The South Gibson Star-Times serves the towns of Haubstadt, Owensville and Fort Branch.
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1466637
B-5 Tuesday, May 3, 2022 South Gibson Star-Times Across America, states have gone on the offensive, targeting the radi- cal sex and "gender" curriculums in grade schools. These proposals fol- low increasing calls from parents to reject sexually explicit content un- earthed in public school classrooms. The Parental Rights in Education law, recently signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, sparked heated con- versations throughout the nation re- garding sex education and "gender ideology." The Florida law address- es teacher conduct and material al- lowed in classrooms. It also post- pones any teaching of sexual orien- tation and "gender identity" until af- ter third grade. Other states, such as Alabama, have followed suit, addressing not just education, but the medical field as well. Thus far, schools and school boards have been the primary target of parental push back against radical gender ideology. However, the issue goes beyond one's local public school district. The organizations that sup- ply the curriculum and teacher train- ing materials are just as important to examine. One such organization is the Sex- uality Information and Education Council of the United States. This organization is a nonprofit devoted to sexual education advocacy. Along with tracking current and future legislation nationwide, the group publishes guidelines for grade school children and young adults. It partners with groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Ad- vocates for Youth, and Planned Par- enthood Federation of America to promote model legislation on "com- prehensive sex education." Since its beginning in 1964, the Sexuality Informa- tion and Education Council of the United States and its partners have been successful advocates for their cause. Through activ- ism and political pres- sure, they have gained heavy influence in cur- riculum and govern- ment. They have ad- vocated "gender-af- firming" programs. They have also pushed opt-out bills as opposed to opt-in bills. That means parents must take their children out of a controver- sial class rather than place them in it. Parents are worried that this agen- da not only exposes children to inap- propriate content at early ages, but it also promotes lifestyles that are contrary to many parents' values. But these activist groups have no in- tention of losing the ground that they have gained. They have denounced recent state proposals such as Florida's. Take Eva Goldfarb and Lisa Lieberman, pro- fessors of public health at Montclair State University. In an online meet- ing, they suggested that the earlier in a child's life that sex and gender topics are introduced into the curric- ulum, the better. In the same meeting, they encour- aged the promotion of sexual topics in other subjects. "The fact that top- ics falling within sex education can be addressed successfully across the curriculum," they said, "is encour- aging." And in the 2022 Legislative Look- Ahead, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the Unit- ed States condemns parental rights bills as "insidious," prom- ising to increase ef- forts to fight such pro- posals. Parents have been primarily taking on the public school sys- tem. However, to ad- dress the radical sex- ual orientation and gender identity agen- da and other unsettling content, par- ents and concerned citizens should push for parental bills of rights. In a recent report, Heritage Foun- dation experts Jonathan Butcher and Lindsey Burke lay out what an ideal proposal would look like. They begin with changing the way schools view students in their care. According to the report, a parent bill of rights must affirm parents as the child's pri- mary caregivers. Parents are the ones "primarily responsible for their children's ed- ucation and health, as well as their moral and religious upbringing." Stu- dents must also be protected from compelled speech and parents must have the final say regarding health and counseling services that are pro- vided to their child. To directly address the curric- ulum developers, lawmakers and parents should push for transparen- cy in the classroom. This transpar- ency should not only include specif- ics about the curriculum, but who is providing the school with it. Parents have a right to know what 'The New York Times,' left-wing propaganda machine The New York Times demonstrates why Gallup polling late last year showed only 36 percent of Ameri- cans saying they trust media a "great deal" or "fair" amount. Times reporters have brought fire to the feet of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, reporting on a re- cording of private remarks that Mc- Carthy made to other Republicans in the days following the Jan. 6 storm- ing of the Capitol. In those remarks, as reported by the Times, McCarthy was critical of President Donald Trump, telling Re- publican colleagues that he believed Democrats had votes to impeach him, in which case, "It would be my recommendation that he resign." The Times produced the record- ing after a McCarthy spokesperson denied that his boss said "he'd call Trump to say he should resign." Taking words out of context to achieve something other than cap- turing truth is what, unfortunately, defines much of our left-wing union media today, particularly The New York Times. I wrote in my own column then that, considering the circumstances of what appeared to be certain im- peachment, Trump should consider resigning. I called it a "Masada mo- ment," referring to the band of Jews 2,000 years ago, trapped on a moun- taintop by Roman troops, who decid- ed to take their own lives rather than being captured by the enemy. My advice, and it appears what Mc- Carthy had in mind then, was that a Trump resignation with only 10 days left in his presidency would deprive Democrats of the political objectives they hoped to achieve with impeach- ment. The point was to minimize political costs, not repudiate Trump. If anyone doubts that The New York Times is about a political agen- da rather than delivering truth, they should compare how the Times has covered the McCarthy affair to the story about Hunter Biden's laptop. The Times reporters get big head- lines in their breathless delivery of the McCarthy story, which is includ- ed in an upcoming book they are pub- lishing. In contrast, the Times reported on March 16, 2022, confirmation of the authenticity of Hunter Biden's emails, showing his extensive busi- ness dealings trading on the posi- tion of his vice president father. This a mere year and a half after the New York Post broke the story in Octo- ber 2020. Can anyone doubt that The New York Times, along with left-wing so- cial media brethren, withheld this blockbuster story a month before the presidential election? And can any thinking person not appreciate that this alone could have made all the difference in the ra- zor-thin margins that delivered the election victory to Joe Biden? Now the New York Post has just dropped another bombshell. A fter reviewing White House vis- itor logs, the Post reports "Hunt- er Biden's closest business partner made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations be- tween 2009 and 2015, including a sit- down with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing." It appears that President Biden, who has said, "I have never spoken to my son about his overseas busi- ness dealings," may have lied. Is this a big story? I think so. As the Times plays this down, it insults our intelligence, focusing on McCarthy and diminishing the truth that what someone speculates about in private — particularly an influen- tial political player — may diverge from what they decide to say publicly. When President Ronald Reagan proclaimed his 11th commandment — "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican" — surely, he was talking about what is said in public. Reagan understood the critical importance of party unity. Under Trump's leadership, our economy was growing at a pace not seen in years. Black and Hispanic un- employment rates reached all-time You've probably heard of the high-flying Big Tech FA ANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Net- flix and Google. Among the five of them, their market cap reached $ 6 trillion last year, which is more than the GDP of all but a small handful of entire countries. Moreover, their net worth is larger than the entire annu- al output of India, with more than 1 billion people. These companies got so big and profitable so fast that politicians on the left, right and center started ac- cusing them of monopolistic behav- ior. "Break them up! " shouted Demo- cratic Sens. Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar. Some Republicans, such as Josh Hawley, endorsed the same strategy. But has anyone noticed what has happened to the stock values of these once-invincible powerhouses? Netflix's stock has gotten crushed of late. Just flattened. Its share price collapsed by 35 per- cent in one day. This was one of the most significant single-day sell-offs in the history of stocks. For now, the rout doesn't seem to be waning. Over the past year, Netflix's market cap has tumbled from $267 billion to close to $ 96 billion. Sorry if you own this stock. And most pension funds do own Netflix as part of their portfolios, so it wasn't just millionaires who got hurt. The Netflix brass blames its de- mise of late on "fierce competition" for subscribers. Meanwhile, Facebook has suffered even more considerable losses that exceed one-half a trillion dollars. That's not supposed to happen to mo- nopolies that crush the competition. Instead, the hunters have become the hunted. Facebook is confronting serious competition from other social media platforms such as LinkedIn and China's TikTok, which are elbowing out Face- book's dominance. What are we to make of all this jostling to be king of the mountain in the digital domain? I carry no water for Big Tech, and I'm as frustrated with the free speech in- fringements against conservatives as anyone. But cries of "monopoly" are so early 20th century. Just as no one worries about Standard Oil, Mic- rosoft or General Motors taking over their industries, we see the same cut- throat survival tactics in the hyper- competitive tech sector. This kind of competition is great news for the con- sumer. It lowers prices and makes a mockery of the "monopoly" rants. Companies such as Google bet- ter look over their shoulders. If you slip up, the marauders are coming to steal away your market share. Some- times, the raiders aren't even Amer- ican companies. Globalization and free trade have dramatically lowered the prices of nearly all digital prod- ucts. That is as it should be in a free-mar- ket capitalist world. One day, you are on top of the world and seemingly in an impenetrable fortress, and the next, you lose half your market cap. We don't need trust-buster regula- tors in Washington, like the leftist Li- na Khan of the Federal Trade Com- mission, policing our businesses. The market is doing that just fine, thank you. America has gained tech dominance over our rivals, especial- ly China, Japan and Europe, because we have allowed the digi- tal economy to remain mostly tax- and regula- tion-free. It's the Wild West in Silicon Val- ley and Austin, Texas, which created the tril- lions in wealth in the first place. The high-tech industry has added value and wealth at a blistering pace, and how sad is it that when our American ingenuity and inventiveness succeed, the trust-busters want to tear it down? Then, when these tech giants start to surrender their competitive advan- tage, the fool politicians want to give them billions of dollars of corporate welfare handouts from taxpayers. The late and great Austrian econ- omist Joseph Schumpeter called the process of inventing new products to challenge the extant corporate pow- er structures in business "creative de- struction." The Netflix and Facebook sell-off is a jolting reminder that the market is a better way than govern- ment to keep companies honest and on top of their game. It also keeps prices low. Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Re- lentless Growth of Government Is De- vouring Our Economy." Race for the Cure By Star Parker Heritage Viewpoint By John Schoof Parents are going on offensive to fight indoctrination in education Give Me a Break By John Stossel Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Another high-tech titan falters Wikipedia bias I love Wikipedia. I donated thou- sands of dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation. Before Wikipedia, all we had were printed encyclopedias — out of date by the time we bought them. Then libertarian Jimmy Wales came up with a web-based, crowd- sourced encyclopedia. Crowd-sourced? A Britannica ed- itor called Wikipedia "a public re- stroom." But Wales won the battle. Britannica's encyclopedias are no longer printed. Congratulations to Wales. But recently I learned that Wiki- pedia co-founder Larry Sanger now says Wikipedia's political pages have turned into leftist "propaganda." That's upsetting. Leftists took over the editing? Sadly, yes. I checked it out. All editing is done by volunteers. Wales hoped there would be enough diverse political persuasions that bi- ases would be countered by others. But that's not what's happening. Leftists just like to write. Conservatives build things: com- panies, homes, farms. You see the pattern comparing political dona- tions from different professions: Surgeons, oil workers, truck driv- ers, loggers and pilots lean right. Artists, bartenders, librarians, re- porters and teachers lean left. Conservatives don't have as much time to tweet or argue on the web. Leftists do. And they love doing it. This helps them take over the me- dia, universities and, now, Wikipe- dia. Jonathan Weiss is what Wikipe- dia calls a "Top 100" Wikipedian be- cause he's made almost half a mil- lion edits. He says he's noticed new bias. "Wikipedia does a great job on things like science and sports, but you see a lot of political bias come into play when you're talking cur- rent events." Weiss is no conservative. In pres- idential races, he voted for Al Gore, Ralph Nader and Barack Obama. Never for a Republican. "I've really never identified strongly with either political party," he says. Maybe that's why he notices the new Wikipedia bias. "People on the left far outweigh people on the center and the right...a lot (are) openly socialist and Marx- ist." Some even post pictures of Che Guevara and Lenin on their own pro- files. These are the people who decide which news sources Wikipedia writ- ers may cite. Wikipedia's approved "Reliable sources" page rejects po- litical reporting from Fox but calls CNN and MSNBC "reliable." Good conservative outlets like The Federalist, The Daily Caller and The Daily Wire are all deemed "un- reliable." Same with the New York Post (That's probably why Wikipe- dia called Hunter Biden's emails a conspiracy theory even after other liberal media finally acknowledged that they were real). While it excludes Fox, Wikipe- dia approves even hard left media like Vox, Slate, The Nation, Moth- er Jones and Jacobin, a socialist pub- lication. Until recently, Wikipedia's "social- ism" and "communism" pages made no mention of the millions of people killed by socialism and communism. Even now, deaths are "deep in the article," says Weiss, "treated as an arcane academic debate. But we're talking about mass murder! " The communism page even adds that we cannot ignore the "lives saved by communist moderniza- tion" ! This is nuts. Look up "concentration and in- ternment camps" and you'll find, along with the Holocaust, "Mexi- co-United States border," and under that, "Trump administration family separation policy." What? Former President Donald Trump's border controls, no matter how harsh, are very different from the Nazi's mass murder. Wikipedia does say "anyone can edit." So I made a small addition for political balance, mentioning that President Barack Obama built those cages. My edit was taken down. I wrote Wikipedia founder Wales to say that if his creation now uses only progressive sources, I would no longer donate. He replied, "I totally respect the decision not to give us more mon- See EDUCATION on page 6 See LEFT-WING on page 6 See WIKIPEDIA on page 6