Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 378 | Dr. Seuss Is Racist & Everything Is Stupid

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

In perhaps its most controversial move yet, the Biden administration did not honor Dr. Seuss during National Read Across America Day. If we keep canceling authors for their perceived problems, will there be any books left to read? Maybe just the ones by Robin DiAngelo or Ibram X. Kendi. This kind of cultural revolt against anything "old" has been seen before in Mao's China, to horrifying effect. The progressives of today have a similarly utopian dream, but the road to get to the equity they want so much is laden with suffering. Maybe we should stop burning books, literally or figuratively? They want math to be more equitable too: Some teachers are now being told that it's white supremacy to look for a single correct answer to a problem.  --- Today's sponsor: Annie's Kit Clubs: No matter your crafting experience, you can make a picture-perfect project you’ll be proud to display. Go to https://AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE and save 50% on your first kit! --- Today's sources: Fox News: Biden erases Dr. Seuss from 'Read Across America' proclamation as progressives seek to cancel beloved author: https://fxn.ws/3q7TBmj Seattle Times: 6 Dr. Seuss books won’t be published for racist images: https://bit.ly/3bSomXz Daily Wire: Oregon Promotes Program Focused On ‘Dismantling Racism In Mathematics,’ Says Finding The Right Answer A Sign Of White Supremacy: https://bit.ly/3uOd9ju Tablet: California Is Cleansing Jews From History: https://bit.ly/3dXbwdc

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. I don't know if you guys heard, but Dr. Seuss is canceled for racism. Every single day, you guys, every single day. Another thing dies at the tip of the woke sword. And today it is the beloved Dr. Seuss. Actually, this is not a new story. This has been being talked about for a long time. the reason why it's relevant today is because the Biden administration took all Dr. Seuss books off of read across America Day, the annual celebration of reading in honor of the legendary children's author, according to Fox News, whose birthday falls on March 2nd, which is today. We will also be talking about replacing math, you know, normal math, like 2 plus 2 equals 4, with a new kind of equitable. math that is sponsored by none other than Bill Gates. And we'll be talking about what that entails. And then also this push to replace history curriculum with Black Lives Matter activism at a variety of schools around the country, namely in California. So we're going to talk about how wokeism is

destroying our education and is actually going to create bigger disparities and not more equity. And I'll explain why. And then also, I think what we can do in response to all of this absolute madness. And also, another thing I'm going to do is connected to things that have happened in the past and why it's not just a laughing matter, like why we should actually care about all of this craziness. So first, let's break down this Dr. Seuss story. First of all, I love Dr. Seuss and I love his books. Our family loves his books. I think reading Dr. Seuss really helped me read. And I think that that is probably true for you guys too. And so no matter the pushback that I am going to get on saying after I explain all of this, we're not going to stop reading Dr. Seuss in our house. And I have

a guess that millions and millions of people feel the same way. So this is according to Fox News. while Biden followed presidential tradition and proclaiming Tuesday, read across America Day, he bucked his predecessors by leaving out any mention of Dr. Seuss from the proclamation. The White House didn't immediately return a request for comment on why Dr. Seuss was left out of the proclamation, but the snub comes as progressives have sought to cancel the beloved children's author. One of Virginia's biggest school districts, Loudon, y'all can tell me if y'all are from Virginia, if I said that correctly,

County Public Schools reportedly nicks Dr. Seuss from the school. schools read across America Day celebration, citing alleged racial undertones in his children's books. This part's interesting. It just shows you how fast this train has moved over the past few years. Former President Barack Obama and former President Donald Trump both highlighted Dr. Seuss's contributions in their annual proclamations of Fox News review of White House archives found.

Obama's 2016 proclamation described Seuss as, quote, one of America. 's revered wordsmiths, who used his incredible talent to instill in his most impressionable readers, universal values, we all hold dear, which of course is true. And I'll put up if you're watching on YouTube, this picture of First Lady Michelle Obama. She looks like she is reading to a bunch of students in the White House. She's got a big cat and the hat person next to her. And all of the precious little children are wearing the classic cat in the hat hats. The Seattle Times reported on this too. I thought this was interesting that Forbes listed Dr. Seuss on as number two on its highest paid dead celebrities of 2020 behind only the late pop star Michael Jackson. The Seattle

Times reported that there are millions of books, tens of millions of dollars made by Dr. Seuss's foundation every year because people love his books and actually demand, according to the Seattle Times, has increased significantly over the past few years. I'm not sure why that is if it's like the popularization of Amazon. I know that they are very, there's like a whole Dr. Seuss segment in Target. So I'll be interested to see how long that lasts. This is what the Seattle Times also said. As adored as Dr. Seuss is by millions around the world for the positive values in many of his works, including environmentalism and tolerance, there has been an increasing criticism in recent years over the way blacks, Asians, and others are drawn in some of his most beloved

children's books, as well as in his earlier advertising and propaganda illustrations. So like I said, we have Dr. Seuss in our house, and we have tons of Dr. Seuss books. It seems like we can't read through them fast enough. And my child, she is, she'll be two this summer. She will have a favorite Dr. Seuss book that we have to read multiple times a day, and then she'll switch to the next one. Fox and Sox is a classic, is a classic in our house. And of course, it's a classic in general, but it is a fan favorite.

She loves Fox and Sox. And if you are a parent, you know the exhaustion associated with Fox and Sox. But it's also fun. It's kind of like a challenge for me. I want to see if I can get through it without making any mistakes. It can happen. As you guys know, I talk very quickly on this podcast, but it doesn't often happen. But it's even like kind of a fun challenge for me.

But in most of the books, you don't see any depictions of human beings. Like, there just aren't humans. There's the cat in the hat. There's, you know, sneaches. There is Horton the Who. There is the Grinch. There's the, or is it Horton the Who or Horton and the Hoos? I don't remember.

And you've got, you know, the Who's in Whoville. You've got Mr. Knox. I think that's the guy in Fox and Sox. So you've got all kinds of creatures. You've got all kinds of different animals. you very rarely actually see human beings. I mean, yes, there are two little kids that are in a cat in the hat. But I'm really confused as to what they're talking about here.

Apparently, there are a few books that he wrote early on that are a little bit more problematic. And like the Seattle Times said, there was some advertising that he had done and some propaganda that was anti-Japanese propaganda during World War II. And apparently also depicted black people in a caricatureduring. way. So obviously that is something that offends and rightfully offends our sensibilities today. And we wouldn't condone an author illustrating something like that today. And I'm not justifying that kind of propaganda from, you know, probably, you know, however long ago it was 80 years ago. But it was a different time. People did see and do and talk differently.

80 years ago than they do today. Of course. And so judging someone who was drawing 80 to 60 years ago by today's standards is just unfair and it's ridiculous. If we did that to every single author, we would have no books left to read. And you do kind of wonder if that's the point. And I will get to that in just one second. The Seattle Times goes on to say in 2017, a school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts criticized a gift of 10 Seuss books from First Lady Melania Trump, saying many of his works were, quote, steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes. It's not true that many of his works are. There might be a few works by Dr. Seuss where this is the case, but that's not true of many or even close to most of his works. And remember,

Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, lauded Dr. Seuss and his books used them. in their, you know, in their celebrations of reading and things like that. But of course, when Melania Trump presented them with a gift, which is very kind, by the way, of Dr. Seuss books, this school librarian said, well, this is racist. I remember that happening. In 2018, a Dr. Seuss Museum in his hometown of Springfield removed a mural that included an Asian stereotype, the cat in the hat. One of Seuss's most popular books has received criticism too, but will continue to be published

for now because apparently Dr. Seuss's foundation, is talking about no longer publishing some books that are problematic. Look, if you start cowtowing to this stuff, the foundation's no longer going to be printing books because they're going to be able to find something that has a quote racial undertone or some kind of hidden subliminal message according to one random academic somewhere in the United States. That is problematic and offensive. And so there's no longer going to be any Dr. Seuss books if they begin seating ground in this way. Seattle Times also says Laura Ingalls Wilders, portrayals of Native Americans in her little house on the prairie, another American classic, have been faulted so often that the American

Library Association removed her name in 2018 from a Lifetime Achievement Award. It gives out each year, which again is just ridiculous. Judging people by our modern morays who lived 100,000, years ago or who lived several decades ago in a different time, in a different culture with different norms is unsustainable. It's unsustainable. Meanwhile, we have books like the gay BCs. I don't know if you guys have seen this kind of viral video that's been going around on Twitter. It might have been originally filmed on TikTok of what looks like a four or five-year-old boy going through what's called the quote, gay BCs, like A is for ally, B is for buy, C is for coming out and apparently the parents are just so proud that they have taught their child this. Apparently,

that's not problematic. That's not offensive at all. I'm sure in a few years when he decides that he is, he's confused about his gender. His parents will say, oh, well, yes, he's just always been this way. This has nothing to do with anything that we've ever taught him or told him. That is not problematic. That is totally fine. We're supposed to accept and celebrate that. But reading American classics like Dr. Seuss, which have been proven to improve the vocabulary, the reading comprehension, and reading ability of children. That is bad because of a few cartoons that Dr. Seuss put out, you know, a hundred years ago that we now deem racist.

We're living in backwards town. We're living in clown town, people. Where up is down and down is up and girls are boys and boys are girls. And Dr. Seuss is bad. And the gaybCs are fine. We also have, of course, Ibrax-Kindy's anti-racist baby, and so teaching kids that white, bad, black, good, and that all of your problems can be blamed on people of another race. That kind of division apparently is fine propaganda, it's indoctrination to teach to our children. But cat in the hat, fox and socks, green eggs and ham, wacky Wednesday, those are all.

very bad. And we should refrain, apparently, this from our cultural betters, this from our academic elites. Now, this might just seem ridiculous that this is just a wokeness taking place, that this is just, you know, crazy liberals offended by everything, which of course is true, but I think that we actually have to put it in context that it's more dangerous than that and it's more familiar than that. We might think, oh, everything is new, everything is crazy. This is not something that anyone would have cared about 10 years ago. And part of that is true.

But look, we've seen this kind of stuff before. I often compare what happens on the left with the Maoist cultural revolution in China in the 20th century, which brutally ended the lives of tens of millions of Chinese people in the name of communism. And this didn't start primarily as a political revolution of Mao taking power politically and militarily, but through a cultural revolution. And that cultural revolution included things that I've compared to cancel culture like struggle session. So someone who has a dissenting opinion or, as Orwell would say, is guilty of wrong think. They're taken

into public and they're, uh, into the public and they're, they're physically tortured. They're emotionally tortured. They're verbally abused until that person recants their wrong opinion. That is basically what cancel culture is today. That was. happening, you know, decades ago in Mao's China and the hopes that doing so would create a uniform society that would openly and congruantly and cohesively embrace communism. And that is what Mao hoped. And within that cultural revolution and within those struggle sessions, there was this idea of replacing the four olds with the four news. So the four olds in Mao's China were old ideas, old culture, old habits, and old customs.

So the hope was to destroy those and to destroy anyone who still held on to any of those old ideas through something like struggle sessions, through just straight up murder and imprisonment. That's always what we see in these kind of totalitarian collectivist revolutions, whether it be fascist or communism. Remember, those two ideologies are very, very close together. who tells you they're in the opposite ends of the spectrum, don't realize that the political spectrum is a circle with fascism and communism very, very close to each other, rather than a

straight line with fascism and communism on the opposite ends from one another. So in Maoist, communist China, during this cultural revolution, they sought through force to replace these old ideas, old culture, old habits, and old customs with the four news, new customs, new culture, new habits, and new ideas in the hopes that getting rid of the old culture would be able to usher in communism, which of course now thought was going to be wonderful for China. And of course, it wasn't as communism always does. It led to famine. It led to starvation. It led to murder. It led to persecution. It led to oppression. Of course, he did all of this in the name of compassion, in the name of progressivism, in the name of making.

things new and better. This is this is what progressivism always does, by the way. It claims to have this great grand vision of the world that has never fully been tried before and convinces people that it is worth it to give up their power, to give up their money, to give up their property, to give up their freedom in exchange for this great, grand, big, beautiful future that the government is going to be able to give you in all people. And not just that, but it convinces you that you're on the wrong. side of history that you're an immoral person, you're a bad person if you don't get on board with all of this. And I think a lot of times we see these kinds of revolutions as some kind of military

coup or military takeover with soldiers showing up at your house and taking away your guns and tearing apart your family, which is what happened in Paul Potts, Cambodia, another disastrous, murderous, communist revolution of the 20th century. But it starts earlier than that. It starts with the people who are in charge, turning people against one another, making them hate themselves, hate their neighbor, hate their country, hate their old customs, and then look to the government, look to the state to usher in something new and better. And so, Mal knew that it had to start on the cultural level. And I think the communists here today, the leftists, whether all of them know it or not, they are ushering in the same kind of division and hate. and book burning as we saw throughout the totalitarian 20th century. And so this is not happening in a vacuum, mind you.

This is not just a thing that we scoff at and roll our eyes at, although it is that, of course, but it's actually more than that. Like there is some historical precedent for this kind of stuff. And I just want you to think about it. If you are on the side of burning books, because remember, it's not just Dr. Seuss, and you might say, well, they're not really burning books. Okay, bear with me for a second and think metaphorically. It's not just Dr. Seuss.

It's other books that have been taken out of a distribution. Obviously, you guys know that Abigail Shrier, who wrote irreversible damage about the social contagion of transgenderism among girls that she had her book taken offline by Target, at least temporarily, until there was a lot of pushback. Amazon has now said that they are going to stop distributing books that they find offensive. and so Ryan Anderson, who I have interviewed before, the interview will come out in a couple months, but he wrote a book when Harry becomes Sally. It's an amazing book. It's a very compassionate book, but it talks about this transgender moment and movement and what it means in particular for kids and why it is so important to push back against it. And his arguments are very sound, they're fact-based, their science-based, their research-based, while Amazon said, no, that's just

too much. We're going to take it off of our website. Meanwhile, of course, they are still distributing things like M. Kempf and all of these actual terrible books. If you are on the side of the people who are burning books metaphorically or literally, we actually saw Antifa burning, I think it was the Constitution and also burning the Bible in places like Seattle and Portland. We've seen that over the past few months. If that is your side, it's time for you to just take a moment of self-reflection for a second and say, all right, am I on the wrong side of this? Like, am I a part of the bad guys? If you were on the side that is for destroying the four olds and to replace them with the

foreign news because you've bought in to the same lie that dictators and totalitarians have been pushing for centuries that they are going to usher in something better, some kind of anti-racist, fully progressive, tolerant future. And in order to get there, you think it's important to cancel classic American authors because of some problematic cartoons that they wrote 80 years ago or that they drew 80 years ago. You need to ask yourself if you might be on the wrong side of things. Not saying that you have to agree with me on everything or that you have to be like a Republican. I'm just saying maybe don't be on the side of totalitarians. Like maybe don't be on the side of these tiny tyrants. Maybe don't join the mobs that are constantly trying to cancel

people based on standards that we just came up with 10 minutes ago. We talked about this in my book that this is the result, that this kind of thing is actually, I'm not talking about specifically about Dr. Seuss, but I'm talking about just the constant hamster wheel that society is on to try to come up with new definitions of right and wrong based on what, based on people's opinions, based on people's feelings, based on a tiny minority of the country who is offended, all of that goes back to godlessness. And our inability to see that morality has already been decided. It's already been dictated by a God who is higher than us, who is higher than the government,

who is higher than the social, cultural powers that be. And we as Christians have the privilege of being able to go to scripture to say what right is, what wrong is, what good is, what bad is, what true is, what false is. when you have a culture that has replaced the God of Scripture with the God of self, you are constantly going to be exhausted, trying to figure out what the new moral code is. Because based on what? Like, based on your own feelings, based on your own emotions, based on your own perceptions. And so that's where you kind of get this constant, exhausting, clamoring for a new form

of righteousness because so many people today don't know where righteousness comes from. They don't know the author of morality. They don't know the source of truth. And so they're trying to come up with their own truth and their own morality. They're canceling other people in the process. They're self-righteous in doing so, refusing to look at their own mistakes. And it just leads to all kinds of chaos. So any kind of pushback against all of this madness, it's not enough just to say,

you know what? I'm going to reject wokeism, which of course I think is well and good. And there are plenty of people that don't share my biblical, you know, worldview who do reject wokeness. And I think that's great. But essentially, it's got to go back to the why. And the why of resisting every single, not all true progress, but the why to getting off this hamster wheel of cancel culture and getting off this hamster wheel of trying to find new standards of offensiveness and new standards of righteousness every single day in every single sphere of the culture. The answer to that is realizing that we are accountable to God, that we move closer and closer into scripture or further and further into scripture to find what is good and right and true. We don't look to the world

into academics, into random experts, into social media influencers or podcasters or politicians to tell us what is right and what is wrong. And I also think there is something very Christ-like and very Christian in refusing to be offended by everything, refusing to take offense in everything and refusing to cancel people based on something they did a long time ago or based on something that they said that we don't like. There's something so very worldly, and I would even say demonic, if you read, for example, James III, about this. constant catiness and constant offense and constant clamoring to be the first person to cancel an idea or an author or a book. It's no way to live. It's no way to live people. And I think we have

a wonderful opportunity as Christians to say, wow, I'm so glad that I do not have to abide by the standards of the world. And, you know, someone was saying, how do we push back against this on Twitter? And so, of course, I think that it has to do with what I just said on a spiritual level, but just on a practical level, like how we push back against madness, like canceling Dr. Seuss is you just say no. You just say, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to participate in that kind of craziness. Now, if you don't want to read Dr. Seuss, that's fine.

Like, if that's too much for you and you truly don't want to support Dr. Seuss, that's okay. Like, I'm not going to make the same decision for me and my family, but you can make that for you and your family, and you can stop buying Dr. Seuss books, and I think that's fine. Like, I'm not going to shame you for that, but you have no right to shame me for not doing that. I mean, you see how that's kind of a ridiculous standard, right? The fact of the matter is, like I said, at the beginning, Dr. Seuss has really helped a lot of people read, and I think that this is going to create more disparities between those who do read

books like Dr. Seuss and those who don't. Yes, of course, Dr. Seuss is not the only author who has come up with really amazing books that have helped kids read. But they're classics for a reason. Like they have been used to help kids read and write and spell and for, you know, speech therapy for decades for a reason because they really are the best of the best. There's a reason why he is the second highest paid dead person in America. It's because his books are so good. And so if you have one group of people who says,

you know what, we're going to keep reading these books and they're going to help my kids read. And you have all of these kids who have really been helped by his books. And then you have a whole other group of kids who is what, getting educated by the gay BCs, an anti-racist baby. Like, who do you think is going to end up bad? Like, who do you think is probably going to end up a better reader? Like with better reading comprehension and, and better enunciation and things like that. I just think it's going to create more disparities between the woke and the non-woke. It's going to create more gaps in understanding, more gaps in culture. It's just going to create more division.

Now, as for us, like I said, we're not going to stop reading Dr. Seuss. Thankfully, we, I mean, like I said, we love Dr. Seuss in our house, and I really do think it has helped my child be very verbal. Like she's just an extremely smart girl, probably regardless of Dr. Seuss. I mean, she's known her alphabet since she was nine months old. And so I, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Dr. Seuss has been a part of our reading Rolodex since she was born and it's not going to stop. I think that's true of many parents. So I'm giving you permission as if you needed it to continue reading Dr. Seuss.

to your kids. All right, I do want to move on to this story about equitable math and how this also, I think, is going to create more disparities between two groups that is, that is very troubling. And why, again, I think that we should be pushing back against this kind of craziness. Okay, so there is something called a pathway to equitable math instruction. is a toolkit that is apparently being given to middle school teachers to teach math more equitably. This was originally given by the Oregon Department of Education. According to the Daily Wire, the department is promoting a program for teachers that seeks to, quote,

dismantle racism and mathematics, alleging that focusing on the right answer is a symbol of white supremacy. The newsletter encourages teachers, to sign up for the training, which the New York Post previously reported, includes a section with 14 things associated with white supremacy culture, including perfectionism, objectivity, and individualism. Objectivity is described in the workbook accompanying the training as, quote, the belief that there is such thing as being objective or neutral. The program's toolkit also encourages teachers not to focus on a single correct answer,

but to come up with at least two answers that might solve this problem and to challenge standardized test questions by getting the right answer, but justify other problems by unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem. So let's back up a little bit. Let's remember what equity actually means. We've talked about that twice on this podcast, that equity doesn't actually mean fairness. It doesn't actually mean equal treatment. It means the desire for everyone to have the same outcomes. In this case, equity doesn't mean the same outcomes is in the same answer to a math problem. Equity means everyone ending up with similar or the same grades. That is what they are trying to accomplish. What the Department of Education and this particular toolkit is setting out to do is to

make sure that kids apparently who aren't typically getting as good of grades in this math class, they would say bi-pac kids, that they need math to be changed. And so, they need math to be changed. or manipulated for them in order for them to get better grades in the class and feel successful so that it doesn't seem that who they would say are white and Asian kids are actually succeeding more than they are. This is the same kind of goal that has been set forth in San Diego schools, for example, by trying to get rid of any grading scale that has to do with class behavior or has to actually do with test scores. And so, this is in the way of equity in that it is trying to get rid of objective standards so that there

are no more gaps in outcome in between groups in the hopes that this will also, I don't know, lead to equality. The problem is, of course, is that equal outcomes are impossible, that individuals are different. We have different talents. We have different abilities. We have different capacities to understand. I am never going to be able to be great at math. Like I was never going to be able to take the AP calculus test because that's not how my brain works. That's not how God made me. And so it was not unfair for someone to be able to, you know, take calculus in high school, but I had to be stuck in my like pre-cowler or finite class. And, you know, they ended up taking the AP calculus test and got some, you know, credit for college or they got to put it on their

resume, which maybe helped them apply for scholarships or get into a better college than it did for me. Whatever it is, that's just life. Like, God didn't make me with the ability to do math as well as other people or to understand physics or chemistry as well as other people. And it's not unfair that people used the abilities or maybe even the opportunities that they had to be able to advance their career or to get into a particular college or to apply for a scholarship. So in order to make it so-called equitable for me, they would have had to punish the people who were good at math, who were excelling with math by taking away the standards. As someone who is not good at math and who would have very much benefited from this new

subjective form of quote equitable math, I am standing against it and saying it's okay that not everyone is great at math. I don't need the standards to be lowered. And talk about racist and patronizing. Non-white kids don't need the standards to be lowered for them. Now, I understand people are going to push back and say, well, systemic racism is making it impossible for these kids to succeed. If that's the case still, which I don't believe, by the way, but still, the answer would not be getting rid of standards altogether or changing the objective reality that that math problems in general that they have an objective, solid, singular answer. So equity in math is not something that is desirable at all, because some things just

cannot be argued against. I would love, I would love to be able to argue math problems. I would love for math problems to be subjective because that's where I live. I live in the realm of the subjective and the argumentative and, the idea world. That's what I love. That's what I enjoy. That is what I am much better at than the world of objectivism. But I also understand that some things just can't be debated. Like, do you really want the person who builds the bridge to be an expert in equitable math? Like, do you want your pilot? Do you want your plane engineer? Do you want your pharmacist? Do you want the person who is formulating medicine to be good at equitable subjective math?

Or do you want them to be able to get the right answer? Do you want your nurse who was trying to formulate the right dosage of your medicine as you're in the hospital to be good at equitable subjective math? To be able to say, oh, there's probably multiple answers to this dosage calculation. Or do you want them to be pretty exact when it comes to life or death? I would say the latter. So this has real life consequences. So not only is it patronizing, not only is it racist, not only is it not really actually going to lead to any kind of long-term equity, but also it puts society in danger because we rely on math. We rely on the objectivism that is science, or at least a lot of science.

And when we take that ability away from children, we take that away from society. We take that away from our future. We take that away from all of the different spheres that actually rely on mathematics. And you know one person who I know understands this, who I know knows this, maybe better than anyone. That is Bill Gates. And yet, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they are the ones that are funding this insanity. Now, you think that Bill Gates, the owner, the founder of Microsoft, doesn't understand that there are objective. right and wrong answers when it comes to math? He knows. He has to know. Do you think that he is going to

hire someone? Do you think he has ever hired someone who is not good at math if their role required them to be good at math? Like, do you think computer programmers, well, I actually don't know anything about computer programming to even say this, but as I understand, it's a pretty kind of objective science in a lot of ways. Do you think that he is going to apply subjective standards? to that kind of person when it comes to roles in his company. Of course not. His company has relied on math and science. And so I know he knows the importance of objective answers in math. So why is he funding this kind of thing? You know what I say about Bill Gates, who is the center of so many conspiracy theories? If you don't want to be the center of so many conspiracy theories, stop being

sketchy. Like, stop being a sketchy guy. Like maybe just being normal. Stop buying all the farmland in the United States and funding equitable math if you don't want to be the center of all of these conspiracy theories. And so what is really, what's, what's really behind all of this? I'll tell you a theory that I came up with the other day is that we've got people, you know, who purport to be woke and with it and helpers of humanity like Bill Gates. We've got the Oregon Department of Education. We've got all these educators saying that they are the ones fighting for social justice. They're the ones fighting for racial justice. they're the ones fighting for marginalized kids.

And yet they're coming up with these kinds of systems and kinds of curriculum that are ultimately going to hold kids back and hold society back and are going to create more gaps. Because the kids with two parents who care about their education and really care about them succeeding in life are going to make sure that their kids know math. They're going to make sure that their kids know the 2 plus 2 equals 4. And they're going to make sure that their kids succeed in science and all of these arenas that require objectivism. The kids who are going to be left behind are going to be the kids whose parents can't afford to be as involved, who don't know to be as involved. And if they're arguing that disproportionately those are black and brown kids, then what you're creating is a further racial divide.

And so my theory is, is that the real white supremacists are the people that are pushing this kind of stuff in the name of equity. And we're all just being gaslit. The rest of us who believe that, hey, everyone should be held to equal standards. Sure, we should help people who need help, reach those standards. We should give them the tools that they need to be able to succeed. Yes, absolutely. But everyone should be treated fairly. Everyone should be treated equally.

We should try to help those that need help. But let's not lower the standards. That's a soft bigotry of low expectations. We're all being told that we're rating. for believing that, for believing in objective truth. Meanwhile, the people who are lowering standards for specifically black and brown students are the real white supremacists. That's my theory and that they're all just trying to distract everyone else by telling you that those who actually care about fairness and those who actually care about really quality are the ones who are the

racist. I think the best thing that you can do is just to say, no, I refuse your characterization. I refuse your insanity. Parents have to refuse this insanity. The fact of the matter is is that 2 plus 2 does equal 4. There are many more complicated math problems that have an objective answer, that must have an objective answer, that think the Lord, people smarter than me have figured out. I am never going to be relied on to build a bridge. Thank goodness. Like I think about all of these people who are more, you know, English rhetoric-minded like I am, big picture-minded like I am, being in charge of like building planes because their teacher and middle school told them that they were great equitable math, dude, we're going to get a lot of crashing bridges and a lot of crashing planes

if people with my ability to do math are in charge of that because their middle school teacher gave them an A in equitable math. That's going to be a real problem. So there are tangible consequences to all of this. I think there are economic consequences. I think there are employment consequences to all of this. I think that there are a lot of social and cultural ramifications when one group of kids can do actual math and one group of kids can't. And so we see once again that progressivism, wokeism, it destroys. It destroys. All progressivism does is says everything that already exists or has existed for a long time is bad. So let's get rid of it. And when someone asks, well, what's that actually going to lead to? Like, do we have any evidence to think that's going to

lead to something better. They say, oh, no, no, no, it's fine. It's going to, whatever is new is going to be good. We never actually know where the train of progressivism is going. It doesn't actually have any kind of provable destination. It just says, we're just going to keep going in this direction. And we don't really care who we take down in our wake. That's true when it comes to the gender identity insanity. It's true when it comes to the critical theory stuff. It's true when it comes to the nonstop cancellations of people at different cultural and time context than the one in which we live, it just keeps rolling. And look, we got to hop off the train. And we got to encourage other people to hop off the train too, because I'm telling you, progressivism, the train tracks

go off the, go off the edge of the cliff. That's where I can tell you that it goes. Progressivism always claims to have this like utopia, beautiful destination of equality and happiness. It never leads there. It never has led there. It always goes off the cliffs. So you've got to hop off. There are some people that I just, I just want to put my hands on your shoulders and say, please wake up, please wake up and realize that this is madness that you don't need to be a part of. Please. Because it's wrecking society. It's wrecking the lives of children who can't consent to this stuff, by the way. As I've talked about on this podcast, children are always the unwilling, unconsenting products of, not products of, but subjects of progressive social

experiments, whether it's the redefining of gender and the family, whether it is, quote, comprehensive sex ed, whether it is school shutdowns, whether it's abortion, whether it's this woke curriculum. Kids are always the unconsenting subjects of these progressive experiments. And we never ask for a second. Like, how is this actually going to make their lives better? How is this actually going to improve things? But unfortunately, the cultural, social, political powers that be just keep moving ahead with the train of progressivism. And it's up to us to get off. Okay. I want to talk about one more story just quickly that goes along with all of this and the rewriting of history specifically in the name of progressivism. So

this is according to tablet magazine, an article titled, California is cleansing Jews from history. Quote, in the fall of 2016, California's then-governor Jerry Brown signed into law a mandate to develop an ethnic studies program for high schools in California. The ethnic studies model curriculum is for high school students in California. It's a very diverse area. And so a lot of people were on board with this because, of course, it sounds good. Ethnic studies, cultural diversity. these are things, especially in a very diverse area that you would think is a very healthy thing to promote and a healthy thing for kids to learn.

But Alina Kaplan is a former senior vice president of one of California's largest affordable housing nonprofits. She was okay with it initially this ethnic studies law because, again, it sounds good. But she actually saw the first draft of this curriculum and she couldn't believe it. Quote, she saw that a list of historic U.S. social movements ones like Black Lives Matter, hashtag Me Too, criminal justice reform also included the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestine, and described it as a global social movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under apartheid conditions. So obviously, very biased against Israel, the BDS movement literally, its goal is to ruin and

destabilize and to weaken Israel and it kind of paints Palestine as this freedom-fighting nation against the evil imperialist Israel, which is just not an accurate depiction. Quote, she was shocked the inter-curriculum that would be taught to millions of students, BDS's primary goal, the elimination of Israel, was not mentioned. Kaplan also saw that the 1948 Israel War of Independence was only referred to as the Nakba, catastrophe in Arabic, and Arabic verses included in the sample lessons were insulting and provocative to Jews. And so we actually see this very weirdly and very rampantly in progressivism, and it kind of goes back to the works of Karl Marx, even though he was ethnically Jewish,

he wrote the work on the Jewish question where he called Jewish people hucksters. And so wherever we see this kind of leftism and Marxism, as well as where we see, where we see, see fascism and all kinds of totalitarianism. We almost always see a streak of anti-Semitism in it. It kind of goes with this leftism. We see it also in the UK, unfortunately. The new curriculum, this article says, which will eventually be promulgated throughout the California school system of six million children would critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cis-heteropatriarchy, capitalism, abelism, and other forms. of power and oppression, according to the proposal, it would build new possibilities for post-imperial

life. This is nonsense that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance. Capitalism is classified as a form of power and oppression, even though it is the economic system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system. And although classism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and transphobia were also listed as forms of oppression, Semitism was not. Jewish Americans were not even mentioned as a minority group. It also talks about the dangers of Zionism and, of course, continues to talk about the Jewish people and the Jewish religion in a negative light. The State Board of Education is going to vote on the curriculum on March 17th, so just in a couple of weeks. So intersectionality is very strange. You guys know

what intersectionality means. It means allotting, basically social value, allotting even credibility and political capital to people based on their identity. So based on their skin color, based on their sexual orientation. And the whiter you are, the worse it is, the more straight you are, the more, quote, cisgender you are, the more Christian you are, the more Western you are, the worse you are perceived to be. This goes right in. with kind of critical race theory, which puts race as the primary identification of oppression or oppressor. And so we see some contradictions, though, in that is that we see, for whatever reason, Jewish people and Asian people being kind of cast into the white bad category on

the basis of, I don't know, perceived privilege or their ability to accumulate. wealth in general or their general success as kind of these racial, ethnic, and religious groups when it comes to Judaism. And so critical race theory and intersectionality very often put them off to the side or put them on the side of the oppressor when it's convenient for them to do so. And we've seen this kind of ugliness specifically against Jewish people for a very long time. and the ramifications of it have never been good. And I do fear how this will translate into real life and into policy, especially in places like California.

But critical race theory is a threat to everyone. Obviously, as we also saw with, quote, equitable math, this kind of intersectional worldview, it blinds us from the reality of right and wrong because we're categorizing people not based on their actions and their words and whether or not they're actually moral, but based on these superficial identifiers, which is just another form of racism. So this is going to lead, continue to lead all of this, this cultural revolution, this malice-like

cultural revolution is going to lead to a lot of division. It's going to lead to violence. It's going to lead to stupidity. And now is our opportunity to hop off, to push back where we see it, to not let your child be indoctrinated with this madness, and just to continue in what we know is good and right and truth. Thankfully, we already have a standard. setter. And that is Christ. And as I always say, don't let anyone tell you that it's not enough to

him and to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Thankfully, he is our proof of objective truth. He is the source of truth. Not just when it comes to what we see in creation, natural revelation, but also when it comes to spiritual reality, special revelation. So he is our source of moral truth. He is also our source of scientific truth. He is the source of reality, so we don't have to wonder whether or not math is, quote, equitable. Because of him, we believe in the existence of objective truth. And all of that is important, whether it comes to math or to history. All right, that's all I got for today.

I will see you guys back here tomorrow.