an On Dec. 25, 1991, the once seem- ingly invincible Union of Soviet So- cialist Republics fell when Mikhail Gorbachev, then-secretary of the So- viet Communist Party, transferred his presidential powers to Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the new Rus- sian Federation. Armenia, A zerbaijan, Belarus, Es- tonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz- stan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ta- jikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uz- bekistan, and Russia were on their way to becoming independent states. When Gorbachev assumed office in 1985, he aimed to bring the Sovi- et Union economically, technologi- cally, and socially up to par with the West. In an attempt to achieve that, in 1986, Gorbachev launched glas- nost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring"), which afforded Soviet citizens more freedom to en- gage in a freer market economy and a semblance of freedom of speech. Gorbachev engaged in open di- alogue with President Ronald Rea- gan. In 1987, Reagan stood against tyranny and advocated for the fall of the Berlin Wall by demanding, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! " The Reagan Doctrine effectively ap- plied economic, political, and stra- tegic pressure, which significantly contributed to the eventual fall of the Soviet empire. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, several of those former Sovi- et republics have improved on eco- nomic and social fronts. The Baltic nations (Estonia, Lat- via, and Lithuania) have shown im- pressive results due to their adoption of free markets and rapid democra- tization. Estonia, a small Baltic country, ful- ly embraced free market capitalism upon becoming an independent na- tion. Mart Laar, Estonia's two-time prime minister, took inspiration from economist Milton Friedman's book "Free to Choose" to restructure the Estonian economy. That free market approach includ- ed monetary reform in 1992, and it al- lowed Estonia to become the first for- mer Soviet republic to have its own currency. In addition, the country has effec- tively dealt with corruption by insti- tuting the rule of law. Estonia also implemented a flat-rate personal in- come tax in 1994. Due to these fundamental chang- es, Estonia became the first former communist country to be listed in the "free" category in The Heritage Foundation's annual Index of Eco- nomic Freedom. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) To this day, Estonia en- joys an incredibly free economy and serves as an example of a country that values personal freedom. In the middle of the Baltic States, Latvia also has an extraordinari- ly free and vibrant economy. Over the past 25 years, it has utilized free trade and a competitive entrepre- neurial spirit, which have led to Lat- via's rise in placement in the Index for Economic Freedom. In addition, Latvia is a democracy that holds fair elections and political pluralism in high regard. Over time, Lithuania has also sig- nificantly increased its economic freedom, rising from a "repressive" country in 1996 to a high-ranking "mostly free" country. Property rights, governmental in- tegrity, and monetary freedom have steadily risen in Lithuania's journey to improve its economic situation. Furthermore, Lithuania is a democ- racy with high respect for civil liber- ties, such as freedom of speech, as- sembly, and religion. Despite the conflict between Ar- menia and A zerbaijan, the South Caucasus region has shown some promise in terms of prosperity. For example, Georgia has devel- oped into a Western, free market democracy, fought corruption, and conducted fair elections. Addition- ally, Georgia maintains a high eco- nomic freedom score, besting many countries in Europe. Central Asia has displayed itself as a region with the potential to im- prove, especially because the coun- tries there continue to struggle with authoritarian governments and pov- erty. While lagging in economic free- dom, Ukraine has made notable im- provements since 2019. To improve, Ukraine must implement policies that advance economic freedom, utilize its strengths and resources, and continue to engage with West- ern markets. Russia, despite being under Vlad- imir Putin's autocratic rule, regular- ly engages in Western markets. As a result, Russian citizens can enjoy something of a market economy. However, Russia still struggles with corruption, low levels of invest- ment, and organized crime. Dissi- dents such as Alexei Navalny and Lyubov Sobol are shining examples of those willing to combat the tyran- ny of centralized power. While some former Soviet repub- lics continue to struggle under au- thoritarianism and corruption, devel- opments are occurring that should spur optimism and hope. Many of those nations—whose populaces suffered under commu- nism—are improving year after year despite hardship. The United States should engage in free trade with those former Soviet republics, which hope to attain economic free- dom. With the encouragement of one of the freest nations in the world, those nations have reason to look toward a brighter future. Johnathan Little is a Fall 2021 Member of the Young Leaders Pro- gram at The Heritage Foundation. Race for the Cure By Star Parker Give Me a Break John Stossel Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Save the children, fire the teachers' unions Heritage Viewpoint By Johnathan Little Where former Soviet republics stand economically, 30 years after fall of USSR See UNIONS on page 7 Court UNIONS