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Americas school board meetings are out of control.

Forget sonorous debates over capital improvements and annual budgets. Todays gatherings are ground zero for some of the nations nastiest brawls over the hyper-politicized issue of mask mandates. Meetings are being overrun by protesters voicing their objections to face-coverings in classrooms replete with mask-themed conspiracy theories, accusations of fascism and biblically themed condemnations. (Many protesters have divined that the Almighty hates masks.) School board members are being harassed and threatened, in person and online.

The encounters can get weird and scary. Outside a school board meeting near Nashville, protesters swarmed medical professionals who had spoken in support of masking, screaming profanity and threats. You will never be allowed in public again! one raged. We know who you are, another warned. You can leave freely, but we will find you!

At a school board meeting in Lee County, Fla., one anti-mask speaker linked the boards support of a mandate with support for child sex trafficking. (Dont ask.) Outside, law enforcement had to break up physical altercations.

Just before a scheduled meeting in Fort Lauderdale, a protester sporting a Not Vaccinated T-shirt spritzed a tray of masks with lighter fluid and set it aflame, proclaiming, Its time to pass off this symbol of tyranny! The board postponed its mask discussion.

After a school board on the outskirts of Pittsburgh passed a mask mandate, one man in the audience gave a Nazi salute, and someone shouted, You made Dr. Mengele proud! On the other side of the state, near Philadelphia, a father in a hazmat suit told the audience at a board meeting that divisive mask mandates are what Hitler wants.

Who knew Pennsylvanias anti-maskers possessed such keen insight into the minds of the Third Reich?

Displays like these upset people who do not think that largely nonpartisan school boards should be the targets of partisan lunacy. But while the drama may feel bound up in the angry, ugly, polarized politics of the moment, it is nothing new. Public schools have long been an irresistible battleground for Americas culture warriors. On issues ranging from sex education to desegregation, public prayer to evolution to the Pledge of Allegiance, cultural cage matches are frequently fought on the backs of local schools, with board members, educators and students too often caught in the fray.

Mask mandates are not the only topic roiling the school scene. Not infrequently, multiple issues get bundled together. In the affluent Virginia suburbs of Washington, the Loudoun County school board has drawn the wrath of parents opposed to critical race theory, transgender rights and pandemic policies. The boards actions have been compared to those of Nazis and Communists. A new PAC, Fight for Schools, has popped up, aimed at recalling and replacing most of the board with common sense candidates. On Wednesday, the PAC is co-hosting a Save Our Schools rally with 1776 Action, a group opposed to critical race theory. The rally is to feature the former Trump administration cabinet member Ben Carson.

Much of the passion in the school culture wars is grounded in gut-level fears. Many parents are terrified by the thought that their children could be indoctrinated or otherwise manipulated by strangers.

This is a particular concern for conservatives, who worry that a snooty, liberal education establishment, in cahoots with a secular state, will turn their offspring against them and their traditional values. The fierce strains of anti-intellectualism and anti-science that periodically dominate conservatism make things exponentially worse. Just witness the backlash in some conservative corners against college not against specific institutions or particular excesses but against the idea of higher education altogether.

As Wilma Mankiller, who was the first woman elected to head the Cherokee Nation, once noted, Whoever controls the education of our children controls the future.

School boards are super local, highly accessible public entities on which citizens can focus their rage and frustration. Fed up with the coronavirus pandemic disrupting normal life? What easier target than the low-level officials struggling to keep area schools on track? It can be tough for an individual or a small band of people to command the attention of a member of Congress or a state lawmaker. But school board members are right there in the community with meetings open to all! just waiting to be screamed at. Think of it as open-mic night for the disgruntled.

For the average citizen, punishing or even replacing a school board member seems a much more manageable proposition than ousting a mayor or governor. Small surprise that, over the decades, conservative movements and groups who tend to have a better grasp of the power of local politics than their liberal counterparts have spearheaded large-scale pressure campaigns and board takeovers. The conservative strategist Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition, once said he would exchange the presidency for 2,000 school seats.

Pretty much every era has its defining school battles. Last decade, the Tea Party organized pressure campaigns on boards and fielded candidates, with an eye toward starving education systems it considered bloated and focused on the wrong missions.

During the Clinton presidency, the Christian Coalition led a nationwide push to stock school boards with social conservatives as part of its broader effort to build a grass-roots army. The group even conducted training seminars for candidates.

During the 1960s and 70s, sex education was a major flash point. The Civil Rights era brought bloodshed over school desegregation along with the rise of all-white segregation academies. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan, as part of its nativist agenda, pushed school boards to jettison textbooks that spoke slightly of the founders. And at any given moment, someone somewhere is apoplectic over a textbook or novel that is part of the local school curriculum.

National political players are quick to latch on to issues that resonate. Remember when President Ronald Reagan was flogging a school-prayer amendment? Republicans today, including many denizens of Trumpworld, are working overtime to keep their base spun up over critical race theory.

All these fights are purportedly waged For the Good of the Children, even as the children are being used as pawns. It is not a pretty sight. But it is the American way.

Excerpt from:
Opinion | Mask Mandates Are Creating School Board Chaos - The New York Times

In his book The Idea of Decline in Western History, historian Arthur Herman writes, Perhaps the most salient feature of the twentieth century has been the tremendous upsurge of cultural pessimism, not just in the realm of ideas, but directly into the arena of politics and culture. This sense of decline, which Herman chronicles as a recurrent feature of modern society, has long animated a loud minority of the political left, and has now become a feature of an increasingly large share of the political right. It is worth pausing to consider what is happening, and what it means for policymaking.

Until Donald Trumps electoral defeat in November 2020, Trumpism was largely understood by the political class and media as a collection of anti-elite sentiments and policy notions aimed at the working class. Since then, a number of commentators have noted that Trumpismif that is even the right name for itis a type of cultural alarmism most ardently embraced not by the working class but a more affluent set of voters. Sure, many of the bozos who stormed the Capitol on January 6 personified the medias idea of the conventional working-class Trump voter, but the anxious, anti-leftist rhetoric conservative political leaders deploy today is aimed at a more affluent, professional-class (and thereby statistically more active) voter.

Shortly after the 2016 election, Cato pollster Emily Ekins identified among Trump voters a more educated, professional free marketeer voter who was Trump-skeptical but voted for him to avoid the alternative. This group has now largely gone all-in on alarmism about the lefts cultural agenda, which is one of the most unexpected political phenomena of the past four years and probably why it was mostly overlooked until recently. They are members of what David Brooks has recently called the GOP gentry and the proletarian aristocracya mix of family and small business owners, middle managers, ranch and franchise owners, and so on. They gravitate toward the plutocratic populism that political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have identified (and that Price St. Clair has covered for The Dispatch), which appeals on cultural rather than economic grounds. While such voters still care about policies that create economic opportunity, they are more emotionally invested in the fight against censorship, speech codes, and the lefts general assault on traditional values.

Even though some members of Congress continue to push economic policy along the lines of working-class concerns, the incentives all point in the direction of cultural conflict as a larger share of active, more influential voters in the base ascribe to alarmism. When Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks of Indiana urged his committee members to lean into the culture war, he was channeling the heart of the rights current anti-elitism, which is angst over cultural demise more than a concern for everyday Joes working hourly wage jobs.

Cultural anxiety among more affluent conservatives overtook economic alienation as a primary concern a while before the political class woke up to it. Even after four years of donning Make America Great Again merch, Trumps most ardent supporters were the gloomiest among all demographic groups on the eve of the 2020 election in that they were the most likely to say Americas best days are behind us. This helps explain whyeven in the wake of the disturbing scenes of the U.S. Capitol on January 6survey data show that an astonishing 55 percent of Republicans believe the traditional way of life in America is disappearing so fast that force may be necessary to save it.

The distinctive class element on the right over todays culture warsbattles over cancel culture, critical race theory, and speech codes, for instanceis less evident in the older culture wars over abortion and same-sex marriage. According to survey data from the American Enterprise Institute shortly before the 2020 election, wealthier conservatives are roughly as conservative as lower-income conservatives on the older culture-war issues, while considerably more anxious about the new ones. On the left, the situation is flipped. Affluent and working-class liberals are more likely to think both sides have roughly the same power on todays cultural issues, while affluent liberals are considerably more progressive on the old culture war issues such as abortion.

Culture wars are about ideological power, and when one side loses it, anxiety ensues. When asked who controls Americas culture and way of life, 61 percent of conservatives with a college degree say liberals do, compared to 43 percent of working-class conservatives. By comparison, only 16 percent of both educated and working-class liberals think they have the most cultural influence. Forty-two percent of working-class conservatives and 44 percent of affluent liberals (i.e., those earning more than $100,000) think both the left and the right have the same amount of cultural influence, compared to about a third of college-educated and affluent conservatives. Ironically, conservatives with arguably more cultural powerthey are more politically active, engage civically at higher rates, and have more access to elite institutionsare more likely to believe they have less of it than their less-affluent and less-connected ideological compatriots.

A class gap also exists on views of the ideological nature of the media. Eighty-six percent of affluent conservatives believe journalists have personal or political agendas, compared to three-quarters of the working-class on the right. Meanwhile, among liberals, only 41 percent of the affluent and 46 percent of the working class believe the same. With justification, conservatives could argue numbers like these prove their pointnamely, liberals are simply blind to media bias since they regard mainstream news as unbiased. But the class distinctions are notable.

The case of religion in America is especially illustrative. Six in ten college-educated conservatives say it has become more difficult to be a Christian in the U.S. compared to just 44 percent of working-class conservatives and 39 percent of the nation overall. Working-class liberals track with the national average on this question, but only about a quarter of educated liberals believe it has gotten harder to be a Christian. Whats interesting is the cultural aspect of this issue. Educated conservatives may have heightened worries about anti-Christian sentiments, but they are considerably less likely to think society depends on Christianity. Compared to 57 percent of working-class conservatives, only 42 percent of college-educated conservatives think belief in God is necessary for someone to be a moral person, which is on par with the national average. Christianity as a cultural more than moral force seems to be what makes the professional class on the right most anxious.

Conservatives are not wrong to believe liberals are gaining ground ideologically in America, but Gallups long-term trend has long shown conservatives enjoying a healthy ideological plurality over liberals. Educated conservatives are less likely than educated liberals to say they have been attacked for their political views, and less likely to feel stressed during political conversations. But anxiety abounds nonetheless.

Conservatives are right to be concerned about the lefts ambitions, but wrong to let alarmism dominate their political outlook. Anxiety blinds people, first, to past cultural upheavals that are arguably worse than the present, and second, to longer-term, more constructive strategies for strengthening U.S. culture, as I have argued elsewhere at length. Instead of leaning into the culture wars, conservative policymakers and thought leaders could lean into a more positive agenda, focused on opportunity and everyday concerns like jobs, schools, and public safety. These issues resonate with a politically exhausted majority of people, who are not particularly interested in the lefts ambitions or the rights cultural anxiety.

Ryan Streeter is the director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Read more here:
How Affluent Conservatives Fuel the Culture War - by Ryan Streeter - The Dispatch

Universities need to allow for more ideological diversity and controversial debate, otherwise they risk losing the public argument over whether they are out of touch with society, the University of Oxfords vice-chancellor has said.

Speaking atTimes Higher Educations World Academic Summit, Louise Richardson said the culture wars and the idea that universities were bastions of snowflakes were being fanned by elements in the media and politics.

This was adding to a growing perception among non-graduates that their taxes are paying for these utterly overprivileged students who want all kinds of protections that they never had, and Ithink we have to take this seriously.

To tackle this, she said, We need more ideological diversity in our universities;we need to foster more open debate on controversial subjects.

We need to teach our students how to engage civilly in reasoned debate with people with whom we disagree powerfully because, unless we do that, we are going to lose the public argument, Professor Richardson added.

However, she also took a swipe at those who had seemingly questioned academias contribution to society, singling out UK government minister and Oxford alumnus Michael Gove, who she said Imembarrassed to confess we educated givenhis famous comments during the Brexit campaign that people had had enough of experts.

Professor Richardson pointed to the development of Covid vaccinessuch as the jab developed by Oxford, saying:Well [with] the vaccine it seems the public cant get enough of experts. Many of our scientists have become household names. We have demonstrated through the vaccine workjust how much universities can contribute, and thats enormously helpful for our cause.

The summit session, Are universities widening geographic divisions, also heard from University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng, who criticised the framing of the debate about whether continentssuch as Africa were suffering from a brain drain of scholarly talent to richer nations.

Some of the talk about the brain drain comes across as Africans, goback home, but some Africans may not be able to go home or they may not wantto, she said. People need to have free choice about their futures just as anyone has got free choice.

She suggested that one controversial way around the problem could be for developed countries that had benefited from the movement of talent to pay a form of tax or some kind of support back to the country of origin.

The point is that the way Africans can contribute to their continents development doesnt have to mean that they must go back home, she said.

If we do something like [a] taxperhaps we can stop this tussle about the blame game and have a situation that allows people to have the dignity of making a choice of where they want to contribute and where they want to work.

Meanwhile, Professor Phakeng also said that her years of trying to broaden access and achievement beyond the most advantaged students had led her to question whether universities were sometimes taking the wrong approach by assuming that those from working-class backgrounds were under-prepared for higher education.

The under-preparednesshas to do, in my view, with their lack of cultural capital and not so much their intellect and perhaps it was universities themselves that were under-prepared for how to teach such students.

Across [the] university, success tends to be racialised or confined to a particular socio-economic class, she said.

I dont think this is only a South African phenomenonIthink it is there elsewhere in the world, and to me that indicates a built-in middle-class prejudice on the part of the institution: anexpectation that students will transform by assimilating into the type of graduates that have dominated graduation ceremonies in the past.

That doesnt mean that you pass students whether they deserve it or not, that means we critiquewhy is it that it is only the middle-class that seem to succeed, Professor Phakeng said.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com

See more here:
Oxford v-c: improve 'ideological diversity' or lose culture wars - Times Higher Education (THE)

We are what we eat, as the saying goes. That may be an exaggeration but theres no question food matters; to our health, to farmers and producers, and certainly, to the planet.

Covid-19 demonstrated the importance of a healthy diet, and the government responded with a raft of anti-obesity measures. Marcus Rashfords brilliant campaign drew attention to food poverty in the UK, while the HGV driver crisis is a stark reminder of the fragility of our food supply. But for a long time, we have avoided that third, planetary point. It is high time we consider what a healthy, sustainable diet looks like.

With the UK aiming to reach net zero by 2050, the conversation has at last begun. Henry Dimblebys recent National Food Strategy was clear that agriculture is a major contributor to emissions, while a recent report from the Climate Change Committee recommended we reduce our consumption of high-carbon meat and dairy products by 20 per cent by 2030.

Participation in Veganuary has soared, with rising numbers of flexitarians and an end to any stigma associated with vegetarian and vegan food. Even the Hairy Bikers have gone meat-free!

While we await the governments response to Dimblebys strategy, examine new trade deals and prepare for Cop26, we can expect increased public and political focus on how we transform our food system from being a carbon emitter to a carbon sink.

For the climate-conscious, the next step might be going plant-based. This shouldnt be controversial yet there is a risk that more sustainable diets will become the new front line in the culture wars, with livestock farmers pitted against climate activists, or new green farming policies seen as detrimental to British farming.

Thats because dietary change is a debate that divides along party and social lines. As research by strategic consultancy Lexington shows, nearly half of Conservative voters never swap out meat or fish and they are disproportionately opposed to a meat tax. You are more likely to remain a meat eater if you backed Leave, are male or live outside London. Meanwhile, 59 per cent of Conservative voters dont think plant-based products should use the language of meat, compared with just a third of Labour voters. A third of under-24s back a meat tax compared with just 15 per cent of pensioners.

There are clear reasons for this. Livestock farming is a key element of British agriculture. Farmers, many in Conservative-leaning regions, are naturally anxious over threats to their livelihood, with climate issues coming alongside fears over the impact of Brexit on exports, and new trade deals and farm payment schemes. Equally, the food we eat stirs strong emotions. For some, not eating meat is framed as a moral decision, meaning that it can be hard to have an objective conversation.

As Lexingtons research finds, for some on the left or the right there is value in making veganism a wedge issue, and stirring the proverbial (vegetable) pot. In the EU, farmers have been fighting back, with bitter battles over the labelling of coconut yoghurt, oat-based milk and vegetarian burgers. Will our newfound Brexit freedoms will see us reconsider those labels?

How can we avoid a similar us versus them attitude as the focus intensifies on sustainable agriculture? What does a just transition to net zero for farmers look like? The government will need rapidly to find answers to these questions if we are to achieve net zero by 2050.

Ultimately, this is not black and white. Its natural that some in the farming sector will raise concerns about seeing their consumer bases diets shifting, while others will want to advocate that we all go plant-based. But it shouldnt be a zero-sum game. There is a big difference between encouraging less intensive livestock farming and expecting everyone to go plant-based.

Advocates of dietary change need to acknowledge sustainable meat production and support a hybrid diet approach. Plant-based producers need to do more to substantiate their claims once their full carbon footprint has been calculated. And we need public education as to what constitutes a healthy, sustainable diet, to incentivise behaviour change and empower consumers to make informed choices.

A polarised debate is not helpful, either in supporting the growth of sustainable farming or encouraging consumers to consider sustainability when making their dinner. We need a balanced conversation to make the changes required to protect people and the planet.

Mary Creagh is chair of Lexingtons Responsible Business practice. Planting the future: A moment of change for UK food can be read in full here

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The food we eat is set to become the latest front in the culture wars - The Independent

Much has rightly been made of the Texas anti-abortion laws granting bounties to anti-choicevigilantesand of the Supreme Court'sabuseof its shadow docket to green-light the law in defiance ofRoe v. Wade.

But in addition to the harms to womens rights in this law, the courts Sept. 1 decision inWhole Womens Health v. Jacksonreveals something dangerous to lawful society writ large: the 5-4 ultra-partisan, conservative majority has, in its haste to gutRoe, eviscerated the rule of law it is supposed to stand for and diminished the courtsown authority.

The decision adds fuel to the already strong arguments for reforming the Supreme Court and urgency to the work of President BidenJoe BidenAt least 1,000 US schools have closed due to Covid since late July: report Democratic donors hesitant on wading into Florida midterm fights Biden granddaughter Naomi engaged MOREs Commission on the Supreme Court.

It concedes, perhaps even celebrates, the fact that states, and individuals, can engage in legally questionable action and evade judicial scrutiny.By allowing Texas to floutRoesclear meaning, the court undermines an ordered society and may be paving the way for authoritarian rule.

The decision is a radical departure from the institutional history of the Supreme Court, which previously has been marked by efforts toassert and preserve the courts exclusive prerogativeto say what the law is. That was the crux of Chief Justice John Marshalls famous 1803 opinion inMarbury vs. Madison, the case that established the Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of the Constitutions meaning.

Over time, the court has jealously guarded its authority against those who have challenged it. It is the courts right to have the last word onconstitutional questions that has secured for it a central place in our system of government. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson onceexplained, We are not final because we are infallible. We are infallible only because we are final.

And the court has time and again insisted that everyoneabide by its rulingsno matter how much they might disagree with them.

This was vividly demonstrated in the civil rights era during the middle of the last century when southern states refused to respect the courts constitutional decisions and when demonstrators took to the streets to promote racial integration in defiance of court orders. The court responded by insistingto both sides: obey the laws first, and only then can you challenge our views of what the Constitution means.

When Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists ignored an Alabama state court injunction in the belief that the order to desist from a planned protest was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court upheld their arrest and conviction.

In his majority opinion in the 1967 case ofWalker v. Birmingham, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart recognized the substantial constitutional questions that a challenge to that injunction would have raised. But he firmly rejected the marchers contention that they were free to ignore a law they believed to be unconstitutional and condemned their decision to take the law into their own hands:

This Court cannot hold that the petitioners were constitutionally free to ignore all the procedures of the law. [I]n the fair administration of justice, no man can be [the] judge in his own case, however exalted his station, however righteous his motives, and irrespective of his race, color, politics, or religion.

And the U.S. Supreme Court has not been alone in that view nor has it been alone in striking down attempts by citizens or governments to disobey existing law.

In 2004, the California Supreme Courtinvalidatedthen-San Francisco Mayor Gavin NewsomGavin NewsomHarris to campaign for Gavin Newsom ahead of recall election California requests .7M in aid for Afghan resettlement Elder pledges to replace Feinstein with Republican if he wins California recall election MOREs declaration that the city would marry same sex couples in defiance of an existing voter-approved law that declared Marriage shall be restricted to a man and a woman.

Justice SotomayorsdissentinWhole Womens Healthmakesprecisely the same point about courts exclusive role in deciding on the laws meaning. Calling the Texas anti-abortion law a breathtaking act of defiance, shelabelled the courts failure to act stunning. In her view, it rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas.

Until last week, defense of the judiciarys role in saying what the law is and insisting that others defer to its judgments has united conservative and liberal justices.

But, inWhole Womens Health,only one conservative, Chief Justice Roberts, joined with the courts three liberal justices in standing up for such nonpartisan jurisprudential principles. His five conservative colleagues seem so eager to gutRoethat they are willing to disembowel the judiciarys own authority.

The risk of legal chaos from the Supreme Courts inaction on Sept. 1 may soon be realized in a kind of Cold War between the states.

Imagine blue states reacting toWhole Womens Healthwith laws permitting private lawsuits against anti-vaxxers who help someone evade a businesss COVID vaccination mandate, or against owners of banned guns whose prohibition is the subject of federal court challenges.

When the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court trashes its own authorityto tilt the scales in the current culture wars, it endangers the liberty of all, no matter which side of the cultural wars they are on.

And it sends an unmistakable signal that reform is needed to preserve the courts legitimacy and its vital role in protecting the rule of law.

As theCommission on the Supreme Courtgoes about its work, it should judge every proposal by a single standard whether it willdecrease the now rampant politicization of the Supreme Court of the kind that led to the decision in the Texas abortion case.

The commission should only entertain reforms thatpromiseto create more moderating influences on the court or, as the Center for American Progress recently said, reduce the influence of justices who pursue a purely partisan agenda.

Only those kinds of reforms can save the Court from its current crop of judicial radicals and secure continuing public respect for it.

In all of its work the commission should be guided by Justice Stewarts wise admonition that[R]espect for judicial process is a small price to pay for the civilizing hand of law, which alone can give abiding meaning to constitutional freedom.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He is author of numerous bookson America's death penalty, including "Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty."Follow him on Twitter@ljstprof.

Dennis Aftergutis a former federal prosecutor, who has successfully argued before the Supreme Court. He is currently of counsel at the Renne Public Law Group in San Francisco.

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Supreme Court trashed its own authority in a rush to gut Roe v Wade | TheHill - The Hill