The Tudor Dixon Podcast: College Admissions Chaos, Grade Inflation & School Activism

3/20/202639 mincomplete

Transcript

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.
0:02Guaranteed Human. Welcome to the Tudor Dixon Podcast.
0:37Today, I want to get into like a deep dive into education.
0:40And it's kind of a personal thing right now because we are in the midst
0:44of trying to figure out what the next steps are to get my daughter, who
0:49is at the end of her or in the midst of her junior year, going
0:52into her senior year, looking at colleges and what does that all mean and what
0:57do test scores mean? And in the middle of me doing this, which I thought,
1:02like when I went to college, you just applied and there weren't all these tricks
1:06that you had to do and you didn't have to pay people to try to
1:08get you in. And I feel like Lori Loughlin or Loughlin, whatever her name is.
1:12And I'm like, what am I?
1:13Do I have to pay someone to fill out all these applications?
1:17What is happening? But there's all these groups that do this.
1:20OK, so if you're in the middle of this, it is so much more complicated
1:24than I thought it was.
1:25And so I have this company and they're like, you know, if you pay us
1:27$10 ,000, we'll help you fill out 12 applications for college and we'll have some
1:33special project for her to do over the summer.
1:35And then she'll be more desirable for these colleges.
1:37And then he says something to me, which I was like, hmm, that's interesting.
1:41He says, do you think you're going test optional or are you planning on using
1:45a school that requires testing and I was like, hmm, OK, so breakdown test optional
1:51is after COVID, some universities said we're not going to require SAT or ACT scores
1:57anymore. And now they're starting to go, oh, crap.
2:01We actually didn't know that then people we would have no judge of whether or
2:04not these children were actually intelligent and could do the work at the school.
2:08So he said, I said, I thought all of the schools were going to requiring
2:12testing again. And he said, well, yeah, kind of because, you know, turns out an
2:18A is not an A anymore and then moved on really quick.
2:20And I was like, hmm, what exactly does that mean?
2:24Because these kids have not learned.
2:26So we found someone that can take a deep dive into this.
2:30We have Josh Wiener with us today.
2:31He is the chief strategy officer at Navi North American Values Institute.
2:37It's a nonprofit that advocates for American civil civic values and combats extremism and political
2:43activism in the K through 12 classrooms.
2:47Josh, political activism was one of the things that they were like, can you tell
2:51us if she's done any activism to help her get into college?
2:55Thank you so much for having me on, Tudor.
2:57It's a pleasure to be here today.
2:59Yeah, you know, you identified two things there.
3:01One of them is the flattening of the grading curves, and they're doing this in
3:04the name of equity. And we have seen schools that have basically said, if you
3:09get above an 80 percent, that's an A.
3:12And this is a big problem for a couple of reasons.
3:15One, we have no real standards to figure out, you know, how students are actually
3:19performing when it comes to their grade point averages.
3:23And two, it's really not promoting academic excellence.
3:27You know, academic excellence is actually holding people to high standards.
3:31That's how you actually get it.
3:33And by flattening the grading curve, you're just allowing individuals to not perform as highly
3:38and get the same achievement that others do.
3:42So it's not only unfair to the individuals who need to be pushed, but it's
3:46unfair to the individuals who have pushed themselves and have earned those higher grades.
3:51The other thing is that, you know, you need to be an activist and it
3:55looks good on your college application to have been an activist in school.
3:59Now, like when I was going to school, that was sort of true.
4:03You know, they like to see that you were, you know, social issue minded and
4:08that you did clubs and activities.
4:09You didn't have to be like, you know, an earthworks or part of social justice
4:15clubs, though. But this is actually part of what has been taught to teachers and
4:21in colleges of education. There is a book called Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo
4:27Freire. And this is taught now in all colleges of education.
4:31And it asks teachers to raise critical consciousness and to make classroom education actually political
4:38intentionally in order to wake up their students to social and political power differences between
4:47people based on their identity.
4:49So this is the kind of stuff that is now in schools that's impacting what
4:53you're seeing when you're doing college applications now, which is very concerning.
4:59This is so different than when I went to school a long time ago.
5:02I realized this, but I don't remember.
5:04I will say I remember Bill Clinton came to campus and I got a ticket
5:10to go see Bill Clinton speak on campus.
5:13Now you know how old I am.
5:14So I went to see Bill Clinton speak on campus and it wasn't like it
5:19really wasn't even a political thing.
5:22It was like, this is amazing.
5:24The president is coming to.
5:25our campus. And we were all excited.
5:27Didn't matter what side of the aisle you were on, there was not even discussion
5:31of politics when I was in college.
5:33I don't remember it being a big deal.
5:34I know that there were probably people in Republican and Democrat clubs.
5:38I wasn't one of them.
5:40I was just, you know, focused on food service, where I was going to go
5:44out that night and what my classes were.
5:46I mean, really, this was and it was a huge time of growth for me
5:50and growing up and getting away from my parents, but not being in the world
5:54yet, like out in the world having to totally fend for myself.
5:59And yet here I have this like we have two extremes.
6:02I think we have, first of all, more women than men in universities.
6:08So men are not going to universities anymore.
6:10And I think that's a somewhat tragic situation.
6:13And I'm not saying that everybody has to go to universities, but I do think
6:17that there is a good growing up period.
6:18And I do think there is a lot of value in a college education.
6:21And now people are being told not to go.
6:24And then I have a situation where my daughter goes to a Christian school and
6:29the families there are like, well, college isn't really that important.
6:32And like I said, I'm not saying it's for everybody, but I do think that
6:36there is a value in a college education.
6:38And these parents are like, how are you going to pay for it?
6:41First of all, it's too expensive.
6:42You can't pay for it.
6:43And then what if you lose your daughter?
6:45So I have like so many concerns.
6:48Can she even get in coming from a Christian high school?
6:52Because she's an activist for Jesus and not an activist for the left, you know?
6:57And then also, is it going to be that she'll only be with people that
7:04are learning social constructs and not actual facts?
7:09And then I lose her.
7:11Yeah, there's so much to unpack there.
7:14First, I remember being in college.
7:17It was around, I went to college 2006 to 2010.
7:21So this is when Obama was first elected.
7:24And it got highly political around then.
7:26I remember actually, I was, I'm a gay man, I was not out of the
7:30closet at the time. And I remember a Republican friend of mine who played hockey
7:34with me said something to me once.
7:36He goes, man, it's harder to come out as a Republican in school right now
7:40than it is to come out as gay.
7:41At the time, I was highly offended by that because I was very much like
7:45in that mind space. Yeah, right.
7:47You don't know. But honestly, like looking back on it, I like understand where that
7:53came from because it was different than even, I think, Tudor to how it was
7:58when you were in college.
8:00And I just think that had to do with the transition our country was going
8:04through between Bush and Obama.
8:07The other side, you know, you talked about this activism piece of it.
8:16Well, actually, I'll go to the like, is college necessary?
8:21Because we're in this really weird time right now where people really don't know what
8:26jobs are going to be available in the economy based on what's coming with artificial
8:30intelligence. And I would say that most universities really aren't prepared for this.
8:35And you talk about it a little bit like if universities, you're going to them
8:41like a university like Columbia or Harvard or something, and they're really focused on this
8:45social justice activism. How is that preparing anybody for a world that, you know, really
8:52is going to be completely usurped by AI just as far as what kind of
8:58jobs people are actually going to be able to do in that marketplace?
9:02So I think when you're thinking about where your kids are going to go to
9:05college, this is a critical thing to think about.
9:08First of all, I wouldn't send them to any of these schools that are really
9:13framing everything from a social justice lens.
9:16As a Jewish person, I certainly wouldn't because these tend to be the places where
9:20there are more incidents of anti -Semitism because of the way that social justice is
9:24being framed by these universities.
9:27I've seen, though, that universities, especially actually in the South, tend to be a little
9:32bit more values -driven and thinking about how to prepare people for the, I guess,
9:40the new world that we're coming into.
9:42Now, nobody really knows what it's going to look like, but at least if you're
9:47founding them in real academics versus this social justice stuff, you're putting them in some
9:52sort of good trajectory for what's going to come.
9:57You know, the last part is costs.
9:59I mean, you know, there's a whole, the guarantee, the guarantee of loans by the
10:04federal government is a big problem for student loans because it just allows the student
10:10loan companies to just kind of like throw out as much money as they want.
10:15And then you have developers that are, you know, building real estate on these college
10:19campuses because, hey, they got loans to pay for these rents and it's just this
10:23ongoing spiral. So, you know, I don't see that really letting up until we really
10:29have kind of this bifurcation between schools that are preparing kids for social justice work
10:34and the ones that are preparing kids for the new economy.
10:37I think that may help, but we certainly need some changes.
10:40But I think on the federal level, as far as student loans go, a humanities
10:44degree right now is not going to get you as far as an engineering degree.
10:49And that's going to change greatly in the next, you know, who knows?
10:53two months, six months, two years, it's going to change fast.
10:57Let's take a quick commercial break.
10:59We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon podcast.
11:05So I come from the manufacturing world, and I think about just 20 years ago
11:11when I was starting out in manufacturing, and I know 20 years ago sounds like
11:16a long time, but you think about just in the realm of how different business
11:22is in that period of time, it hasn't changed as much as I think it's
11:26changing today. Because I look, I mean, we had some of our drawings were still
11:30hand drawn by people for parts, you know, and then it was like CAD drawings,
11:35but you're still printing them out.
11:37I mean, we didn't have big computer screens or anything.
11:39We still had landlines and faxes, you know, I think about how different it is.
11:45And I do question, like, how do all of these curriculums prepare you?
11:51And I think a lot of that preparation is life preparation, you know, because I
11:56think a lot of what you're going to do, a lot of what you do
11:59in college does prepare you for being on your own and taking care of yourself
12:03and life, but also critical thinking and how to think through a problem and how
12:08to get from here to there and how to put all of the anxiety of
12:12things aside and focus on how you get a missional approach.
12:17Like, how do I get to the end of this?
12:19How do I finish this journey?
12:20And that was something I felt like I got out of college was like, there
12:24are going to be challenges and this is how you navigate those.
12:26But I don't know that that's what they're getting today.
12:30Right. I don't know either.
12:31And I think about even my college degree was in environmental policy and law.
12:36And, you know, I left school after the financial crisis.
12:38I wasn't getting any sort of environmental policy or corporate environmental management job at that
12:43point. And I ended up not really using my degree.
12:45I went into media and advertising and eventually, long story, I ended up in advocacy.
12:53But, you know, what I really got out of college is what you're saying.
12:57It's how do I plan my life?
12:59How do I manage social situations?
13:02How do I make sure that I succeed at my responsibilities while balancing all those
13:07things? How do I, you know, learn what I need from a life skill perspective
13:11from these classes that I can hopefully apply somewhere after school gets out?
13:17So, you know, I think there's certainly something to that social building, that cultural building
13:25that university really does. But, you know, maybe it's more important the type of culture
13:32that you're going into than the type of academics that you're going into right now,
13:36because we're not sure if the academics are actually going to be helping you in
13:41the new economy. And it's like, is that less than worth $300 ,000?
13:46You know, you also go, oh, my gosh, am I really talking about sending my
13:50kid to college to grow up and learn those skills for that price tag?
13:55But I do think that as I, I went to the University of Kentucky and
13:59that's what, so we took our girls down to the university because we both went
14:05to the University of Kentucky over the summer.
14:08We took them there and they all loved it.
14:11And there is a part of me that feels like those, some of the Southern
14:15schools have still focused on education.
14:18And it still felt that way.
14:20It still felt fun. There was still joy on the campus.
14:24And I think that you can walk on some campuses and be like, there's a
14:27real joy crush here. But I think that that's happening in lower school, too.
14:33For K through 12, I feel like there is.
14:35So I will tell you an example of this.
14:38I just recently there was a child that was at our school and I went
14:43up to mom and I was like, oh, what are you guys doing here?
14:46Because they're public school. They're a public school family.
14:48And she said, you know what, the child made the decision on their own that
14:54they wanted to come here.
14:55They'd seen things that were and this is junior year, junior year to switch over
15:00in the middle of your junior year to go to a private school is a
15:04big decision for someone that's 16.
15:06And she said that the child was having so many tough experiences in the public
15:13school that they said on their own, I want this.
15:16And she said, you would not believe there's no drama there.
15:21She said, compared to what the child had been experiencing in public school, she said,
15:26it is an awakening. I have a different child at home, a child that doesn't
15:30have the stresses, that doesn't have the constant drama.
15:34And I do think that some of this ideology that they teach in K through
15:3812 is causing a massive amount of stress and not enough learning.
15:43Yeah, and it certainly depends on the private school, because this is a problem in
15:46private schools, too. Let me let me be clear.
15:48But in public schools, especially, there's this real demoralizing factor that's going on.
15:54And it's basically this operating system by which we're teaching children that based on their
16:01intersectional identity, they are either an oppressed or oppressor person.
16:05And they are basically told, if you're oppressed, you're a victim, and you're not going
16:11to be able to succeed in our society because capitalism is against you.
16:16And so is the U .S.
16:18form of imperialist democracy. And the only way that...
16:22This is like so heavy.
16:23The words that you're even using right now, I'm like...
16:25This is what they do.
16:27It's demoralizing, right? Like it is heavy.
16:30And look, it's softer, younger, and it gets stronger when you get older.
16:35But you'd be surprised the things that they say to people in kindergarten.
16:38I'll give you an example in a second.
16:40But they say then that the only solution to this is to tear down the
16:45systems that are oppressing people.
16:47And then if you're part of the intersectional oppressor, it is your responsibility to use
16:53your privilege to tear down these systems.
16:55And if you're not, and if you're not actively doing it, or if you don't
16:58say the right things in the right moments to support the oppressed people, you are
17:04racist, white supremacist, homophobic, transphobic, etc., depending on the context.
17:09So this is tremendous. Like imagine the social pressure of that.
17:14Like every day you're walking on eggshells in school to make sure that you're sort
17:19of like falling in line to this ideology.
17:22And it is like, first of all, tremendously stressful.
17:25And second of all, you're telling somebody you either are hopeless because of who you
17:30are, and the only way is revolution, right?
17:33You get into like what they do.
17:35Or you have the original sin of being, you know, an oppressor.
17:40So you should feel bad about yourself.
17:41The only way to make up for it is to do these things.
17:44It's entirely terrible. This is so, I mean, it's so sad to think.
17:51It's something I would never have had to imagine dealing with.
17:55And I think it's, I think people are mistaken when they believe, well, we'll elect
18:01new people and the whole education system will change.
18:04Because it's got such deep roots.
18:07And I think it's got deep roots outside of just the education system as well.
18:12Because I know that we recently had a young friend become a teacher and she
18:18was going online to get her resources for her classes because there's a whole new
18:24world for teachers out there that my teachers certainly didn't have with online resources.
18:29And they go and they get ideas.
18:31But the ideas online are filled with these biases and these, it's like all filled
18:38with ideology. The curriculum is ideology based.
18:42And they don't really realize, I don't think they really realize they were even doing
18:45it. Yeah, there are bad actors, but most people are just caught up in a
18:50terrible system. It used to be that there was a curriculum and a textbook that
18:54supported that curriculum. And then you sort of had some wherewithal to use the textbook
18:58in your own way. Well, textbooks are out the window.
19:01Schools are very much digitized.
19:02And teachers, in a lot of ways, are under -resourced.
19:06Even when we're paying more than we ever have for schools in some places, they're
19:10under -resourced. And they go to a place that, you know, we've seen, TeachersPayTeachers .com.
19:16And there's no vetting by the school of what these materials actually look like.
19:21And actually, a lot of the anti -Semitic material that we see in schools, they
19:25end up coming from online resources.
19:27And this is a transparency problem.
19:29Like, we have a hard time catching up to these things as a society, especially
19:34with how fast they're moving.
19:36And, like, it should be incumbent on school boards to understand that their teachers are
19:40getting their classroom materials from these places that are not being vetted or are not
19:45being approved. And there should be a process by which to do that.
19:49Otherwise, you end up with stuff that you don't know who's planting it there.
19:53This is actually where we see foreign funding come into play.
19:57One of the places in K -12 education in manipulating it is putting out materials
20:03that then end up on these sort of, like, free or, you know, low -cost
20:11gig economy teacher resource websites.
20:14What kind of foreign funding?
20:17Yeah, so we've seen, like, there's some foreign funding from, like, an organization called JITO
20:27or an organization called the Middle East Children Alliance.
20:30And they have funding ties that actually, in some cases, go back to the PFLP,
20:36the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
20:38And they are basically this Teach Palestine curriculum has ended up in a lot of
20:44different schools. And it also is a professional development tool.
20:49And it basically teaches these things like it correlates immigration in America, the immigration debate
20:57in America, with the Palestine -Israel conflict.
21:01And it basically says, like, it sort of says, you know, Palestinians are indigenous to
21:08Palestine, as are indigenous people to, you know, certain parts of the United States.
21:13And this is about Turtle Island and Land Back.
21:15And it makes these sort of, like, solidarity type of claims between the two.
21:22And then these teachers bring that professional development into the classroom and sometimes these materials
21:27into the classroom. Also, Qatar has funded something called the Choices Program, which they got
21:34Brown University behind, which is a very skewed version of Middle East studies that minimized
21:40the War of Independence narrative in favor of the Nakba narrative, for example, erased Jewish
21:48indigenous. to the land of Israel.
21:51And that program, you know, while Brown eventually dropped the program, their endorsement of the
21:56program, it floated around in state education websites or at school resource guides for a
22:04very long time. And we actually identified some of those, reached out to departments of
22:10education across the country and got about six or seven states to take them down
22:14because they don't even realize that they're there, right?
22:17So those are just two examples.
22:20A last one is in Chicago and actually across the country, Qatar Foundation International will
22:27fund Arabic language teachers. So they'll just say like, here's a grant for $100 ,000
22:32and you have an Arabic language teacher.
22:34And the Arabic language teacher forms relationships with other teachers and then consults and guides
22:41them. We have proof of this from signal chats that we've infiltrated actually on how
22:46to talk about controversial issues like the war in Gaza.
22:50So like, you know, this comes up in a class and a teacher will say,
22:55oh, who do I know that can help me defend that Gaza is a genocide?
22:58Well, the Arabic language teacher, you know, so.
23:02So the teachers are being indoctrinated and then they pass it along to the children
23:06and they don't even know that this person has been hired specifically to indoctrinate them
23:12on certain issues. Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not said that that's what they're
23:17there to do. Right. Right.
23:18Right. Yeah. Right. But that's how indoctrination happens, right?
23:23You don't really know. Right.
23:25But if you teach a, a construct of, um, intersectional identity where the experience of
23:33the oppressed person is correct in a situation where there's power dynamics, the Arabic language
23:39teacher is the one whose experience is correct.
23:41It's not the Jewish, uh, Zionist pro -Israel person.
23:46So that teacher, because they've been formed through their college of education, through their, uh,
23:52culture at the school to believe that the oppressed person is the one that they
23:56need to, they call it center.
23:59Um, they will defer essentially to the person of color or the person of, um,
24:05oppressed status as the arbiter of truth in these situations.
24:11Okay. So what is the solution now in California?
24:15There's the, there's been this suit that's recently been filed against the state of California,
24:20alleging that they're allowing harassment of Jewish and Israeli students in public education.
24:26That's in K through 12, I believe this, this suit that's been filed.
24:31And there are young girls who say that they had their lives threatened by students.
24:36If they heard them speaking in Hebrew, they were going after them and telling them
24:41that they would, they should be dead.
24:43This is obviously this, the antisemitism has spread so quickly.
24:49And maybe from your perspective, maybe it's just what we're seeing now.
24:53And maybe you would say, look, it has always been this bad.
24:56It just feels like it's insane right now.
24:59Uh, it's always been there, but it's not been this bad.
25:03I mean, when I was growing up, we had some of it.
25:05And there's also like this kind of subversive antisemitism where it's kind of joking and
25:09like, no, like people think it's no big deal, but it makes me feel like
25:13not proud to be a Jewish person.
25:15Like you're money hungry. You're not good at sports.
25:18You're anxious, geeky, yada, yada, right?
25:20Like those are the tropes, but that never made me proud to be like Jewish.
25:24And I never really was until later in my life.
25:27And that's a real thing.
25:28Um, and you know, we had bomb threats at like the school when I was
25:32a Jewish area. So like this stuff has been there, but what we've seen is
25:37like this explosion because of the manipulation of this ideology into Jew hatred, into framing,
25:43not just Jewish people, but people who hold up the systems of the West, Americans,
25:48white people as evil and giving a permission structure to say, you know, resistance, which
25:54is another word for basically violence because they, they, then they say resistance and then
25:58they actually teach you, well, you know, decolonization that that's only achieved through violence.
26:05And then, you know, it's kind of this, they don't make the direct, they do
26:08like two hops. And so it makes this permission structure for people to hate and
26:14be violent against not just Jewish people, but whoever is perceived as upholding these systems
26:18of power. Um, I saw this really coming, uh, getting crazy in 2021.
26:26There was a, uh, a military operation between Israel and Gaza at that time.
26:32And, uh, it was the first time that I was told that I was a
26:36white supremacist and actually a Nazi for supporting Israel in, in that war.
26:42Um, and, you know, I think probably even a little bit before that 27, 2018,
26:482019 is when a lot of this stuff has gone a little bit wild.
26:52And if you think about the proliferation of social media and the smartphone and kind
26:56of the early 2020 teens, uh, it very much correlates with that because this is
27:01that, that problem too. I saw someone just, I think, gosh, just a couple of
27:06days ago on TV, say something that it really struck me.
27:09She, I can't remember who it was, but she was saying, you know, when, when
27:1410 -7 happened, Go, go, go, go, go.
27:15No, you'll. or view do you?
27:16Bye. Bye, bye. Bye, bye.
27:16we all assumed what the moral response would be, would be a shock and outrage.
27:20And that wasn't the response.
27:22And that's when we started to question, where is morality today?
27:27Like, where are the people who are on the right side of things when all
27:30of a sudden people were saying, you didn't see what you saw and those women
27:33didn't get raped and they didn't kill kids.
27:35It's like, how did we get here?
27:40Yeah, and that's something that they play in in this construct of, there's actually a
27:46guy named Edward Said who is a professor at Columbia who structured something called Orientalism,
27:52which is based, by the way, in the same constructs that we're talking about right
27:55now, this oppressed oppressor. And he sort of frames basically that we as the West
28:04believe we're right because we are virtuous in like, you know, our dedication to human
28:11rights. And that when we push those things on other countries or other cultures, that
28:16that is colonization. And that that is actually not understanding where those cultures are coming
28:22from. And there's this sort of like moral relativism that is happening there where they're
28:28saying like, well, you know, you may see that, you know, there's oppression of women
28:33in Palestine or in Iran or in these Middle Eastern countries, these Islamist countries.
28:40But that's just because you have a, you don't understand what is moral in their
28:46societies and you need to respect their culture and their version of morality, which I
28:52think is, this is where we get to this, right?
28:55So then when you frame these things as, you know, they are part of this
29:02global South that is colonized by the West and the white people are kind of
29:07like just always trying to push their stuff on them, you get like they become
29:11the victims and then people believe it's virtuous and righteous to defend the victims, regardless
29:16of like the normal Western moral structure that we have, which by the way is
29:21based in Judeo -Christian values versus kind of what the Islamists would say.
29:27So this is how you get when somebody drives a vehicle with explosives into Temple
29:35Israel, them saying, well, you know, Israel bombed his family in Lebanon last week, right?
29:42Well, that to me is the most horrifying response.
29:47By the way, I don't, I don't see like, you know, there were two Israeli
29:52Jews shot outside a museum in DC.
29:55There's no retribution being paid for that because we don't believe in that as a
30:00society. We don't believe that like violence begets violence.
30:04Like that's not like what we do.
30:05And by the way, the individual's family, one of them was a Hezbollah commander, according
30:11to the IDF. So, you know, look, death is horrible.
30:15Which means he is the person who put his children in danger, no one else.
30:19Right. I totally agree. Um, so yeah, this is moral relativism and it's a really
30:26big problem. And honestly, I think that, you know, religion and lack of adherence to
30:32religion in our country has something to do with it.
30:35There's sort of this void that's getting filled by the social justice stuff.
30:39And the morality structure there has more to do with your identity and whether your
30:45identity is oppressing somebody else.
30:47And then sort of saying, you know, whatever, they're the victims.
30:51So whatever they believe or whoever they are, that's fine and right.
30:54Because we're the ones who need to sort of like, you know, defer at this
30:59point in time because we held them down.
31:01And that's why they are the way they are.
31:03Let's take a quick commercial break.
31:05We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon podcast.
31:11Something that I feel like you're onto something with the faith thing, because one of
31:16the things that I've seen with the teenagers today is that the teenagers that have
31:22a strong faith, they have a stronger confidence because they are living for something bigger
31:29than them. And they're not concerned with, you know, what do people think of me?
31:33It's what does God think of me?
31:35And I just think that there is a difference when there's a focus on that
31:40faith. I want to ask you something, because at the beginning you said, you talked
31:44about the kid who was the Republican saying it's harder to come out as a
31:47Republican than it is as gay.
31:49Well, let me ask you how you feel today about being Jewish, because one third
31:53of Jewish college students say they don't want, they feel uncomfortable displaying their Jewish identity.
32:00Yeah, and I, you know, I probably should have worn it, but I always wear
32:03my Magen David out like every day because I believe that that's the only thing
32:08that we can do. Our expressions of Jewish pride and people knowing that there are
32:11Jews around them is the best thing that we can do.
32:14But like, you know, it's not for everybody.
32:16You know, think about, you know, your daughter alone on the subway, if she could
32:21have been a target because she's showing her Jewish star, if she was, obviously she's
32:25not. But just as an analogy, you may not want that.
32:29And I don't encourage everybody to do that, but that's a very sad state that
32:33we're in. And, you know, back to religion, I mean, this idea of saying that
32:39people are different based on their identity or their intersection.
32:43And you're the one who's a good person.
32:43And if you don't like this, we won't go on the way.
32:44identity, it's not really based in what Judeo -Christian values are.
32:49Like we see everybody as equal in and created in the image of God.
32:54And that means that we treat people equally and we treat them not by, by
32:59like their immutable characteristics, but by who they are and like what, sorry, not by
33:05who they are, but like how they, they, they, how they are, like how moral
33:09they are, how they treat other people, the content of their character.
33:12Right. So I think there's something to that too.
33:15We've gotten away from, I'd say like the humanism that, that religion really professes.
33:24And, you know, maybe this, this run away from a religion has allowed people to
33:28find something different that, that matches their social justice vibe.
33:32Don't you think that's part of it if you can continue to create differences and
33:37anxieties around those differences, like there's racism, there's this, if you can continue to create
33:44more racism, then you have it.
33:46It's there. It can divide, it can cause activism.
33:49You know, if you have a loving society, there's not enough to push each other
33:53apart. And I do think politics plays a huge role in this because you have
33:58to divide to get, to add your voters.
34:01You know, we've got to, we got to get every, every voter counts.
34:05We've got to dissuade them from going for the other side.
34:08It really has become very nasty.
34:10Very nasty. To the point where like two things.
34:14One, there's, I mean, I didn't used to believe it, but I probably had it.
34:19There's certainly a Trump derangement syndrome.
34:21I, I am not a Donald Trump fan, but I also agree with some of
34:27the things that he's done and I'm happy with some of the things he's done.
34:30There's other things that I'm not so happy about, but the ability for me to
34:33decipher those two things is important because it also allows me to understand on the
34:39side that's like, it's not for me, but like these people that are sort of
34:42like my side's the left and we're just here to oppose the right.
34:47They then ignore anything that's going bad on their side because anything is better than
34:52this. And it allows all this craziness to fester on their side.
34:56So that polarization has been really bad for our country because it actually makes it
35:02so that anybody on either side really doesn't hold their own side accountable.
35:06And we're seeing that like on the left from what I'm describing and also on
35:10the right from, you know, allowing these people like Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes to sort
35:16of like have these platforms.
35:18So, you know, I'd like to see the right and some people have really like
35:23push that stuff away, but the polarization has made it very difficult.
35:27I just saw today that she posts, Candace Owens posted that she's like the number
35:33one podcast, I think with Joe Rogan, they're like tied at the top.
35:38And that's exactly what I thought.
35:39How? And then the only someone explained it to me, like, it's kind of like
35:43the National Enquirer and you know, it's all lies and it's like the Bat Boy,
35:47you know, you see it at the at the checkout counter at the grocery store
35:52and you like people just like to buy it because it's entertainment, but they know
35:56it's all fake. But it's so dangerous.
35:58It's not just the Bat Boy.
36:00You know, this is really dangerous stuff that people are putting out there.
36:03And how do we continue to ignore it?
36:05But but then you got people on the right that are like, well, you can't
36:08say anything about speech. I can't.
36:10I'm sorry. But if we own you, we've owned these people in the past.
36:15So you have to separate yourself, say whatever you want.
36:18But I have to separate myself from you because you you do not represent me.
36:22And I am with you on the fact that we have separated parties so much.
36:27Like I said, at the beginning of this, when I was in college, I knew
36:31my parents didn't vote for Bill Clinton.
36:33And I don't think I had voted in an election at this point in my
36:36life. But he was the president.
36:38And there was a joy in seeing your president.
36:41And now I can't imagine college kids that don't like Donald Trump going to a
36:45rally. Right. That would never have been.
36:49Not a chance. It's just way too polarized right now.
36:52Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Well, I there's I could talk to you, honestly, for hours.
36:57I so appreciate you coming on today.
36:59I think there's a lot more to dig into on how to protect our kids
37:02from the anti -Semitism that's happening in schools and just this indoctrination.
37:06So we'll have to have you back sometime.
37:09Josh Wiener, thank you so much.
37:10Can I just leave your viewers with two things?
37:13Yeah, please. Yeah. I just want parents to just be mindful, like ask your kids
37:18what's going on in school.
37:19Take a look at their classroom work.
37:21Make sure that you understand what's going on in the classrooms and come and report
37:25if you think you're concerned to things like, you know, this ideology that's in the
37:29classroom to Navi. We're at NaviValues .org and we can kind of direct you on
37:34what exactly to do. But, you know, also run for school board if you're concerned
37:39about what's going on in your school, because that's another way that you can impact
37:42things. So sorry, I just wanted to leave your viewers with.
37:44No, I think that's great because we always say we feel powerless as parents when
37:49you see this stuff. But but what you said to me is so critical.
37:53We are in a world where we are so distracted constantly, even as mom, you
37:59know, the phone is ringing.
38:00You've got your you're sucked into social media.
38:03Even if you're just scrolling videos, put that down and ask what happened, because your
38:08kids are going to tell you what happened.
38:10That's the beauty of kids.
38:11they don't hide things. Some of the most bizarre things, I'm sure some teachers are
38:17like, why did you tell your mom that?
38:19But because they tell me just bizarre things too, you know, but that's the joy
38:23of parenting. Find out. And I love the fact that you gave us the resource
38:28in Navi because we don't know where to go.
38:30So thank you. Of course.
38:32Thank you, Tudor. Thank you.
38:33And thank you all for listening to the Tudor Dixon podcast for this episode and
38:37others. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
38:41Rumble, or YouTube at Tudor Dixon.
38:43Just make sure you tune in and have a blessed day.