Education
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Planned Parenthood & Disney Princesses: An Idea That is Rotten to the Core
The abortion giant, Planned Parenthood, isn’t afraid to push boundaries of legality, compassion, or even rationality. In fact that seems to be their modus operandi. So, it is of little surprise that yesterday Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania called for the creation of a Disney princess that has had an abortion.
After no small amount of backlash, the organization took down the tweet, but not before the Wayback Machine captured at least six images of it.
Supposedly Planned Parenthood’s rationale for originally posting this foolish tweet was that they sought to “make a point about the importance of telling stories that challenge stigma.”
Give me a break. This is the same organization whose Kentucky branch posted “Some men have a uterus” over and over again on Twitter earlier this month. They are bent on pushing the envelope, expanding their base, and keeping the next generation beholden to their faux pro-woman ideology.
No, this was no mistake. It was a trial balloon to test the waters of their audience to see what they would tolerate.
The fact of the matter is, Planned Parenthood is already indoctrinating boys and girls in public schools across America with their Get Real sex education curriculum. Thankfully, Cumberland County parents were sick and tired of the abortion titan pushing its nefarious agenda on their sons and daughters and exerted such opposition to it that it was pulled from all public schools in the county.
In light of this, is it really that far fetched to think they wouldn’t champion a pro-abortion Disney princess if they thought it would play well with their base?
The faux pas is instructive. To even suggest inserting their “services” into the realm of fictitious Disney princesses, no…the realm of innocent little girls, is unfathomable.
These are the same little girls that, if born just 3 or 4 years earlier, could have easily spent their final moments on this earth within the walls of a Planned Parenthood clinic being torn limb from limb.
This brutal reality drives home just how misguided the pro-choice understanding of female empowerment really is. They perpetuate the tragic lie that young women are somehow going to be happier if they end the life of their child. And if Planned Parenthood’s tweet even remotely reveals their true intentions, they would like to see this lie peddled to the entertainment industry’s youngest audiences.
Although many Americans have ceased from being shocked by this organization’s far-reaching dedication to the culture of death, it seems as if it was finally a bridge too far for a number of pro-abortion Americans.
One respondent wrote, “”Disney princesses are for CHILDREN and these are adult issues…This far-out crap is why we got stuck with Donald Trump.”
Another replied, “They have no idea how extreme this sounds (and yes, I’m pro-choice).”
So, what do we say to women that are fed up with this sort of nonsense? Are American girls resigned to accepting that Planned Parenthood and abortion activists are their voice in the 21st century? Must women’s empowerment and girl power forever be hinged to a faulty belief that life only has value if it is wanted, healthy, or convenient?
As a millennial mother of young daughters, I want so much better for my girls and their peers. I don’t want Planned Parenthood, or Disney for that matter, teaching them what womanhood should look like.
To grow up in a sex-saturated, convenience-centric culture that tells girls their path toward success involves squashing the “patriarchy” and killing their children is tough. With that in mind, let’s do our part to make sure our real princesses aren’t indoctrinated by these sorts of lies while watching the next Moana or Rapunzel on the big screen.
The best way to combat bad ideas is with good ones. This means that we must show little girls a better way forward. A way that Planned Parenthood, for all of their platitudes about helping women, will never understand.
How can we do this?
By embracing our femininity. By not talking down to men. By not putting up with condescension from men. By honoring the gift of motherhood. By facing unforeseen circumstances with courage and compassion.
So, although Planned Parenthood will continue to champion their fake, bankrupt version of women’s empowerment, let’s commit to bringing up girls that know better. It’s time to raise a generation of princesses that know their worth and can see Planned Parenthood’s poisonous, rotten fruit for what it really is: a toxic ideology that corrupts our children and leaves hurting women and dead babies in its wake.
Milton Friedman’s Best Argument for Free Trade
In this short clip from the late economist Milton Friedman, he challenges protectionist thinking with the best anecdote he’s heard supporting free trade:
It takes muddled thinking indeed to at once think we are punishing countries like Cuba with a trade embargo limiting foreign goods entering their economy, but somehow benefiting our economy by doing the same thing to ourselves through tariffs.
Charter schools respond to report
Stymied by Segregation a report by Kris Nordstrom of the NC Justice Center, highlights segregation – who would have ever guessed it — as one of the biggest challenges facing North Carolina public schools. The report has garnered coverage among the local press. In part, because Nordstrom calls out charter schools for making segregation worse in many places. How do you solve the problem? Among other things, the author recommends allowing the state to close charter schools that aren’t diverse.
Do parents really want the state deciding what school their child can attend based on factors that may not be as important to them? It’s a recommendation likely to generate significant opposition from parents and educators.
There are many things wrong with this report. If you want a quick review, read Tom Miller’s insightful, spot-on critique available here. Miller, is a former public-school teacher and current charter school principal. It’s well worth your time.
Stymied by Segregation reiterates the left’s never-ending message: parents can’t be trusted and we know better.
Thankfully, most parents and policymakers know otherwise.
NC revenue surplus revised — again.
$265.8 million; remember that number. That’s North Carolina’s projected revenue surplus, according to the Fiscal Research Division (FRD) of the North Carolina General Assembly. The revision adds another $75.2 million to an earlier estimate of $190.6 million, which was reported two weeks ago on this blog. The figures are included in the State Controller’s General Fund Monthly Financial Report.
Source: Office of the State Controller: General Fund, Monthly Financial Report
Four years of tax reductions and four years of revenue surpluses. That’s a strong argument for real tax reform and controlling state spending.
The government watchdog organization, Truth in Accounting reports that 25 states are facing revenue shortfalls in 2018.
Thank our legislative leaders – and Tar Heel taxpayers — that North Carolina is not one of them.
Making public education truly public
Most of us agree that young people are different. They come from different backgrounds, have different aptitudes, personalities, strengths and beliefs and also they learn differently. We celebrate these differences. So why do the values of standardization and uniformity dominate our public school system?
It wasn’t always this way. In our nation’s early history, our public schools used to be more receptive and respectful of these differences, but as the years have passed, schools have grown less and less tolerant of these differences.
How did our public schools come to stand for uniformity and standardization and what are the consequences of these developments are questions Ashley Berner answers in a fascinating TED Talk, No One Way to School: Educational Pluralism and Why it Matters
Find out why our schools should encouraged educational pluralism, here and here.
Lessons From the Irish, Why the Left Hates Betsy DeVos, & Being a Social Justice Warrior
The Weekend Muse | Brooke Medina
Why Progressives Hate Betsy DeVos
North Carolina writer and book author, Bruce Ashford, hits the nail on the head when it comes to why so many on the Left dish out disdain for Secretary DeVos. Perhaps it is has less to do with her recent 60 Minutes interview and more to do with her stalwart advocacy on behalf of school choice for all American children. Such a platform threatens the tight control education bureaucrats and unions have wielded over our nation’s public school system. Unsurprisingly they will fight tooth and nail to ensure they retain power, to include exploiting every misstep and hurling every ad hominem within their arsenal.
Fair-minded people on both sides of the aisle should be able to agree that the status quo in many of America’s public schools have left our children without access to the education options best suited to their unique needs. To hold this position is not anti-public school. It is pro-parental choice. Parents should be free to choose the school, whether public or private, that is the best fit for their child. Secretary DeVos might very well prove to be the outsider that the Department of Education—and our children—need.
Lessons From the Rise of America’s Irish
This weekend many Americans will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Whether it be the donning of green attire, drinking a Shamrock Shake®, or partaking of corned beef and cabbage, Irish and non-Irish, alike, will celebrate this cultural and religious holiday.
Jason Riley of Wall Street Journal reminds us that the history of the Irish extends far beyond mischievous leprechauns and kissing the Blarney stone. He offers a sobering look into the history of one of America’s most marginalized people groups. So, while your Irish soda bread is baking, maybe take some time to read through an important piece of Irish and American history.
Being a Social Justice Warrior
To be sure, the calling of the social justice warrior is a high one in the Church of Political Correctness. Not everyone can be triggered as easily or offended so quickly. In fact, it takes weeks, months—maybe even years—to perfect the level of vitriol and anger toward fellow human beings that happen to see things from a different perspective. That’s why we at Civitas have designated this as a must-see for anyone wanting to learn more about the inner workings of our nation’s thought police (in a purely satirical way).
The Weekend Muse is a new weekly installment that will feature several links to articles or videos Civitas staff has deemed to be “the best of the best” when it comes to timely, thought-provoking, or laughter-inducing content.
Rep. Mark Walker Sounds Alarm on Federal Debt Crisis
No issue better epitomizes our broken federal government than the debt. And like Democrats, Republicans have failed miserably to control federal spending.
U.S. Rep. Mark Walker of Greensboro co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Times with Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) on the spending crisis. Note, they correctly diagnose the problem as one of spending and not revenue. It seems foolish for Washington to demand more money when they have been such poor stewards of our tax dollars for so long.
It’s frustrating that we have allowed the debt to reach almost $21 trillion since experts and lawmakers have been sounding the alarm about the debt, at least regularly, since the 1980s.
Walker and Ratcliffe call for a Balanced Budget Amendment in their piece. “As a collective goal for this legislative year, we want to ensure that an effective and enforceable Balanced Budget Amendment passes the House of Representatives,” they write.
Rep. Walker will be attending CLC in April and it’s another great opportunity to press him and his party to deliver on an essential issue for all of us.
It would be greater still if the entire North Carolina Congressional delegation would stand together in true bipartisan fashion and demand real controls on spending. Unfortunately, nothing will change unless the citizenry demands more than just talking about spending restraint from their federal representatives. Lawmakers continually prove they don’t have the collective courage on their own to address this crisis.
Students demonstrate; while no one questions WCPSS policy
Thousands of Wake County Students walked out of class today to honor the memory of students and teachers killed last month in a mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida and to call for stricter gun control.
The march and walkout were coordinated by The Women’s March, an organization with strong ties to the progressive Action Network. That’s important since WCPSS officials have repeatedly said the student demonstrations are not political events.
WCPSS said it will not discipline students who chose to participate in the demonstration, largely because they made it so they can’t. The school board changed the student conduct policy to allow such student demonstrations and prohibit students from being disciplined.
Last week I laid out in an article why I believe the Wake County School System erred when making its policy. I am not alone. There are many others—nationally—who disagree with the policy of schools advocating for student demonstrations while at the same time removing from students all the consequences of their actions.
Yesterday on the website The 74, Robert Pondiscio, a Senior fellow at the Fordham Institute and an advisor to Democracy Prep Public Schools in Harlem where he teaches a senior seminar on civics and citizenship, shared his thoughts on the topic when he wrote:
Student civic engagement is to be encouraged, even celebrated, but that doesn’t mean it must meet with official approval. Indeed, it is essential that it does not. If students have permission to walk out, it’s no longer student activism at all. It’s a field trip. And that’s part of the teachable moment, too. The message to students should be clear: If this issue is important to you, then it’s worth the consequence. Otherwise, you’re not protesting gun violence, you’re boycotting chemistry class. By its very nature, an act of civil disobedience means the protester refuses to comply with rule, norms, and expectations. Permission, by definition, restores the element of compliance, robbing the protest of any meaning.
Later in the same column , Pondiscio raises the other question that has gone unanswered throughout these developments.
Schools that refuse to enforce standard discipline over the Parkland protest may regret it down the road. The vast majority of schools are publicly financed and government-run. If school officials grant students permission to walk out to protest gun violence (a refusal to enforce disciplinary norms is tantamount to official approval), they must also not punish those who disrupt learning to protest in favor of gun rights, or for or against abortion, police violence, or any conceivable political cause. This includes viewpoints many in a school community might deem repellent. Thus, the only sane policy on the Parkland protest is an aggressively neutral stance — with consequences. . .
As someone who is deeply concerned about the role of our schools in preparing young people for citizenship, I expect to be cheered by Wednesday’s display of student activism, regardless of whether I agree with its political agenda. But as a civics teacher, my message to students would be that the courage of your convictions carries a price. If your cause is just, you should pay it with honor and dignity.
I share Pondiscio’s sentiments about the importance of the teaching moment. Our schools’ rush to encourage student demonstrations teaches the wrong lesson and creates an unworkable policy. Both good reasons why the policy needs to be changed.
NC Policy Watch’s Troubling Position on Tax Breaks
Does the money you earn from your labor belong to you? This question is important and draws a distinction between economic conservatives and progressives.
NC Policy Watch is a progressive North Carolina think tank co-founded by Chris Fitzsimon and the A.J. Fletcher Foundation. On March 22, Policy Watch will be hosting Prof. Christopher Faricy, of Syracuse University, to discuss his book “Welfare for the Wealthy: Parties, Social Spending, and Inequality in the United States.”
According to Rob Schofield, NC Policy Watch Policy Director, Dr. Faricy will discuss how “Republicans regularly enact tax breaks like 401k and 529 savings plans that use the government to redistribute wealth.”
I agree that tax credits, deductions, and exclusions are distortions in the tax code. However, I disagree with what Schofield thinks are creating these distortions. Schofield writes “The problem is, tax breaks are often inexact tools that don’t direct resources to where they are most needed.”
There are three mind-boggling implications made in the description of this event. Let’s unpack them.
1) Tax breaks are wealth redistribution.
This statement is incorrect. Tax breaks are distortions in the tax code that keep overall tax rates artificially inflated. However, allowing taxpayers to keep more of their own hard-earned money is not wealth redistribution.
Tax breaks, assuming they are applied uniformly, are not the same as redistributive subsidies. The only scenario in which tax breaks are wealth redistribution is a world in which all labor (and thereby wages) belong to the government. If that is the case, then anything less than a 100 percent tax rate is wealth redistribution. That is a bloodcurdling world in which we are all slaves to the government and government controls all means of production.
2) The government, and not citizens or taxpayers, knows best how to spend and distribute resources.
Government should exist to protect the rights and property of citizens, and offer a few core services.
In fact, the February 2018 Civitas Poll found that 63 percent of North Carolinians prefer a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes.
Beyond those core services, the government should not be directing many (if any) resources. In fact, government at all levels has a very long and terrible track record of inappropriate spending and misappropriating resources.
Either Mr. Schofield has a blind faith in big government, or he is in favor of pork-barrel spending.
3) NC Policy Watch and Rob Schofield are opposed to all tax breaks.
If this statement were true, then at least Mr. Schofield would be speaking from an ideologically pure position. It would mean he wants a simpler tax code; likely with a higher rate, but still simpler.
However, NC Policy Watch has come out in favor of policies such as “circuit-breaker” tax credits for low-income homeowners, the Earned Income Tax Credit, healthcare tax credits, an increase in the number of income tax deductions, and the Renewable Energy Investment Tax Credit.
In fact, Schofield decried Civitas’s criticism of special tax breaks for Amazon in that company’s site search for a second headquarters.
It should also be noted that NC Policy Watch has been completely silent on the $185 million in corporate tax breaks that Governor Roy Cooper gave away in 2017.
The truth is that the progressive left has no overall aim to simplify the tax code or get rid of tax breaks. They just disagree with who gets tax breaks.
Meanwhile, the Civitas position is that taxpayers deserve a tax code with as low of a rate as possible, and that is done by having fewer distortions. On that matter, Civitas has been clear and consistent.