If you’re not helping the mission, you’re hurting the mission. And the mission is to win the White House, Senate, and House in 2024, as well as state general assemblies and governors. This is not helping

Youngkin, like DeSantis, faces Trump’s fury

Fresh off a diatribe against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom he derisively described as an “average” Republican in a Thursday social media post, former President Donald Trump on Friday morning went after another popular Republican governor — Glenn Youngkin of Virginia — in what seemed like a warning meant to dissuade him from seeking the presidency in 2024.

“Young Kin (now that’s an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?) in Virginia couldn’t have won without me,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, his proprietary social media network. It is not clear why he falsely insinuated that Youngkin was of Chinese ancestry (the origins of the governor’s name are Germanic), but Trump has a record of rhetoric against China and Chinese people, which during the coronavirus pandemic contributed to anti-Asian rhetoric and violence.

First, Trump did not denigrate Chinese people, he blocked them from coming over near the beginning of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. And, if memory serves, the Democrats and their pet media called Trump a raaaaacist for that. Second, here’s what it looks like in full

Trump now attacking Glenn Youngkin .. pic.twitter.com/eEEPcAMplX

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) November 11, 2022

A less combative and polarizing figure than DeSantis, Youngkin could hold more appeal to suburban voters, who helped him win in the northern Virginia suburbs, which have sometimes been seen as a presidential bellwether. Throughout the fall, he and DeSantis both campaigned for Republican candidates, albeit in different states.

Will he run? Will DeSantis run? How about Greg Abbott, Nikki Haley, Kristi Noem, or Doug Ducey? Regardless, we saw this show in 2016, and we do not need a reboot. It would go over as well as the reboot of Charmed. Not good. His time is past. Much of his schtick has gotten stale and old. Sure, he can fill a concert venue for a speech. But, it should not be about him anymore. It needs to be about taking back the country from the Modern Socialists. He wants to be a celebrity.

I’m moving on. I gave up on Palin back in 2011 (can’t find that post, I think I might have only written it at Right Wing News. Probably have to dig further back in the archives). In a later post here and at RWN on Palin endorsing Trump

Many of you know my feelings on the subject of Sarah Palin. She lost my support politically when she played the will she/won’t she game in regards to running for president last time around. She resigned as Governor of Alaska, supposedly to deal with all the legal issues for all the suits and things aimed her way from Liberals. Many Conservatives thought this would give her the chance to get ready to run for President, especially as she put together a PAC. Then she had her little bus tour, for which she also quit halfway through. She said she was going to do it her way, and did not compete in any debates. Then, after being asked again and again, and missing a self imposed deadline, all while raising lots of money for her PAC off the possibility, she said “no.” Interestingly, many others are coming to the same conclusion, such as Powerline’s John Hinderaker

Maybe not. Today Sarah Palin endorsed Trump, to the delight of theNew York Times. Now they get to call Trump a conservative. I was a fan of Palin, until she succumbed to the siren song of celebrity, abandoned her post as Governor of Alaska and went Hollywood. One thing Palin and Trump have in common is that they are both stars of reality TV shows. Maybe someone needs to explain to both of them that reality television is not great preparation for dealing with reality.

Trump is going too much back to celebrity, he has way too many legal issues (real or not, it matters not). He won’t change, and it’s hurting.

Too be clear, I’m speaking for me, not for The First Street Journal Editor.

Who wants to bet that Biden and his people ignore the rulings?

U.S. judge declares Biden’s student debt relief plan unlawful

A federal judge in Texas on Thursday ruled that President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt was unlawful and must be vacated, delivering a victory to conservative opponents of the program.

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump in Fort Worth, ruled in a lawsuit backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation on behalf of two borrowers.

The debt relief plan had already been temporarily blocked by the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while it considers a request by six Republican-led states to enjoin it while they appealed the dismissal of their own lawsuit.

Biden’s plan has been the subject of several lawsuits by conservative state attorneys general and legal groups, though plaintiffs before Thursday had struggled to convince courts they were harmed by it in such a way that they have standing to sue.

The plan would saddle working and middle class taxpayers with paying off loans that people legally signed for, often getting degrees that can’t bring in the money to repay the loans. And then there are people who are making $100k a year, claiming they cannot repay.

Pittman in a 26-page ruling wrote that the HEROES Act – a law that provides loan assistance to military personnel and that was relied upon by the Biden administration to enact the relief plan – did not authorize the $400 billion student loan forgiveness program.

“The Program is thus an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated,” Pittman wrote.

I’m sure Biden will appeal, but, will he and his people work hard to fight? He got what he needed, lots of youths getting out and voting, minimizing the damage in the midterms. Biden may not even try to take it to the Supreme Court, because, come 2024, Biden and the Dems can promise to fight for loan forgiveness if they re-elect Biden and give him Congress.

Despite this being the Bluegrass State, Kentucky’s second-largest newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, is unabashedly liberal. We have previously noted their editorial endorsements:

• 2020: Joe Biden for President, Amy McGrath Henderson for Senate, and Josh Hicks for 6^th District Representative;^[1]Notably, the editors endorsed Charles Booker over Mrs Henderson in the Democratic primary, saying that he was the more progressive candidate. Mrs Henderson once said, “I am further left, I am … Continue reading
• 2018: Amy McGrath Henderson for 6^th District Representative
• 2016: Hillary Clinton for President, Jim Gray for Senate, and Nancy Jo Kemper for 6^th District Representative
• 2014: Alison Lundergan Grimes for Senate, and Elisabeth Jensen for 6^th District Representative

All Democrats, and all defeated in Kentucky and in the 6^th District. It seems that the Herald-Leader Editorial Board isn’t exactly in tune with the voters of the Commonwealth. Note that the 2016 and 2014 Democratic nominees for the 6^th congressional district were political novices, and the editors struggled to find much good reason to endorse them. Representative Andy Barr (R-KY 6^th District) beat them both by landslide margins.^[2]Dr Malcolm Jewell, one of my political science professors at the University of Kentucky during medieval times, defined a landslide margin as 10% or greater.

In fact, with the exception of the 6^th district race in 2018, the editors’ endorsed candidates lost by landslide margins. Even in 2018, with Mrs Henderson outspending Mr Barr $8,274,396 to $5,580,477, she lost 51.0% to 47.8%.

In her Senate campaign, Mrs Henderson raised $94,120,557 and spent $90,775,744 compared to Senator Mitch McConnell’s $71,351,350 and $64,787,889, only to lose 38.2% to 57.8%. As it happens, Mrs Henderson had the lowest percentage total against Mr McConnell of any of his opponents save sacrificial lamb candidate Lois Combs Weinberg in 2002.

Of course, the newspaper is big, big, big, on protecting homosexual and transgender rights. So, it was with some amusement that I read this article:

What are some warning signs of sexual abuse or grooming? This is what the experts say

by Aaron Mudd | Thursday, September 29, 2022 | 9:00 AM EDT

It’s not lost on parents that the manipulative behaviors perpetrators use to set children up for sexual abuse are designed to be subtle and often appear innocent.

According to child advocate Janna Estep-Jordan, what many may not realize is that in these unsettling situations, perpetrators are also working the parents, too.

“Perpetrators, they groom a child, but they groom a family as well,” said Estep-Jordan, director of operations and prevention education with Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky, an advocacy group that makes the prevention of abuse and neglect of Kentucky’s children its mission.

Discerning between sexually-motivated manipulation and normal child-adult interactions can be difficult at times, as the National Children’s Advocacy Center points out.

So how do you tell the difference between what’s acceptable and what’s not?

Sounds like a useful article, does it not? I am not going to cite all of Aaron Mudd’s, the reporter’s, points, but some really caught my eye:

• Treating a child as if they’re an adult. This behavior often begins with humor: the abuser will tell a risque joke to the child with the aim of getting them slowly acclimated to adult topics. If the tactic backfires, the abuser can fall back on gaslighting: “It’s just a joke” or “Don’t be so sensitive.”
• If the child is of a younger age, Jordan said they may have an age-inappropriate knowledge about sexual relationships. A potential red flag related to this includes children acting out sexual behaviors or recruiting their peers to do the same, Jordan said. The key here is the knowledge of something that a child of that particular age wouldn’t typically know.

I’ve reformatted the second point, which was three separate paragraphs in the original. But when I read these things, what jumped immediately into my mind were the tactics that the homosexual and transgender activists have been using. Heidi Klaassen, a writer for Salon, wrote “Drag is not dangerous: How exposing your kids to drag performance can be a good thing“. There was “DRAG THE KIDS TO PRIDE – A Family Friendly Drag Show,” including children putting money into the thongs of male drag queens dancing.

How is this not treating children like adults, to get them acclimated to adult topics? How is this not providing kids with “age-inappropriate knowledge about sexual relationships?” Yet if conservatives call the homosexual and transgender activists “groomers,” the left wax apoplectic!

I am amused: the very liberal Herald-Leader just warned readers that the very things the far-left sex activists are doing is grooming.

When we noted, just yesterday, that the post-Labor Day surge in homicides in 2021 was not yet showing signs of being repeated this year, we still knew that 2022 would be joining the list of years and mayors in which at least 400 murders had been committed. There was at least some hope that it wouldn’t be the very next day, but there were three more people dead as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, September 26^th. Naturally, there were exactly zero stories on this showing on either The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page or specific crime page. Fox29’s Steve Keeley noted the ‘milestone’.

2022 is now Philly’s 19^th bloodiest year, a status achieved with more than three months left to go. At a current rate of 1.4870 killings per day, the city is on track for 542.75 murders for the year, still lower than 2021, but very strongly in second-place all time.

We noted, just two days ago, that there was actually some reason for hope that Philadelphia’s homicide numbers might fall below those of record-shattering 2021’s.

As of September 5^th, the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend this year, 373 people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards, yielding a homicide rate of 1.5040 killings per day, or a projected 549 murders for 2022; the mid-summer ‘lull’ that had happened in 2021 didn’t occur this year.

But there may be some hope that the post-Labor Day surge that happened in 2021 might not happen, or not be as bad, in 2022. While this wouldn’t seem to be a cause for celebration in more civilized places, there has been only one recorded homicide in Philadelphia since Wednesday, September 14^th, and the homicide rate has dropped below 1.50, down to 1.4809 per day, which projects out to 540.53 murders for the entire year.

That’s hardly a great number, but at least it’s better than last year’s record-smashing 562.

And as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, the numbers are even: 393 homicides in both 2021 and this year. 393 homicides ÷ 265 days elapsed in the year = 1.483018867924528 homicides per day, x 365 days in the year = 541.3018867924528 projected killings for 2022. That’s hardly a great number, but what I am seeing is that the post-Labor Day killing surge of 2021 has not manifested itself so far this year.

Thanks to a tweet from Christine Flowers, I found this gem from WHYY, the National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting System stations for the Philadelphia area.

Central Bucks West tells teachers not to use students’ preferred names and pronouns without parent approval

By Emily Rizzo | Updated: Thursday, September 15, 2022 | 8:28 PM EDT

Administrators at Central Bucks West High School have introduced a new “Gender Identification Procedure” that many teachers say is discriminatory against LGBTQ students.

Teachers say they were told to not use a student’s preferred name or pronoun if it does not match with the information in the school’s database. They say they were told to inform school counselors about any student who requests a different name or pronoun. School counselors would then arrange a conversation with the student’s parents or guardians so they could approve their student’s name and/or pronoun change.

Let’s tell the truth here: while the Central Bucks (County) West School Board, which we have mentioned several times previously, appears to be at least somewhat conservatively oriented, in this they are protecting the School District. By setting up a system under which parents can ‘opt in’ to allowing their memtally ill ‘transgendered’ students to be identified by their ‘preferred’ names and pronouns, the District is also setting up a policy which allows parents to choose not to go along with that silliness, and thus protect the District from being sued into penury.

Though not mentioned in the article, if teachers are required to use the preferred names and pronouns listed in the school’s database, it would seem to also require teachers who disagree with the notion that people can change their sex to use the names and pronouns in the school’s database if the parents agree to the changes.

It’s easy to foresee problems here: what happens when the parents, especially divorced or divorcing parents using their kids as a weapon against each other, disagree? Eventually this will arise, whether in Central Bucks West or elsewhere.

But here’s where the problems really arise:

Administrators introduced the procedure at a faculty meeting six days into the school year; teachers said administrators cited protecting parents’ rights as the reason. Four teachers told WHYY News about the meeting and the unprecedented pushback from educators.

“A lot of us are distraught,” said Becky Cartee-Haring, who has taught English at Central Bucks West for 16 years.

“I physically felt sick in that meeting, listening to an administrator basically argue that we were going to protect ourselves by outting children … it’s heart wrenching … It’s just cruel.”

Teachers said administrators told them they have to follow parents’ or guardians’ wishes if they differ from a student’s.

“What the children wanted was completely irrelevant,” said David Klein, who has been teaching social studies at Central Bucks West for 26 years.

Klein said he’s not going to follow the new procedure.

“There’s no way I’m hurting a kid. Hell no. I cannot be complicit in harming children,” Klein said, raising his voice. “And I said this in the meeting … this is the most at-risk marginalized group of students, they need our support more than anyone else. No! Kid says, ‘Call me Tony,’ I’m calling them Tony!”

Klein and other teachers are unwilling to “deadname” a student in front of their peers, parents, or other school staff.

“Deadnaming” means to call Bruce Jenner, Bruce Jenner, and not his made up name “Caitlyn”. “Misgendering” means, to the left, referring to a ‘transgendered’ person by his real sex, not the one he claims to be.

Klein said even if he faces a parent who does not want their child to be called a name that the child prefers, he will continue to prioritize the student.

It would seem that Mr Klein has decided that he knows better than the parents how to rear their children. He’s certainly allowed to think that — we cannot penalize someone for their thoughts — but if he acts in the manner implied by his statement, and refers to the ‘transgendered’ student in variance with what the parents have specified, he will have personally opened the District, and himself personally, to a humongous lawsuit, a lawsuit they would very much deserve to lose. The public schools can’t even give students an over-the-counter medication without the consent of the parents; the idea that they could enable and reinforce ‘transgenderism’ without the parents’ consent is monstrous.

“My job is to educate your kids, to prepare them for the future, to make them feel safe, period. That’s my calling. Pardon me,” Klein said, choking up. “I’m calling you Tony because you need to feel safe in my classroom. How else are you going to learn? And if they want to fire me, that’s their business.”

Does Mr Klein believe that his “calling” outweighs the rights and responsibility of parents?

There’s more of the same kind of thing, from other teachers, at the original, but it’s pretty much more of the same, teachers who believe that they Know Better how to rear other people’s children.

The left have long insisted on body cameras for police officers, and there’s certainly a reasonable case to be made for that. Body cams exonerate cops far more often than they record bad behavior by officers. Well, we obviously need cameras in public school classrooms as well, but, of course, the teachers’ unions oppose that.

Why? It’s difficult to come to any conclusion other than they are afraid that recording what they teach will expose bad behavior on their part, and, at least in the Central Bucks case, would reveal them failing to honor the District’s policies.

We have compulsory school attendance in every state of the union, so our children are ordered, by the state, to attend school, and the vast majority of parents don’t have the ability to send their kids to private or parochial schools. Thus, we must have accountability, must demand accountability of the teachers who are put in charge of our children, accountability to prevent them from undermining parents. The Central Bucks School District is starting along the right path, but more needs to be done to ensure that parents’ guidance is not undermined by teachers.

As we have previously noted, telling the people most at risk for contracting Monkeypox how to avoid it is just way, way, way too politically incorrect! Monkeypox, an infection that is being spread primarily, though not exclusively, by male homosexual sex, certainly worries the homosexual male community, but our public health officials are apparently very, very worried about not saying the wrong thing, lest they be deemed politically incorrect or, horrors! homophobic.

As Monkeypox Spreads, U.S. Declares a Health Emergency

The designation will free up emergency funds and lift some bureaucratic hurdles, but many experts fear containment may no longer be possible.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Apoorva Mandavilli | Thursday, August 4, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday declared the growing monkeypox outbreak a national health emergency, a rare designation signaling that the virus now represents a significant risk to Americans and setting in motion new measures aimed at containing the threat.

The declaration by Xavier Becerra, President Biden’s health secretary, marks just the fifth such national emergency since 2001, and comes as the country remains in a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak late last month.

Mr. Becerra’s announcement, at an afternoon news briefing where he was joined by a raft of other top health officials, gives federal agencies power to quickly direct money toward developing and evaluating vaccines and drugs, to gain access to emergency funding and to hire additional workers to help manage the outbreak, which began in May.

“We’re prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus,” Mr. Becerra said, adding that “we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously, and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus.”

Mr. Biden has faced intense pressure from public health experts and activists to move more aggressively to combat monkeypox, which has infected more than 6,600 people in the United States. Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, called Thursday’s declaration “a pivotal turning point in the monkeypox response, after a lackluster start.”

Let’s see: 6,600 cases, out of a population of roughly 330,000,000, means that a whopping 0.002% of Americans have been infected by a disease which, while very uncomfortable, has led to exactly zero fatalities in the United States.

More than 99 percent of people infected with monkeypox in this country are men who have sex with men, which has posed a delicate task for public health officials communicating with the public about the threat. They do not want to stigmatize gay people, as happened in the early days of the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic, but neither do they want to downplay their particular risk.

Translation: political correctness is far more important than disease prevention!

And now the CDC have released their guidelines, Safer Sex, Social Gatherings, and Monkeypox

While CDC works to contain the current monkeypox outbreak and learn more about the virus, this information can help you make informed choices when you are in situations or places where monkeypox could be spread. Monkeypox is not considered a sexually transmitted disease, but it is often transmitted through close, sustained physical contact, which can include sexual contact.

How can a person lower their risk during sex?

OK, stop right there! “A person” is singular, while “their” is plural. Why wouldn’t the officious bureaucrat who wrote this, knowing that monkeypox is spread not just primarily, but almost exclusively, by homosexual male sex, not use “His” rather than the grammatically incorrect “their”?

Vaccination is an important tool in preventing the spread of monkeypox. But given the current limited supply of vaccine, consider temporarily changing some behaviors that may increase your risk of being exposed. These temporary changes will help slow the spread of monkeypox until vaccine supply is adequate.

Reducing or avoiding behaviors that increase risk of monkeypox exposure is also important when you are between your first and second shots of vaccine. Your protection will be highest two weeks after your second dose of vaccine.

Make a habit of exchanging contact information with any new partner to allow for sexual health follow-up, if needed.

Talk with your partner about any monkeypox symptoms and be aware of any new or unexplained rash or lesion on either of your bodies, including the mouth, genitals (penis, testicles, vulva, or vagina), or anus (butthole). If you or your partner has or recently had monkeypox symptoms, or you have a new or unexplained rash anywhere on your body, do not have sex and see a healthcare provider. In some cases, symptoms may be mild, and some people may not even know they have monkeypox.

I noted that while the illustration in the CDC’s document shows two men males in bed, there is not one word in the document which says or suggests that sexual transmission of monkeypox is almost exclusively among male homosexuals.

If you or a partner has monkeypox or think you may have monkeypox, the best way to protect yourself and others is to avoid sex of any kind (oral, anal, vaginal) and kissing or touching each other’s bodies—while you are sick. Especially avoid touching any rash. Do not share things like towels, fetish gear, sex toys, and toothbrushes.

Even if you feel well, here are some ways to reduce your chances of being exposed to monkeypox if you are sexually active:

• Take a temporary break from activities that increase exposure to monkeypox until you are two weeks after your second dose. This will greatly reduce your risk.
• Limit your number of sex partners to reduce your likelihood of exposure.
• Spaces like back rooms, saunas, sex clubs, or private and public sex parties, where intimate, often anonymous sexual contact with multiple partners occurs—are more likely to spread monkeypox.
• Condoms (latex or polyurethane) may protect your anus (butthole), mouth, penis, or vagina from exposure to monkeypox. However, condoms alone may not prevent all exposures to monkeypox since the rash can occur on other parts of the body.
• Gloves (latex, polyurethane, or nitrile) might also reduce the possibility of exposure if inserting fingers or hands into the vagina or the anus. The gloves must cover all exposed skin and be removed carefully to avoid touching the outer surface.
• Avoid kissing or exchanging spit since monkeypox can spread this way.
• Masturbate together at a distance without touching each other and without touching any rash.
• Have virtual sex with no in-person contact.
• Consider having sex with your clothes on or covering areas where rash is present, reducing as much skin-to-skin contact as possible. Leather or latex gear also provides a barrier to skin-to-skin contact; just be sure to change or clean clothes/gear between partners and after use.
• Be aware that monkeypox can also spread through respiratory secretions with close, face-to-face contact.
• Remember to wash your hands, fetish gear, sex toys, and any fabrics (bedding, towels, clothes) after having sex. Learn more about infection control.

There’s more at the original, but it’s all the same thing: it is written with the underlying assumption that the stereotype of homosexual males being extremely promiscuous is accurate. The document doesn’t say that directly, of course, but it’s basically a wink-and-a-nod, yeah, we know what you reprobates have been doing.

One thing that is never suggested is something really radical like, oh, monogamy.

We have previously noted how the Central Bucks School District approved what The Philadelphia Inquirer called a “contentious” policy of not purchasing books with “sexualized content”. But the Inquirer’s Assistant Opinion Editor, Alison McCook, says that she wants her daughter to be able to read those books; does the Inky not pay her enough to buy them herself?

Why I want my kid to read banned books

Every school district — including Central Bucks — has LGBTQ students. Hiding books with positive LGBTQ messages won’t stop them from being gay, it will just stop them from feeling OK about it.

by Alison McCook | Monday, August 1, 2022

A few months ago, a long-awaited moment in my life arrived: My 8-year-old grudgingly let me read to her from my favorite childhood book, Harriet the Spy. As I opened my original copy, now faded, yellowed, and torn, and started reading about this judgy tomboy who is determined to be a writer, I had excited butterflies in my belly. But they stopped a few pages in, when Harriet’s nanny, Ole Golly, introduces Harriet to Ole Golly’s mother, who is obese. For several pages, Harriet keeps calling back to Mrs. Golly’s physique, describing her as a “mountain,” bursting out of her clothes, with “ham hands.” She has some sort of mental disability, perhaps dementia. “This fat lady wasn’t very bright,” Harriet thinks.

When I finished the chapter, I closed the book and reminded my daughter about how people come in all sizes and that it’s not nice to make a big deal out of the way someone looks. And I talked about her grandfather, my dad, who had dementia for her entire life — he had a problem with his brain, I said, which wasn’t his fault.

We have these conversations about older books a lot. The girl in The Secret Garden was born in India and is downright cruel to the local people who work for her family, calling them “pigs.” Stuart Little is kind of a sexist jerk. The Baby-sitters Club series has modern moments, but the books shouldn’t always call Claudia a “terrible student” when she struggles with math and reading, but clearly seems destined for a brilliant career in art or fashion. And as the only Asian character, she is consistently described in an exotic way, with “beautiful dark almond-shaped eyes” and “jet black hair.”

I didn’t ban any of these books; they’re still sitting on my kid’s bookshelf. But I would rather she read them with me so that we can talk about the many harsh asides they contain.

Perhaps Mrs McCook doesn’t realize it yet, but what she has just described is homeschooling her daughter, at least in part — and quite possibly a far greater part than most parents do — concerning the lessons she wishes her daughter to learn.

Not all children’s books should take place in some politically correct utopia where difference is celebrated and everyone is gentle and kind. There’s a reason schools teach Lord of the Flies and The Merchant of Venice, even though cruelty runs rampant through both. It’s important for kids to learn that life isn’t a PC utopia, and develop tools to think about and deal with that.

One wonders: would Mrs McCook approve of Tom Sawyer and, Heaven forfend! it uses that bad, bad word, Huckleberry Finn?

That said, I also believe it makes sense to revisit some of the books we consider classics and ask ourselves if the moments they depict are truly teachable, or just plain cruel. If the latter, perhaps they should be part of a classroom, not the library, so teachers can talk to kids about what they read and help them place it in a modern context.

Oh, so ‘Mark Twain’s’ classics should be revisited, though I’m having some trouble picturing today’s teachers having a classroom discussion of Samuel Clemens’ casual use of the “N” word. More, Mr Clemens writes the speech of black characters in a slave patois that modern readers would find offensive.

But we seem incapable of having rational conversations about books in school, mostly because of fear. On one side of the conversation, adults who want kids to have access to books with diverse authors and topics are afraid of being called “groomers” who seek to “turn” all kids gay or trans; on the other side, we have adults who are afraid of exposing kids to ugly parts of history or different kinds of people in a compassionate way. But these conversations are important, especially so since Central Bucks adopted a new ban on books with “sexualized content,” and Pennsylvania has the second-highest number of book bans of any state (after Texas).

So let me start. I believe we should revisit some older books that may make some kids feel hurt or unwelcome in the world. (That’s revisit, not ban.) But the books I suggest we revisit are not the books that will likely be banned by Central Bucks and other school districts across the state, which are targeting books that include LGBTQ characters, or address race or racism. I want my daughter to read the often-banned books The Bluest Eye and Gender Queer: A Memoir, even if she isn’t LGBTQ herself — I want to open her mind and heart to people who are different from her.

Here Mrs McCook shows us her agenda. With this paragraph, and with her entire column Why I take my kid to Philly Pride, the author tells us that she wants to normalize homosexuality and ‘transgenderism,’ to teach her daughter to accept those things as not being marginal, but something that ought to simply be expected. And that is precisely why some conservatives have called these things “grooming.” Some of us do not believe that those things are normal or acceptable, and that teaching that they are has harmed society. Given that the City of Brotherly Love has been setting new homicide records, but seems to see Monkeypox as a greater problem and the left want to change the name so it won’t hurt people’s feelings pretty much reinforced the idea that #woke^[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading politics is the real problem.

It is with some amusement that I also note that she wants to get rid of Mothers’ Day, which I read completely, just to see if she was writing with tongue firmly planted in her cheek:

You know who else probably hates this holiday? The roughly 20% of adult women who never have children. Some childless women likely tried to have children and couldn’t; think how sad the day is for them, as storekeepers and strangers tell them, unbidden, “Happy Mother’s Day.” Think about the women whose children have died, or have experienced miscarriage (roughly 20% of all pregnancies), or gave up a baby for adoption.

Then there are people who have mothers but don’t get along, and are happier when they don’t spend time together. A 2015 study found that more than 1 in 10 mothers are estranged from at least one of their adult children. What a painful reminder this day is for them.

So let’s cancel Mother’s Day.

In other words, Mrs McCook would cancel Mothers’ Day because it might hurt the feelings of those adult women who, for whatever reasons, might not be, nor ever be birthing people mothers. Interestingly enough, she also argued for the reimposed indoor mask mandates that the city quickly canceled when public resistance mounted.

One of my favorite days of the year is Philly Pride, and I take my kid whenever I can. This year, the kids’ area included a book section with author signings, and she begged me to buy her a book called When Aidan Became a Brother, about a trans boy, and how he and his family learn from his experience when welcoming a new sibling. “You taught us how important it is to love someone for exactly who they are,” Aidan’s mother tells him.

My daughter loves this book, and so do I. It’s a beautiful story about family, acceptance, and a kid who is just trying to be himself. I hope that reading about Aidan helps give my daughter the courage to be herself, to know that she deserves to feel loved and accepted no matter what.

And I hope she always remembers the inscription the author Kyle Lukoff (who is also trans) included for her when we asked him to sign her copy. “Thank you for being part of this world,” he wrote.

Mrs McCook is absolutely free to teach her daughter anything she wants; that is her right, protected under the Constitution via the First Amendment.

But what she also wants is for the public schools to teach other people’s children that homosexuality, ‘transgenderism,’ abortion, and heck, probably all of the woke mindset are good things, never realizing — or, if realizing, being perfectly willing to subvert — that other people might not want their children taught that such things are good, noble or acceptable.

Mrs McCook is very able to buy the books she wants her daughter to read all and learn by herself; she has a decent job, and books are cheap. Other people have the right to buy their kids the books they want them to read, whether Huckleberry Finn, The Communist Manifesto, or even the dreaded Mein Kampf.^[2]I’ve read all three, which ought to tell you exactly nothing about my political philosophy. I will confess that Mein Kampf is a dreadfully dreary reading, at least in English, because, written … Continue reading

I wonder if Mrs McCook would consider Mein Kampf acceptable in the school library?