Indoctrination. There’s no other way to explain what’s happening to our children in the public school system in California. They are being indoctrinated into a progressive worldview on a daily basis, and sex education is arguably the clearest example of institutional, systematic indoctrination into this worldview.

Should children be taught at an early age age transgenderism? Should students at any age be taught by schools about bondage, anal sex, oral sex, or anything that many Americans still view as improper sexual activities? These are discussions that should be between parents and their children, not schools. But parents are incompetent in the eyes of progressives, especially those who have an agenda to subvert faith-based beliefs of abstinence, chastity, and traditional sexual relationships through marriage.

OAN’s Liz Wheeler is spot on, as usual, in pointing out how the methodical indoctrination into progressive sexual worldviews is pervasive and required in the California public school system. Parents, be warned.

As President Trump fulfills a campaign promise to return control of K-12 education to the states, it’s a refreshing reminder that federalism really can be accomplished to some extent even as both parties vie for greater power in DC. His “Education Federalism Executive Order” will launch a 300-day review of Obama-era regulations and guidance for school districts and directs Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to modify or repeal measures she deems an overreach by the federal government.

This is wonderful news. Hopefully, it’s not the last we hear about federalism coming from the administration.

At any given moment, Republicans or Democrats may be embracing some variation of federalism. Once President Trump took office, it became very popular for Democrats to start talking about allowing states to make decisions for themselves with California leading their charge of applying federalism selectively. As for Republicans, federalism seems to be the catch-all last resort; when they have a topic that’s either too toxic or something they failed to address with their standard measures, they turn to federalism for solutions.

We’ve seen examples of each of these springing up over the last couple of years. Should we be applauding their efforts? No. For federalism to work, it must be applied as an overarching philosophy of governance, not as a cherry-picked buzzword to throw out there when it’s politically expedient.

Over the last few days, I’ve had some free time to explore the ways both major parties attempt to apply federalism. That’s the one silver lining to being under the weather – plenty of reading time. As I caught up on as many of the recent pushes for federalism as I could find, there was one unifying quality to the stories. They all used federalism as a means to an end rather than as the end itself.

Americans need federalism now. It’s not fair to say we need it now more than ever because we’ve always needed it. Just because the tenets of federalism are applied less today than in the past doesn’t mean the need is more dire. That’s not how federalism works. You don’t sprinkle a little of it over your salad and call it a day. You embrace it as the standard by which American government from top to bottom is administered.

To do this, we have to apply the Constitution to everything government does. We start at the federal level since DC is the entity that exemplifies our nation’s trajectory towards statism. Piece by piece, we tear down the administrative state by asking two simple questions: does the Constitution allow this and would it be better handled locally?

An example of how the first question is applied would be Obamacare. One must do constitutional gymnastics in order to give a reason why the federal government should be so deeply involved in the health insurance industry. The Affordable Care Act is a hodgepodge of different loopholes and law-bending tactics put together to create the illusion that there’s nothing wrong with the government completely overreaching into a private industry that applies to nearly every American. On these grounds alone, it should be repealed. There are plenty of other grounds for repealing it, the most conspicuous being that is has failed magnificently to make healthcare more affordable, accessible, or improved.

The second question has the perfect example holding many of our children for much of the day Monday through Friday. The education system is broken. The Department of Education is a three-decade-old failed experiment. The only thing keeping the illusion alive that it’s helpful in any way is that DC has taken a huge amount of taxpayer dollars and redirected it to programs intended to improve education. They pay for so much that happens in the public school system that most people involved in it couldn’t imagine what life would be like without the federal government’s handouts. DC has been able to embed itself through taxpayer dollars and has demonstrably botched every effort to make the system better.

If less money was taken by the federal government, more money could go directly from taxpayers to their schools. Today, most taxpayer dollars applied to education don’t even go towards our children’s education. Imagine if those same dollars (or less) were applied at the school, district, city, county, and state levels instead. We’d have more control over the quality of our children’s education. More importantly, there would no longer be the federal standards scapegoat invoked by many school administrators today.

Federalism works because it allows more responsibility to be taken at the local level. When the responsibility is in the hands of our neighbors instead of bureaucrats and lifetime politicians in DC, voters have much more say. Our voices can be heard by our leaders and representatives when we’re meeting them for coffee instead of sending them emails or Tweeting at their social media interns. Moreover, our votes have more pull.

Federalism does NOT work when it’s applied piecemeal. It can certainly help in individual situations on certain issues, such as the plan to put food stamps under the control of states instead of the USDA. There are other times when applying federalism in one-off situations is wrong, such as the argument that sanctuary cities are a form of righteous federalism. I’ll flesh out why that’s not the case in a future article.

If our nation can put the tenets of federalism into action across the board, we can begin the process of taking down the budgets, bureaucracies, and powers that have been in a continuous state of accumulation for decades. Only then can we be certain our freedoms stay intact and every American has an opportunity at prosperity.

A great video introduction of the inner workings of the modern-day musket, a rifle everyone on the Pro-Liberty Right should own.

The AR-15 is the modern-day musket, the basic rifle of the common man or woman. Equivalent to the Kentucky long rifle from days of yore. Owning one should be a basic requirement to obtaining one’s woman or man card with building one from a stripped lower receiver on up the best way to become intimately familiar with the firearm.

It’s been said that the AR-15 is a ‘Barbie-doll’ for grown ups, with countless options and accessories beyond the basic form. The rifle has two main parts – the upper and lower receivers. The upper comprises the barrel, upper receiver, gas impingement or piston system, Picatinny rails or hand guards and optical or back up iron sights.

The lower receiver is the critical part of the system, with the basic part [colloquially called a ‘stripped’ lower receiver]. It could be thought of as the ‘motherboard’ of the rifle. This is the part that has the serial number and is considered to be a ‘gun’ in its basic state.

For those interested in building one of these fine rifles, there are a number of tutorial videos and articles on the web. Such as the series outlined below from the fine people at Brownells.

Everyone can start out by getting a stripped lower receiver and add the parts for the fire control group as well as the upper receiver and other parts. It is a great way to learn the intricacies of the rifle, just be careful since it’s very easy to accidentally lose a stripped lower receiver since its only a small, lightweight piece of aluminium that can easily be misplaced.

How To Build An AR

Brownells: How to Build an AR-15