Posted on 01/22/2026 6:09:16 AM PST by MtnClimber
The culture wars are taking their toll, and the nation could suffer irreparable damage.
The late Andrew Breitbart emphasized that “politics is downstream from culture,” meaning that culture shapes society’s values, which in turn determine its politics. Today, we are in the midst of a colossal culture war, with zealous radicals seeking to overturn our long-standing traditions and institutions.
One ongoing struggle that has received national attention is the absurd claim that a male who decides he’s a female has a constitutional right to compete in women’s sports. At this time, 27 states have laws or policies prohibiting the gender benders’ insane scheme, but appellate courts in Idaho and West Virginia say that’s wrong. Now the Supreme Court is dealing with the insanity.
On Jan. 13, SCOTUS heard appeals from the two states. Little v. Hecox concerns an adult biological male, Lindsay Hecox, who sought to compete on women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University. West Virginia v. B.P.J. involves a teenage track and cross-country athlete. Both states have barred biological males from women’s teams.
During oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito pressed the attorney representing the transgender athletes, prompting a concession that a male simply declaring himself a woman is not sufficient to guarantee the right to compete on a girls’ sports team.
However, Justice Ketanji Jackson delivered a garbled message: “Is treating someone transgender but does not have, because of the medical interventions and the things that have been done, who does not have, uh, the same, uh, threat to physical competition and safety and all the reasons the state puts forward—that’s actually a different class, says this individual. So you’re not treating the class the same. And how do you respond to that?” (This is the same justice who, when asked in 2022 whether she could define the word “woman,” replied that, because she wasn’t a biologist, she couldn’t.)
While the transitioning issue has harmed women, men are also in the crosshairs of culture warriors. For example, a Scientific American article describes how to fight “Toxic Masculinity.” Additionally, the American Psychological Association declares that “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful.” In fact, the APA is front and center in the war on men. The organization’s guidelines maintain, “Conforming to traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological development, constrain their behavior, result in gender role strain and gender role conflict, and negatively influence mental health and physical health.” Their guidelines also claim that “traditional masculinity leads to violence.”
Needless to say, the perverse culture warriors have a “Get ‘em while they’re young” mindset and thus target children.
A case in point is California, where in late 2024, AB 1955, the state’s so-called “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth (SAFETY) Act,” took effect. This despicable law specifically prohibits schools from adopting any policies that require them to disclose “any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person—including parents—without the pupil’s consent.”
The question is whether parents have a right not to be kept in the dark by a school if their child begins a gender transition.
A federal judge recently ruled in favor of the parents. Judge Roger Benitez writes that the California policies “are designed to create a zone of secrecy around a student who expresses gender incongruity.” Children as young as two years old are required to consent before teachers can talk to their parents about gender issues. Judge Benitez says this violates the Constitution on both sides: “Parents have a right to receive gender information and teachers have a right to provide to parents accurate information about a child’s gender identity.”
The state sought to defend its approach as necessary to prevent bullying. While the judge lauded that goal, he responded, “The problem is that the parent exclusion policies seem to presume that it is the parents who will be the harassers from whom students need to be protected. California state policymakers apparently do not trust parents to do the right thing for their child.”
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has stayed his ruling for now, but this issue, too, could reach the Supreme Court.
Another area where culture warriors have had a significant impact is classroom indoctrination, and examples abound. One glaring example is in Pennsylvania, where public school teachers affiliated with “Philadelphia Educators for Palestine” were found to have violated school district policy by allowing students to join a Signal chat that celebrated anti-Israel terrorism, promoted Marxism, and advertised a “Rally for Rage and Resistance” on the second anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
Keziah Ridgeway, a Black Muslim educator at Northeast High School, was temporarily placed on administrative leave after she was accused of threatening Jewish parents who objected to her persistent intrusion of antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda into the classroom. Ridgeway publicized the names of local Jewish leaders and implied that gun owners should target them. She is now, unfortunately, back in the classroom and suing the Philadelphia school district, alleging discrimination.
At the same time that students are learning to deny biological reality and hate Jews, basic parts of their education are neglected. According to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, only 22% of high school seniors are proficient or above in math, and just 35% are proficient in reading—the lowest scores since NAEP began in 1969. Also, a record-high percentage scored at “below basic” levels in both math and reading compared with all previous assessments.
To reverse this alarming trend, we must return to a traditional education curriculum.
A good example is the Founders Classical Academy, a charter school in Lewisville, TX, that is part of a network of 23 “classical” schools, primarily in Texas and Arkansas. The Founders network is one of about 275 classical charter schools nationwide. Including private religious schools that call themselves classical, about 250,000 students now attend such schools.
Not surprisingly, classical education elicits howls from the radicals, who argue that these schools are “the thin edge of the wedge of cultural warfare.” A 2023 report by the left-wing Network for Public Education, an advocacy group, describes the terms “classical” and “traditional” as “dog whistles to attract conservative families with Christian nationalist identities anxious to place their children in schools that reflect early- and mid-20th-century values, pedagogy, and curriculum.”
There is no doubt that we are in the throes of a culture war that, if left unopposed, will obliterate traditional American values, leaving our nation unrecognizable.
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies
Tell me, where is sanity?
Tax the rich
Feed the poor
Till there are no rich
No more
I am cautiously optimistic. I see Gen Z males being pretty sensible about this stuff. And there is reason to think that Gen Alpha will be a serious generation.
But we need to push the AWFLs off stage.
CORRECTION: To reverse this trend, we must reduce government to the bare essentials. And the first step in that process is to eliminate public schools entirely.
Mockery and derision would work if the media didn't defend and protect them.
When they measure proficiency in math and reading, are the standards the same as they were in 1969 or have they been relaxed?
Godless mankind will wax worse and worse. No denying that.
bml
Agreed. And I see some young black males doing the same. I wish I had a dollar for every single black man who came though the financial small group I sometimes lead and put the teachings to practice. Then come through again years later, but this time married and wanting his wife to know how to handle money too ... before they have kids. My church is majority black (maybe 2/3rds black) and most parents are married. Some of the openly talk about voting Republican because they don’t like the Dims’ spiritual warfare stuff (the Dims are never on God’s side).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.