A movement to bring back teaching about the ancient Greek and Roman worlds

The New Neo Posted on by

So fascinating. Some excerpts:

[In the 18th Century in the US] Both elementary education and higher education taught the classical world, but for different reasons. For the vast majority, whose only access was to elementary education, the ancient world was taught to provide a common referent for participating as a citizen in the new American Republic. The over-arching intention was to provide citizens with an understanding of what the Founders were trying to accomplish when they used classical republics as their model to create the United States. Students needed to understand what “tyranny” was and why the Founders wantedto avoid it, what the difference was between a “republic” and a “kingdom,” why the former was to be preferred to the latter, and how, in turn, a “republic” differed from a “democracy.” The classical world provided many such examples that had inspired the Founders, so they were taught to young citizens to help them understand the Founders’ intentions…

The advent of the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century led to a pernicious change in elementary education, namely, the replacement of history with “social studies.” Ralph Ketcham, Anders Lewis, and Sandra Stotsky write: “In 1913 a committee led by Thomas Jesse Jones, a Welsh immigrant deeply interested in the education of African Americans, created a report entitled ‘Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education.’ Jones and other members of the committee believed that education had to be made “relevant” to students. And history, according to Jones was not relevant to the vast majority of students who would, after a few years of schooling, go off into factories and never have to bother themselves with the boring, arcane facts of the past. In place of history, schools should offer “social studies” classes that would help children accept their lot in life by teaching them skills they would need in the factories of the modern world.”

The Jones report was widely adopted by Progressive education reformers throughout the country and led many states to replace history with social studies. As Ketcham and his colleagues point out, “History was too far removed from the immediate needs and wants of children. It was too arcane, too academic, and too likely to involve abstract thoughts. The fragile minds of so many American youngsters could simply not handle history.”24 As late as 1967, an article entitled “Let’s Abolish History,” argued that “no teacher at any grade level … should teach a course in history as content.”

I was taught “social studies” in grade school, but everyone knew it was just a strange name for history. My teachers were old, most of them born in the 19th century, and they weren’t into anything newfangled. We were taught at least something about the Greeks and Romans back in grade school, and more again in high school. But I remember it being more about dates and battles and names rather than concepts.

The article has excerpts from some current textbooks that had an almost instantaneous soporific effect on me, a reminder of how much I hated history in school even though history really does interest me. How do they manage to leach all the life out of it?

Trump unveils…

The New Neo Posted on by

…his Platinum Plan to help Black Americans. Among other things, it designates the KKK and Antifa as terrorist organizations, but the major focus is on economics:

The president is expected to tout the plan as “a bold vision that we can and will achieve over the next four years.”

The president’s plan, according to the campaign, will increase access to capital in Black communities by almost $500 billion, help to create 500,000 new Black-owned businesses, and help to create 3 million new jobs for the Black community.

If the plan succeeded in doing this, it would help all of us.

More and more and more on Russiagate and on the pursuit of Flynn

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s so much coming out that I’m mostly going to offer links.

The Federalist details how one FBI agent who later was assigned to the Mueller team has testified about enormous and systemic (that word is appropriate here) misuse of the system to get Trump and his associates:

Barnett painted a picture of a Special Counsel that was run the opposite of the way a typical FBI investigation would be. “Typically investigators push for legal process and have to explain the need for the request to the attorneys. Barnett said the SCO attorneys were pushing for legal process and just wanted investigators to sign affidavits they prepared,” he said, according to the report. He said every request was “green-lighted” and that seasoned FBI agents were viewed as a “speed bump” to the attorneys leading the investigations.

The situation was so extreme that Barnett and others joked about how it was like a game, which they referred to as Collusion Clue. “In the hypothetical game, investigators are able to choose any character conducting any activity, in any location, and pair this individual with another character and interpret it as evidence of collusion,” Barnett said, according to the report of his interview.

Please read the whole thing.

Much more on Barnett here:

…Barnett is identified as the original Case Agent on the “Crossfire Razor” investigation, the foreign counterintelligence investigation of General Michael Flynn…

…Working with his supervisor, the Case Agent makes operational decisions about what investigative techniques to use, and how to exploit information that is developed by those efforts. The Case Agent assigns “leads” to other squad agents — investigative tasks to be performed as part of developing as much information as possible about the target.

The first thing to understand is that William Barnett appears to be a highly experienced agent…

The second thing to understand is that he’s a “brick agent.” He is not in FBI management. He is not a supervisor. He is a working case agent who goes out into the field and gathers information…

Barnett did not “Open” Crossfire Razor investigation and he was never clear what the people who did open it wanted the investigation to look at or do. It was never clear to him what the purpose was for opening Razor.

Barnett didn’t get anywhere with the investigation and was about to close it when he was instructed not to do so and told to look into a Logan Act violation for the Kislyak phone call. He found no reason to charge Flynn under that act, and then:

After the January 24 interview of Gen. Flynn [the one that tried to entrap Flynn and then charge he lied], the Razor investigation became “top-down” — meaning all the instructions on Razor were coming from high FBI management without the Case Agent being involved. He was not invited to meetings or asked for input.

Barnett believes he was purposely “cut out” of the January 24 interview. Normally, a Case Agent and a supervisor would conduct such an interview. Barnett was not told the interview was planned. He only found out about the interview the day after it had taken place.

After that, Barnett asked to be taken off the case because he suspected it would be investigated by an IG.

There’s a lot more at the link. But the whole thing makes me wonder why Barnett didn’t become a whistleblower way back then. I said I wonder, but I think I know the answer: fear.

In a separate but related topic, there’s Brennan’s role in suppressing evidence that Putin and Russia actually favored Hillary Clinton’s election.

Steele’s primary subsource was a person the FBI knew had been suspected of being a Russian agent

The New Neo Posted on by

Isn’t everyone? A Russian agent, that is.

Sometimes it seems that way. But that didn’t stand in the way of the FBI resting much of its investigation of the Trump administration on the reported word (secondhand) of someone suspected of being one:

The Crossfire Hurricane team identified this source in December 2016. The members “became familiar with the 2009 investigation.” Despite this, they interviewed the course “over the course of three sequential days in January 2017.”…

A declassified summary of interviews with this source came out over the summer. The source told the FBI in January and March 2017 “the information contained in the anti-Trump dossier was unreliable.”

The source’s information “that served as the basis of the dossier was ‘second and third-hand information and rumors at best.’”

The document released over the summer showed the “FBI was on notice of the dossier’s credibility problem, yet continued to seek further FISA warrants renewals for Page.”

So the credibility problem was on two levels – the suspect nature of the source as well as the fact that the source told the FBI that the Steele dossier information he had supposedly relayed to Steele was unreliable and that Steele had mischaracterized what the source had actually told him.

Other than that, no problem.

I doubt any of this will matter in the end. No one important in the case has been indicted, and if Biden is elected none of the higher-ups who perpetrated this massive conspiracy to frame a president of the United States ever will be indicted. And half the public either doesn’t care about any of it or applauds what was done to Trump and his aides.

If I had to choose one single undertaking that has set this country on its present banana republic (or worse) course, it would be Crossfire Hurricane.

Why was the guy who derailed a NYC subway set free with no bail after a previous offense?

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Ace.]

A man with the wonderful name of Demetrius Harvard caused tremendous damage – and could have caused a lot more – when he was witnessed putting metal debris on the subway tracks, which managed to derail a NYC subway to the tune of about a million dollars in damages.

My first thought on reading that was hmmm, I wonder why the terrorists didn’t do that in the 60s. My second thought was that I hoped this doesn’t inspire copycats. And my third and fourth thoughts – on reading the rest of the article and learning that Harvard had been freed without bail and was on “supervised release” after a previous offense of damaging an MTA bus by striking it with a metal barricade – was that no-bail release for such an offense is stark raving madness, and that “supervised release” is some sort of bitter joke.

This guy allegedly did something potentially very dangerous in the previous offense against the bus, attacking city property that may or may not have been carrying passengers. And yet, no bail necessary. I couldn’t find any article that answered the question of where the bus was when attacked and whether it had passengers, but I very much doubt that it was unoccupied and in some storage place. My guess is that it did have passengers, and if so it makes Harvard’s act and his easy release that much worse.

And that’s not all – there’s more [emphasis mine]:

A man accused of attempting to derail a New York City subway train was released without bail in a prior case despite having an open warrant for failing to appear in court.

Demetrius Harvard was arrested and arraigned on Sept. 5 after he struck a bus with a metal street barricade. He was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief and granted supervised release. Prosecutors did not ask for bail.

At the time of his arrest, he had an open warrant for failing to appear in court in a March case in which he threatened employees at a mobile phone store with a metal pipe and threw a trash can at the store’s sign, according to the New York Post. The judge released him without bail in that case despite prosecutors requesting a $1,000 bail.

It’s not as though the city of New York didn’t have plenty of warning about this man’s dangerousness. But their policies are the opposite of “broken windows.”

This time, Harvard’s bail was set at $50,000. That’s actually not all that much, considering the magnitude of his crime. I wonder why he isn’t being charged with terrorism, because I believe that his latest offense may fail into that category.

And how was Harvard caught? By the quick and courageous actions of a man named Rikien Wilder:

Wilder said he noticed a strange man walking on the tracks, and then placing debris on the rails. When the man came up to the platform, Wilder jumped into action and headed down to the tracks, himself.

“I removed what I could see and I got up out of there because you know, I could hear, I could feel the turbulence from the train coming,” Wilder said. “It kind of angered me a little bit because he seemed to get some joy out of, you know, wrecking the train and potentially harming people.”

Wilder went to alert MTA workers at the station, while the man, who police identified as Demetrius Harvard, allegedly went back down to the tracks and placed more debris on the rails. The next train that passed derailed, injuring three people.

“Normally, we don’t encourage riders, customers to go down onto the tracks,” MTA Chairman Pat Foye said.

But Wilder wasn’t done. He then chased the suspect and held him for 15 minutes until police arrived. Chairman Foye said that for Wilder’s heroism the MTA would “extend the highest award the MTA can provide to a civilian” — a year of unlimited MetroCard rides.

I think someone should donate some reward money to him, as well.

By the way, since everything seems to be about race these days, both the perpetrator and the hero of this story are black.

Where does Governor Newsom think…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the electric power will come from (or other technology, such as pressurized hydrogen) to run all these non-gas cars? How will it be generated, and at what financial and environmental cost? Or is this just virtue-signaling by the governor, since the time frame ensures that he will no longer be in charge (at least, I think he won’t)?:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed an executive order to ban gas-powered cars and trucks in California by 2035, a move he said would cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than a third.

Plus, Newsom said he is directing the California Air Resources Board to establish regulations that require all new cars and passenger trucks be zero-emission vehicles by 2045 “where feasible.”

“This is the most impactful step our state can take to fight climate change,” Newsom said while announcing the order. “For too many decades, we have allowed cars to pollute the air that our children and families breathe. You deserve to have a car that doesn’t give your kids asthma… Cars shouldn’t melt glaciers or raise sea levels threatening our cherished beaches and coastlines.”

Here’s the text of Newsom’s order. I did notice that part of the plan seems to be to create more public transportation in California:

a)Building towards an integrated, statewide rail and transit network, consistent with the California State Rail Plan, to provide seamless, affordable multimodal travel options for all.

b)Supporting bicycle, pedestrian, and micro-mobility options, particularly in low-income and disadvantaged communities in the State, by incorporating safe and accessible infrastructure into projects where appropriate.

So, poor people will ride bicycles – as in old Communist China – and the rest of us are supposed to take the bus and the rail. Good luck with that in California, a state that does not lend itself to such approaches (which have been seriously botched in the past, anyway). At some point, if this goes through, I imagine that cars themselves will be limited or banned, in order to force people to accept involuntarily what they will not do voluntarily.

Climate change and COVID are used in similar ways by the left, in the effort to gain control authorities could not otherwise justify.

Hunter and Joe and the MSM

The New Neo Posted on by

For any situation to become a big story and inspire outrage against the actual perpetrators, enough people in the media (MSM or social) have to be behind framing the story in that particular way. The facts matter, but only to a certain extent, and they can be twisted to mean the opposite of what they actually indicate, if that’s the goal.

Just to take one example of thousands, the whole Russiagate story – what the Obama administration and the federal agencies such as the FBI did to try to frame Obama’s successor and/or his associates – is a shocking one, much bigger than Watergate. But it was covered by the press, and amplified on social media, in a way that attempted to exonerate the culprits and perpetuate the frameup. And for many many consumers of news, it did so successfully, despite an enormity of evidence that proved that those agencies acted mendaciously.

The same with so many of the cases of supposed racist murder at the hands of police officers, the cases BLM and others use to stir up racial hatred and riots. The fact are almost always other than the left says, but if enough people pick it up, then their lies are believed. With the help of the MSM and social media, that has helped fuel the current crisis. And this is by design – the design of the left, which also supplies the money to fund much of the non-spontaneous and wholly-planned rioting.

And so it is with the exploits of Hunter Biden, whose father Joe is of course the current Democratic nominee for the presidency. This – and this and this and the information in all the links here – would be vastly important if the media deemed it so. But the media is uninterested:

A passive observer might take this all in and think that Hunter Biden’s foreign adventures are a worthy topic of discussion while his father runs for president.

That passive observer would be wrong, according to the press. Hunter Biden strikes Cockburn as a very interesting figure, yet news operations are suddenly competing to see who can find his exploits least interesting. CNN, the AP, Politico, and CBS all variously dismissed the report as old news, politically charged, or ‘controversial’. The finest headline of all belongs to The New York Times, though: ‘Republican Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Biden.’

No evidence? Hunter Biden was paid millions of dollars by Ukrainian, Russian and Chinese oligarchs. In fact, he was paid a lot more than Russia ever spent on the Facebook ads liberals think swung the 2016 election. That’s plenty of evidence. What the Times and others mean is that there is no proof of wrongdoing by Biden. But so what? There was never one shred of proof for the Russia collusion conspiracy theory, but the Times accepted a Pulitzer for hundreds of articles obsessively chronicling that story. They’re still at it to this day.

But don’t expect any months-long investigation into Hunter Biden, now or ever. He’s only a Democrat.

I had noticed that jaw-dropping NY Times headline, as well. But why be surprised? This is the way it is, across the board, and has been for a long time:

In other words:

Let’s be honest. If this were one of Trump’s kids, there’d be wall to wall coverage right and Pelosi would already be drawing up the articles of impeachment. Further, there would be widespread demands for the DOJ to investigate for criminal behavior.

I suspect that’s where this is headed, and it’s another reason Joe Biden may be more desperate to win that some think. The only way he can protect his corrupt family is to gain power over the DOJ. There’s simply noway everything that went on here was above board. The wives of Putin stooges do not wire millions of dollars to the VP’s son for no reason. Don’t forget that this all was happening while Joe Biden was heading up the Russia-Ukraine policy front for the Obama administration. Was Russia attempting to buy influence? That certainly seems to be the most likely explanation.

Forget it, voters. It’s Bidentown.

Andrew C. McCarthy explains the Breonna Taylor case,…

The New Neo Posted on by

…which he calls “tragic.” It is, but it’s nowhere near murder – not that the mob cares. But for those who’d like to know:

Police will be relieved that no charges were brought against Sergeant Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, whose shots in the dark chaos struck Ms. Taylor only after the officers were fired upon by her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker — who himself may have been justified, in the confusion, in shooting at what he says he believed was an intruder. The cops were doing their job in executing a lawful search warrant at a location that was quite justifiably tied to a notorious criminal — Ms. Taylor’s former boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover.

Please read the whole thing.

Two police officers shot in Louisville

The New Neo Posted on by

Today the grand jury handed down a ruling in the Breonna Taylor case that the mob didn’t like. What has followed are the sort of riots we’ve grown used to, and tonight that included the shooting of two police officers. Fortunately, the officers are expected to survive.

The facts of the Taylor killing, which occurred last March, have been hard to ascertain. I haven’t written about it before because I’ve read so many contradictory things – for example, did the police enter the apartment on a no-knock warrant, as many have alleged? Apparently not; the police announced themselves, although witnesses differ. They were met with gunfire and returned gunfire, which is how Taylor was killed.

A grand jury hears testimony for the prosecution, not the defense, and decides whether there’s enough to bring charges. The mob would prefer to be the ones to make that decision, on the “evidence” produced by demagogues and the MSM. That would be the mob veto:

When a state court acquitted the white officers charged in the post-arrest beating of Rodney King, widespread riots successfully prompted a second trial at the federal level and determined its outcome. The jury at that second trial were fully aware of the new rules: “no justice, no peace.” “The outcome,” I wrote in 1995, “was a foregone conclusion. What juror would want to be responsible for provoking a new round of deadly riots?” The officers were duly convicted of violating the civil rights of Rodney King under a federal statute…

Maxine Waters, Congresswoman from Los Angeles and now a prominent supporter of BLM and Antifa, referred to the Rodney King riots at the time as a “rebellion,” implying that they were a justified reaction of the black community against the endemic injustice of white supremacy that dominates American society…

Even before the Rodney King riots, a prominent law professor had made elaborate arguments that rioting is a form of expression protected by the First Amendment—a simple matter of “matching one’s rhetoric to his outrage.” Think of it—one of the most advanced and respected legal minds arguing that rioting is rhetoric!

And yet that is exactly what today’s progressive rioters believe…

…Riots are not only being justified: they are being made into a staple of our judicial system and our public life, the threat of them used to install routine fear and racial supremacy in our homes and cities.

The Rodney King riots occurred in 1992, nearly thirty years ago.

The source of Democrat/leftist rage is the demand for power

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, they hate Trump. But it’s hardly just that. It’s that the left thinks it is entitled to run things and that any impediment to that goal is illegitimate.

And after all, if they look at American history, there really has been a slow steady march to the left. The same is true in many other countries. If that march goes too quickly and seems too vicious, it has been somewhat reversed in some places such as the USSR and its satellites, and China. But in terms of Western Europe and the US, what was once unthinkably leftist for most people (since the 30s, anyway) has now become quite popular.

If you look at the course of 20th Century American history, you can see some back and forth but also a general overall movement ever leftward. FDR was a real turning point, although there were glimmers prior to that. Since then, the Republican presidents have been Eisenhower, Nixon/Ford, Reagan, the two Bushes, and now Trump. Only Reagan and Trump can be characterized as conservatives who fought strongly against that leftward drift. Also, for most of the time, Republican presidents were dealing with Democratic congresses, which helped tie their hands. Not so for Democratic presidents, who often had Democratic congresses – and therefore much more power – and were willing to use it.

I chronicled these changes in this 2017 post, some of which I’ll now quote:

If you study Congressional history in terms of party control (see this important chart), you will note that, ever since Coolidge and Hoover, Republicans have only had that “offense” opportunity (control of the presidency and both houses) twice. The first time (and then they barely had control) was in 1953-1955 under Eisenhower. That was a long long time ago, I think you would agree, and Eisenhower wasn’t exactly a conservative. Also, the reason I wrote “barely” is that the GOP’s “control” of the Senate balanced on a razor’s edge, with 48 Republicans to 47 Democrats plus one Independent (the Independent being Wayne Morse, who basically was no Republican).

The second time was much more recently, and it’s the one most present-day readers remember: under George W. Bush, and in particular the years 2005-2007. He also had majorities in 2003-2005, but a much weaker one (especially in the Senate), so weak it could be undermined by just a couple of senatorial RINOs. Those Bush years were also dominated by the war in Iraq, and unfortunately Republicans did not capitalize on their very rare moment of being in control and thus able to play “offense.”

…[I]t’s actually the Democrats who’ve been in control of both [the presidency and Congress] far far more often ever since FDR, and therefore able to play real “offense” in the sense I’m talking about.

In addition, many times that the Democrats have held presidency and Congress, their majorities in both houses have been overwhelming, featuring numbers that Republicans haven’t rivaled since before FDR and have not come close to rivaling after (even during the Bush II presidency when they did have control for a few years). All of the presidents in my lifetime [written in 2017] whose party has held both houses at any time during their presidency (other than the aforementioned George W. Bush and briefly and weakly Eisenhower) were Democrats. All the ones who had very strong majorities for much of the time were Democrats as well. Besides FDR, we have Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, and early Clinton,. Actually, Clinton was the only post-FDR Democratic president who had to face a divided Congress for a substantial (at least half) portion of his presidency…

Check out the numbers; it’s quite astounding how large the Democratic margins in Congress were during the last two-thirds of the 20th Century. As an example, from 1935-1937 the Senate was about 72% Democratic and the House 74% under FDR, and those margins increased in 1937-1939 to 78% and 76%. Hard to see what Republicans could have done against that. During 1945-1947, Truman’s Congress was very close to 60% Democrat in the Senate and about 56% Democrat in the House (for the next two years he had to deal with a Republican Congress, however). JFK? 64% of the Senate was Democratic during his first two years, and that margin increased to 67% for the next two years (some of which, of course, became the LBJ years). At the same time, the House was 60% and 59% Democratic. The margins increased still again during LBJ’s first elected term, 1965-1967, to about 68% in both branches of Congress.

In contrast, Nixon (and then Ford) had to deal with an enormous Democratic majority of around 58% for both branches (although the margins reduced somewhat during the later years of his/their terms) the whole time he was in office. Carter was initially given a 61% lead in the Senate and almost 67% of the House, later reduced to a still-strong 57%/64%…

Study it all you want, but you won’t find margins anything like that—not even remotely like that—for any Republican president since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, and Coolidge. And Coolidge only had 53% of the Senate and approximately 52% of the House at first, which went up a bit in the next election before it went down in the subsequent one, with the Senate Republican lead in the Senate fading to one vote. With Hoover, the Senate went back up to 58% GOP (then down again to a one-vote margin during the last two years of his term), while the House was 61% Republican and then down to a tie during those last two years.

So, that was the situation for Republicans controlling the presidency and Congress during the 20th Century, except for the aforementioned brief times during the Eisenhower years when they barely controlled Congress. And then in the 21st Century, more slight control for the GOP under Bush.

What a contrast! For nearly a hundred years Congress has mostly been in control of Democrats, often very strongly in control, and that’s also been when there’s a Democratic president. Republican control has been weak and extremely sporadic, and therefore most Republican presidents have faced an oppositional Congress.

SCOTUS has also marched leftward, with some exceptions. The idea that Trump could get a second term and would have the opportunity to appoint three SCOTUS justices, a third of the Court, rankles the left very deeply. How dare he? That’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat!

Now we have quite a few Democrats/leftists not only saying that they’ll pack the Court if they get the opportunity, but also that, if the Court issues judgments they don’t like, they’ll just ignore those judgments. Oh, and perhaps they’ll impeach Trump if he tries to appoint a SCOTUS justice now, as is his right.

They are having tantrums if they don’t get their way, but these are not ordinary tantrums. These are highly dangerous tantrums that are just another sign of the breakdown of the old Democratic Party, which was a fusion of far left and moderate, and its almost total replacement by the activist far left.

If the American people don’t see this for what it is, the far left just may succeed in getting the power it so desires. And once they get it, they will do everything they can to keep it.