Many years ago, I remember seeing a TV documentary set in a Brazilian forest.  A marmoset – a cute little monkey – thought it would be fun to tease a boa snoozing on a tree branch.  The snake had a full belly and just wanted to sleep, so it was not amused and did its best to ignore the joker.  The marmoset was having a wonderful time, however, and wasn’t about to quit.  Finally, the snake had had enough, grabbed the little pest, strangled it, and, even though it was hardly worth the effort, ate it.  Thus did another monkey win the Darwin Award.

Now, marmosets aren’t very bright.  Even so, that was one dumb monkey.  But you have to wonder – given the dumb stuff humans do every day, just how much smarter than marmosets are we?

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Critical Race Theory is the idea that all white people (meaning, apparently, anyone with a white skin, or close to a white skin, or who disagrees with a critical race theorist) are racists and oppressors of all people of color (defined just as loosely and arbitrarily as the opposite).  It’s a pernicious, illogical, irrational, and, well, racist idea.

Like all bad ideas, there is a nugget of truth in there somewhere.  Some people are, in fact, racists.  But it requires a leap of faith to turn that sad and obnoxious fact into the core tenet of an entire theory of culture and society; meaning that critical race theory has more in common with religion than philosophy and political ideology, which at least claim to be based in reason and developed argument.

Race matters, white people need to be put in their place, violence to do so is justified.  Wow. Who would have thought that radical left-wing academics, the most fervent supporters of and proselytizers for critical race theory, would be the founders and leaders of the new Ku Klux Klan?

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Speaking of the Darwin Award, it seems that Epicurious Magazine will no longer be publishing recipes containing beef.  Not for dietary reasons, but to “save the planet”:

https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/why-epicurious-left-beef-behind-article

Never heard of Epicurious before.  Don’t expect to again, or care.  Pass the Worcestershire sauce for my ribeye, please.

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And speaking further of the Darwin Award, it seems that the public schools remain determined to make themselves irrelevant.  Post-pandemic, school choice continues to grow, with Florida being the latest state to expand its program.  At least 4 other states have done something similar recently.  Private, Catholic and charter schools around the country are reporting that their phones are ringing off the walls, with parents desperate to get their kids back in real, brick-and-mortar schools and out of virtual school limbo.  (For what it’s worth, virtual schooling works well for a small subset of kids, primarily those with health and/or behavioral issues, but not for most kids, who need the social interaction that physical schools provide.)  Teachers’ unions in a number of places have refused to go back to work until ridiculous conditions are met – or until they get a substantial raise, whichever comes first.

As a long-time supporter of school choice who has never been able to see the logic in having government-run schools as the de facto monopoly source of education, this is all good news.  The quicker we get to the situation in which parents decide where their kids go to school, be it public, private, Catholic (or other religions, obviously), charter, virtual, homeschool, or something that hasn’t been thought of yet, with the state providing a voucher to help pay for it, the better.

• Kenneth D. Gough © 2021