We’re getting ready to say goodbye to 2021. Honestly, I won’t miss it. It has been a challenging year, to say the least.

If we were asked what would make 2022 better, most of us would probably say for COVID to disappear. But the more I thought about it, if we could ask for just one thing in the new year, I believe it should be that America would turn back to the God of the Bible.

Beyond COVID, our nation is facing multiple epidemics which can all be traced to the decline of our Judeo-Christian values.

We have an epidemic of broken families and children without fathers in the home. There is an epidemic of corruption on Wall Street, in government and even at your local school board.

There is epidemic of despair, depression and drug addiction. There is an epidemic of violent crime. A growing number of people no longer fear punishment in this life, and don’t believe in eternal life. There is an epidemic of hatred and bigotry.

I believe the whole world would be a better place if more people believed in the God of the Bible. But it is particularly important that we get a revival here in America.

America was founded by people who came here to freely worship God. Christian pastors gave birth to the revolutionary fervor that won our War of Independence. George Washington said it was only because of God’s hand that we prevailed over the British empire. And our founders boldly declared that our liberty comes from God, not government.

My prayer for 2022 is that America will rediscover the wisdom and truth of the Bible, and turn our hearts back to the God who loved us so much that He gave us His only begotten son.

Left-wing Lunacy

Just outside the nation’s capital in Arlington County, Virginia, there’s a revolution taking place in public education. And not for the better.

Bureaucrats in the Arlington public schools are pushing for radical changes to the grading system. Here are some of the proposed changes:

• No penalties for late homework — because that leads to inaccurate grades as it reflects on student’s behavior and not student achievement.

• No extra credit — extra credit leads to biased grades and penalizes students with fewer resources.

• Unlimited redoes and retakes on assignments.

• No grading for homework as mistakes are vital to learning and students are less likely to take risks when they fear they will be penalized for making a mistakes.

This is insane! It won’t help anyone achieve more. It will simply lower standards for every student.

Arlington County, Virginia, is solidly in the grip of the radical left. Joe Biden won the county with 81% of the vote. So, it’s not surprising to learn that this radical policy is being proposed in the name of “equity.”

If you read our recent special report on critical race theory, you know that equity has nothing to do with equality. It’s the one of the left’s catchall buzzwords for their latest bizarre ideas. Beijing’s Communist Party bosses must be laughing their heads off.

The good news is that many Arlington public school teachers are angry. They sent a letter saying that the proposed “equity” changes are letting students down by setting them up for failure in life.

The year began with a rebellion of parents against leftist indoctrination. I know from experience that there are many teachers who agree with those parents. Now we are seeing more examples of teachers who refuse to accept the dumbing down of education in the name of equity.

Hopefully, the new conservative government that is about to take over in Richmond will take action, and begin a new era of commonsense educational reform.

And while we’re on the subject of left-wing lunacy, a Minnesota school board is making headlines for endorsing segregation and discrimination in the public schools. The board voted unanimously to pay extra stipends to non-white teachers and to allow minority staff to work at sites with other “educators of color.”

It’s shocking how the progressive left’s solution for racism and discrimination is more racism and discrimination. But that’s exactly what many proponents of critical race theory are demanding.

By the way, don’t make the mistake of thinking that critical race theory is limited to just public education or that it doesn’t affect you if you don’t have children in the public schools. It’s infecting everything, even medicine.

COVID & Kids

Yesterday, I blasted the fearmongering complex of government and media that is trying to make the reality of a bad disease even worse by exaggerating the risks we face.

Now, they’re doing it to children in order to browbeat parents to get kids as young as five vaccinated. Leftist teachers’ unions and big city mayors are once again using Omicron as the excuse, and they’re edging back toward remote learning.

NBC News kicked off the latest round of “panic porn” with a report Wednesday suggesting there has been a massive increase in children admitted to hospitals around the country. ABC News is jumping on the bandwagon with this headline: “U.S. Children Hospitalized With COVID In Near-Record Numbers.”

Exactly what are these “near-record numbers”? According to NBC News, children hospitalized with COVID jumped 52% from 1,270 to 1,933.

Now, here’s some desperately needed perspective.

We’re not talking about 1,933 children in New York City. Or 1,933 children in California. We’re talking about 1,933 children in the entire country, and there are more than 70 million children in America.

If you do the math, that gives you an approximate hospitalization rate of 0.00000026. So, when NBC says hospitalizations have increased by 52%, that tells you almost nothing.

But did you notice the phrase “hospitalized with COVID”? Why didn’t they say “hospitalized because of COVID”? Well, I suspect that number would be even more insignificant.

That’s because the CDC now requires anyone being admitted to a hospital for any reason to be tested for COVID. So, if you’re child falls and hits his head, and is admitted for a concussion, he will be tested for COVID. If he tests positive, he will be admitted with COVID, not because of COVID — and that’s a very different thing.

Deep into the NBC News article, a top medical official at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia explains: “We test anybody who’s admitted to the hospital for whatever reason… However, we’re really not seeing an increase in children who are hospitalized for COVID or in the intensive care unit for COVID.”

That fact should have resulted in the entire story being spiked as it essentially disproves the headline. This is another egregious example of media misinformation and malfeasance.

I can only conclude that this deliberate manipulation of words is an intentional effort to stoke great fear in order to browbeat parents into getting their children vaccinated.

Just to be clear, children with severe health problems are at risk from COVID, and all appropriate precautions for those children should be considered. But the average, healthy child faces virtually no risk from COVID.

Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins University studied the records of 48,000 children diagnosed with COVID. He couldn’t find one child who died from COVID who didn’t already have a serious preexisting condition. A similar study in Germany found the exact same thing — healthy children face zero risk of death from COVID.