9 Comments

I will not blindly trust this new government (none of us should!), but this is a good start. It restores some modicum of normalcy at a time when we have lost all trust in institutions.

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Tracking the impacts (legal, ideological, practice), as they rumble through K-12, universities, private sector, government, clergy sermons and the like, will be interesting.

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These are extremely helpful EOs - as the article mentions, so much activity expressly contrary to the 14th amendment has been propped up by the government and any grantee as "essential" for some time now, even contravening the Supreme Court decision from 2023. The essential next step is to codify this into law, as any EO is just a pen stroke away from being annulled by the next administration.

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Thank goodness the equal human rights based on common humanity returns to align with the constitution. And finally, women are women again! Biological sex is a reality and that women are female based on their biology...

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We need metrics and a means to measure them, and the practice of reviewing the metrics and the evaluation. I’m not wanting another academic layer. But goals should be defined and work toward them should be defined and transparent.

Philosophically we should reassert the importance and rights of the individual enshrined in our Constitution AND the limitations of the government. A major cause, if not THE cause, of division between Left and Right is that of collectivism vs individualism, respectively. All collectivism, be it socialism, communism, fascism, nazism, have proven to benefit only the self-appointed elites at the expense and harm to most people.

We should not just brush the Leftist ideologies away. We need to learn from them to continue to thwart them politically and to limit their intrusion into governance.

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I just hope DEI 1.0 isn't replaced with DEI 2.0: White is Right and Male Can't Fail.

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I wouldn't worry about that. I strongly suspect it'll be replaced by Loyalty 1.0: We Don't Care What You Look Like, How You Identify Or Who You Shag In Bed, Just Be Uncritically Loyal To Trump.

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I liked a lot of this essay but...

"when they infringe on the rights of students, parents, teachers, healthcare providers, and working-class Americans."

Why are you saying working class here?

It seemed strange, to say the least.

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I would say it's because working-class Americans have been consistently left behind or ignored by many recent administrations and policy-makers. Union-busting, the loss of many manufacturing jobs, and the wholesale conversion of economies in many parts of the country into "tourist economies" (read minimum wage jobs that don't allow workers to actually live in the areas they work) have all combined to do serious damage to those in the working-class. Add in the "paid high school diploma" that has become almost mandatory for any job (the BA or BS degree) and you have a system that conspires against social mobility that doesn't involve inherited wealth.

How else do you explain the shift in Union membership voting patterns over the last few years? Most "job retraining" programs are a joke, and often die out after a couple of feel-good years. Add to that the consideration that once construction is done most green energy projects employ a mere fraction of what a coal-fired plant did and you have a recipe for disaster.

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