In the late eighteenth century, a group of unusually enlightened men gathered to plot rebellion against the most powerful military power of the day. Their grievances were many, set down in the Declaration of Independence. This storied document was many things, but above all it was a cry of rebellion against tyranny: against the arbitrary, capricious and unwelcome rule of the English over the colonies. It was a cry for liberty.
Against all odds, their rebellion succeeded and, a few years later, they met once again to devise a form of government that would be strong enough to see to those things that only government can do, such as military defense and the enablement of trade between the states. They were, however, leery of the dangers of tyranny, and so they crafted a unique form of government: a federal republic, with power dispersed among the several states, and numerous checks and balances to prevent abuse.
It was a noble experiment, and it served us well for centuries, but it is essential that we understand that this experiment has now failed in its primary purpose: to secure our liberties and to forestall tyrannical rule.
The evidence of this failure is indisputable to anyone with eyes to see. Unelected bureaucrats can impose their will on the citizenry in a way that so far exceeds the arbitrary and capricious rule of the English as to stagger the imagination.
They are imposing upon us regulations to all but outlaw vehicles powered by fossil fuels. They have decreed that a woman can become a man, and a man can become a woman, with utter disregard for biological reality.
The intelligence services are spying on Americans, and the FBI looks more and more like the secret police with every passing day. I am afraid of my government; I fear the knock on the door in the middle of the night. The grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence look trifling by comparison.
If the Democrats get their way, it will get even worse. They have made it clear that they intend to undo the system of checks and balances that have kept tyrants at bay for centuries. They will eliminate the Senate filibuster.
They will pack the Supreme Court and turn it into something like the Soviet Politburo, an organ of political power unaccountable to the people with absolute authority over every aspect of life. They will continue to push for non-citizen voting rights, allowing millions of illegal immigrants to vote in key local and state elections.
And, perhaps worst of all, power will be further centralized in Washington under the Democrats, who will willingly crackdown on local and state governments that don’t adopt their left-wing vision. In short, a form of absolute tyranny will be established.
Our constitution was designed to prevent this from happening. It is time for us to recognize that our experiment in self-rule has failed, and that we must do something about it before it is too late.
How did we get here? It all starts with federal money. Money is, and always has been, a profoundly corrupting influence in government. This has been true throughout history, going back to the Romans and even before.
Money is power. Money is control. Money gives you the ability to reward your friends and punish your enemies. Federal money has become a lever used by the bureaucrats to impose their will on state and local government, emasculating the federal system.
The Biden administration is giving away trillions of dollars in public funds to support its allies and to buy votes with the money they’ve taken from us. But no matter how many trillions of dollars they fritter away, it’s never enough, and they are on the verge of spending the country into bankruptcy. The system they have constructed will inevitably collapse, and take us down with it.
What then shall we do? How can we reclaim our lost freedom and save ourselves from the coming tyranny?
To do this, we need to be as bold as our opposition. They have stated that the American system is to be burned to the ground and replaced with something new. I agree, in part. Yes, burn it to the ground — but replace it instead with something old: the Federal Republic the founders intended us to have. This will require a massive — and I mean massive — reduction in the size and the scope of the government, and a return to its stated purpose, as eloquently laid out in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
This, and no more.
Craig W. Stanfill (@craigwstanfill) is a computer scientist, software entrepreneur, and the author of the AI Dystopia science fiction series.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Parents are growing increasingly concerned about the prevalence of technology in classrooms, and the negative side effects that change is fueling among children nationwide.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic pushed schools to remote learning, many have only grown increasingly reliant on technology, shifting assignments into digital forms and handing every student a computer or tablet to aid their education in the classroom. But after seeing their kids become angrier, less sociable and less educated, parents are asking where the teachers have gone.
“What are we doing with an iPad all day, for eight hours a day in our kids’ hands?” Patricia McCoy, a mother of four in Wyoming, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Honestly, it’s disturbing. They give your kids worksheets on the iPad. There’s no actual critical thinking happening because they’re given apps to replace the teachers.”
Even when parents ask for additional help for their struggling children, the solution at some schools always comes back to more technology.
“If your kid is struggling in math, instead of giving them tutoring, they’re going to recommend to you that your child use this app on their iPad to help teach them how to do this math,” McCoy continued. “But that app doesn’t teach them how to do the math. They enter the problem and it gives them the solution all written out and worked out, so there’s no critical thinking being done. The answer is being given to them. They have ChatGPT at the ready, and other things similar to ChatGPT, which, again, does all the thinking for them. And all they have to do is show up, log into the iPad, get the answers from one app, put it into another app and get the grade.”
This has some parents wondering where the teachers have gone and whether they are teaching their students at all.
“THEY DON’T WANT TO TEACH”
“Covid did create a lot of this, and it made it a lot easier for some of the teachers now to just place these kids in front of a screen,” Mike Maldonado, a California father of five, told the DCNF. “And it makes it easier for some of these teachers because they don’t want to teach. They’re just there for a job.”
“We can’t ignore the fact that all this stuff makes it easier on the teacher, which actually, I think produces a worse result, “Jaime Brennan, member of the Frederick County Board of Education who spoke on behalf of herself and not the board, told the DCNF. “When a teacher can go online and make up an assignment using AI, now they haven’t thought. Now they’re not using their brainpower, and it’s like a trickle down effect. We’ve already introduced screens and technology to the level that as humans, I don’t think we were designed to use, and we haven’t adapted to it very well.”
Critically, Brennan said, the use of AI has prevented students from developing automaticity, the skill of memorizing basic solutions, such as simple addition, to the point that you do not even think about it, which is a foundational skill students carry on throughout their education and adult life.
McCoy told the DCNF that the digital learning environment has left her youngest son academically “two to three years behind” his siblings, who did not go through this new screen-based school system.
“He is drastically farther behind academically,” McCoy said. “He does what he needs to to pass, but intellectually and academically, he is years behind his two brothers and his sister at this age, and that is sad and heartbreaking as a mother to know that I probably failed my child because I went along with what the school said was going to help them.”
Despite being “years behind,” McCoy’s son is on track to graduate on time.
“We graduate kids who have to go to community college and take remedial math,” Brennan mentioned. “Our kids leave 12th grade and they go to 13th grade. So we’re putting out kids that are not ready to operate in the regular world.”
POSSESSED BY THE SCREEN
Not only is she worried about his education, the concerned mom has seen a noticeable shift in her son’s mood as he is forced to rely on more and more screen time.
“I tried to take my son’s phone away one time, and it looked like a demon was looking back at me. My son was not looking at me,” McCoy recalled. “His eyes were completely black and cold. It was like he was a totally other person, like a drug addict, and you’re taking their drug from them. And he was 15 at the time.”
Without his phone, McCoy said her son was a new person.
“That week, he was a totally different person. He wasn’t overly tired and drowsy all day. He was actually interacting with the family and spending time with us. Instead of being shut down and closed off in his room, he was playing with our dogs more,” McCoy said.
Maldonado thinks these behavioral issues stem partly from the lack of human interaction children experience in increasingly screen-dependent classrooms.
“Part of the problem is that they’ve lost a lot of the interaction,” Maldonado said. “This is why some of these kids I think act out, because they don’t want to listen to the teacher. There has to be that communication between two people, two humans, and not a screen where they can’t really interact and get the tone, the voice inflection of a response.”
“That is a major issue,” Maldonado continued. “Without social skills, how do you function in society? And we see it all the time. Social skills are definitely learned, it’s a trait that you pick up from interacting with people when you’re young. And that’s the big thing, people don’t realize that if there’s no interaction, that person is going to be withdrawn, not just from the classroom, but from the home and from society.”
The issue is especially apparent in children who were younger during the Covid year, Maldonado said. The so-called “Covid babies” are typically “the ones who you can see have the majority of the behavioral issues.”
“It is hard to get some of these kids to actually look you in the eye and make eye contact. They don’t know human interaction,” Brennan concurred, adding that students today are not even dating as much as they used to. “I’m really concerned where that’s going to lead, and what our kids are going to be like. We’re already seeing negative impacts of kind of this disintegration, people are waiting till later to getting married. They’re not getting married.”
THE PRICE AMERICA IS PAYING
Meanwhile, as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) among youth increases, more data and stories are coming out revealing the tool often exposes children to inappropriate content, damages the development of critical thinking skills, and at times, drives kids to suicide by explicitly coaching them to do so. Brain scans from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) revealed that brain engagement was severely diminished under participants who used AI compared to those who used a traditional search engine, and memory recall following assignments completed with AI tanked.
Interestingly, schools that struggle with budget concerns and often fail to see promised district-wide staff raises somehow find funds to buy brand-new devices for every student — even when they already had slightly older, but still functional devices.
“Most of [the money goes] to administration and fees and other things that have nothing to do with the education of our kids, or they spend it on these expensive iPads and technology that shouldn’t even be in the classrooms, and then they go to the state and say, ‘You’re not giving us enough money. We need more money,’” McCoy told the DCNF. “Well, we keep throwing money at the problem, but the problem doesn’t get better or go away. It gets worse every year. So clearly, money isn’t solving the issue on why our kids can’t read, write and do math.”
“Stop spending the money on the iPads and put that money back in the classrooms instead,” McCoy continued. “Give it to the teachers.”
While Tina Descovich, co-founder and CEO of parental advocacy group Moms for Liberty, mirrors the concerns of many parents, she also told the DCNF there could be a place for technology in the classroom.
“I think they have to be used in a very responsible fashion,” Descovich said. “There’s so many wonderful teachers that would like to use AI in a way to help enhance their skills and teach their children better.”
Moms for Liberty signed a pledge with the White House in September to help foster innovation and interest in AI with America’s youth.
Brennan remains concerned that technology in the classroom prevents kids from thinking independently and may harm future skill building rather than facilitate an interest or expertise in technology.
“Are you trying to keep pace with the kids who are learning to use the technology, or are you trying to create the kids who are going to develop the technology? Because those are two different things,” Brennan said. “So if we’re just teaching our kids to be technology consumers, then sure, the easy way out is to do everything on the technology. If you’re trying to keep teach kids to be the technology developers, they need to learn to think and process away from the technology. They need to have other skills that are not technology based.”
PARENTS STILL HAVE POWER
For parents concerned about the technological takeover of their children’s classrooms who feel like their schools aren’t listening to them, Descovich said that along with helping their kids at home when possible, parents should “rally with like minded parents.”
“Start educating your community,” Descovich said. “I think when parents really understand what’s happening and what the concerns are and what the risks are, they will want to take action. And when you have enough parents showing up at school board meetings and speaking about an issue we have, as we know, you definitely can make an impact, and they will listen.”
President Donald Trump said Thursday he will pause migration from some countries following the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House.
The suspected gunman, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, is an Afghan national who entered the U.S. in 2021 under a Biden-era immigration program for Afghans fleeing the Taliban movement. He was reportedly granted asylum this year.
U.S. Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from injuries she sustained in the Wednesday shooting, Trump told service members in a video call Thursday night. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was in critical condition. Lakanwal was also injured in the shooting.
The two victims were members of the West Virginia National Guard sent to Washington, D.C. in August under Trump’s orders for a crackdown on crime.
In a lengthy social media post on Thursday, Trump claimed “reverse migration” is the answer to years of mass migration and said he plans to “permanently pause migration from all third world countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover.”
Trump also appeared to consider removing migrants who have become U.S. citizens. He said he will “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is capable of loving our Country.”
He said the federal government will end all “benefits and subsidies to noncitizens, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport and foreign nation who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
The FBI said they are conducting investigations in Washington State, the suspect’s last known residence, as well as connections he may have had in San Diego.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau has executed “multiple search warrants around the country.”
Patel said Lakanwal had a “relationship in Afghanistan with partner forces.” Multiple reports claim Lakanwal worked alongside the Central Intelligence Agency while in Afghanistan.
