Archives for category: Cruelty
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Nancy Flanagan: Lessons from the Pandemic that We DIDN’T Learn

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2023 //
13

Nancy Flanagan thought, as I did, that most parents would be happy to send their children to school when the pandemic ended (note: it’s not really ended). But neither of us anticipated what really happened.

This is an excerpt from a longerpiece. You should read it all.

Flanagan writes:

Here are eight pandemic-driven outcomes impacting the functioning of public schools, as the health crisis fades.

1. Vaccination rates, already worrisomely dropping, now have hit their lowest point since 2011, in spite of laws requiring vaccinations for schoolchildren. You have to ask yourself why parents are not eagerly seeking a vaccination that undoubtedly saved countless lives and reduced hospitalizations: Health officials attributed a variety of factors to this drop in vaccinations, including families being less likely to interact with their family doctor during the pandemic and a “spill-over” effect from misinformation around the COVID-19 vaccine. 

2. Book banning, an issue that schools have perennially wrestled with, especially in conservative communities, has now spread to public libraries.  ALA President Emily Drabinski explained that while “attacks on libraries right now are shaped and framed as attacks on books” these efforts are really “attacks on people and attacks on children.” In retaliation for advocating against book bans, some conservative states — including Montana, Missouri and Texas — have announced they are “severing ties with the ALA.”

3. The four-day workweek and remote work elbowed their way into traditional M-F/face to face classrooms at the same time they were conceived as the solution to keeping a workplace open during a pandemic. For schools in rural areas where transportation eats up budgets, fewer schooldays and more Zoom classes can keep public schools alive: Hybrid work arrangements have killed the return-to-office hype. Employees equate a mix of working in the office and working from home to an 8 percent raise. They don’t have to deal with the daily hassle and costs of a commute. Remote work saves companies money. It cuts overhead, boosts productivity and is profitable. And what is profitable in a capitalist economy sticks. Remote work also has major benefits for society, including improving the climate by cutting billions of miles of weekly commuting and supporting families by liberating parents’ time.

4. Higher education also seems to be undergoing a metamorphosis, as high school graduates and returning-to-school adults have reassessed the value of a college degree: In a study conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the majority of adults who had household members enrolled in college for the fall 2021 term said that their school plans changed.

32% said their classes would occur in different formats.

16% canceled all plans to attend.

12% took fewer classes.

It goes without saying that what impacts our colleges and universities will trickle down to K-12 public schools.

5. Shifts in the need for labor and workforce development have impacted the need for teachers, and what teachers are willing to work for, especially in long-term careers in education. Perhaps Sean Fain, leader of the UAW best expressed this: “Our fight is not just for ourselves but for every worker who is being undervalued, for every retiree who’s given their all and feels forgotten, and for every future worker who deserves a fair chance at a prosperous life. We are all fed up of living in a world that values profits over people. We’re all fed up with seeing the rich get richer while the rest of us continue to just scrape by. We’re all fed up with corporate greed. And together, we’re going to fight to change it.”

6. The incessant media drumbeat of “learning loss” has persuaded people that test scores are more reliable than our own observations about what students are learning, how they’re progressing. From a brilliant article in Rethinking Schools: Shifting blame away from the for-profit healthcare system and the government’s response to the coronavirus is part of what makes the learning loss narrative so valuable to politicians who have no interest in challenging existing patterns of wealth and power. It is a narrative meant to distract the public and discipline teachers. Here’s the recipe: 1. Establish that closing schools hurt students using a narrow measure like test scores; 2. Blame closure of schools on teacher unions rather than a deadly pandemic; 3. Demand schools and teachers help students “regain academic ground lost during the pandemic” — and fast; 4. Use post-return-to-normal test scores to argue that teachers and schools are “failing”; 5. Implement “teacher-proof” (top-down, standardized, even scripted) curriculum or, more insidiously, argue for policies that will mean an end to public schools altogether. 

7.  School leaders and the education community, used to hard-trimming back budgets year after year, have now witnessed unprecedented levels of greed and corruption in corporate and political circles, taking tax dollars away from struggling schools.  From Heather Cox Richardson’s August 24th newsletter:  The Department of Justice is bringing federal criminal charges against 371 defendants for offenses related to more than $836 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud, most of it related to the two largest Small Business Administration pandemic programs: the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans. It’s hard not to wonder how many library books, STEM kits and teachers that $836 million could have bought, as we all rebound from disaster.

8. A mishandled pandemic will likely be followed by political unrest—or, at least, uncertainty. In Ottawa County, Michigan, always a solidly red, conservative county, the 2022 election overturned a more moderate governing board and put in place a collection of people who were angry—furious, in fact– about what happened during the pandemic. Here’s a well-written, balanced story on the impact this political shift is having on people in Ottawa County—a young woman who delivers food to families who need it, a local health department administrator, and other essential programs:

Categories Censorship, Cruelty, Disruption, Extremism, Health

Nancy Bailey: Don’t Believe the Hype About Grade Retention

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2023 //
27

Regardless of claims to the contrary, holding kids back (flunking them) is a terrible idea. I recall attending a meeting of the National Association of School Psycholfists where the president of the organization said that the three worst fears of children were: 1) the death of their parents; 2) going blind; 3) flunking in school.

The third was deeply humiliating. It meant losing your friends and being branded a dummy. Yet there are states that continue to employ third grade retention, thinking they are helping children and knowing they are boosting fourth grade reading scores.

Nancy Bailey reviews the evidence here. Her inclusion: there are better, more humane strategies than grade retention.

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Failure, Research, Students

Paul Krugman: There Are No GOP Moderates in the House of Representatives

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2023 //
14

Maybe House Republicans got tired of not finding a new Speaker. Maybe they felt humiliated by their inability to agree on a leader. Every one of them finally agreed to endorse one of the most radical extremists in the House as their party’s leader. You know already that Mike Johnson is hostile to abortion and to gay rights. You know that he was a prominent leader in the effort to overturn Trump’s loss in 2020.

What you probably do not know is that Johnson is an extremist on economic issues as well. Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economics columnist for the New York Times, wants you to know that his views on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are also radical.

He writes:

There are no moderate Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Oh, no doubt some members are privately appalled by the views of Mike Johnson, the new speaker. But what they think in the privacy of their own minds isn’t important. What matters is what they do — and every single one of them went along with the selection of a radical extremist.

In fact, Johnson is more extreme than most people, I think even political reporters, fully realize.

Much of the reporting on Johnson has, understandably, focused on his role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Let me say, by the way, that the widely used term “election denial” is a euphemism that softens and blurs what we’re really talking about. Trying to keep your party in power after it lost a free and fair election, without a shred of evidence of significant fraud, isn’t just denial; it’s a betrayal of democracy.

There has also been considerable coverage of Johnson’s right-wing social views, but I’m not sure how many people grasp the depth of his intolerance. Johnson isn’t just someone who wants to legalize discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. Americans and ban gay marriage; he’s on record as defending the criminalization of gay sex.

But Johnson’s extremism, and that of the party that chose him, goes beyond rejecting democracy and trying to turn back the clock on decades of social progress. He has also espoused a startlingly reactionary economic agenda.

Until his sudden elevation to speaker, Johnson was a relatively little-known figure. But he did serve for a time as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a group that devises policy proposals. And now that Johnson has become the face of his party, people really should look at the budget proposal the committee released for 2020 under his chairmanship.

For if you read that proposal carefully, getting past the often mealy-mouthed language, you realize that it calls for the evisceration of the U.S. social safety net — not just programs for the poor, but also policies that form the bedrock of financial stability for the American middle class.

Start with Social Security, where the budget calls for raising the retirement age — already set to rise to 67 — to 69 or 70, with possible further increases as life expectancy rises.

On the surface, this might sound plausible. Until Covid produced a huge drop, average U.S. life expectancy at age 65 was steadily rising over time. But there is a huge and growing gap between the number of years affluent Americans can expect to live and life expectancy for lower-income groups, including not just the poor but also much of the working class. So raising the retirement age would fall hard on less fortunate Americans — precisely the people who depend most on Social Security.

Then there’s Medicare, for which the budget proposes increasing the eligibility age “so it is aligned with the normal retirement age for Social Security and then indexing this age to life expectancy.” Translation: Raise the Medicare age from 65 to 70, then keep raising it.

Wait, there’s more. Most nonelderly Americans receive health insurance through their employers. But this system depends greatly on policies that the study committee proposed eliminating. You see, benefits don’t count as taxable income — but in order to maintain this tax advantage, companies (roughly speaking) must cover all their employees, as opposed to offering benefits only to highly compensated individuals.

The committee budget would eliminate this incentive for broad coverage by limiting the tax deduction for employer benefits and offering the same deduction for insurance purchased by individuals. As a result, some employers would probably just give their top earners cash, which they could use to buy expensive individual plans, while dropping coverage for the rest of their workers.

Oh, and it goes almost without saying that the budget would impose savage cuts — $3 trillion over a decade — on Medicaid, children’s health coverage and subsidies that help lower-income Americans afford insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

How many Americans would lose health insurance under these proposals? Back in 2017 the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Donald Trump’s attempt to repeal Obamacare would cause 23 million Americans to lose coverage. The Republican Study Committee’s proposals are far more draconian and far-reaching, so the losses would presumably be much bigger.

So Mike Johnson is on record advocating policies on retirement, health care and other areas I don’t have space to get into, like food stamps, that would basically end American society as we know it. We would become a vastly crueler and less secure nation, with far more sheer misery.

I think it’s safe to say that these proposals would be hugely unpopular — if voters knew about them. But will they?

Actually, I’d like to see some focus groups asking what Americans think of Johnson’s policy positions. Here’s my guess, based on previous experience: Many voters will simply refuse to believe that prominent Republicans, let alone the speaker of the House, are really advocating such terrible things.

But they are and he is. The G.O.P. has gone full-on extremist, on economic as well as social issues. The question now is whether the American public will notice.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, Disruption, Economy, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Republicans

Massacre in Maine

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2023 //
55

What more can be said about the senseless murder of at least 18 people in Lewiston, Maine? We have said it all, heard it all.

Thoughts and prayers for those who lost loved ones.

Action on gun control? No way.

One Democratic Congressman from Maine, Jared Golden, switched his position and will now vote for restrictions on guns. Susan Collins, Republican Senator from Maine, will continue to oppose a ban on assault weapons. She favors a ban on “high-capacity magazines,” though it’s doubtful her colleagues would support that. She’s usually called a “moderate.” She’s probably serving her last term. Why is she resisting limits on deadly weapons?

The Republican Party will not budge. They didn’t budge after the murders of babies at Sandy Hook. They didn’t budge after the festival carnage in Las Vegas. They didn’t budge after the slaughter of children in Uvalde, Texas. They won’t budge now.

The United States banned assault weapons from 1994 to 2004. The ban lapsed and was never renewed. The skies didn’t fall. The Constitution remained in place.

According to the AP:

The shooting was the country’s 36th mass killing this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 190 people have died in those killings, which are defined as incidents in which four or more people have died within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.

But other news sources say there have been 565 mass shootings this year:

There have been more than 565 mass shootings in 2023 so far, which is defined by the Gun Violence Archive as an incident in which four or more victims are shot or killed. These mass shootings have led to 597 deaths and 2,380 injuries.

I’m not sure that it matters how many people died in mass shootings because the people with the power to ban civilian ownership of military weapons don’t care. They won’t act no matter how many people die.

If I were a foreigner, I might hesitate to be a tourist in the U.S. It’s dangerous here.

Categories Corruption, Courage, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Guns, Republicans

Thom Hartmann: The Real Mike Johnson Is a Dangerous Rightwing Zealot

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2023 //
21

Thom Hartmann has checked out the record and public statements of the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana. He is even more of an extremist than his idol Donald Trump.

Hartmann writes:

The election of Louisiana’s Mike Johnson as House Speaker proves the premise that all the GOP has left are Donald Trump and hate.

As Congressman Jamie Raskin told reporters yesterday:

“Donald Trump has cemented his control over the Republican conference in the House of Representatives. He has a stranglehold on the Republican Party. Even as he faces 91 criminal charges and several of his election lawyers have pleaded guilty now to election-related offenses, one of his enablers on January 6 has just become the speaker of the House Representatives.”

Johnson’s hate of Democrats is so deep that he led a Trump-backed effort in the House to get Republicans to back a lawsuit by 18 Republican state attorneys general to overturn Biden’s election as president.

Their lawsuit had no merit and no facts — everybody, including the Republicans involved, knew that Biden had won fair-and-square — but Republican hate of Democrats is now so deep that the idea of Democrats legitimately governing after winning an election is repugnant to them. No matter how big the Democrats’ victory (7 million votes in this case) may be.

Johnson went public with his support of Trump’s hateful, poisonous Big Lie just a week after the 2020 election, saying:

 “You know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there’s a lot of merit to that…They know that in Georgia it really was rigged.”

As The Washington Post noted at the time:

“Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, spearheaded the effort to round up support on Capitol Hill. Johnson emailed all House Republicans on Wednesday to solicit signatures for the long-shot Texas case after Trump called. The congressman told his colleagues that the president ‘will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review.’”

Johnson got 106 of the 196 Republicans then in the House to sign on to the effort to force four swing states to throw out Democratic votes and declare Trump emperor for life: he was the legal architect of the argument. It doesn’t get more hateful against our republican form of government than that effort to destroy confidence in the vote at the cornerstone of our democracy.

Johnson’s hate of women having agency over their own bodies and lives is so intense that he has repeatedly championed a nationwide ban on abortion. 

His wife Kelly, a “licensed pastoral counselor” with whom he’s in a “covenant marriage,” makes money from Louisiana Right To Life, and before being elected to the House in 2016 he was an attorney for the far-right-billionaire-supported Alliance Defending Freedom that pushed the Dobbs case before the Supreme Court.

While there, he helped sue New York and New Jersey to force them to allow official state license plates that displayed an anti-woman, anti-abortion message; sued New Orleans to try to block benefits for the partners of queer city employees; and promoted a “National Day of Truth” to encourage homophobic students to hate on their LGBTQ+ peers.

Johnson and the GOP explicitly hate queer people and their allies.

“Radical homosexual advocacy groups” are promoting “the culture’s assault on traditional values,” Johnson wrote in an op-ed for a Louisiana newspaper. That “assault,” of course, was gay marriage, something that horrifies Johnson and his wife. 

He wrote:

“Same-sex ‘marriage’ selfishly and deliberately deprives children of either a mother or a father. Children need both. Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone.

“Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”

Johnson also supports a federal version of DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law that would outlaw any discussion of queer people in any public school classroom in America. In another anti-gay newspaper screed, Johnson wrote:

“Your race, creed and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do. This is a free country, but we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices. Where would it end? This is one Pandora’s box we shouldn’t open.”

While Johnson hates queer people, he apparently loves Vladimir Putin, an affection that has earned him the loyalty and help of Donald Trump.

Last month he joined Matt Gaetz and 93 other Republicans in voting to cut off all US military aid to assist Ukraine’s survival in the face of Russia’s ongoing terror campaign.

He’s also a friend to mass shooters and the psychopaths at the NRA. 

Johnson repeatedly voted against gun safety and gun control legislation, and voted against re-authorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

Hating on Medicare and Social Security is another specialty of Johnson and the GOP. As Social Security Works Executive Director Alex Lawson noted yesterday:

“Rep. Mike Johnson has a long history of hostility towards Social Security and Medicare. As Chair of the Republican Study Committee from 2019-2021, Johnson released budgets that included $2 trillion in cuts to Medicare and $750 billion in cuts to Social Security, including:
— Raising the retirement age
— Decimating middle class benefits
— Making annual cost-of-living increases smaller
— Moving towards privatization of Social Security and Medicare.”

Johnson also pushed for $3 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), saying slashing the entitlement programs should be Congress’ “top priority.” Johnson is also a huge advocate for a Catfood Commission to figure out ways to slash Social Security benefits to seniors (thus forcing them to eat catfood: the White House refers to it as a “death panel for Social Security”).

Like Red state Republican politicians beholden to the tobacco, alcohol, and pharmaceutical industries, Johnson also hates marijuana. He’s repeatedly argued and voted against legalization, as well as helping shoot down a bill that would let legal pot dispensaries use banks to conduct their business.  

Hating on science and our children’s future is a feature, not a bug, of Republican politics, and Mike Johnson fits right in. The largest single group of donors to his political career have been the oil and gas industries, and he happily takes their money and spreads their lies. For example, he argued:

“The climate is changing, but the question is, is it being caused by natural cycles over the span of the Earth’s history? Or is it changing because we drive SUVs? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”

The League of Conservation Voters gave his environmental record a 0 percent (yes, zero) score for 2022: this guy has burrowed so deeply in Big Oil’s pocket that he’s like a blood-filled tick on a shaggy dog. He’ll never let go.

On voting rights, Johnson hates voters in Blue cities in Red states as much as their own Republican legislatures do. A big fan of voter suppression laws, he argued that making it harder to vote and purging people from voter rolls would help the GOP in the 2022 election:

“They’re making sure that the election results can be counted upon, and that’s a critical thing for us to do.”

That was followed by his voting against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For The People Act, both of which would have guaranteed Americans’ right to vote regardless of race, religion, or geography. On the other hand, he voted for a Republican bill that would have enshrined GOP voter suppression efforts nationwide. 

Like Rand Paul and Tommy Tuberville, Johnson apparently also hates our men and women serving in the armed forces.

He voted against the Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Actthat President Biden was cheerleading because it would aid service members like Biden’s son Beau who became deathly sick because of exposure to open-air burn pits and other toxins.

He also voted against a year-end package of bills to aid service members, including requiring states to honor the professional licenses of military spouses who find themselves stationed in states other than where they were originally certified. And he joined Tuberville in his opposition to the Pentagon paying to fly raped servicewomen stationed in countries or states where abortion is illegal to places where it is available.

Johnson has supported a few Republican military spending bills, but only, as military.comnoted, when they are “packed with GOP policy riders such as provisions to bar abortion services, transgender health care, and LGBTQ+ Pride flags at the VA.”

Johnson, like most Republicans who hate the idea of Brown people entering our country legally, is also a “border hawk,” having visited our southern border with Donald Trump and introduced two pieces of legislation that would restrict immigration and refugee status. Speaking of his desire to “build a wall” and keep would-be refugees out of the US, he said:

“Now, I have no illusions about this. I’m sure that President Biden will veto anything we send him, but it will send a very strong message. If we can’t override a veto, we’ll be ready to run when the next Republican president is elected two years later.”

Republicans like Johnson love to plaster the word “freedom” all over everything they do. But they’re just fine with a for-profit prison industry lobbying for harsher sentences, and to keeping draconian drug laws in place.

When Republicans say “freedom,” it’s a safe bet they mean they want the freedom to hate on minorities, the freedom of rich people and giant corporations to screw average working people, and the freedom of billionaires to continue paying only around 3 percent of their income in income taxes.

In MAGA Mike Johnson (what Trump calls him), Republicans have found the perfect embodiment of their deplorable basket of hatreds. At this point, the only “loves” they have are rightwing billionaires and the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, Trump’s good buddy and fossil fuel oligarch Vladimir Putin.

Thank you for reading The Hartmann Report. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Politics, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Trump

Jan Resseger: Iowa’s Harsh Turn to the Right Puts Children at Risk

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2023 //
11

In this post, Jan Resseger discusses Marilyn Robinson’s essay about the new cruel politics in Iowa, which appeared in the New York Review of Books. Iowans are “free” to work for less. Their children are “free”to attend religious schools at public expense and “free” to work at dangerous jobs. This new definition of freedom risks a future of harm to children and general ignorance.

Resseger encourages everyone to learn about the Iowa regression:

In Dismantling Iowa, in the November 2, 2023 New York Review of Books, Marilynne Robinson examines Governor Kim Reynolds’ Iowa as the microcosm of the conservative Republican attack on the rights of children and on the promise of K-12 and university education. Robinson is a novelist and retired professor of creative writing at the University of Iowa; she has been an artist-in-residence at a number of other colleges. Her style contrasts with the writing of policy wonks, but she comes to the same conclusions. Her comments are about today’s politics in Iowa but at the same time reflect on the politics of other states like Florida and Wisconsin and Ohio.

Robinson begins with a bit of history—the sudden rightward turn of states once known for their progressivism. She defines a “liberal” education, the foundational principle of progressive colleges established in the nineteenth century by abolitionists across the Midwest: “American higher education is of the kind historically called liberal, that is, suited to free people, intended to make them independent thinkers and capable citizens. ‘Liberal’ comes from the Latin word liber, meaning ‘free.’ Aristotle, a theorist on this subject of incalculable influence until recently, considered education a natural human pleasure, essential to the perfecting of the self, which he says it is in our nature to desire. Obviously when he taught there was no thought of economic utility that would subordinate learning to the purposes of others, to the detriment of individual pleasure or self-perfection. Training in athletics, music, then philosophy were to be valued because they are liberating.” “(W)e are in a period when the value of education is disputed. Regrettably, it has become expensive enough to be regarded by some as a dubious investment of time and money. Its traditional form and substance do not produce workers suited to the present or the future economy—as these are understood and confidently imagined by its critics.”

At the K-12 level, Robinson prefers free public education to school privatization exemplified by Iowa’s new publicly funded private school tuition vouchers. She examines the provision of education through the lens of equality, one of the principles our society has historically endorsed, but which Robinson believes Governor Reynolds and her legislature have sacrificed: “The governor has been very intent on achieving equality as she understands it for Iowa students. She and her legislature have provided a grant of public money for every child who is approved by the state to attend a private school, the money to be released when the child is accepted there… It should be noted that ‘private’ in this context can mean religious in some—or any—sense of the word. The constitutional issues that might arise from this use of public money seem to be of no concern. As for the character of these schools… the implicit promise seems to be that contact with ideas and people some find problematic can be avoided, that they can be and will be excluded on what are called religious grounds. So public money will be used to deprive some children of the kind of education the governor deems beneficial while other children are deprived of the education that comes with encountering a world not yet structured around polarization.”

Will the state protect the rights of students receiving state support for private school? “State governments can intervene in public schools, hector, threaten, and substantially control them. Private schools are too disparate to be the objects of sweeping denunciation…Now that state money will come into such private schools as there are in Iowa—forty-one of the ninety-nine counties don’t have even one—it will be interesting to see if the governor and her like have a comparable interest in interfering with them. These schools can be selective, which is a positive word now, though the honor and glory of public education is that it does not select… An element in all this is the fact that we have let the word ‘public’ seem to mean something like ‘second-rate.’ This is very inimical to the open and generous impulses that make a society democratic.”

Robinson explores some other legislative actions Iowa has undertaken supposedly to provide freedom from regulation for Iowa’s parents and children: “Consistent with this current ‘conservative’ passion for dismantling things, including gun laws… the governor and the legislature of Iowa are stripping away legal limits on child labor… All this is being done in the name of freedom. It is always fair to ask when rights are being claimed whether they impinge on others’ rights. The question certainly arises here. We know that the employment of children does not reliably bring out the best in employers… Migrant children, unprotected or worse, work under sometimes intolerable conditions… (I)t is jarring that Iowa children will… do work previously prohibited as dangerous, at hours previously prohibited as incompatible with their schooling. They are making the most of a new opportunity, according to the governor, to ‘develop their skills in the workforce.’ Not incidentally, they will also be easing the labor shortage from which the state suffers. The minimum wage in Iowa is $7.25. In Illinois it is $13.00, in Missouri $12.00, in South Dakota $10.80. Surely these figures suggest another possible solution to the shortage of workers, a better way to compete with surrounding states than to expose children to the possibility of injury, or to the costly lack of a high school diploma. There is much talk about choice in Iowa, but many children will find that, for them, important possibilities have been precluded.”

What about the culture wars in public schools? “(T)he Iowa governor and her legislature have launched a campaign to embarrass the public grade schools. Of course there is now great perturbation about what can or cannot be included in their libraries. This intrusion of the state government on traditionally more or less autonomous communities has the tenor of a moral crackdown. New laws have been enacted to bring unruly librarians to heel. Educational standards for new librarians have been lowered. The governor says, of course, that the legislation ‘sets boundaries to protect Iowa’s children from woke indoctrination.’ It is as if parents zipping up their five-year-old’s jacket feel a qualm of fear because of potential classroom exposure to sinister ideas, not because their state now allows permitless concealed and open carry.”

Please open the link to finish the article.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Cruelty, Education Industry, Freedom, Ignorance, Iowa

Gary Rayno: The World Moral Order Is in Tatters

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2023 //
41

I read the NHInsider regularly to follow the doings of the libertarians and rightwing Republicans who currently control the state. The education articles are written by veteran journalist Gary Rayno. I was very impressed by this article posted yesterday, which aptly summarizes the mess the world is in today, relying on the wisdom of William Butler Yeats. Religious zealots and intolerance are steering events.

He writes:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

This quote from the William Butler Yeats poem “The Second Coming” — written in 1919 just after World War I — often appears in times like these when the world’s moral order crumbles and more resembles “Lord of the Flies.”

Today human tragedy is on the front pages of newspapers, on television and radio news programs, on Twitter (X) and other social media.

The world is teetering on the edge of World War III as some nations try to pull the world’s superpowers into a conflict that millions of people will not survive.

Today’s conflicts in the Mid East and Europe are made more dangerous by technology that can pinpoint artillery shells to blow up a tank or to kill civilians in large numbers depending on the depravity of the shooters.

The Mid East is the founding place of three of the world’s major religions and has seen its share or wars in the last century not just between Arabs and Israelites, but among Arab nations as well.

The region’s long history of conflicts did not prepare anyone for what happened last week on a Jewish holy day when the terrorist group Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip for years, invaded Israel, killed nearly a thousand people, including families with young children, beheaded some, tortured others and took about 150 hostages back to Gaza to use as bargaining chips.

They not only killed, tortured and maimed Israeli citizens, they used their own citizens as human shields by preventing them from leaving Gaza.

The absence of respect for human life and suffering is inconceivable but all too common in today’s polarized world as the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world talk about killing Democrats and Hamas leaders talk about eliminating all Jews.

The Israeli government, as it often does, retaliates with even more force than used against it, and has the stated goal of eliminating Hamas. That objective means lost Palestinian civilian lives seen as collateral damage.

Once the fighting begins, war produces few white hats.

The wars in the Mideast are often both ethnically and religiously driven pitting the Muslim Palestinians against the Jewish Israelites with centuries of history to solidify the beliefs of both sides.

While religion is not the biggest driver for war, intolerance is, it is in the Mideast.

And the problem with religious wars was aptly stated by former President Richard Nixon when he said “In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.”

The Mideast conflict has taken the focus away from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities the Russians have inflicted on the Ukrainians and their country.

The war in Eastern Europe is more ethnically driven than religious.

Until Putin decided to expand the Russian empire, Europe had been largely free of conflicts since World War II, but like the Mideast conflict, attempts are to draw the superpowers into the chaos and expand the carnage.

While the world’s eyes are on the Mideast and Eastern Europe, the United States government is being held hostage by a couple dozen extremists, particularly in the US House, but also the Senate, who want to see chaos and ensure the dysfunction of government as we know it.

The Christian Nationalist movement is the foundation of some of the extremists, but not all of them.

The House decided to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and since that time more than a week ago, nothing is moving and that prevents any help to fund the nation’s allies in the two conflicts or to keep government functioning beyond the middle of November.

Republicans and their slim majority in the House cannot agree on a new Speaker and probably won’t until the crisis threatens to explode and Republicans realize they will pay politically for their inability to solve the civil war within their ranks.

One member of the House Republican caucus called it a clown show.

In the Senate a former football coach, Tommy Tuberville, is holding up hundreds of military appointments at this crucial time over the abortion issue, while others like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are holding up key appointments like ambassadors etc. that will have a direct effect on what is happening in the world’s hot spots, mostly to create chaos and hits on their Twitter accounts.

The Grand Old Party appears to be more interested in creating chaos than governing.

At the state level, 19 Republican governors, and we all know governors are experts in foreign policy, criticize President Biden’s handling of the attacks on Israel including New Hampshire’s own Chris Sununu.

Not that long ago, politics was put aside when the nation faced serious threats such as the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC or the beginning of Desert Storm, but no more.

The head of the National Republican Committee, Ronna McDaniel, referred to the latest conflict in the Mideast as a “great opportunity” to attack Biden.

You did not hear Democrats criticizing President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attack, or President George H. W. Bush after he began Desert Storm.

The nation came together to support their leaders’ actions. And you did not see the demonstrations on college campuses and city streets that happened this weekend pitting Palestinian supporters against those backing Israel.

Like the Palestinians and Israelites, much of what divides the United States has a religious undertone incorrectly based on the notion the United States was established as a Christian country.

That would be very interesting because many early settlers to the “new world” came here to escape religious persecution in nations with state religions.

The Constitution guarantees religious freedom as well as the founding principle of “all men (women) are created equal.”

Many on the right are trying to impose their religious beliefs on issues like abortion or LGBTQ+ rights or what young people can read or watch.

And you don’t have to look to the Mideast to see what can happen when religious beliefs become a driving force in politics.

In Littleton, Theater Up received a $1 million grant to help fix up the town’s aging Opera House, which is on the National Historic Building list, through a long-term lease. The group currently uses the building, but its lease ends in May.

After discussions with the town’s selectmen, one of whom is the state Senator for District 1, Carrie Gendreau, and who objected to murals painted on a private building in town earlier this year saying she objected to its LGBTQ+ theme, the theater group was informed the selectmen were not inclined to help pay for a $2,500 building study to determine what could and could not be done in the historic building.

The decision was due to the group’s affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community and complaints about its production of La Cage aux Follies, the award-winning play about a gay couple, the group was told.

Theater Up was also informed the selectmen continue to explore a ban on public art in the community which would certainly impact the group’s ability to continue its mission.

This is religious oppression in reverse, much like the group that tried to block the state from distributing COVID-19 in a new program serving the elderly two years ago.

This is imposing one’s beliefs on those who do not share them.

The second half of Yeats poem is not so well known as the first, but is more telling about where we might be headed and what a “second coming” could really mean.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Garry Rayno may be contacted at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Religion

Texas Observer: McCarthyism Rides High Again at Texas Universities

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2023 //
12

Gabriel Arans of the Texas Observer writes about the revival of McCathyism at universities in Texas. Republicans are intent on pushing out professors they think are too liberal.

Arana writes:

Texas A&M University’s disgraceful treatment of celebrated journalism professor Kathleen McElroy should terrify anyone who cares about academic freedom, education, and equality in Texas. The state’s Republican leaders, along with Governor Greg Abbott, have launched a radical, McCarthyite crusade to purge education of liberal bias.

Only in Texas or Florida would decades of experience at the country’s most prestigious newspaper and a track record of championing newsroom inclusivity disqualify someone for a job relaunching A&M’s defunct journalism program, which was shuttered in 2004 after 55 years.

McElroy’s ordeal is just the beginning.

At first, A&M officials seemed to realize how lucky they’d been to snag McElroy, a Black woman who served in various managerial positions at the New York Times for 20 years before completing a doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she served as the director of the School of Journalism and Media and now teaches.

McElroy didn’t want to draw attention to herself, but A&M insisted on a public ceremony to celebrate her appointment as head of the university’s new journalism program. On June 13, she signed an offer accepting a tenured position in front of a crowd gathered at the school’s academic building, pending approval from the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents.

Over the next few weeks, the deal unraveled. After conservative activist site Texas Scorecard published a scare-mongering article about McElroy’s work on newsroom diversity, right-wing ideologues on the board of regents started scrutinizing her hire. Six or seven regents called and texted now-disgraced University President Katherine Banks to express concerns.

“I thought the purpose of us starting a journalism program was to get high-quality Aggie journalist [sic] with conservative values into the market,” regent Jay Graham texted Banks. “This won’t happen with someone like this leading the department.”

Another regent, Mike Hernandez, added that McElroy was “biased and progressive-leaning” and called giving her tenure a “difficult sell” for the board.

Members of a conservative alum group called the Rudder Association and other right-wing Aggies flooded Banks’ office with calls and emails.

Text messages show that Banks—who initially denied any involvement in McElroy’s bungled hiring, then was caught lying—was fully behind conservatives’ efforts to rein in liberal academia: “Kathy [Banks] told us multiple times the reason we were going to combine [the colleges of] arts and sciences together was to control the liberal nature that those professors brought to campus,” Graham wrote.

So Banks watered down the offer to McElroy. Still eager to return to her alma mater to train the next generation of journalists, she agreed to accept a revised five-year, nontenured teaching position, which would not require the regents’ approval.

“You’re a Black woman who worked at the New York Times,” José Luis Bermúdez, the interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, warned McElroy. Her hire, he said, had been caught up in “DEI hysteria.”

But then, Banks diluted the offer further, offering McElroy a one-year, “at will” position. McElroy declined and spoke about how the university had treated her with the media.

“I’m being judged by race, maybe gender,” McElroy told the Texas Tribune. “I don’t think other folks would face the same bars or challenges.”

(Editor’s note: McElroy sits on the parent board of the Texas Observer. Because of our editorial independence policy, she has no say in our editorial decisions. Alongside this piece, today the Observerpublished a heartfelt essay from McElroy about her journalism journey and the irony of being the subject of media coverage rather than the one behind it. )

Over the summer, with the governor’s support, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 17 (SB 17), which requires institutions of higher education to do away with all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and initiatives by 2024. Already, the University of Houston has shut down its Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as well as disbanding its LGBTQ+ Resource Center (under pressure, however, it appeared to backtrack, but it is only a matter of time before the offices are officially closed). Public universities across the state have formed committees to implement the law and seek input from the academic community. It’s clear, however, that days are numbered for all the offices and programs that help students from different backgrounds.

While the ostensible goal of anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts is to prioritize merit over race in higher education—and get rid of all the “divisive” diversity stuff that liberal academics champion—the real intent is to put radical, uppity queers, minorities, and liberals in their place. A key part of the plan is to strip liberal academics of the protections that allow them to pursue research and speak publicly without fear of reprisal; this past session, right-wing legislators tried to get rid of tenure but settled on more modest restrictions. The Senate also passed a ban on “critical race theory,” an academic theory that posits racism is embedded in society, but the House failed to pass the measure….

Anti-DEI hysteria will lead to a brain drain at Texas’ public universities. Academics at most institutions enjoy the freedom to conduct scholarship without interference. To ensure they can pursue ideas that may be unpopular to the public and pursue knowledge for its own sake, they are granted protection after demonstrating excellence in their field. The best scholars don’t want to work in a place where they have to worry that criticizing wingnut politicians will get them put on leave—as A&M did when Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick complained to administrators about criticism levied against him by opioid expert Joy Alonzo—and the best students from around the country will choose institutions that value academic freedom, openness, and inclusion rather than those under siege by the radical right.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Disruption, Extremism, Higher Education, Republicans

A Visit to Terezin, a Nazi Concentration Camp

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2023 //
49

While in Prague, I went with a group of about 25 people to visit Terezin. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had seen a book of drawings created by the children of Terezin. Years ago, I had visited Auschwitz, which was an extermination camp, with gas chambers and huge ovens for incinerating bodies. The displays of luggage, hair, and other reminders of those who were gassed were gruesome and horrifying.

Terezin was not an extermination camp, though thousands of people died there. Most people sent to Terezin were later shipped to Auschwitz to be killed. I recalled reading that the Nazis used it as a propaganda showplace, where they demonstrated to Red Cross officials that the Jews there were living in a place similar to a resort, under idyllic conditions.

Terezin is one hour outside Prague. There were two parts to it. First was an all-male prison where members of the Czech resistance were held, as well as Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and others whom the Nazis hated. This facility was a centuries-old fort with high walls and abysmal living conditions. Many prisoners died of malnutrition or disease.

Then we went to the other part of Terezin, about a mile away. Also known as Terezinstadt, it is a picture-perfect town of colorful houses surrounding a park. The Nazis evicted all its inhabitants and used the town to house Jewish families from Czechoslovakia and Germany and eventually from other countries. There was no barbed wire, though every entrance into the town was guarded.

The town originally had 3,000-5,000 inhabitants. After it was turned into an internment camp for Jews, as many as 60,000 people were crammed into the same buildings. Nazis sent out flyers in Germany and Czechoslovakia portraying Terezin as an idyllic town. Wealthy Jews from Germany paid to go there and were allowed to bring a few pieces of luggage.

Once there, all their possessions were taken away, and they were assigned to a crowded dormitory. Men and women lived in separate dormitories, as did children. Families, of course, were separated. Adults were required to work, and children were mostly confined to their dormitories. Workers were paid in scrip, which they could use to buy clothing that had been confiscated from new arrivals.

Food was scarce, and many died of malnutrition and disease. There were regular transports from Terezin to Auschwitz. Somehow the Jews in Terezin knew that it was very bad to be shipped East, so the Nazis compelled some of those who arrived at Auschwitz to write their friends in Terezin to assure them that Auschwitz was a swell place.

In 1944, the King of Denmark asked the International Red Cross to inspect Terezin because Danish Jews had been sent there. The IRC let the Nazis know that there were coming, and the Nazis selected a date that gave them time to clean up the camp and stage a performance. The chiildren played soccer before an enthusiastic audience. A well-known Czech conductor led an orchestra of imprisoned musicians. The Red Cross issued a report praising conditions at the camp.

A few days after the Red Cross inspection, the orchestra conductor was deported to Auschwitz, along with many of the musicians.

The Terezin museum was fascinating, and I regretted that we had only an hour there. One room was filled with names of children who passed through Terezin. There were 15,000, but only 8,000 names. Names are added whenever anyone is identified. There was a wall of children’s drawings. And there were beautiful poems written by children who knew they were doomed.

The museum also contained a graphic chronology of anti-Semitism in Hitler’s time—such as the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leaders agreed on the necessity of a “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem: to kill every one of the 11 million Jews then living in Europe.

The architect of the Final Solution was Rudolph Heydrich, who was the deputy head of the Nazi “Protectorate” that included Czechoslovakia. He was assassinated by partisans in 1942.

In retaliation, the Nazis made an example of the towns of Lidice and Lezaky, believing the assassins came from there. The Nazis murdered every man in Lidice and sent the women to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where most died. Lezaky was totally destroyed, and its inhabitants killed.

In the midst of great beauty and art that we see today in Central Europe, it’s hard to imagine these horrific events. So much death and destruction. Unthinkable. Unimaginable. But true.

As I left the Terezin museum, I saw a copy of a diary written by one of the children who survived both Terezin and Auschwitz: Helga’s Diary. But the shop was closed. I was the last person to exit. I got on the bus and ordered a copy online.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, International, Propaganda

Thom Hartmann: The Poison of Libertarianism, Part 2

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2023 //
28

Thom Hartmann wonders why Republican leaders embrace cruelty, why they seem happy to inflict misery on others. This is part 2 of his analysis of libertarianism, and it is compelling.


So, once again, why are Republicans so cruel and why do they seem so fond of libertarianism? Why does Greg Abbott put razor wire in the Rio Grande river? Why does Donald Trump target people for assassination by his followers? Why does Ron DeSantis revel in keeping tens of thousands of low-income Florida children from getting Medicaid?

Yesterday, I laid out the terrible impact Libertarian policies, which have infected the GOP for five decades, have had on the United States. But where did the whole idea of libertarianism come from, and who started the Libertarian Party?

Get ready for a wild ride as we do a deep dive into America’s most bizarre (and phony) political party.

How is it that Republicans so often embrace casual cruelty like tearing mothers from their children or throwing pregnant women in poverty off public assistance? Why have 12 GOP-controlled states refused to this day to expand Medicaid for their 30 million minimum-wage working people when the federal government covers 90 percent of the cost?

Why are Republicans so committed to destroying Medicare and Social Security? Why do they go so far as to use the disrespectful slur “Democrat Party” when there’s no such a thing in America and never has been?

Why are Democratic members of Congress having to armor their own homes, having received over 9000 death threats so far this year, virtually all of them from domestic terrorists who Republicans refuse to repudiate? The FBI still is looking for a Matt Gaetz supporter who threatened to murder Gaetz’s Democratic opponent: why are these people attracted to the GOP?

It turns out this is not just politics; the roots of this brutal movement in today’s GOP run from a 1927 child murderer, through a greedy real-estate lobbying group, to Ronald Reagan putting both of their philosophies into actual practice and bringing morbidly rich rightwing billionaires into the GOP fold.

As a result, Republican policies over the past 42 years not only gutted America’s middle class and transferred $50 trillion from working people to the top 1 percent, but also led straight to the Trump presidency and the attack on the Capitol on January 6th that he led.

The Libertarians

Reporter Mark Ames documents how, back in the 1940s, a real estate lobbying group came up with the idea of creating a new political party to justify deregulating the real estate and finance industries so they could make more money. 

This new “Libertarian Party” would give an ideological and political cover to their goal of becoming government-free, and they developed an elaborate pretense of governing philosophy around it.

Their principal argument was that if everybody acted separately and independently, in all cases with maximum selfishness, such behavior would actually benefit society. There would be no government needed beyond an army and a police force, and a court system to defend the rights of property owners. It was a bizarre twisting of Adam Smith’s reference to the “invisible hand” that regulated trade among nations.

In 1980, billionaire David Koch ran for vice president on the newly formed Libertarian Party ticket. 

His platform included calls to privatize the Post Office, end all public schools, give Medicare and Medicaid to big insurance companies, end all taxation of the morbidly rich, terminate food and housing support and all other forms of “welfare,” deregulate all corporate oversight while shutting down the EPA and FDA, and selling off much of the federal government’s land and other assets to billionaires and big corporations.

Reagan, who won that 1980 election, embraced this view in his inaugural address, saying, “[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He then doubled down on the idea by beginning the systematic process of gutting and crippling governmental institutions that historically had supported working people and the middle class.

The child-killer who inspired a movement

Reagan wasn’t just echoing the Libertarian vision; he was also endorsing Ayn Rand’s “objectivist” view of the world, which traces its roots to a murderous psychopath in 1927.

Back in 2015, Donald Trump told USA Today’s Kirsten Powers that his favorite book was Ayn Rand’s raped-girl-decides-she-likes-it novel, “The Fountainhead.”

“It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions,” he told Powers. “That book relates to … everything.”

Ayn Rand’s novels have informed libertarian Republicans like former Speaker of the House of Representatives and current Fox News board member Paul Ryan, who required interns to read her books when they joined his staff.

Powers added, “He [Trump],” told her that he “identified with Howard Roark, the protagonist who designs skyscrapers and rages against the establishment.”

Rand’s hero Roark, in fact, “raged” so much in her novel that he blew up a public housing project with dynamite.

Rand, in her Journals, explained where she got her inspiration for Howard Roark and the leading male characters in so many of her other novels. She writes that the theme of The Fountainhead, for example, is: 

“One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one’s way to get the best for oneself.”

On Trump’s hero Howard Roark, she wrote that he:

“…has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world. He knows what he wants and what he thinks. He needs no other reasons, standards or considerations. His complete selfishness is as natural to him as breathing.”

It turns out that Roark and many of her other characters were based on a real person. The man who so inspired Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes was named William Edward Hickman, and he lived in Los Angeles during the Roaring Twenties.

Ten days before Christmas in 1927, Hickman, a teenager with slicked dark hair and tiny, muted eyes, drove up to Mount Vernon Junior High School in Los Angeles and kidnapped Marion Parker — the daughter of a wealthy banker in town.

Hickman held the girl ransom, demanding $1,500 from her father — back then about a year’s salary. Supremely confident that he would elude capture, Hickman signed his name on the ransom notes, “The Fox.”

After two days, Marion’s father agreed to hand over the ransom in exchange for the safety of his daughter. What Perry Parker didn’t know is that Hickman never intended to live up to his end of the bargain.

The Pittsburgh Press detailed what Hickman, in his own words, did next.

“It was while I was fixing the blindfold that the urge to murder came upon me,” he said. “I just couldn’t help myself. I got a towel and stepped up behind Marion. Then, before she could move, I put it around her neck and twisted it tightly.”

Hickman didn’t hold back on any of these details: he was proud of his cold-bloodedness.

“I held on and she made no outcry except to gurgle. I held on for about two minutes, I guess, and then I let go. When I cut loose the fastenings, she fell to the floor. I knew she was dead.”

But Hickman wasn’t finished:

“After she was dead I carried her body into the bathroom and undressed her, all but the underwear, and cut a hole in her throat with a pocket knife to let the blood out.”

Hickman then dismembered the child piece-by-piece, putting her limbs in a cabinet in his apartment, and then wrapped up the carved-up torso, powdered the lifeless face of Marion Parker, set what was left of her stump torso with the head sitting atop it in the passenger seat of his car, and drove to meet her father to collect the ransom money.

He even sewed open her eyelids to make it look like she was alive.

On the way, Hickman dumped body parts out of his car window, before rendezvousing with Marion Parker’s father.

Armed with a shotgun so her father wouldn’t come close enough to Hickman’s car to see that Marion was dead, Hickman collected his $1,500, then kicked open the door and tossed the rest of Marion Parker onto the road. As he sped off, her father fell to his knees, screaming.

Days later, the police caught up with a defiant and unrepentant Hickman in Oregon. His lawyers pleaded insanity, but the jury gave him the gallows.

To nearly everyone, Hickman was a monster. The year of the murder, the Los Angeles Times called it “the most horrible crime of the 1920s.” Hickman was America’s most despicable villain at the time.

Ayn Rand falls in love with a “superman”

But to Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, a 21-year-old Russian political science student who’d arrived in America just two years earlier, Hickman was a hero.

Alissa was a squat five-foot-two with a flapper hairdo and wide, sunken dark eyes that gave her a haunting stare. Etched into those brooding eyes was burned the memory of a childhood backlit by the Russian Revolution.

She had just departed Leninist Russia where, almost a decade earlier, there was a harsh backlash against the Russian property owners by the Bolsheviks. Alissa’s own family was targeted, and at the age of 12 she watched as Bolshevik soldiers burst into her father’s pharmacy, looted the store, and plastered on her Dad’s doors the red emblem of the state, indicating that his private business now belonged to “the people.”

That incident left such a deep and burning wound in young Alissa’s mind that she went to college to study political science and vowed one day she’d become a famous writer to warn the world of the dangers of Bolshevism.

Starting afresh in Hollywood, she anglicized her name to Ayn Rand, and moved from prop-girl to screenwriter/novelist, basing the heroes of several of her stories on a man she was reading about in the newspapers at the time. A man she wrote effusively about in her diaries. A man she hero-worshipped.

William Edward Hickman was the most notorious man in American in 1928, having achieved the level of national fame that she craved.

Young Ayn Rand saw in Hickman the “ideal man” she based The Fountainhead on, and used to ground her philosophy and her life’s work. His greatest quality, she believed, was his unfeeling, pitiless selfishness.

Hickman’s words were carefully recounted by Rand in her Journals. His statement that, “I am like the state: what is good for me is right,” resonated deeply with her. It was the perfect articulation of her belief that if people pursued their own interests above all else — even above friends, family, or nation — the result would be utopian.

She wrote in her diary that those words of Hickman’s were, “the best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I ever heard.”

Hickman — the monster who boasted about how he had hacked up a 12-year-old girl — had Rand’s ear, as well as her heart. She saw a strongman archetype in him, the way that people wearing red MAGA hats see a strongman savior in Donald Trump.

As Hickman’s murder trial unfolded, Rand grew increasingly enraged at how the “mediocre” American masses had rushed to condemn her Superman.

“The first thing that impresses me about the case,” Rand wrote in reference to the Hickman trial in early notes for a book she was working on titled The Little Street, “is the ferocious rage of the whole society against one man.”

Astounded that Americans didn’t recognize the heroism Hickman showed when he proudly rose above simply conforming to society’s rules, Rand wrote:

“It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. … It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, with a consciousness all his own.”

Rand explained that when the masses are confronted with such a bold actor, they neither understood nor empathized with him. 

Thus, “a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy [was] turned [by the media] into a purposeless monster.”

The protagonist of the book that Rand was writing around that time was a boy named Danny Renahan. In her notes for the book, she wrote, “The model for the boy [Renahan] is Hickman.” He would be her ideal man, and the archetype for a philosophical movement that would transform a nation.

“He is born with the spirit of Argon and the nature of a medieval feudal lord,” Rand wrote in her notes describing Renahan. “Imperious. Impatient. Uncompromising. Untamable. Intolerant. Unadaptable. Passionate. Intensely proud. Superior to the mob… an extreme ‘extremist.’ … No respect for anything or anyone.”

Rand wanted capitalism in its most raw form, uncheck by any government that could control the rules of the market or promote the benefits of society. Such good intentions had, after all, caused the hell she’d experienced in the Bolshevik Revolution.

Ayn Rand, like Hickman, found peace and justification in the extremes of her economic, political, and moral philosophy. Forget about democratic institutions, forget about regulating markets, and forget about pursuing any policies that benefit the majority at the expense of the very rich — the petty political rule-makers and rule-enforcers could never, ever do anything well or good.

Libertarianism and Ayn Rand set the stage for Trumpism

Only billionaires should rule the world, Trump has suggested.

And he tried to put it into place, installing a billionaire advocate of destroying public schools in charge of public schools, a coal lobbyist representing billionaires in charge of the EPA, an billionaire-funded oil lobbyist in charge of our public lands, and a billionaire described by Forbes as a “grifter” in charge of the Commerce Department.

Trump’s chief of staff said that putting children in cages and billionaire-owned privatized concentration camps (where seven died) would actually be a public good.

As Ayn Rand might say, “Don’t just ignore the rules; destroy them.”

Welfare and other social safety net programs were, as Rand saw it, “the glorification of mediocrity” in society. Providing a social safety net for the poor, disabled, or unemployed, she believed, were part of a way of thinking that promoted, “satisfaction instead of joy, contentment instead of happiness… a glow-worm instead of a fire.”

Sociopaths of the world, unite!

Rand, like Trump, lived a largely joyless life. She mercilessly manipulated people, particularly her husband and Alan Greenspan (who brought a dollar-sign-shaped floral arrangement to her funeral), and, like Trump, surrounded herself with cult-like followers who were only on the inside so long as they gave her total, unhesitating loyalty.

Like Trump, McConnell, McCarthy and their billionaire backers, Rand believed that a government working to help out working-class “looters,” instead of solely looking out for rich capitalist “producers,” was throwing its “best people” under the bus.

In Rand’s universe, the producers had no obligations to the looters. Providing welfare or sacrificing one nickel of your own money to help a “looter” on welfare, unemployment, or Social Security — particularly if it was “taken at the barrel of a gun” (taxes) — was morally reprehensible.

Like Trump saying, “My whole life I’ve been greedy,” for Rand looking out for numero uno was the singular name of the game — selfishness was next to godliness.

Later in Rand’s life, in 1959, as she gained more notoriety for the moral philosophy of selfishness that she named “Objectivism” and that is today at the core of libertarianism and the GOP, she sat down for an interview with CBS reporter Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes.

Suggesting that selfishness undermines most truly American values, Wallace bluntly challenged Rand.

“You are out to destroy almost every edifice in the contemporary American way of life,” Wallace said to Rand. “Our Judeo-Christian religion, our modified government-regulated capitalism, our rule by the majority will… you scorn churches, and the concept of God… are these accurate criticisms?”

As Wallace was reciting the public criticisms of Rand, the CBS television cameras zoomed in closely on her face, as her eyes darted back and forth between the ground and Wallace’s fingers. But the question, with its implied condemnation, didn’t faze her at all. Rand said with confidence in a matter-of-fact tone, “Yes.” 

“We’re taught to feel concern for our fellow man,” Wallace challenged, “to feel responsible for his welfare, to feel that we are, as religious people might put it, children under God and responsible one for the other — now why do you rebel?”

“That is what in fact makes man a sacrificial animal,” Rand answered. She added, “[Man’s] highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness.”

Rand’s philosophy, though popular in high school and on college campuses, never did — in her lifetime — achieve the sort of mass appeal she had hoped. But today Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a central tenet of the Republican Party and grounds the moral code proudly cited and followed by high-profile billionaires and three former presidents of the United States.

Ironically, when she was finally beginning to be taken seriously, Ayn Rand became ill with lung cancer and went on Social Security and Medicare to make it through her last days. She died a “looter” in 1982, unaware that her promotion of William Edward Hickman’s sociopathic worldview would one day validate an entire political party’s embrace of a similarly sociopathic president.

The result so far is over a million dead Americans from Covid, an epidemic of homelessness, and the collapse of this nation’s working class.

While the ideas and policies promoted by the libertarian wing of the Republican Party have made CEOs and billionaire investors very, very rich in recent decades, it’s killing the rest of us.

A return to sanity

In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower put America back together after the Republican Great Depression and built the largest and wealthiest middle class in the history of the world at the time.

Today, 42 years of Ayn Rand’s ideas being put into practice by libertarian Republicans from Reagan to Bush to Trump have gutted the middle class, made a handful of oligarchs wealthier than any king or pharaoh in the history of the world, and brought a whole new generation of criminals, hustlers and grifters into the GOP.

Three men in America today own more wealth than the entire bottom 50 percent of the country, a level of inequality never before seen in the modern developed world.

When America was still coasting on FDR’s success in rebuilding our government and institutions, nobody took very seriously Rand’s or Koch’s misguided idealist efforts to tear it all down.

Now that Libertarians and objectivists in the GOP have had 42 years to make their project work, we’re hitting peak libertarianism and it’s tearing our country apart, pitting Americans against each other, and literally killing people every day.

If America is to survive as a functioning democratic republic, we must repudiate the “greed is good” ideology of Ayn Rand and libertarianism, get billionaires and their money out of politics, and rebuild our civic institutions.

That starts with waking Americans up to the incredible damage that 40 years of Rand’s writings and libertarian “Reagan Republicans” have done to this country.

It will succeed if President Biden can overcome the cynicism and greed celebrated by McConnell, Trump, Gaetz, Greene, Cruz, and Hawley; reclaim the mantle of FDR; and put America back on the upward trajectory the middle class enjoyed before the Reagan Revolution.

Categories Cruelty, Education Reform
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »