The lethal consequences of going “woke”

 

The editorial board at Issues and Insights examines some of the lethal consequences of going “woke”:

The Wages Of Woke Are Death

Going woke means more than, as the saying says, going broke. It also means the ultimate loss of life. The grip of wokeness on our society will eventually kill Americans.

Let’s begin with health care. Medical school students, whose learning should be focused on the healing arts, are being taught social justice ideology. Apparently, white supremacy, oppression, and structural racism must be addressed by America’s doctors-to-be, as well as the sin of being white.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion studies are being required at some schools, which of course crowds out time used in the past to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills needed to be a good doctor. Politics have no place in medical schools, but there they are.

At the same time, some schools, as many as 40, are dropping standardized testing for diversity’s sake, reports the Daily Caller. The Medical College Admission Test, which “determines an individual’s ability to problem solve, think critically, and understand concepts about medical study,” does not serve the purposes of the social justice mafia. Now there are other legitimate academic avenues to medical school outside the MCAT. But as we’ve seen in other institutions of higher learning, standards designed to demonstrate and ensure competence are being killed off.

Given these facts, it’s a certainty that many of this country’s doctors of tomorrow and beyond will not have the competence needed to keep patients alive and well. Americans will die or suffer unnecessarily because wokeness demanded that the medical community marginalize them.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine professor and associate dean who wrote “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns,” says the ​​”quiet woke revolution” that had been capturing medicine “erupted in spring 2020 into a full-blown revolution.” 

One win for the woke insurgency is the American Medical Association’s “Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity.” Goldfarb says that “unlike other social justice programs, this program is lethal” and “will tangibly reduce the quality of medical care, and almost every American will suffer its side effects.” If medical schools “cut training time in biochemistry and pharmacology for future doctors” to make room for studies that are political in nature, someone is bound to die.

Then the editors put the field of engineering under the same microscope.  Next they look at the military.  And here are their conclusions:

Wokeness is winning because our institutions have become cowardly and complicit; businesses are afraid they will fall behind if they don’t score well on the Corporate Equality Index, which is a Maoist extortion racket that demands prescribed behavior from companies; and the average American is scared of being ostracized and canceled for not just uttering but even holding opinions the mob doesn’t like.

Unless and until we overcome our fears, the malicious and depraved will continue their booted march through our culture and our economy. No one should be frightened to say that a system based on race, ethnicity, or gender over competence, intellect, and ability is dangerous. It is in fact mortally dangerous. 

The full editorial is here.

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What is Critical Race Theory?

 

Our household subscribes to Imprimis, the newsletter of Hillsdale College.  Every month, we receive their publication which features an article adapted from a lecture on campus.  It is always good value.  This month’s edition features Christopher F. Rufo’s insights into Critical Race Theory.  It is an eye-opening discussions, and here is a very short extract.  

Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, over the past decade it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks, and school curricula.

There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality. But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—is explicitly rejected by critical race theorists. To them, equality represents “mere nondiscrimination” and provides “camouflage” for white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression. 

. . .

On the grassroots level, a multiracial and bipartisan coalition is emerging to do battle against critical race theory. Parents are mobilizing against racially divisive curricula in public schools and employees are increasingly speaking out against Orwellian reeducation in the workplace. When they see what is happening, Americans are naturally outraged that critical race theory promotes three ideas—race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation—which violate the basic principles of equality and justice. Anecdotally, many Chinese-Americans have told me that having survived the Cultural Revolution in their former country, they refuse to let the same thing happen here.   

Read the rest here.

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The Power of “No”

art credit: callcenterhelper.com

Kurt Schlicter over at Townhall makes good points:

For way too long, too many conservatives and other normal people have failed to deploy our most potent weapon in the defense of free thought and expression – the utter refusal to go along with the demands of the carnivorous left. As has been said before by me and others, we need to introduce these spoiled brats to the concept of “no.”

. . .

But a larger, more comprehensive information operation is still ongoing, one in which a bunch of pampered SJW stormtroopers, aided and abetted by the weak and frightened elder caste of liberals occupying the heights of the establishment, are attempting to define the tolerable range of ideas and expression within our culture. In a shocking turn that would surprise only stupid people, the tolerable range of ideas and expression they wish to establish corresponds exactly to the ideas and expressions they agree with. The Venn diagram of what they think and what they allow to be thought is a single circle.

The rest of us are expected to shut up, and thereby concede and recognize their mastery over us.

We could do that, sure. 

Or we could tell them “no.”

The first four of his bullet points for effectively saying "no" are:

• ·         Never apologize.
• ·         Reject their demands. 
• ·         Speak truths they want suppressed. 
• ·         Laugh at them.

Read the rest here.

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