Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

Social and Emotional Learning is the latest front in the war the political left is waging on individualism

Posted: August 25, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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For the past several decades the political left here in the United States has been waging a guerilla style war on individualism.  That side of the political spectrum believes in collectivism, which is a belief system where individual humans have no true value.  Collectivism is the defining issue of the political left.

Individual identity, individual rights, and individual liberty have all been the very bedrock the United States was built upon.  Ever since the 1960s, the Democrat party has veered further and further to the left. Most Democrats today embrace collectivism, rather that individualism. 

Unfortunately, the most rabid collectivists infected American colleges and Universities back in the 1960s, turning them into centers of indoctrination, rather than centers of learning.  From these indoctrination centers, collectivism has spread like a cancer across the United States.

Collectivists here in the United States worked particularly hard to infect the education departments of colleges and Universities, turning them into mills that produce collectivist high school and grade school teachers.  Particular emphasis was placed on creating collectivist school administrators and principles.  Teacher unions also became institutions of collectivist indoctrination.

Collectivist educators worked tirelessly to create clever sounding collectivist indoctrination schemes in order to stealthily indoctrinate American children, right under the noses of their parents.  Two of the most common schemes are Critical Race Theory and Social and Emotional Learning.

Until I read this article, UN Program Teaching Kids ‘SEL’ Really Seeks To Kill Individualism (thefederalist.com), I was unaware that one of these schemes originated with the United Nations.

School districts around the world are racing to implement Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs in the name of improving their students’ social and emotional skills. In fact, according to the global purveyor of SEL standards, 27 states so far have adopted K-12 SEL competencies, and all 50 states have adopted SEL competencies for pre-K students. But where is this massive push for SEL coming from, and what are the motives behind it?

The answer to this question is becoming clear: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a primary force behind the SEL movement worldwide. A major way UNESCO advocates for SEL is through UNESCO’S Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development. The Gandhi Institute produces an online publication called The Blue Dot, which features articles from SEL experts and others around the globe that highlight “the relationship between education, peace, sustainable development and global citizenship.” Invoking Gandhi’s name in the title of this United Nations entity is meant to pull at the heartstrings of anyone who hears it. But should our heartstrings be pulled?

But why? What is it UNESCO wants to instill in children? UNESCO’s materials make it clear that SEL is intended to foster not only kindness between students, but cooperation with a global agenda rooted in the doctrine of collectivism. Nandini Chatterjee Singh, a program specialist for the Gandhi Institute, says “SEL skills are powerful competencies” that have been shown to “instill pluralistic thinking.” The institute’s website further says it is seeking to teach children to “exhibit prosocial behavior for … a peaceful and sustainable planet.”

In short, proponents of the sustainable development goals and SEL want to instill “pluralistic thinking” in your child in the name of global peace. They want children to be taught to value the “collective good” over individual liberties, rights, and property despite the fact that the freest, most prosperous nations in the world are founded on individual liberties, rights, and property.

The United Nations has long been an international institution devoted transforming the globe into a Socialist one world government.  As you can see from the following quotes from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization website, Social and Emotional Learning is a key to making this collectivist hell happen.

At UNESCO MGIEP, we recognize the urgent need for Social Emotional Learning (SEL) to be mainstreamed into education systems to transform education and shape a future that is geared towards providing peace and human flourishing. SEL can be described as learning that allows all learners to identify and navigate emotions, practice mindful engagement and exhibit prosocial behaviour for human flourishing towards a peaceful and sustainable planet

Central to envisioning and shaping a more sustainable and peaceful future is youth. The mass mobilisation of youth towards sustainable development requires empowering youth with information and involving them in policy’s development, promotion and implementation. At UNESCO MGIEP, we work with youth organisations and young people worldwide by supporting their initiatives and curating youth action towards kindness and transforming education.

UNESCO MGIEP’s efforts in prevention of violent extremism include the development of an entirely youth led guide that puts forth youth-centred actionable recommendations for a wide range of stakeholders as well as capacity building for youth in SEL.

UNESCO MGIEP aims to mobilize the world’s youth to achieve the 17 SDGs through transformative acts of kindness. This campaign attempts to create a positive culture of kindness, in which every young person’s selfless act matters!

The Global Collective for SEL and Digital Learning is a multi-stakeholder alliance mobilized to promote Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and digital learning as critical new dimensions in achieving the Sustainable Development

Report from Louisiana: Mary on the Bayou

Posted: August 22, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – It was my intention to post last Monday from the Fete Dieu du Teche but I have to say, I got all caught up in that event that I just wasn’t able to.

I’ve posted before about this annual Eucharist procession down Bayou Teche each year on August 15, on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. In Cajun Country it also coincides with the 257th anniversary of the arrival of the Acadians in south Louisiana. This all-day event begins in Leonville with a Mass in French by the Bishop and ends in the early evening in St. Martinville with some six or seven stops in between where the boats stop, and the procession comes ashore to say the Rosary in each town.

It is just incredibly moving to me to see the entire community in prayer and reverence like this and I love hearing the ceremony in French.

I am not a real believer in coincidences. My husband and I are not Catholic but are Episcopal. They are fairly close; close enough where we can follow the services. On Saturday, two days before the Fete event, we were shopping in an antique store and found “finger rosaries.” We’d never seen one but thought they were very pretty so we each picked out one. We have Anglican rosaries, and I figured I could sort of use this in the same, or similar, way. The one my husband picked had a “Miraculous Medal” of Mary on it. Neither one of us had ever heard of this medal so when we got back to the house Steve did a little research on it.

At the Fete Dieu du Teche, as we were walking down to the bayou bank for the procession, Steve saw a lady in a van trying to park. She was with Radio Maria, and she was having trouble wedging into a parking place, so Steve helped her. After the ceremony, she sought him out to thank him, and she said, “Oh wait! I want to give you something!”

She handed him an American flag with a Miraculous Medal of Mary dangling from it and a card that said it had been blessed.

Kindness begets kindness.

I have so much love and respect for the Cajun culture and not to oversimplify things, but their love of Church, family, and community is incredibly admirable.

Living in three hours away from the area is just too far for me and I can’t wait until we can relocate there. I’m not Cajun by blood, but I had someone down there tell me, “but you are by heart!” I’ll take that incredible honor and I’ll mark my calendar for August 15 next year!

Chicago is being devoured by violence, so city looks to removing monuments

Posted: August 21, 2022 by John Ruberry in business, crime, culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Father Marquette monument on Chicago’s Southwest Side

By John Ruberry

As I’ve stated many times before in this space, Chicago’s best days are behind it. Seemingly random and numbing violence is everywhere. Yes, shootings and murders are down from 2020 and 2021, but remain much higher than in 2019, the year its embattled mayor, Lori Lightfoot, was sworn into office. 

However, theft, burglary, and automobile theft are dramatically higher compared to 2021–overall crime is up 36 percent. Since two waves of riots in 2020, major retailers such as Macy’s, the Gap, and the Disney Store have closed their massive stores on Chicago’s premier shopping district, North Michigan Avenue, for now at least, known as the Magnificent Mile. 

Boeing is moving its headquarters out of Chicago, as is investment firm Citadel, which is headed by Ken Griffin, a prominent donor to Illinois Republican candidates. Griffin mentioned Chicago crime as a reason for departing for Miami. 

Chicago’s CTA public transportation system includes its sprawling el train lines. Violent assaults and murders have become common on the el. The criminal descendants of Jesse James aren’t attacking trains from the outside, they are paying, well…maybe paying, customers. I suspect most of the creeps are turnstile jumpers.

Click here for my confrontation with a CTA thug, from my most recent, and perhaps last, ride on a Chicago el train.

In 2020, soon after the violent riot outside a Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park, in the middle of the night Lightfoot had the statue removed for “temporary” storage. She was too much of a coward to do so during daytime, and too much of a financially reckless liberal to care about the expense, as it is likely the workers removing the Columbus statue were being paid doubletime wages. Illinois, the home of Abraham Lincoln and a solid Union state, has no Confederate monuments, but the always-angry left chose an old “favorite,” Christopher Columbus, both a brilliant and flawed man, to vent its rage. 

Two other Columbus statues were also placed into storage around that time. 

Another response by Lightfoot formed the Chicago Monuments Project. One of Chicago’s last remaining honest journalists, John Kass, called it in his Chicago Way podcast, “Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Woke Committee on Problematic Statuary.“

Since then, a former city of Chicago attorney claimed in a lawsuit that not only did Lightfoot, who is up for reelection early next year, prevent an agreement with a local Italian-American group to return the Columbus statues for public view, but she had this to say, “My d— is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d— in Chicago.”

To be fair, in March, Lightfoot said she “fully expects” the Columbus statues to return to their former locations.

On Friday afternoon, in an old-school “news dump,” Lightfoot’s committee revealed its recommendations. It’s hard to believe, but Chicago’s Lincoln statues were on the committee’s hit list. Honest Abe survived, as did the other US presidents on the committee’s woke naughty list. But a whole bunch of others, including the Columbus statues, a Roman column monument to Italian aviator Italo Balbo, a Mussolini cohort, monuments to French explorers Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette–they were the first recorded Europeans to visit what is now Chicago–and a statue of General Phil Sheridan on horseback at the southern end of Sheridan Road, are recommended for removal. In regards to Marquette and Jolliet, semblances of “white supremacy” is the reason. Some monuments that have been in storage for years will not be returned to public view.

The full report from the “woke committee” can be found here.

Sheridan’s prominent role in the Indian Wars is why he may be toppled from Chicago. Few people know these facts, but Sheridan, one of the North’s ablest generals in the Civil War, had a home in Chicago and “Fightin’ Phil” was present during the Chicago Fire. When the city’s mayor placed Chicago under martial law, Sheridan was in charge. 

Three statues, including ones of George Washington and William McKinley, should have “artistic prioritized interventions,” the committee says. My guess is that signs will be placed next to them, pointing out the honored ones flaws. Who among us is flawless? Liberals can’t imagine the non-enlightened ones thinking for themselves, or using their smartphones to Google “President McKinley.” And yes, slavery is the worst scourge in American history, but how many Americans don’t know Washington owned slaves?

For now, Abraham Lincoln’s statues will be spared these “artistic prioritized interventions,” but the committee warns, “such measures may be employed in the future through ongoing program investments.” Illinois, of course, is known as “the Land of Lincoln.”

Lightfoot’s monument committee is recommending new monuments, mostly “red meat” ones appealing to the left, although I support a statue of Chicago’s gospel legend, Mahalia Jackson. But why not one for Muddy Waters too?

What about a Ronald Reagan statue? The Gipper was the first president to live in Chicago and the only one born in Illinois.

There is no monument recommended for Lightfoot, “Triple Threat” is not only an African-American, but she is Chicago’s second female mayor and its first lesbian one. 

If a Lightfoot statue is ever erected, I’m sure I won’t be the only one focusing on her crotch. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

You don’t want vigilante justice

Posted: August 20, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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While I was on vacation this week I happened to see this video of a store owner tackling a man that punched an elderly person in the face and stole his wallet. The story has a happy ending, with the loser getting thrown to the ground in what looks like a WWF wrestling move and eventually being arrested. Thankfully, the city is pursuing charges against the criminal and not the store owner.

But what happens when that is no longer the case? What happens when crimes go unpunished? What happens when people are allowed to ransack a 7-11 with impunity?

First, you’ll have stores respond with increased security, limited hours and eventually leaving. That’s what’s happened in San Francisco, where CVS and Walgreens began closing store after store when the city essentially allowed criminals to run free so long as they stole under $1,000 in merchandise. It’s not just California though…places as far away as Philadelphia have similar issues.

The second response, should crime continue unpunished, is far worse. When people feel that the police won’t or can’t protect them, they will turn to vigilante justice. It’s exactly how the Mafia started in Sicily, where the lack of police to settle disputes resulted in towns paying for groups of men to enforce justice. For a time, it worked: the Mafia kept crime low and people tolerated its existence. But it wasn’t a great system, as it incentivized the Mafia to engage in significant political tampering, as well as brutal enforcement tactics, to maintain its grip on power.

Mafia-like activity in America would be similar to Italy. Having local disputes solved by the equivalent of a local warlord might become a better option then waiting weeks for a court date with a corrupt judge. Neighbors will settle more disputes informally than formally. Most worrisome, we’d also see an increase in unsolved murders. If your store is robbed, you know who did it and you don’t expect the police to punish the criminal, then at some point you might take it into your own hands. Neighbors will know its happening, but since they are likely affected as well, they may shrug their shoulders and stay quiet. Why snitch on a neighbor that killed a local criminal? You’re better off without that criminal, and you certainly don’t want to be on your neighbor’s hit list!

We don’t want an America like this. Vigilante justice is not a good option. Let’s hope we can bring better law enforcement back.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

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