by Bob Barr | Sep 1, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallGender unicorns. “Social justice” physics. Math and reading skills deemed no longer necessary. College grads multiple thousands of dollars in debt but unemployable in the marketplace. America’s once world-class education system is crumbling around us, rotting from within.Measured by money spent, our education system should be working magnificently. At more than $14,000 per student, the U.S. spends the fifth-most of any country in the world educating children, in a highly managed system overseen by officials from local school boards to the presidential cabinet. Despite all this – actually because of it – the return on our investment in education has never been worse. Decades ago, liberals realized educational institutions were a crucial tool by which to push their radical agenda into American culture; first covertly, but now openly, even proudly. The result is a system far less concerned with the actual, objective education of students, than with consolidating power by the adults who oversee it. Students suffer, but teachers’ unions, public school officials, bureaucrats at all levels of government, and well-funded special interest groups gain ever greater control.Students barely able to read and write are being taught about gender unicorns. White students are demeaned as being “racist” simply for being white. All the while, students are being emotionally scarred and taught to be afraid of everything around them, thanks to masking mandates, social distancing, plexiglass barriers, and constant “active shooter” drills. Sadly, private schools are not immune to these destructive shenanigans. As John Sailer writes at City Journal, plans by a Washington, D.C. private school for “anti-racist” education includes “discussions of social justice such as kneeling during the national anthem, Title IX, and paying college athletes while...
by Bob Barr | Aug 30, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller President Gerald Ford often was disparagingly and unfairly said to be “unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.” Recent comments by U.S. Army Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley responding to questions about the decision to evacuate Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan tells us that our nation’s leaders appear to have lost the will to take on more than one mission at the same time.During a news conference on Aug. 18, as the scope of the disastrous exit from Afghanistan was beginning to manifest itself, Milley was asked why the Bagram Airfield was prematurely evacuated. The four star general declared that of the two tactical missions demanding decisions by he and other top military leaders — specifically, to protect the American Embassy in Kabul and the Bagram Airfield — the United States could only do one or the other, but not both. Thus, the decision to “collapse” (not “evacuate”) Bagram.The toll in lives and resources resulting directly from this decision to close the only secure airfield in Afghanistan has been enormous. More important from a strategic national security perspective, however, is that it reveals that as a country our leaders no longer possess the will to carry out more than a single military operation at a time.America’s post-9/11 military involvement in and exit from Afghanistan will be the source of debate for years to come; as was our involvement in and exit from Vietnam a half century earlier. In many respects, the more recent conflict mirrors the manner by which military historian Andrew Bacevich described how the U.S. military fought in Vietnam — not as a decade-long war...
by Bob Barr | Aug 25, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallUnderlying virtually every policy of the Left is the notion that, with enough laws, society will be ordered, and that from order will emerge safety, security, and happiness. The problem is, the well-ordered utopia long sought by leftists over the centuries, including our own, is a pipe dream that always comes at the cost of individual freedom. Still, social engineers from Washington, DC to Canberra, Australia continue their drive to force socialism upon us.The continuing COVID-19 pandemic has provided an endless supply of excuses for Big Brothers of all stripes to find new ways to control our lives – a situation that in many respects is worse than the virus itself – and the results can be bizarre.In Australia, for example, government officials are shooting rescue dogs as a way of preventing people from traveling during COVID to adopt them. Closer to home, elementary school children in districts across America are being forced to wear masks (even outdoors) that restrict their own breathing, despite the overwhelming data that the COVID risk facing these youngsters is virtually nil. The illusion of ordered safety has come to trump facts, common sense, and even basic human decency.Over the course of our nearly two-year long COVID journey, we have moved from temporary measures designed to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, to myriad legal mandates and economic restrictions wielded, rescinded, and then reimposed by public officials whenever they feel the situation warrants. It is only our Constitution — and the fact that there remain Americans who still understand and defend its guarantees of individual liberty — that has thus far protected us from suffering Australia’s version...
by Bob Barr | Aug 23, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIn the aftermath of the Taliban’s victory over the U.S.-backed Afghan government and military and as the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks is close upon us, one would think that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) might be more worried about Islamic extremist attacks than about COVID lockdown opponents and critics of Biden’s 2020 election victory. Not so.According to a DHS National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin that is effective until Nov. 11, extremists who “may seek to exploit the emergence of COVID-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks” are a significant terror threat. The department also warned of “calls for violence on multiple online platforms associated with … perceived election fraud and alleged reinstatement.”According to this analysis, “racially- or ethnically-motivated violent extremists (RMVEs)” and other “anti-government” and “anti-authority” extremists are some of the nation’s top terrorism threats at this time.While DHS also considers “foreign terrorist organizations” a potential threat, it appears to be lower priority than threats posed by domestic extremist groups that are ideologically motivated and prone to “conspiracy theories.” DHS reaches this conclusion despite, in its own words, there being “no credible or imminent threats identified.”Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley belatedly seems to have realized and spoken about the danger that “terrorist groups” will “reconstitute” in Afghanistan, but his conclusion seems not to have registered meaningfully with the head of the Homeland Security Department, Alejandro Mayorkas. A review of the DHS website’s public information releases in the days since the fall of Kabul reflects little...
by Bob Barr | Aug 18, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallLike most Americans, the debacle surrounding the fall of Afghanistan’s capital city to the Taliban caused me great concern. In fact, we are witnessing failures of leadership decision-making and foreign intelligence analysis worse than any in modern history; certainly, worse than the failures that lead to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.To a degree, this conclusion is based on my personal experiences of having lived in that part of the world in my youth (I graduated from high school in Tehran, for example), having worked at the CIA for eight years in the 1970s, and having served in the Congress before, during, and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Even without this background, however, the many negative short and long-term ramifications of this debacle cannot be overestimated.Broadly speaking, there is more than enough blame to go around leading to the dismal situation in Afghanistan that President Biden inherited on January 20th, including mistakes by all three of his immediate predecessors (one Democrat and two Republican). But the final series of decisions – or non-decisions – leading directly to this fiasco, were made by this administration, and efforts by Biden to shift blame to others is an act of cowardice.The lenses through which this administration viewed events in Afghanistan were deep rose-colored. This caused them to overlook the otherwise obvious weaknesses in both the Afghan military and its civilian government. They persisted in the narrative that the fall of Kabul to the Taliban was only a “possibility,” and certainly not an “inevitability.” Even worse, they concluded that this possibility was months away, and therefore we had adequate time to arrange for an orderly exit. Last...
