Category Archives: Individual liberties

Martin Brown Is Absolutely Correct: To Achieve Real Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, “DEI” Must Die

Posted on May 25, 2023 by | 34 comments

by J. Kennerly Davis

Martin Brown, a senior aide to Governor Glenn Youngkin, created quite a stir when he told an audience at the Virginia Military Institute that “DEI is dead.” Democrats in politics and the media jumped on the remark, and the Governor’s support of Brown, to assert that the Youngkin administration is hostile to policies and programs that foster diversity, equity, and inclusion. The partisan criticism is baseless. Martin Brown is correct. For Virginia to effectively foster diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI must die.  

Every system of government is based upon an idea, a fundamental concept for its organization and operation, a proposition. Most times, the idea has been small, shabby, uninspiring, and authoritarian. Ultimate authority has been held by a ruling class. The rights of individuals have been understood to be nothing more than malleable artifacts, with their scope and substance and tenure entirely dependent upon the changeable determinations and dispensations of the ruling class.

But sometimes, the idea for a system of government is a grand one, exceptional, inspiring, revolutionary. The idea of America is a grand idea: the revolutionary proposition that all persons are created equal, endowed by their Creator with inherent dignity and unalienable rights; the revolutionary proposition that the only rightful purpose of government, the legitimizing purpose, is to recognize, respect, and protect the shared sacred humanity, inherent dignity, and natural rights of the people;  the revolutionary proposition that the people shall rule, and each shall be able to think and speak and worship and associate freely; the revolutionary proposition that a richly diverse people can form a strongly united nation, e pluribus unum. That is a grand idea!

For more than a hundred years, the regressive authoritarians who wrongly style themselves “progressive” have worked to undermine the grand idea of America and replace it with their own very small idea: the counterrevolutionary proposition that an elitist ruling class of credentialed technocrats, infallible “experts,” should exercise unrestrained administrative power to define the rights, allocate the resources, and direct the affairs of the supposedly unenlightened masses under their paternalistic supervision. Continue reading →

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Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, DEI, Democracy and Western Civilization, Ethics, Individual liberties, Politics, Race and race relations, Scandals

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Read It and Weep – DEI at UVa

Posted on May 18, 2023 by | 121 comments

Navy helicopter overflies UVa Disharoon Park as team stands at attention for national anthem. Photos By Sanjay Suchak, sanjay@virginia.edu

by James C. Sherlock

Kerry Daugherty’s column this morning was heart-wrenching for anyone who cares at all about kids’ educations.  The Norfolk School Board voted 6-1…

to begin teaching gender ideology, masturbation, sexual identity, homosexuality, abortion and lesbianism in middle and high schools.

To kids who cannot read or perform mathematics at grade level.

Now we get a look at what awaits any kid who escapes Norfolk public schools with sufficient skills and diversity credits to get accepted into the University of Virginia (UVa).

They will be welcomed by a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy so large, powerful and widely distributed that a DEI factotum will:

  • review and grade their application in the recruitment process;
  • exercise authority over the curriculum and faculty;
  • monitor their progress; and
  • interview each candidate for graduate school and meet with each annually to assess political views.

If I just told you how this works as above, you would think I was making it up.

So I will quote from UVa’s website. Continue reading →

121 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Freedom, Government workers and pensions, Individual liberties, Marxism, Taxes

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Glen Allen Va’s “Do No Harm” Doing a Great Deal of Good

Posted on May 12, 2023 by | 26 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Do you assume that Virginia’s medical schools are strict meritocracies, taking only the most well prepared and accomplished applicants?

And that their efforts are then focused entirely on creating the most skilled physicians possible?

If so, you are mistaken.

The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), written by the American Medical Association (AMA), a proudly progressive organization, measures everything they know to measure.

The AMA knows MCAT is by far the best predictor of success in medical school and brags about it. The MCAT itself was redesigned in 2015 to include sections that required test-takers to have an understanding of the social and behavioral sciences.

The current MCAT sections breakdown is as follows:

  • Section 1 – Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems (BBLS);
  • Section 2 – Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems (CPBS);
  • Section 3 – Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior (PSBB);
  • Section 4 – Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills (CARS).

Remember that women and minorities who take the MCAT are not so “disadvantaged” that they do not feel ready to apply to medical school.

The AMA hoped the change would produce more women and “underrepresented” (as opposed to Asian-American) minorities with high MCAT scores.

Fair enough.

Yet the rest of the woke medical leadership refuses to accept the results of AMA’s MCAT because that test still does not yield the “correct” candidates. Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (higher ed), Health Care, Individual liberties, Marxism, Not-for-profits, Politics, Race and race relations

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Bible Quotes Verboten in Loudoun Teacher’s Work Email

Posted on May 4, 2023 by | 91 comments

by James A. Bacon

A Loudoun County school teacher has been told to remove a Bible verse from the signature block of her work email. She contends her constitutional rights are being violated, according to the UPI news service.

Loudoun County Public Schools maintains that the quote — “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16” — runs afoul of the Establishment Clause, which prohibits governmental establishment of religion.

If anyone runs afoul of the Constitution, it’s the Loudoun school system for using its power to expunge a personal expression of religious belief. An individual school teacher acting in her private capacity is not the government. Expressing her faith in an email signature block is not establishing a religion.

I’m an atheist and have been most of my life. But when I encounter idiocy like Loudoun’s ban, I’m tempted to start attending church as a form of cultural and political resistance. I don’t put any stock in Christian theology, but I have a deep appreciation for the moral system that the Judeo-Christian tradition has bequeathed our society. And I don’t want to see militant secularism enthroned as the new government-sanctioned worldview. Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, Individual liberties

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Latin Mass Churchgoers Witnessed Suspicious Activity After FBI’s ‘Radical-Traditional Catholic’ Memo

Posted on May 1, 2023 by | 41 comments

Exclusive to The Daily Signal

by Tyler O’Neil

Two parishioners at a Latin Mass Catholic church in rural Northern Virginia say they witnessed suspicious activity from what looked like FBI vehicles in February, a month after the FBI’s Richmond office published a now-rescinded internal memo focused on “radical-traditional Catholics.”

The FBI’s Washington, D.C. office, which monitors the church’s area, denied any knowledge of such activity in a statement to The Daily Signal.

The two witnesses told The Daily Signal that they saw two cars approach the church, drive through the parking lot as if they were writing down license plate numbers, and then leave, on two separate instances outside Immaculate Heart of Mary Chapel in Linden, Virginia, some 63 miles west of Washington, D.C., between Feb. 12 and Feb. 26. (The memo had been published on Jan. 23 and rescinded on Feb. 9.)
Continue reading →

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Posted in Civil Rights, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Individual liberties, Uncategorized

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School Closures Resulted In Spike In Suicide Attempts Among Kids

Posted on April 27, 2023 by | 13 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

How is it that those of us without fancy degrees from prestigious universities or medical training intuitively KNEW that the Covid-19 lockdowns and school closures would have a profoundly negative effect upon kids?

I watched one of my nieces, who graduated from high school in 2021, spend her junior year at home, isolated from her friends and extended family. A future physician and excellent student, she sat alone, doing class work off of a computer screen. On top of that, her entire social structure was dismantled. There were no sleepovers or parties, no sports, dances or proms. When schools finally reopened she was seated more than 6 feet away from the nearest other student at lunch and if they dared speak to each other, a teacher would scream, “NO talking!”

All for a virus that barely affected kids, as we all knew from the earliest weeks of the pandemic.

I worried about her and her friends. Turns out, she’s OK. Some of her classmates? Not so much.

Last week, UVA Today published a study showing a sharp increase in the number of attempted suicides by children ages 10 to 19 from 2020 on.

The rate of suspected suicide attempts by poisoning among children and adolescents ages 10 to 19 reported to U.S. poison centers increased 30% during 2021 – the COVID-19 pandemic’s first full year – compared with 2019, a new UVA Health study found.

Attempted suicides continue to climb.
Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Children and families, Education (K-12), Health Care, Individual liberties, Mental illness and substance abuse, Psychology, Schools and Public Recreation, Uncategorized

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Fourth Circuit Gives Standing to Parents Suing Loudoun County Schools over First Amendment Violations

Posted on April 21, 2023 by | 45 comments

Ian Serotkin
LCPS School Board Chair, Defendant

by James C. Sherlock

In a win for freedom of speech, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond overturned a finding by a federal district judge that Loudoun parents did not have standing to sue the School Board for infringement of First Amendment rights.

The parents alleged a bias reporting system instituted by Loudoun County Public Schools “chilled their children from exercising their free speech rights.”

The ruling:

… the parents plausibly allege that implementing the new reporting system chilled their children’s speech to support their First Amendment claims. So, we vacate the district court’s order dismissing those claims and remand for those claims to be considered on the merits.

I suspect the new trial and appeals will find even the current, revised LCPS policy on reporting to be intended to chill protected speech. Continue reading →

45 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Courts and law, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Freedom, Individual liberties, Parental Rights, Virginia Law

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Apologies Run One Way in Woke World

Posted on April 20, 2023 by | 73 comments

Credit: Bing Image Creator

by James A. Bacon

The woke witch trials of the 21st century don’t burn their victims at the stake, but they still do immense harm.

We previously told the story of how Morgan Bettinger, a 4th-year student who ran afoul of the University of Virginia’s social-justice warriors, was vilified on social media, investigated by university authorities, and required to perform social-justice-related community service to atone for supposed threats she never uttered.

What we haven’t told before but can now thanks to a lawsuit asking for the expungement of disciplinary sanctions on Bettinger’s college record, is what it’s like for a student to endure the assaults of the Woke Mob.

The question every UVA alumnus, student, parent, professor and member of the UVa community must ask is this: how can freedom of speech and expression thrive in an environment where students are treated this way?

The lawsuit cites the following testimony Bettinger gave in a recorded interview with the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights. Continue reading →

73 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Individual liberties, Uncategorized

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Richmond FBI Office Used Undercover Agents to Spy on Traditional Catholics

Posted on April 13, 2023 by | 77 comments

by Robin Beres

The United States has not always been a bastion of religious freedom. When Virginia became an English colony in 1607, the English considered religious differences just as treasonous as political differences. Sure, Elizabeth I had reinstalled the Church of England following Queen Mary’s tumultuous reign, but the possibility of another Catholic on the throne remained a threat for decades.

As a result, English rulers decreed the Church of England to be the only official church in Virginia. For nearly two hundred years, there was no religious freedom in the colony. Even other Protestant denominations, such as Presbyterians and Baptists, were persecuted.

It wasn’t until 1786 that the Virginia General Assembly enacted Bill No. 82, “A Bill for establishing religious freedom.” Written by Thomas Jefferson and guided through the Virginia legislature by James Madison, the bill, eventually known as the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, was strongly backed by leaders of other religious factions.

The bill stipulated that no government had the legitimate authority to establish or compel anyone to hold certain religious beliefs. Jefferson firmly believed that if this newly-born nation was to survive, all men must be given the freedom to determine their own beliefs.

The bill was the first attempt to get religion out of government and government out of religion. Eventually the act became the basis of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment declaration that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” The bill also confirmed Virginia as the birthplace of America’s religious freedom.

Little wonder then why many Virginians were stunned and concerned to learn of a January memo issued by an analyst with the Richmond FBI’s field office. The memo seemed to determine there were white supremacists masquerading as Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass. The author of the “analysis” seems to have even created a name for this newly-discovered group: “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” or RTCs. Continue reading →

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Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, Federal, Freedom, General Assembly, Individual liberties, Law enforcement, Virginia history

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Incarceration Should Not Mean Humiliation

Posted on April 13, 2023 by | 9 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Hang onto your wallets, Portsmouth. A lawsuit filed Friday in Circuit Court is seeking $1 million in damages due to alleged misconduct by a sheriff’s deputy. Oh, and another $350,000 in punitive damages.

The conduct – if it happened – was atrocious.

According to court papers filed by a former inmate, Danaesha Martin, a sheriff’s deputy on May 2, 2022 forced her to disrobe to prove she was actually having her menstrual period when she requested sanitary products.

If true, this is sick. Sadistic, too.

No matter the crime, incarceration should not be accompanied by humiliation. Treating inmates like animals should not be part of the criminal justice system. Jailers are supposed to behave better than the people behind bars. Continue reading →

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Posted in Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Ethics, Individual liberties, Scandals

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Five Questions: An Interview with Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears

Posted on April 11, 2023 by | 108 comments

by Shaun Kenney

Last week, The Republican Standard had the opportunity to follow Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears as she toured the Richmond Slave Trail — which included not only the site of the notorious Lumpkins Slave Jail but also the site where Gabriel Prosser was executed and presumably buried in 1800.

Winsome Earle-Sears brought a narrative rooted in the role of hope in human liberation, whether it was in her own tradition from Jamaica to the hopelessness that seems to infect so much of our political discourse today. TRS was able to sit down with the Lieutenant Governor in order to explore her thoughts on this topic and many others.

We just toured Lumpkin’s Slave Jail site. Clearly this is a place with a lot of hurt and anguish, but a little bit of courage and heroism. Where do you think that resilience — that hope — comes from given the experiences of the past?

People look at me and think that I have courage, but I don’t. I have no special store of courage more than the next guy, but I have counted the cost and what I say and do comes with consequences.
There are times when people believe that I am not willing to take that stand, but God comes along and tells me to pick up my cross. Many people attribute that to me being a Marine, but it is really not: it is attributable to my Christian Faith.
Continue reading →

108 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Business and Economy, Children and families, Civil Rights, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Elections, Feminism and women's rights, Freedom, Immigration, Individual liberties, Political Influence, Politics, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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“Repressive Tolerance” and the Constitutions of the United States and of Virginia

Posted on April 9, 2023 by | 35 comments

Courtesy of the American Bar Association

by James C. Sherlock

In the United States, the first references for judges and attorneys are the federal and state constitutions.

The Constitution of the United States, in its First Amendment, requires that:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

The Constitution of Virginia goes much further:

That the freedoms of speech and of the press are among the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained except by despotic governments; that any citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; that the General Assembly shall not pass any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, nor the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for the redress of grievances.

In service to those constitutions, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) may be the most vital non-profit in America.

It defends free speech, academic freedom, due process and freedom of the press for conservatives and progressives alike, picking up the banner cast away a decade or more ago by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Yesterday came a comment here on BR that has since been edited away.

I do not, however, believe in consequence-free speech (as many on the Right clearly do). If you are going be be [sic] provocative in your speech, you might expect reaction from your audience after a time.”

The author is at least observant.

Provocative political speech — with virtually every subject now being considered political — regularly provokes reactions, often repressive and sometimes violent, in the public square.

I disagree with his opinion on expectations, however.

The public square is not a back alley. It is where repressive and violent reactions to speech should be least-expected and never tolerated.

If they are tolerated, we have no society, no democracy, no ordered community of any kind. Continue reading →

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Posted in Civil Rights, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Freedom, Individual liberties, Politics

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Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” and the Suppression of Debate

Posted on April 8, 2023 by | 71 comments

Herbert Marcuse. Courtesy Britannica

by James C. Sherlock

There have been countless articles here on the tyranny of the left on Virginia college campuses. And nationwide.

I need not summarize them here.

But I think it useful on a weekend to consider the origins of that movement to better understand it.

It did not spring up randomly, and it continues to flow from its source, Herbert Marcuse and his book Repressive Tolerance (1965)*.

Marcuse abandoned the working class as a source of subversion of capitalism in 1964’s The One-Dimensional Man.  He

put his faith in an alliance between radical intellectuals and those groups not yet integrated into one-dimensional society, the socially marginalized, the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other ethnicities and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable.

You may recognize that target coalition.

Herbert Marcuse has been the campus left’s philosopher since the 60’s radicals were suckled on his writings and remained in academia. Their students have come now to dominate the heights of the culture, including academia, Hollywood, the media, and teachers’ unions.

What I call the “stupid right,” more useful to the left than to conservatism, seeks to use some of Marcuse’s tactics in an equally destructive way. But they remain a fringe.

They seek a different coalition, most of which utterly rejects them.

Because they are destructive of society. Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, Education - Early Childhood, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), General Assembly, Government workers and pensions, Individual liberties, Marxism, Politics

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How Orwellian Is “Student Conduct Software”?

Posted on April 2, 2023 by | 29 comments

by James A. Bacon

More than 1,300 educational institutions across the country use software developed by Charlottesville-based Maxient, which bills itself as the “industry leader” and “most trusted provider for incident reporting and behavior records management.” Clients include most of Virginia’s public institutions of higher education.

The recent revelation in The CollegeFix and Wall Street Journal that the nation’s universities maintain consolidated files on student “behavior” is troubling to many, conjuring images of “Big Brother” college administrators compiling dossiers on students who commit microaggressions or otherwise transgress woke codes on speech and behavior.

While it is clear (1) that most colleges have developed the capability to build such dossiers and (2) that many have integrated them with their “bias reporting” systems, concrete incidents of abuse have yet to surface. The fact is, little is known about how the software is being used. Only now are questions being asked.

The Cadet, the independent student newspaper at the Virginia Military Institute, has taken an important first step in finding out. The Cadet submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to all public universities to determine how Maxient is being used. Some institutions — Longwood University and Mary Washington University — were particularly forthcoming. Some were not. Virginia Commonwealth University refused to hand over any documents or answer any questions, referring The Cadet to the university’s website.

The Longwood and Mary Washington responses to The Cadet FOIA show the kinds of incidents that at least two public universities are putting into their “student conduct” databases. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (higher ed), Individual liberties

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Free Speech and Open Inquiry Are “Non-Negotiable”

Posted on April 1, 2023 by | 15 comments

Aimee Guidera, Secretary of Education

by James A. Bacon

Governor Glenn Youngkin made a national name for himself by standing up for parents’ rights in public education. His administration has engaged in bruising battles over transgender policy, critical race theory, and educational standards in K-12 schools. His approach to higher-ed issues has been far less contentious. Other than fighting for a year-long freeze in college tuition & fees, which he won, Youngkin’s higher-ed policy has generated few headlines.

That doesn’t mean Youngkin has neglected higher education. Rather than take a confrontational approach, such as seen in Florida and North Carolina, the governor is trying to work within the system. In a keynote address delivered to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) Friday, Amy Guidera, Virginia’s Secretary of Education, described the administration’s philosophy.

The purpose of higher education is to equip students to become more productive and constructive members of society, Guidera said. Allowing free speech, free inquiry and intellectual diversity is critical to achieving the larger goal. It is important, she said, for students to “be confronted with ideas and beliefs [they] have never encountered before.”

Rather than enact legislation, Youngkin has chosen to work with the Council of Presidents, comprised of the presidents of Virginia’s public colleges and universities. He has met with the Council every quarter, something that no previous governor did, Guidera said. In those meetings he has been clear about his support for “a culture of free expression.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Individual liberties, Uncategorized

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