Speaker 1: Welcome to the Nonprofits, the weekly show that addresses current
Speaker 1: events and news items from an atheist and secular humanist perspective.
Speaker 1: In our first segment this week, the current regime is
Speaker 1: continuing its war on dei eli slack. What kind of
Speaker 1: trouble are they causing now?
Speaker 2: Well? In February of this year, the Department of Education
Speaker 2: rescinded to grants that would have helped fund universities and nonprofits.
Speaker 3: Across the country.
Speaker 2: Specifically, they recentded them specifically because these grants would fund
Speaker 2: programs dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion. So eight of
Speaker 2: the affected states filed a lawsuit, leading to a federal
Speaker 2: district court to order the Department of Education to reinstate
Speaker 2: the grants. So then, following that, the Justice Department, presumably
Speaker 2: at the behest of the Department of Education, filed the
Speaker 2: request to the Supreme Court to pause the federal district
Speaker 2: Court's order, which the Supreme Court has granted. What that
Speaker 2: means is that those grants and those funds will remain
Speaker 2: unavailable and a better society will remain tragically out of reach.
Speaker 2: The story is from CBS News by Melissa Quinn, published
Speaker 2: on April fourth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: All right, Eli, Well, I mean the current regime obviously
Speaker 1: has declared war against DEI initiatives here, so how does
Speaker 1: this particular battle fit into that larger picture of that war.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, so the idea here, I think we're
Speaker 2: probably all on the same page about this is that
Speaker 2: like making sure that public universities are not like diverse,
Speaker 2: equitable and inclusive is more important than making sure that
Speaker 2: they are.
Speaker 3: We can't have that.
Speaker 1: We can't have that.
Speaker 3: So that's sort of I think the message at this sense.
Speaker 2: And I think there's a common I mean, it's pretty
Speaker 2: clear there's a common misconception that a lot of white
Speaker 2: men have the complaint about DEI initiatives that you know,
Speaker 2: they don't help white men, And I think that that
Speaker 2: actually it's not the case that they can't help white men.
Speaker 2: It's just that it's not designed to help you just
Speaker 2: by virtue of being a white man. Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: they can help Christian, you know, religious people like Christian,
Speaker 2: Jewish and Muslim and Hindu people, as well as atheists.
Speaker 2: They can benefit neurodiverse individuals such as those with like
Speaker 2: ADHD and autism. Ben if it's single working parents veterans,
Speaker 2: Like I'm trying to say, there's no like straight white
Speaker 2: male veterans. So I it's it's not an attack on anyone.
Speaker 2: It's just it's just forcing, you know, to share the stage.
Speaker 3: Like just because you're a.
Speaker 2: White like you, you weren't born there's nothing about the
Speaker 2: way you were born that makes you deserve anything any
Speaker 2: more than anybody else.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Well, I suppose when you know, when you
Speaker 1: have privilege your whole life, then when that privilege is taken,
Speaker 1: then it seems like persecution. It seems like, you know,
Speaker 1: you lost your crutch and so now you know you
Speaker 1: have to walk on your own and that's that's it.
Speaker 1: Apparently that's a big a drawback or something. Jonathan. Let's
Speaker 1: jump over to you here in the article they said
Speaker 1: quote Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the ruling quote
Speaker 1: vindicates what the Department of Justice has been arguing for months.
Speaker 1: Local district judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize
Speaker 1: control of taxpayer dollars, force the government to pay out billions,
Speaker 1: or unilaterally halt the president's policy agenda. Do you think
Speaker 1: Bondi's claim that the courts are overstepping holds water.
Speaker 4: Not at all. She obviously doesn't know her job very well.
Speaker 4: That doesn't surprise me. She was also ag in Florida
Speaker 4: before she got this job, all right, so she's she's notorious.
Speaker 4: But you know, the thing that bothers me the most
Speaker 4: is that her assumption that the courts don't mean anything
Speaker 4: to the presidency or the administration. That is absolutely false.
Speaker 4: Any can stop an action of the administration if that
Speaker 4: administration is breaking federal law, and with the current administration
Speaker 4: that's not an unusual occurrence apparently. But yeah, if the
Speaker 4: lower court, district court says, Okay, you can't do this
Speaker 4: because it's unconstitutional, they have the option of what they
Speaker 4: did here, bring it up to the Supreme Court. And
Speaker 4: if they do, the Supreme Court has the option of saying, no,
Speaker 4: we're not going to look at this. You know, it
Speaker 4: depends on how busy they are, a bunch of other stuff,
Speaker 4: what the merits of the case are, what the findings
Speaker 4: of facts, where there's a whole bunch of stuff that
Speaker 4: goes into this is very complex, But they definitely have
Speaker 4: the right to tell the administration to stop. Otherwise our
Speaker 4: government is broken, and that I think is the baseline
Speaker 4: thing they want to do here. They want to make
Speaker 4: sure that even the courts can't stop what they're trying
Speaker 4: to do for an authoritarian government. And that to me
Speaker 4: is criminal in itself, Unamerican in itself, it's absolutely Unamerican.
Speaker 4: And Pam Bondi knows better than this. You know, she
Speaker 4: does have a law degree. You think she would have
Speaker 4: at least taken one course in the Constitution, you know,
Speaker 4: being the highest law the land. People, you can't just
Speaker 4: willy nilly decide that it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Apply to your right.
Speaker 4: The courts decide that, and the Supreme Court is the
Speaker 4: supreme arbiter of the courts. So if it goes to
Speaker 4: them and they say, okay, the lower court probably didn't
Speaker 4: need to do this, or I don't think it's the
Speaker 4: same thing, or they have another argument, than fine, they
Speaker 4: are They tend the Supreme Court tends to take cases
Speaker 4: that involve a possible constitutional crisis, which is courts tell
Speaker 4: them to do something and they don't do it as
Speaker 4: a constitutional crisis, and there's no there's no checks and
Speaker 4: balances anymore. At that point. There's no way that if
Speaker 4: you are unjustly treated by your government that you can
Speaker 4: raise that up to the government and the justice system
Speaker 4: and get justice for an illegal or unjust act. So
Speaker 4: that's my opinion on that that quote is just totally
Speaker 4: off the wall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think what's ironic about it too, is
Speaker 1: that what she's saying is that how dare you, Colurts.
Speaker 1: You know, you're one branch of the government. You can't
Speaker 1: unilaterally stop this other branch of the government from unilaterally
Speaker 1: deciding what money goes where.
Speaker 3: You know, how dare you?
Speaker 4: It's their job, that's what they do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's literally why we have the multiple branches
Speaker 1: of the government is for those checks and balances, and
Speaker 1: so trying to say that, you know, employing those checks
Speaker 1: and balance is is somehow unilaterally designating billions of dollars. No,
Speaker 1: this is money that Congress already vote. You know, they've
Speaker 1: already designated for this kind of thing, and you know
Speaker 1: that's really that's really their job, right, that's you know,
Speaker 1: Congress is the one who controls the purse strings, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really really off the mark, and it's
Speaker 1: it's very frustrating to hear this kind of thing over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, and it's just it's just
Speaker 1: enough to drive a person crazy. Uh So, having said that,
Speaker 1: let's jump back to Eli here and just real.
Speaker 3: Quick because I got a question from it.
Speaker 2: But before I bet she probably did take exactly one
Speaker 2: constitution of course, and it was probably something like a
Speaker 2: biblical interpretation of the constitution.
Speaker 3: You know, that could be that could be.
Speaker 1: So well, Eli, you you were as we were just
Speaker 1: talking about we we we see that de I is
Speaker 1: really being mischaracterized here and and that's merely to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, what DEI does is it's intended to level
Speaker 1: the playing field for groups that are starting out at
Speaker 1: a disadvantage. It's not the prob you know, the the
Speaker 1: the theory behind this philosophy is not to raise one
Speaker 1: group up above any other group. It's to balance that
Speaker 1: playing field. It's to give them, it's to give them
Speaker 1: a leg up, but it's to give them a leg
Speaker 1: up from the hole that they're in, not to you know,
Speaker 1: to get a leg up over any other group. So
Speaker 1: why would why would this current regime be against any
Speaker 1: of against that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Because and you kind of touched on it earlier.
Speaker 2: Not only is it it doesn't feel to the people
Speaker 2: that have the leg up already. When you give everyone
Speaker 2: else the same leg up, it doesn't feel like everyone
Speaker 2: else is getting a leg up. It feels like you're
Speaker 2: getting dragged down. They feel like they're like they feel
Speaker 2: like when you're used to winning at the expense of
Speaker 2: everyone else, and then they that stops happening. Now you're
Speaker 2: not winning as much because we're taking care not to
Speaker 2: make sure that your success is not at the expense
Speaker 2: of others. And so when that success starts to decline
Speaker 2: or change or whatever it may be, you start to
Speaker 2: feel like you're at a disadvantage, and that disadvantage is
Speaker 2: being manufactured by this thing that is giving other people
Speaker 2: the same, you know, not the same advantages you have,
Speaker 2: but just leveling the playing field so that your advantages
Speaker 2: don't really come into play unfairly when they shouldn't. So
Speaker 2: it's this idea that it's it's it's the idea of
Speaker 2: taking the least persecuted group and you know, convincing them
Speaker 2: that they're being persecuted. We see that in like a
Speaker 2: couple of different contexts that we talked about a lot,
Speaker 2: but that's what's happening here. It's the idea that DEI
Speaker 2: is persecuting white men because like, oh, I lost my
Speaker 2: job you know because of the I Well, that means
Speaker 2: that you only had your job because you were a
Speaker 2: white man, So right, right, like shut shut up and
Speaker 2: let somebody qualified you know your position, right.
Speaker 1: We shine light on the problem. Is that you know
Speaker 1: that's uh, that shouldn't be an issue.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that means it work.
Speaker 1: So so are you saying then that opposition to the
Speaker 1: to these policies is to protect a privilege or is
Speaker 1: it to specifically to put down these other groups? I mean,
Speaker 1: is it is it positive discrimination for uh, for oneself?
Speaker 3: Basically?
Speaker 1: I mean, the the people that are pushing these kind
Speaker 1: of things through are you know, largely white male Americans,
Speaker 1: And you know, is it is it just to push
Speaker 1: up that group or is it to push down the
Speaker 1: other group? Or is it just a lucky happenstance that
Speaker 1: they get to do both at once.
Speaker 2: I think probably, if I'm being charitable, it's more likely
Speaker 2: that more human behavior, more human behavior, is motivated by
Speaker 2: selfishness than by malice.
Speaker 3: Right, So I think if.
Speaker 2: I'm being charitable, I could probably be convinced with little
Speaker 2: effort that it's it's just for the purpose of maintaining
Speaker 2: the advantage, because like when you're when you're succeeding, you
Speaker 2: don't want anything to you know, affect that or like
Speaker 2: get in the way of that.
Speaker 3: So I can I can empathize with that.
Speaker 2: Instinct, but it's it's not conducive to like a society,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: So, so you're saying it's more just a the Uh,
Speaker 1: these marginalized groups are really just collateral damage, and you
Speaker 1: know it's just a we're sorry. You know, we didn't
Speaker 1: want to, but we had to to to to maintain
Speaker 1: the status quo. And it's just kind of the price
Speaker 1: of participation.
Speaker 2: In this in this game, right, Like it's like it's
Speaker 2: like you or me, And if I can silence you,
Speaker 2: I don't have to think about the fact I don't
Speaker 2: have to think about you, and so then it's.
Speaker 1: Just made I don't have Yeah, Jonathan, what are your
Speaker 1: thoughts on that? Do you think that this is a
Speaker 1: discriminatory process or or or is that just is that
Speaker 1: a feature or a bug?
Speaker 4: It's a feature? This is actually uh they have they're racists.
Speaker 4: Let's face it, they're racists. These people they're they're attacking
Speaker 4: are not of their tribe and they just feel like
Speaker 4: the American UH, America should be for white cis male,
Speaker 4: heteronormative people, and everybody else should just be servants, you know.
Speaker 4: That's it. That's women included. Are are not part of this.
Speaker 4: It's male. And since the men have been losing their
Speaker 4: competitive edge because they no longer have the system working
Speaker 4: to give them a competitive edge. Once that's gone, they
Speaker 4: have to be like everybody else and they can no
Speaker 4: longer claim to be better than people just by existing.
Speaker 4: And that is it. And the administration is twisting doing
Speaker 4: a backwards somersault to a catch twenty two landing, you know.
Speaker 4: So that's how they're trying to manipulate the narrative of it,
Speaker 4: not what's actually happening, but the narrative that they want
Speaker 4: everybody to believe is happening. And that's what they've been
Speaker 4: doing for a lot of things. The first thing that
Speaker 4: I think of when I think of these sorts of
Speaker 4: activities is that they're attacking what is preventing them from
Speaker 4: doing what they want. So if you're attacking DEI, you
Speaker 4: don't want equality, right, you don't want diversity right, right,
Speaker 4: you don't want any of that. That's you don't want
Speaker 4: any of that quote unquote wokeouness. You don't want people
Speaker 4: to be taking into account that some people in certain
Speaker 4: societal groups are not allowed to do certain things. They say, well,
Speaker 4: they're they're this, or they're that, they're lazy, they're this
Speaker 4: or that, and you know, or they're you know, they're
Speaker 4: you know, some other derogatory term. And the thing is
Speaker 4: that that's not the case at all. What it is
Speaker 4: is they want to make it look like their oppression
Speaker 4: of a group is actually a good thing.
Speaker 1: Right, right, re establishing fairness and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: quote unquote meritocracy.
Speaker 4: Well, if it's meritocracy, there's nothing to change.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: I mean a twisting backwards somersault to rationalize that. So
Speaker 4: there's a catch twenty two. You can't do it either
Speaker 4: way and still right right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, we haven't really talked about the specific specifics of
Speaker 1: these grants that are being canceled in two of them.
Speaker 1: Two of the targeted grants are funding for a program
Speaker 1: called the Teacher Quality Partnership Program, and also the other
Speaker 1: one was the Supporting Effective Educator Development Program, both of
Speaker 1: which are intended to give new teachers the support and
Speaker 1: development opportunities they need to become the high quality educators
Speaker 1: that we need. You know, we need to have good
Speaker 1: teachers in this country, and you know, the way to
Speaker 1: do that is to work from the ground up. We
Speaker 1: need to attract qualified teachers, attract talented teachers, but then
Speaker 1: we also need to support them and to nurture them.
Speaker 1: You know, teaching is a difficult profession. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been a teacher myself for over twenty five years, and
Speaker 1: we know that nearly half of all new teachers leave
Speaker 1: the profession within their first five years. And that that
Speaker 1: to me, that's an amazing uh statistic there. And you
Speaker 1: know you don't see that very often, that that high
Speaker 1: level of attrition at such an early early moment, and
Speaker 1: so so it makes all these support programs all that more, uh,
Speaker 1: all that more important. So how it boggles my mind
Speaker 1: to even have to ask this question. We'll go to
Speaker 1: Eli with it first. How could undermining education be seen
Speaker 1: as a good thing?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you have to take on a perspective
Speaker 2: that is antithetical to to humanism.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: I think it is in the best interest of the
Speaker 2: ruling class that those without it, or those outside of
Speaker 2: it are uneducated or ignorant and can't think about or
Speaker 2: comment on, or speak intelligently or engage critically about the
Speaker 2: goings on of the world. And if that's the case,
Speaker 2: then they're just kind of forced to listen to what,
Speaker 2: you know, they're being told, and you know, there's not
Speaker 2: really like when you don't really have a good method
Speaker 2: for determining who's telling the truth or not and the
Speaker 2: answer is that nobody is, then you can get away
Speaker 2: with with, you know, whatever you want. Like we were
Speaker 2: saying earlier that you know, the day, you know, the
Speaker 2: day Internet gets cut off, as you said, there is
Speaker 2: the day you know something major just happened. Right, So, yeah,
Speaker 2: if they can keep people ignorant, if you can undermine education,
Speaker 2: you can keep your population ignorant. And you can control
Speaker 2: an ignorant population.
Speaker 1: So are you saying that that there's an aspect of
Speaker 1: like risk management here, right? I mean, just remove possible
Speaker 1: future threats. I mean is that kind of the deal
Speaker 1: or is it or is it merely just you know,
Speaker 1: almost an opiate of the masses kind of thing. Just
Speaker 1: keep the masses dumb and obedient and and and you know,
Speaker 1: keep the keep the dollars flowing in.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, little column a little column B right, right,
Speaker 2: it's I think go ahead, John.
Speaker 4: I was just gonna say that, Yeah, it's if you
Speaker 4: haven't the only way you have a democracy or republic
Speaker 4: is with an educated populist. Thomas Jefferson pointed that out.
Speaker 4: So now if you if you don't have, if you
Speaker 4: dumb down the population, then you control the absolute narrative.
Speaker 4: You know, Uh, we're doing the right thing. The economy
Speaker 4: is going fine. You know, it was the last guy
Speaker 4: who had the greatest economy, economy and greatest recovery we
Speaker 4: ever had, who who messed it up for you? You know,
Speaker 4: and then you know things that are not in control
Speaker 4: of the government. Economy is not completely in the control
Speaker 4: of the government. It's more in the control of the
Speaker 4: boardrooms across you know, across the world. So you know,
Speaker 4: it's like there's very little the government can do when
Speaker 4: there's like inflation and things like that. There's a lot
Speaker 4: that can do by you know, regulation and things like that.
Speaker 4: And the Federal Reserve has more power than any other
Speaker 4: branch of the government. So but the people who take
Speaker 4: credit are the people who were elected, even though they
Speaker 4: probably did very little that actually had an effect. So
Speaker 4: you know, it's like the whole thing is the same thing.
Speaker 4: Keep your people to where they don't understand what's going on.
Speaker 4: You can make everything black or white to them, there's
Speaker 4: no nuance, so they can just do what you tell
Speaker 4: them is white, and everything that's black is everything that
Speaker 4: everybody else wants, you know. So that's the propaganda point
Speaker 4: is control the narrative. And to do that, you can't
Speaker 4: have people who think for themselves or have independent sources
Speaker 4: of information.
Speaker 1: So, Jonathan, I think we got time for one more
Speaker 1: quick question, and I want that I want to direct
Speaker 1: this one you and I'll apologize in advance. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you to take the position of the other
Speaker 1: perspective on this problem. Here. So, the current occupant of
Speaker 1: the White House was elected by the American people to
Speaker 1: take specifically to take the helm and steer the ship,
Speaker 1: as it were. Isn't this type of action just another
Speaker 1: way for a leader to provide guidance for the nation
Speaker 1: they've been entrusted with.
Speaker 4: Allegedly elected Anyway, the whole idea is that, yes, the
Speaker 4: mandate is not a full mandate because he didn't win
Speaker 4: one hundred percent there are still constituencies that he has
Speaker 4: to represent, and by deliberately targeting those constituencies, he is
Speaker 4: not anybody. You know. The current administration is doing things
Speaker 4: that are pretty much beyond the pale, most of them.
Speaker 4: Most of this DEI canceling stuff is illegal. Congress passed
Speaker 4: these grants, pass this money for that to find how
Speaker 4: they were supposed to be spent and develop the rules
Speaker 4: for it. So Congress makes the laws. The administration does not.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Right, The administration is there to implement the laws as
Speaker 4: described by Congress. Right, So this is another constitutional crisis
Speaker 4: going on. If you decide to take the legislative branch
Speaker 4: into your own hands, what's that say? You know, so
Speaker 4: that's the question.
Speaker 1: Good question, Yeah, And I think that's a good place
Speaker 1: for us to close out our discussion here