A few weeks after Iran’s “president,” Ebrahim Raisi, promised stricter enforcement of his nation’s misogynistic dress code, a woman named Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurd, was likely beaten to death by “morality police” for failing to wear her hijab properly. The apparent murder was nothing new for the theocratic “guidance patrols” that have been patrolling cities since the 1979 Islamic revolution, one of the most disastrous events of the late 20th century.

This week, Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” interviewed this same theocratic crackpot responsible for Amini’s death wearing a hijab. And it immediately reminded me of Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci’s 1979 interview with Ayatollah Khomeini. The juxtaposition reminds us just how much journalistic integrity has eroded.

Rarely mentioned these days, Fallaci, who died in 2006, was somewhat of a celebrity due to her pugilistic interviews with world leaders in the 1960s and 1970s. A war correspondent for most of her career, Fallaci was shot three times and left for dead during student demonstrations in Mexico City in 1968 in what became known as the Tlatelolco massacre. Striking and sophisticated, uninterested in the ideology or political affiliation of her victims, Fallaci had no patience for moral equivalency. In truth, she was a liberal of the old school, and her infinite skepticism regarding power made her the most formidable interviewer of her time. “Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon,” she is quoted in her book “Interviews with History” (which should be required reading in journalism school). “I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born.” //

Fallaci, barefoot and covered in Islamic garb from head to toe, proceeds to challenge every Khomeini lie, confronting him on his fascistic tactics and murders. You really need to read the transcript to comprehend just how masterfully she handles the interview. Here is a snippet of her challenging the Iranian regime’s insistence that she wear religious garb – a “stupid, medieval rag.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/07/archives/an-interview-with-khomeini.html

The following is invited public testimony to South Dakota’s Board of Education Standards on September 19, 2022, as written in advance of the hearing. Monday’s was the first of multiple hearings that will occur around the state as part of a curriculum process that began after massive public outcry against a 2021 history curriculum plan that pushed far-left politics.

Gov. Kristi Noem’s chief of staff, Mark Miller, chaired a new commission that started with curriculum guidelines proposed by Hillsdale College and refined them with in-state teachers, tribal leaders, and historians. //

I have read many K-12 standards, and the first standout in these was their clarity. Most curriculum mandates are laden with jargon. Clear language allows everyone to understand what children are expected to learn. This creates unity and accountability for parents, children, teachers, taxpayers, school boards, and state lawmakers.

These requirements are rich in key information and beautifully represent what every American citizen should know (excluding the South Dakota-specific standards, of course). They reflect what research and experience find ensures a high-quality education for all children: core knowledge, carefully arranged and frequently reinforced.

Excellent instruction in the story of humankind helps us all understand human nature, benefit from others’ experiences, and understand our rights and duties. Distributing such core human knowledge broadly, as University of Virginia researchers E.D. Hirsch and Daniel Willingham, and other academics, have shown, reduces social inequality.

Their work also shows what’s wrong with the “critical thinking” canard that pretends filling one’s brain with knowledge is somehow at odds with thinking soundly. It is not, and anyone who says so is poorly informed about cognitive science. Indeed, as Ethics and Public Policy researcher Stanley Kurtz has written of South Dakota’s struggle to update its social studies curricula, “critical thinking” jargon is usually used as a cover for political indoctrination.

In fact, instruction rich in factual knowledge, such as these proposed standards require, is exactly what’s required for critical thinking — because knowledge is the basis of all critical thinking. And it’s clear from almost any data you look at that American children are not being given such core knowledge in most publicly funded schools. //

South Dakota’s constitution rightly observes, “The stability of a republican form of government depend[s] on the morality and intelligence of the people.” Therefore, the lack of strong history and civics instruction is an existential crisis. //

https://doe.sd.gov/contentstandards/ss-review.aspx

Monarch who through her seven decades of public service became a figure of fascination by remaining steadfastly private //

The 42nd of a line of kings and queens of first England, then Britain, then the United Kingdom, since William the Conqueror, she was also the sixth queen-sovereign of England and the fourth of the UK. In addition, she was queen and head of state of 15 other countries, stretching from Fiji, Australia and New Zealand to the Bahamas and Canada, all once part of the former British empire. She was for seven decades head of the Commonwealth, whose 54 countries comprise 2.1 billion people, a third of the globe’s population.

In accordance with the precedent established by Henry VIII, the Queen was also Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a role she took much more seriously in both her private and public lives than many of her predecessors. //

During the course of her reign she was served by 15 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss. She met more than a quarter of all the American presidents who have ever lived, five popes, hundreds of national leaders, from the saintly, such as Nelson Mandela, to the tyrannical, including Robert Mugabe and Nicolae Ceausescu, as well as thousands of celebrities and – it is calculated – more than 2 million more “ordinary” people. She was easily the most travelled monarch in British, indeed world, history: criss-crossing the globe regularly to visit the Commonwealth and just about every other significant country in the world, into her 90th year, and touring Britain year in and year out even longer. //

Yet through all this exposure, renown and public fascination, she never engaged in partisan politics, uttered a truly controversial remark, scarcely expressed an opinion and only rarely showed emotion: exasperation occasionally, but never temper.

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