Hurricane kicks

I usually ask first time guests on my AM program (1) if Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy (yes, he was) and (2) if they have read "The Looming Tower" by @lawrence_wright. I do that to get a sense for whether or not I am dealing with someone who has a basic grasp on post-war American history. I'm changing up the entrance exam for at least a while, so study up would-be guests. The new trio of inquiries will be (1) Tell me a little about the Ottoman Empire? (2) Tell me a little about the British Mandate? (3) What was the hot spot in the Roman Empire in 70 A.D. and what did those Romans do that year? These are basic, basic questions, the answers to which should be taught and learned in a world history course in 9th grade, and certainly hammered down in an AP World History course in a later year of high school. Students admitted to an "elite" college certainly should know informed if not complete responses. If they don't, should learn them very, very early on in their "university education." I doubt 1 in 100 of the "demonstrators" on campuses across the U.S. know these basic, basic things. (I am also confident that most of the people who pause to recognize out loud that they are speaking on land that belonged to long-ago expelled "native peoples" have zero idea that the very same concept and respect for "first peopels", if extended to the Middle East, would have to recognize the Jews as the original peoples of Israel.) The combination of ignorance and ideology is lethal to informed, productive argument (and as @marcthiessen noted to me yesterday, especially when that combination is welded on to an individual's complete certainty/arrogance). This is where public education education and college/university faculties and administrators at most of those schools have brought us: To an intersection of ignorance, ideology and iron certitude about whatever an individual choses to believe or feel. @christopherrufo nailed this all in his prophetic "America's Cultural Revolution": amazon.com/Americas-Cultu… If you want to get a handle on how we ended up here, get and read Rufo's book. It is a revelation, especially for people (incuding me) who dismissed academic leftists as impotent and under-educated ideologues who could not possibly persuade many people with their jargon over any period of time. I was wrong about that, as have been millions of other Americans. Time to start changiong that. My two suggestions, both of which depend on a robust use of the Spending Clause by the next Congress when that Congress is controlled in both chambers by the GOP and with a Republican in the White House: Use the reconciliation process to: (1) Ban, absolutely, any federal funding for anything, including student loans, for any school with an endowment of $5 billion or more; and (2) Ban federal education dollars for K-12 schools going to any state that does not offer a robust school choice option for parents. (@DeAngelisCorey can fill in the details on what constitutes "robust.") These two measures would absolutely be constitutional exercises of the spending power and would fit easily within the Congress' rules governing reconciliation and thus be subject to simple majority vote in the Senate. If @realDonaldTrump adds both to his agenda, he will engage the parents of America who are presently in despair over the quality of public education in their area and the descent of most colleges into factories of anti-American and anti-Western ideologues.