Monthly Archives: July 2021

Liberals vs. conservatives

Conservatives cant give up on colleges | July 1

Columnist Michael Andrews is correct to observe that throughout America, college faculty are politically far more liberal than conservative and that students routinely become more liberal while in college. He is incorrect, however, to attribute this to a a left-wing political infiltration by faculty who then indoctrinate students. Instead, it is a product of differing thought processes for liberal versus conservative decision-making in general. It is not at all limited to the political arena. In fact, differing political viewpoints are not a cause; they are a result of broader philosophical differences. Without regard to political affiliation, a conservative, by definition, wants to keep things as they are. A conservative in the apolitical sense typically bases his or her preexisting doctrine of what is right on religious dogma or cultural tradition.

On the other hand, a person thinking liberally in the apolitical sense does not begin with a preconceived notion of what is right. Instead, a reverence for the scientific method of discovery, truth and an open mind are the cornerstones of liberal thought without regard to political affiliation. Liberal thinkers do not ask, What is right? Instead, they ask, What is? The answer does not need to fit into a preexisting value system. It is what it is.

Given that a mission of a university is to discover and promulgate truth and knowledge, it is not surprising that liberal thinkers are more common than conservative thinkers. It isnt that universities recruit liberals and indoctrinate students. It is the pursuit of truth and a welcome acceptance of change that attracts and develops them. Faculty are disproportionately liberal because they seek truth and discovery and they are not averse to change. It just so happens that also makes them, on average, more liberal than conservative in politics, also.

Alan Balfour, Temple Terrace

Elsa blows past | July 7

That was one nasty hurricane we had, must have blown 20 mph. If not for the constant chirping of my phone going off alerting me how bad it was going to be, I would have missed it. Next time I will be better prepared and have my phone turned off.

John Spengler, Spring Hill

Academy of the Holy Names is too woke, not Catholic enough, lawsuit says | July 6

Thank you for publishing the story of Barbara and Anthony Scarpo suing the Academy of the Holy Names for the return of their past financial donation of $1.35 million by accusing the school of being too woke. That is exactly why its so important to support your local newspaper. Its extremely important to know who is trying to control whom in our local community. Years ago Nelson Rockefeller asked my father, who was active in Republican politics, to support him in his first run for governor of New York. My dad declined, not because of policy positions but simply because he was leery of supporting anyone with so much money. I am today amazed how prescient was my dad in realizing the power of money to crush integrity, whether it be in the secular or the religious sphere. This whole incident is the mirror image of Gov. Ron DeSantis trying to withhold money from state universities if they dont teach what is approved by local politicians! Lets hope the leaders of our state university system have as much gumption as those at the helm of the Academy of the Holy Names.

Jeanne Fischer Zylstra, Temple Terrace

Bidens fantasies about a new new deal are a mirage | July 2

I am one of the moderate and conservative voters that columnist Jonah Goldberg references (according to The Pew Research Center study) who are responsible for Joe Bidens victory in the 2020 election. As a lifelong Republican, I had previously only voted for one Democratic presidential candidate John Kennedy when I was 18 years old. I am not and never was a Trump fan, although I agreed with many of his accomplishments as president, but I could not support the man for the person he is. I believed Joe Biden was sincere when he said he wanted to bring the country together and cross the aisle to do so, if needed. His was the message that this country needed and still wants. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when he rapidly changed courses and shifted closer to the progressive left wing of his party and its agenda. Both parties have left and right extremists and unfortunately their voices are the loudest. They both need to remember that, in studying the results of the 2020 presidential election, the quiet middle-of-the-roaders make the difference. We will be voting in 2022 and 2024.

Liz Gauntt, Tampa

Trump Organization, CFO face fraud charges | July 2

It should come as no surprise that the indictment of the Trump Organization and its CFO did not charge Donald Trump personally. His record of avoiding culpability is well documented. Early in Trumps business career, he was sued by the Justice Department for discriminatory rental practices when African Americans were systematically excluded for consideration as prospective tenants. The case was settled, and no admission of guilt by Trump was required. As president, Trumps abuse of power led to little more than two benign impeachments and a bruised ego. For those who believe this is some sort of lucky streak, you have not been paying attention. Trumps schemes are his craft. They include his relentless campaign to subvert the Constitution, which left unchecked poses more of an existential threat to the republic than our geopolitical adversaries.

Jim Paladino, Tampa

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How liberals and conservatives think | Letters - Tampa Bay Times

Former history teacher and Fox News contributor Leo Terrell fired back Tuesday at liberal actor John Leguizamo's profanity-laced rant against critical race theory opponents issuing a challenge to the Hollywood celebrity on "Fox & Friends"to debate him on the topic.

NIKKI HALEY CALLS FOR EVERY GOVERNOR IN AMERICA TO BAN FUNDING FOR CRITICAL RACE THEORY IN SCHOOLS

LEO TERRELL: I think he's absolutely wrong. Why should we listen to an actor? Is he qualified? Is he a former professor? Is he a lawyer? Why should 340 million Americans, parents, teachers, students listen to him? He's not qualified to give his opinion on critical race theory. He's not qualified to talk about whether or not it's taught. And he's more than not qualified to claim that it's just a legal theory. It's a base of conclusions without supporting facts. His acting platform does not qualify him to tell parents and teachers and students that critical race theory does not exist.

...

I'll tell you exactly what my problem is, not only as a former school teacher, but as a lawyer, a civil rights lawyer, a person who deals with the issue of racism. Critical race theory is not a program, a discipline, a principle grounded in fact. It only tells you a conclusion. It tells you that white people are privileged, black people oppressed. It doesn't tell you the why, the how and everything else. It takes a part of history when we first became a nation and then apply it to everyday life. It ignores the progress in this country.

So there's no facts. And I challenge John, the "Ice Age" cartoon character, to debate me and tell me what facts he has.

WATCH THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW BELOW:

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Leo Terrell rips liberal actor's critical race theory rant: 'He's not qualified to give his opinion' - Fox News

In the past, Ive been deeply drawn to a common claim made on behalf of liberal education: that it offers a superior preparation for the uncertainty and contingency of the postgraduate futures facing graduates. Countless institutional websites and college administrators reassure prospective students and their parents that liberal-arts graduates are better prepared for the uncertain world of tomorrow. Classic arguments favoring open-ended exploration over instrumental teaching, such as Abraham Flexners 1939 essay The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (recently republished with a new introduction), remain sentimentally popular in academe. Im still emotionally attached to these narratives, but they have so many problems that Ive come to question their value or at least their accuracy.

The first problem is that the idea is a rephrasing, in contemporaneously acceptable language, of a very old notion of the liberal arts. The medieval European understanding of liberal arts, based partially on a reinterpretation of classical ideas, suggested that elites needed an open-ended education based on the trivium and quadrivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) because, as rulers, they would face complex and unexpected problems, whereas others only needed an introduction to practical arts relevant to specific repeated labor.

Reorienting this proposition around uncertain futures doesnt get away from the uncomfortable hierarchical implications still embedded in it. The hidden proposition seems to be that its fine for petrochemical engineers to just learn petrochemical engineering, but that future politicians, leaders, policy makers, artists and so on need to learn in a more flexible and less prescriptive way. But if the underlying point about uncertain futures is true, then we should draw the opposite conclusion: The people who may need liberal arts the most are the petrochemical engineers, or anyone else who works in a field that could shift dramatically based on deep structural changes in the economy or in the ongoing material conditions of human life.

Once you see it that way, you recognize that either everyone needs liberal arts or no one does. If liberal arts and preparation for uncertainty are synonymous, it cant possibly make sense to limit that training to future leaders or a small elite. If everyone needs it but what we mean by liberal education is only accessible or comprehensible to students with special or privileged preparation, then were lying or confused about our proposed linkage to uncertainty.

Which is the next problem. The linkage of uncertainty to the liberal arts also depends on a caricature of vocational or pre-professional pedagogy by faculty and other higher-education professionals who have limited experience with those practices. Liberal-arts faculty can be surprisingly incurious about how teaching actually happens in educational settings different from their own in programs allegedly too instrumental, too fixed, too rigidly tied to a single profession or job. In some cases, faculty who identify as doing liberal arts are transposing an objection they have to the professional practices, outlooks, or ideologies of the end products of some courses of study with the structure and nature of the pedagogy in those courses of study.

I may have an issue with the dispositional outlook of many professionals holding an M.B.A., but I have not carefully studied whether what I take issue with is rooted in what and how they learned on the way to that degree. Only rarely do we get a specific enough look inside some aspect of professional or vocational training to see a connection between a professions questionable practices and the questionable things taught to those professionals say, for example, the connections between police training on the use of force and the actuality of the use of force by contemporary police. Pedagogy is hard to witness and analyze wherever it happens, whether were interested in a class on electrical wiring or English literature.

This point leads to my deepest concern about uncertainty and liberal education: Our assumptions about how to teach to uncertainty are mostly unexplored, and the empirical evidence of whether we do so successfully is debatable. To the degree that we are successful, we dont really know why. Arguably, the capacity to navigate uncertainty has less to do with student learning than with the social capital and economic resources available to our graduates. This is where preparation for uncertainty lives alongside other reassuring concepts like resilience, emotional intelligence, or grit. These concepts may not be measuring teachable skills or habits of mind so much as access to money and social networks. Dealing with rapidly changing conditions is much easier if your parents can help with the rent or if you know someone who can get you in the door in a new line of work after your current gig closes down.

Still, let us suppose that liberal education of the kind offered at highly selective private colleges and research universities offers a good example of curricular structures or pedagogies that prepare graduates to anticipate and endure uncertainty. What exactly are those structures and practices, then?

Many of us would answer critical thinking (which may be an equally leaky terminological boat). Wed likely assert that critical thinking suffuses our institutions in such a way that their graduates learn to view the world around them skeptically and provisionally, and that this in turn prepares them to adapt rapidly to changing economic and social conditions (and to help lead or direct processes of change for others). The major problem with this answer is that any curricular structure, any pedagogy, can likely and perhaps justifiably claim to be producing critical thinking and hence to be preparation for uncertainty. Its so truistic and underspecified that its hard to be satisfied with it as an answer. Possibly, we could decompose critical thinking to far more specific epistemological and methodological commitments in various academic disciplines: the scientific method, thought experiments, close reading, etc., and get a better account of how to teach skepticism, provisional truth-making, and so on. Possibly.

But are the graduates of any kind of higher education dispositionally or technically more able to cope with uncertainty? The Covid-19 pandemic combined with the instability of American political life has been an interesting test case for this question. Id say the evidence of the past year and a half is inconclusive. Educated professionals may have weathered the economic disruptions of the pandemic fairly well, but that is mostly a material byproduct of the work they do and the technologies they are accustomed to using, pandemic or otherwise. These professionals adapted to masking and social-distancing quickly, but that may have been as much an act of sociopolitical affiliation as an ability to adjust habits. How well they coped in terms of mental health is still an open question.

Who is adapting best to uncertainty in the political sphere? Many educated professionals, especially those who identify as liberals or progressives, have self-reported in the last year that they feel completely incapable of adapting to the politics of this dangerous moment in American history. As they should.

I believe in what Helga Nowotny calls the cunning of uncertainty and accept her argument that everyone rich and poor, college educated in a liberal-arts curriculum, or high-school educated in a trade can and should live with and even embrace that cunning. By cunning, Nowotny means that uncertainty is an irreducible part of human life and the physical universe, and that we should follow where it leads us. Just so. I also believe in what the economist John Kay has called obliquity: that in a very concrete and empirical sense, many of our most cherished goals and values are achievable only if we do not try to achieve them directly. Tell me you want to be happy in life, and I will, following Kay, tell you that you should not try to be happy. The road to happiness involves long detours through unknown and unexpected pathways.

At the same time, we can and should be reducing uncertainty where it has been engineered on purpose, where it is used to produce insecurity and precarity for the benefit of a few. It is one thing to try to prepare students for the broad reality of uncertainty as Nowotny describes it, or to orient them to the oblique routings between an educational present and lifelong aspirations. It is entirely another to deploy the rhetoric of uncertainty to naturalize the unstable labor markets of the early 21st century.

The uncertainty of those markets is a product of the credulous and wholly ideological celebration of creative destruction and disruptive innovation by the oligarchs of our present American moment and their courtiers. There is nothing inevitable or natural about the proposition that industries, workplaces, and communities should expect to be discarded at any moment by private equity firms, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, or crony capitalists. The proposition that training for uncertainty means accepting the need to change everything about your skills, values, aspirations, and material situation at a moments notice because a few people with extraordinary wealth and power have almost incidentally destroyed your status quo is not the cunning of uncertainty but the craft of exploitation and domination.

For the same reason, we should not have to adapt to a rising authoritarianism or a capricious pack of liars doing whatever it takes to hold to power. We cannot and should not build a political system that is so stable that it banishes contingency and forbids contention but neither should we accept that our political tomorrows must be arbitrary and that the well-educated should be prepared to adapt to life under any form of sovereignty, however awful or destructive.

Maybe a liberal education is, or could be, about embracing uncertainty where it is generative, necessary, and useful. But in the rush to reassure current applicants and anxious families that our students will be prepared to dance nimbly into an uncertain future, we are not only dangerously incurious about whether thats actually true we are offering a form of unwarranted benediction to the engineered precarity of our present moment. Inhabiting the foundational uncertainty of the universe is one of the deepest challenges of human life. If we have insight into that, good. If we dont, lets work to develop that insight. But we mustnt confuse this work with the drive to normalize the insecurity of our present moment. Our educational job there is different: We must teach our students to reject that project entirely.

A version of this piece originally appeared in the authors newsletter, Eight by Seven.

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An Unconvincing Argument for the Liberal Arts - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Former Liberal Party member John Ruddick says the Liberal Party has lost what it was standing for and is ill-equipped to handle the three emergencies facing the Commonwealth.

What the Liberal party was really standing for up until the last few years, which you know, in the Westminster world, our ideal is Margaret Thatcher, Mr Ruddick told Sky News host Chris Kenny.

We havent been getting that from our state or liberal governments for some time now.

Right now, weve got three emergencies facing the Commonwealth.

Weve got: a COVID elimination strategy, which is just going to send us back to the stone age if we persist with it; weve got a net zero carbon by 2050 and we have built a debt to Jupiter.

We dont have time to turn this around.

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Liberal Party has lost the ideal it was 'standing for' - Sky News Australia

About 75% of Hindus residing in southern India said they would accept a Muslim as a neighbour a stark contrast to all other parts of India

People in the South of India tend to be more religiously integrated and less opposed to interreligious marriages, data from a nationwide survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre show. Though people from the southern States are equally, if not more, religious than citizens in other parts, relatively fewer of them consider theirs to be the "one true religion". For instance, 62% of people from the South go to places of worship at least once a week, which is more than the share in Central, Eastern, Western and Northeastern parts. About 57% wore religious pendants, higher than all regions except Central India (58%). However, only 37% of them, the least among regions, thought it was important to stop women in their community from marrying into another religion.

The southerners were more liberal when it came to dietary restrictions. Relatively fewer of them considered a person to be not Hindu if they eat beef, or a person to be not Muslim if they consume pork. People from the South also had more "close friends" from outside their religion and caste circles compared to persons from other parts of India. About 75% of Hindus residing in southern India said they would accept a Muslim as a neighbour a stark contrast to all other parts of India. Importantly, education played a role in people's religious beliefs. Religious opinions of the college-educated varied sharply from those who did not attend college.

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Methodology | Pew interviewed 29,999 individuals across 29 States and UTs. Persons from all major religions, speaking at least 17 different languages across all age groups (excluding children), were included in the sample. The survey was conducted between November 17, 2019, and March 23, 2020.

Also read: Indians value religious freedom, not integration

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Data | People in South India are far more liberal in matters of religion and nationalism: survey - The Hindu

Calgary city councillor George Chahalsays he will run for the Liberal Party in the northeast riding of Calgary Skyviewin the upcoming federal election.

Chahal told CBC News thathe thinks it's important for Calgary to have a voice in the federal government.

"I want to continue on the work we're doing in northeast Calgary, in the city of Calgary, and make sure we are represented in the city of Canada," he said.

Chahal was first elected to city council in 2017. He said he intends to complete his current term on city council, but will withdraw his nomination papers for this fall's municipal election.

His announcement means that there will be nine new council members this fall.

It will represent the biggest turnover on Calgary city council in modern history. Council went to 15 seats for the 1977 election, and the previous record was set after the 1983 election, when eight seats had new faces.

As of Thursday, Ward 5 had four contenders listed, aside from Chahal:Raj Dhaliwal,Anand James Chetty,Tariq Khan andAryan Sadat.

Chahal's announcement comes one day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau toured through Calgary.

Speaking on Red FM on Wednesday, the prime minister said that in his view,it was important for Albertans to choose Liberal MPs in the upcoming federal election.

Trudeau also addressed speculation that two members of Calgary city council may end up running for the federal Liberals Chahal and Calgary Mayor NaheedNenshi.

"Ihave a tremendous amount of respect for both Naheed and GeorgeChahal, who are amazing community representatives and have worked incredibly hard to get Calgary and indeed people through a very difficult time," Trudeau said.

"Ilook forward to continuing to work with them, however things end up happening."

The Liberals currently have no MPs from Alberta. Calgary Skyview is currently represented by Conservative MP Jag Sahota.

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Calgary city councillor will run federally for the Liberal Party - CBC.ca

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks as he meets with Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, not shown, in Calgary on July 7, 2021.

Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

There is much speculation afoot about the prospect of the minority Liberal government calling an election at the end of the summer holidays, and sending Canadians to the polls in late September or October.

Honestly, where do people come up with these ideas?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, coyly shorn of his pandemic beard and sporting a new haircut, downplayed the likelihood of a fall election just last week.

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Parties will adjust election tactics to fit varied effects of COVID-19 pandemic, public health, political leaders say

He plans, he said, to use the summer break to consult Canadians and what better way to do that than by flying to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., to make a $420-million climate change investment in a steel mill, and profit from the occasion to take jabs at the Conservative Opposition?

It looks like many more Canadians can expect to be consulted this summer by Mr. Trudeau and his cabinet ministers, with consultation defined as a swing through your hometown, taxpayer-financed chequebook in hand.

Okay, but what other evidence of a fall election is there?

Some point to the fact that 19 MPs of all parties, including Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna, have discovered the urgent need to announce they will not be running in the next election which is not scheduled until October, 2023.

And, yes, theres the fact that the Liberals lead in the polls and, if the election were held now, the current minority government would stand a fair chance of winning a majority.

And, sure, the vaccination rollout that started out so badly has turned out to be a major win for the Liberals, with Canada now among the most vaccinated countries in the world.

We suppose theres no need to even mention that the Conservatives under Leader Erin OToole dont seem able to gain traction, that the NDP are polling too low to be a threat, and that other progressive party, the Greens, are imploding.

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And it would just be stating the obvious to recall that the Liberal Party convention in April was almost entirely focused on election planning.

But other than campaign-style spending announcements, those 19 MPs thoughtfully giving their riding associations 2 years notice, the polls consistently favouring the Liberals, the success of the vaccination campaign, the weakness of the opposition, the naked election planning by the Liberals (and, at this point, by the other parties, too), and Mr. Trudeaus obvious desire to regain his majority in Parliament, what other evidence is there of an election?

Three words: high-frequency rail.

Transportation Minister Omar Alghabra consulted Canadians this week when he travelled to Quebec City to re-announce his partys previously stated commitment to build what it calls high-frequency rail service (not, note well, high-speed rail) between Toronto and the Quebec capital.

After teasing its support for the project in the 2019 election campaign, the Liberals have trotted it out again, this time with a promise to [take] the first steps in preparing for the procurement process.

That includes consulting with Indigenous groups and communities, and engaging with the private sector to determine capacity, and seek perspectives on the best possible delivery model.

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Thats hardly a ripping endorsement of an ambitious project that would reroute most of Via Rails Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City traffic away from tracks it doesnt own, and which it has long shared with freight trains, and put it on dedicated tracks that would allow passenger trains to operate more frequently and at higher speeds.

Its a project whose cost will run into the heady billions of dollars without a private-sector partner, which is why Ottawa is still looking for one, and still trying to determine how much risk that partner would be willing to take on (the best possible delivery model).

And there is a veritable chasm between the assertion that the request for proposal for the procurement process is expected to launch in fall 2021, as the government puts it, and actually, you know, building something.

Yet Mr. Alghabra this week earned his party headlines about a tantalizing rail megaproject the kind of announcement you dont waste halfway through a term lest people forget it, or, perhaps worse, remember it and hold you to it. And he made his pitch in Quebec, where the Liberals need to pick up seats if they are to win a majority.

Brace yourselves. Theres an election coming down the track. Its picking up speed. Scheduled arrival: Fall.

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Hear that? The Liberal election train is getting closer, and picking up speed - The Globe and Mail

When the Supreme Court handed down its two recent final decisions, one in a major voting laws dispute and the other addressing a donor disclosure requirement, both were considered victories for conservatives and both were reversals of the country's most controversial appellate court.

That court, the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, saw some of the most high-profile reversals of judgments in the tumultuous year for Supreme Court cases. The 9th Circuit went 1-15, adding to a string of losing records to the high court, according to SCOTUSblog.

Its only decision left standing was a unanimous Supreme Court affirmation that some of the NCAA's player compensation regulations violated anti-trust laws.

SUPREME COURT TEES UP NEWSY FALL TERM: ABORTION, GUNS, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

But, as many Democrats in Congress consistently note, the 9th Circuit did not see the highest reversal rate this year. Given the volume of cases it sends to the Supreme Court each year, it rarely does. The most-reversed circuits are often much smaller courts, usually sending one or two cases to the high court.

Still, many of the Supreme Court's reversals, including the donor disclosure and voting law cases, often have lasting consequences. Notably, this year the high court reversed the 9th Circuit's decision favoring a California law allowing labor union activists to organize on company land.

It also reversed the circuit on a series of immigration cases, a subject appeals judges have frequently been out of step with the Supreme Court.

Both conservatives and liberals agreed the 9th Circuit was playing by a different set of rules.

In one case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court's interpretation of one immigration statute was "incompatible" with what it actually said. In another, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote its judgment "cannot be reconciled" with actual immigration rules.

But, Gorsuch wrote, "The Ninth Circuit has long applied a special rule in immigration disputes."

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The circuits that saw a 100% reversal rate the 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, 10th, D.C., Federal, and Armed Forces circuits did not send more than five cases to the high court. The 9th sent 16, in addition to a series of so-called shadow docket cases in which the court ruled against it.

The Supreme Court's shutdown of the 9th Circuit comes in the wake of dashed Republican hopes that former President Donald Trump would swing it in a more conservative direction. Trump appointed 10 judges to the court during his term, dramatically reducing the conservative-to-liberal ratio, an 11-seat lead on the 29-judge court, to a margin of three.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE IN THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

At the time, the raft of appointments led many to declare that the circuit, which governs nine states, had become conservative. But those judgments were premature, said Arthur Hellman, an emeritus law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has written extensively on the 9th Circuit.

It is a more centrist court, Hellman told the Washington Examiner of the 9th Circuit's changes in recent years.

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Tags: News, California, Supreme Court, NCAA, Judge, Appeals Courts, Neil Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor, Immigration

Original Author: Nicholas Rowan

Original Location: Liberal California appeals court sees year of high-profile reversals at the Supreme Court

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Liberal California appeals court sees year of high-profile reversals at the Supreme Court - Yahoo News

In response to a letter by Marty Ansley:

With as much respect as I can muster, I'd like to respond again and say that I didn't mention a meritocracy nor facts not existing in my letter.

I stand by all said before.

I believe critical race theory is a liberal, Marxist theology and a party line of only one side of this country and as such, of course, it shouldn't be pushed in our schools no matter the grade level.

The court case in Illinois in which a teacher is suing her school district for forcing the teaching of critical race theory is an example of this being taught in elementary schools. See Deemar V. District 65 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

There are publicly available leaked documents from the Iowa critical race theory curriculum. Why aren't they public in the first place? These show that those teachers are made to tell their children in class that MAGA slogans and trying to rebut critical race theory through commonly used wording like "we're all one human family" are "covert white supremacy" just a bit lower on the pyramid than being a member of the KKK.

Words have meaning but we used to be a country that judged people for actions! Believing and saying that all lives should matter equally can't be made equivalent to actual intimidation or even lynching due to differing skin color. Saying so is ridiculous propaganda and I do think these things are proof of a wide conspiracy to push only one party line in our schools.

The vehement religious fervor you and other defenders of critical race theory show is also proof that this is a belief system and not a factual curriculum. That, to my mind, is tantamount to a problem that should be fought under separations of church and state.

Because of your ad hominem attacks, stereotyping and assumptions used to spout more party lines, I see nothing else I can respond to. Your religion (liberal Marxist theory) clashes with mine (Christianity).

And the argument must always end there.

But, I believe in your right to believe what you wish. I just will never cease to fight seeing any single party line or religious dogma pushed onto our children in schools claiming to be public government schools for all.

I thank you for the debate and I hope you enjoyed your freedom this Independence Day.

Josie N. Johston

Chehalis

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Letter to the Editor: Critical Race Theory Is a Liberal, Marxist Theology - Centralia Chronicle

Chip sealing a city street. This image shows the entire chipseal process. The left side has already been reconditioned. On the right a black asphalt seal coat is being applied, behind small chipped rock is falling from an application machine. The rock will be pressed into the asphalt and excess swept up. Chipsealing is a less costly alternative to resurfacing an asphalt road.

Weather permitting, the City of Liberal will start the annual Chip Seal Program on July 19, 2021. The areas to be chip sealed are:

Kansas Avenue to Western Avenue

The railroad tracks to 2nd Street

2nd Street from Western to general Welch

7th Street from Western to Terminal Road

8th Street from Western to Stadium Road

Stadium Road from 15th Street to 7th Street

During this time, the City requests no parking in the street. The City estimates the project to take three weeks.

The city apologizes for any inconvenience and thanks you for your patience. If you should have any questions or need further assistance, please call 626-0135.

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Chip Seal in the City of Liberal to Begin - KSCB News.net