It’s been a busy week here in the offices of ILYBYGTH International! Here are some of the stories that came across our desk that we thought you might find interesting:
Trump’s proclamation for Education Week.
- The usual conservative buzzwords, but some from the other side, too, at ILYBYGTH.
What was the “city on a hill” really about? Not what Reagan thought, at WaPo.
Two insufficient ways schools teach WWI. At TC.
This WILL be on the test!
School privatization takes a hit in the mid-term elections, at T74.
Freaking out yet about the Asia Bibi case? At the Guardian.
- Here at ILYBYGTH we ask: Are these right-wing mobs scarier than their left-wing counterparts?
What do you do if you support teacher strikes but lose your bid for Congress? Run for President, at Politico.
More swings than a school playground: Hillary Clinton is back IN the Texas history standards, at DMN.
Are evangelicals cracking up? Eric Miller interviews Paul Djupe at R&P.
we can foresee almost no circumstances at this point that would intervene in the mutual love affair—the equally yoked relationship—between white evangelicals and Trump. But, that necessarily entails a crackup of evangelicalism.
More than double-secret probation on the line: Dartmouth sued for allowing “Animal House” antics by three well-funded professors, at IHE.
Are the real anti-Semites on the Left? At Spectator.
What can conservatives and progressives agree on? Deriding tax breaks for Amazon, at the Federalist.
Jill Lepore on her new non-textbook textbook, at CHE.
A former school superintendent describes his disillusion with testing at Chalkbeat.
We’re not playing the long game for our kids.
Rutgers changes its mind: It’s okay if a white professor is anti-white, at FIRE.
- The background here at ILYBYGTH.
- The worrisome potential of this decision at ILYBYGTH.
- What does it have to do with the “White Student Union” at Yale?
This isn’t what he wanted…
Money-laundering Bible college busted, at CT.
Will the real populist please stand up? R.R. Reno at TAM.
When the ruling class ignores or derides the unsettled populace (as is happening today — deplorables, takers, and so forth), the restlessness jells into an adversarial mood. A populist is anyone who gains political power on the strength of this adversarial stance.
I Love You but You're Going to Hell 
R.R. Reno on the Future of Conservatism
This month’s Commentary Magazine includes a forum about the future of conservatism. Fifty-two prominent conservatives opine on the best path forward for American conservatism in the wake of President Obama’s reelection. As editor Elliott Abrams notes in his introduction, that future might not always seem bright. “Some conservatives,” Abrams argues, “seem almost to frolic in their pessimism.”
In his short offering, R.R. Reno, editor of the conservative journal First Things, argues that conservatism must avoid a single-minded focus on free-marketism. More important, Reno believes, will be a focus on moral values. Since the 1960s, Reno writes, America’s “cultural revolution” has undermined its traditional values. These days, according to Reno, “Round-the-clock irony and cynicism make old-fashioned values like working hard, paying your debts, and keeping your word seem, well, old-fashioned and even foolish.”
The solution, in Reno’s vision, is a conservatism that focuses on morals and culture. Reno insists,
“Unless we reinforce and support clear norms for adulthood–marriage, family, work, community involvement, patriotic loyalty–then the disoriented middle of the middle, no matter how economically self-sufficient, will become increasingly dependent on bureaucratic and therapeutic support and guidance, which means more government.”
What does all this have to do with schooling and education? Everything. Though Reno does not make this connection explicitly, his call for a renewed morality serves as a pithy articulation of the educational ideology of many American conservatives since at least the 1920s. After all, if conservatives hope to “reinforce and support clear norms for adulthood,” as Reno hopes, one obvious way to do this will be—has always been—to insist on clear moral standards in American schools.
Posted by Adam Laats on January 12, 2013
https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2013/01/12/r-r-reno-on-the-future-of-conservatism/