Deere Backlash
Founded in 1837, John Deere is the world's largest farm equipment manufacturer with revenue of over $61 billion. The company manufactures tractors, combines, backhoes, excavators, seed drills, and more and sells them on every continent. Simply put, John Deere makes and sells the equipment that farmers and other working men need. Earlier this month I reported on how Tractor Supply Company had retreated from Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), LGBTQ events, and climate change philosophy after a rural customer backlash. Now it has come to light that John Deere has adopted similar progressive policies.
Rural Backlash
Rural Americans are different than those from the big coastal cities. Tractor Supply Company just discovered that. Tractor Supply is a Tennessee-based retailer known for selling animal feed, farm tools, workwear, and even live chicks and ducks. It is one of the last companies in the nation that you would expect to go woke, but it did. On October 20, 2021, CEO Hal Lawton wrote an Op-Ed in The Tennessean newspaper titled, “Why businesses should follow Tractor Supply’s push for diversity, inclusion, and climate change prevention.” Lawton led Tractor Supply with the philosophy that Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) was a necessary good and that climate change was an existential threat.
Osan Pride
Osan Air Force base commander, Colonel William McKibban, has authorized base personnel to wear a “pride morale patch” on their military uniforms. The colonel states “The patch represents the advancement of the Air Force’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, dignity, and respect within the mission.” The mission of the United States military is to deter war and ensure national security. The only commitment our soldiers, sailors, and marines should have is to win wars when called upon. All else is a needless distraction.
The Words and the Fury
Faith, marriage, and family are at the core of American values, but like a vampire sucking the life from its victim, the secularization of our culture has weakened it and threatens to destroy it. Nearly every day some new progressive idea is thrust upon us; defund the police, prosecutors that don’t prosecute, biological males in women’s sports and locker rooms, new pronouns, choose your gender, child genital mutilation, and the ever-growing LGBTQ agenda. The pervasiveness of the progressive ideology can be seen in the backlash against the commencement address given by Harrison Butker.
Classical Education
Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation, is the latest book on American education by Pete Hegseth, co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend on Fox News. For this release, Pete has teamed up with classical educator David Goodwin.
As a teacher, I had a growing awareness of problems in American education even before such concerns spread like wildfire during the pandemic lockdowns.
Ageless Liberty
Lewis County is one of the most conservative areas in Washington State. Sixty-two percent of its citizens voted for Trump in 2016 and Sixty-five percent voted for him in 2020. When Trump supporter Joe Kent ran for congress in 2022, Lewis County voters helped him oust moderate Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler in the primary. But, despite those conservative credentials, it seems that nowhere is safe from progressive nonsense.
Genders and Pronouns for Everyone
For the last seven hundred years the terms sex and gender have been synonyms. However, recently the world has gone crazy, and now, on many college campuses, if you ask how many genders there are the students would be hard-pressed to answer. For most of us, sex and gender still refer to a person’s biology. The LGBTQ movement would like to change the definition of gender into what people think, or believe, is their sexuality. They demand that society should accept that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, pansexual, asexual, genderqueer, aromantic, cisgender, genderfluid, pangender, non-binary, and hundreds of such terms should now be used to describe gender. Wikipedia currently lists 110 possible genders.
Stochastic Terrorism?
Is Angela Reading a security threat to the United States? According to Lt. Col. Christopher Schilling the leadership of nearby Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst believes, “[T]he current situation involving Mrs. Reading’s actions has caused safety concerns for many families. The Joint Base leadership takes this situation very seriously and from the beginning have had the Security Forces working with multiple state and local law enforcement agencies to monitor the situation to ensure the continued safety of the entire community.” What has Angela Reading, a previously law-abiding wife, mother, and member of the school board, done to require such scrutiny from the military and local law enforcement?
B is for Brainwashed
It’s disturbing that we live at a time when parents must check the content of their children’s pre-school and kindergarten books but as A is for Activist shows—they must. Written and illustrated by Innosanto Nagara, A is for Activist masquerades as a board book for teaching ABCs but as it states on the back cover, the book is for “families who want their kids to grow up in a space that is unapologetic about activism, environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and everything else that we believe in and fight for.”