Education desk: Unions vs. Safe Schools
“With disorderly school environments that are at times actively hostile towards the wellbeing of both students and staff, I have a simple question: Where are the unions?” asks The Fordham Institute’s Daniel Buck. “Nowhere to be seen.” “The national teachers unions have fully embraced the weakest approaches to school discipline.” American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten even praised LA’s system “for banning suspensions of students who defy their teachers”; the National Education Association has “consistently denigrated discipline.” Yet lax discipline creates “the kinds of chaotic, ungovernable” environments that are a “primary reason” teachers quit. AFT founder Albert Shanker “once quipped that, ‘When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.’ ” Now it seems unions don’t “even represent teachers anymore.”
Conservative: Lefty Indoctrination of Military Kids
“Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) schools, which serve children of armed service members stationed abroad, promoted materials produced by left-of-center organizations,” including the Southern Poverty Law Center, that “train students to be social justice activists and pushed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) on teachers,” reports the Daily Caller’s Robert Schmad. “Many of the lessons offered by the SPLC encourage students to engage in community activism, often with a liberal tilt.” “Pentagon schools are also intent on making teachers engage in group discussions on internalized racism and ways to better embed racial equity in their work.”
Corporate analyst: Lululemon’s Costly Lesson
After the George Floyd riots, retailer Lululemon pledged $300,000 to activists including Black Lives Matter, the NAACP and defund-the-police group Reclaim the Block, recalls Isaac Willour at The American Mind. It also adopted a “zero-tolerance policy” against employees engaging with shoplifters. Yet Lululemon “soon found itself being targeted by everyone from smash-and-grab looters to literal organized crime,” and this year announced it had cut off donations to the activists. It’s “a step in the right direction,” but “the rational” approach was always “to eschew politics and making donations to radical activist groups in favor of creating value for shareholders. Maybe next time it won’t take four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen merchandise to prove that point.”
Libertarian: Burgum = Don’s Best Choice
Donald Trump could announce his running mate any day now, and of the top contenders for the job, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum “is the least bad choice,” explains Reason’s Robby Soave. Unlike Sen. Marco Rubio, who comes off as ideologically flexible, and Sen. J.D. Vance, who flirts with “progressive policies” like a higher minimum wage, “Burgum has governed as a traditional conservative: cutting taxes, improving the business climate in the state, supporting the Second Amendment, and so on.” His “record as a governor suggests that he is less likely to abandon basic free market principles at the drop of a hat.” Though “none of the candidates under consideration for Trump’s veep slot are particularly libertarian,” Vance and Rubio “have moved decisively in an anti-libertarian direction on economic issues,” which is “ample reason to hope Trump excludes them from the ticket.”
From the left: Trump Is a ’90s-era Dem
The liberal media would have you believe “former US president Donald Trump is a far-right extremist,” groans Batya Ungar-Sargon at Spiked. Yet “Trump’s policy agenda is extremely moderate.” He’s “a Nineties-era Democrat.” He “believes abortion should be legal up to 15 weeks,” “supports gay marriage,” courts “labour unions” and seeks “the black vote.” Trump has “co-opted some of the Democrats’ long-abandoned pro-worker policies.” The liberal media want to pin the Heritage Foundation’s conservative Project 2025 agenda on him, but Trump has completely “disavowed the project” calling it “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” And the 2024 Republican platform reflects “not the far-right version of the media’s fantasy, but what Trump actually thinks and is proposing” — that is, “a great deal of what ordinary working people want.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
