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Medical Technology Analyst discusses the spooky implications of data mining in Common Core

April 10, 2013
Wilson

Writer

GLENN: Before we went on vacation a couple of weeks ago, Nic Anderson, he called us up and we were talking about the Common Core and what they were using. And I had mentioned something that was in Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance: Critical factors for success in the 21st century. And this is from the Department of Education. This is their handbook that they had posted. And I asked him, because he called up and he said ‑‑ he could define what an FCAT ‑‑ or an fMRI was. And it talks about fMRIs, it talks about, you know, digital wristbands around your kids' wrists and monitoring everything about your kids while they're in class. And he called in to say, "Hey, look, the definition of, you know, some of these things." And I said, well, would you look into this. Well, he did, and he's reporting back now. And he's a guy who uses this technology. He is actually a medical technology analyst and owner of North Carolina Anderson Consulting. Let's bring Nic in. Nic, is it NC Anderson or is it North Carolina Anderson Consulting?

ANDERSON: NC Anderson.

GLENN: NC Anderson Consulting.

ANDERSON: But I'm sure the people of North Carolina appreciate the shout‑out.

GLENN: Okay. So Nic, first of all, you are only working off of what you found in the Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance from the Department of Education's website, right?

ANDERSON: That's right. Either there or from the people that they cite as experts. I've gone to them and I've looked up what they are doing, what they are working on. But yes, it's all based off of this document from the Department of Education.

GLENN: I told you two weeks ago, I said anything that you find, make sure you burn it to a DVD because, are you aware of what the Department of Education has done with this handbook?

ANDERSON: Yeah. So I ‑‑ the day after, maybe the day of when you and I spoke on March 28th, I went and I logged on and tried to find the PDF and couldn't find it anywhere. And thank goodness Keith had ‑‑ one of your ‑‑

GLENN: Producers.

ANDERSON: Yeah. He called ‑‑ he sent me the link and I was able to go to it straight from there. But then I tried to look it up on my own and couldn't find it anywhere and I just found it again yesterday but it's ‑‑

GLENN: Buried.

ANDERSON: You have to dig for it. It's not right there.

GLENN: Yeah. It used to be right there.

ANDERSON: Right.

GLENN: They know we are onto them and they are trying to cover their tracks. If you are doing anything on Common Core, I'm telling you this is absolute evil. It is evil. Make no mistake. And you are going to come up against the big Republicans and the big Democrats on this one. Evil.

Nic, what did you find about the things that they are doing? I mean, they are making our kids into guinea pigs and they are monitoring them and they are collecting data points on them. What did you find?

ANDERSON: That's right. I mean, one of the interesting things is right at the top of this document, right in the beginning, let me read this little paragraph. I mean, this is just, it's comical if it wasn't scary. It says, "It may not always be productive to persevere in the face of challenge. For example, persevering to accomplish goals that are extrinsically motivated, unimportant to the student or in some way inappropriate for the student and potentially induce stress, anxiety and distraction and have detrimental impacts on students' long‑term retention, conceptual learning or psychological wellbeing. Careful research is still necessary to help educators learn how to protect students, engage them, and fine‑tune practices..."

GLENN: So wait a minute. They are saying that it might be inappropriate, it might be uncomfortable but they still have to do it?

ANDERSON: That's right. And the funny thing is this whole document's about grit and perseverance and they are saying, you know what? It might not be a good thing to always try hard. There are times when, you know, we don't want to overstress these kids because, you know, heaven, heaven forbid they actually have to work for something.

GLENN: Okay. So let's talk a little bit about the fMRI.

ANDERSON: Sure.

GLENN: Skin conductance and pupil monitoring that they are planning on doing.

ANDERSON: So the document, let's see. Page 32 says, for example, data mining techniques can track students' trajectories or persistence and learning over time, thereby providing actionable feedback to students and teachers. In additional, functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, and psychological indicators offer insight into the biology and neuroscience underlying observed students' behaviors.

Well, fMRI is based on the premise that as your brain thinks, it consumes oxygen and increases the magnetization of certain regions of your brain. So in theory I could take a kid and put him in the scanner and ask him a series of questions, things he should have learned in class and if his brain isn't consuming oxygen as I would expect it to be, well, then in theory I could hold the kid back at the end of the year, I could advance him if he answers really well and so on. The fusion tensor imaging is not mentioned in the article but it is a major research point right now by a couple of the authors. The fusion tensor imaging is able to track how two areas of the brain are connected. So if I said the color "brown" and you think of dirt, those are two separate things. Dirt is brown and brown is brown. Those are two separate parts of the brain thinking of something, but they're connected. And if I did an fMRI on you, I could see that, wait a minute, why when I said the word "brown" did this part of your brain light up. Well, diffusion tenser imaging will allow me to draw a connection between where the color brown is located in your brain and where the word "dirt" or the concept of dirt is located in your brain, and I can connect those two things.

GLENN: So what does that do?

ANDERSON: Well ‑‑

GLENN: Why do I need that or what is the good part of that and bad part of that?

ANDERSON: The good, some of the good parts, it's used in stroke. You know, like in detecting a stroke patient, you know, so on, certain things. But where it's being proposed in education is that if I could do diffusion tenser imaging, if kids aren't making these connections like I would expect them to be, something's wrong. And once again I could hold the kid back. So if I said, you know, 4 times 4 and then the part of your brain that is able to analyze that is not connected to the 4 times 4 part of your brain, then I suspect that something's wrong with you.

GLENN: Can I tell you something? I just had ‑‑ because I'm trying some holistic things and everything else and ‑‑ because I have really severe neuropathy and so I was on vacation. I went and I had a brain scan and I think it was probably kind of like an fMRI. But they did this whole scan on me and the doctor, when he got to the brain scan, he was sitting behind the deal and he went, whoa, never seen that before. And that's really something you don't want your doctor to say. And I said, what is that? And he said, you've got to look at this. And the creative side of my brain was just on fire. He's like, I've not ever seen the creative side. And he said, he started showing me. He said, look at how this all connects all the way down. Well, I would be spat out as abnormal, but you in a good way. Now ‑‑

ANDERSON: Yeah.

GLENN: Now, if I am ‑‑ the things that make me unique, for instance my ADHD, that has made me unique and has made me, because I can adapt to it, it gives me a different set of skills than everybody else. If they start saying, well, you're not functioning like everybody else, you're going to destroy the people like Steve Jobs because I can guarantee you Steve Jobs doesn't think like everybody else. The guy who runs Virgin Airways.

ANDERSON: Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, or anybody.

GLENN: Einstein, yeah, didn't they ‑‑ I think they pickled his brain to be able to see it later because he operated differently. So isn't this doing extraordinary damage to people?

ANDERSON: That's right ‑‑ ‑ that to the overseers of this. So if we did skin conductance testing which is, you know, if I say something and it makes you panic, your skin gets clammy, that's part of your sympathetic nervous system and I can detect the clamminess of your skin and I go, wait, you shouldn't be freaking out like that. That was a simple question I asked you about, you know, some mathematical problem or whatever. And I can detect that data point. This whole article, by the way, this whole draft is all based on data mining. They mention it a hundred times. And that's ‑‑

GLENN: Explain what data mining means. Explain why that's bad.

ANDERSON: So let me see if I can find. They mention data mining right in the very top of it. New technologies using educational data mining and affective computing ‑‑ "affective computing" is fMRIs, skin conductants, pupil dilation monitoring ‑‑ are being ‑‑ are beginning to focus on microlevel moment‑by‑moment data within digital and blended learning environments to provide feedback to adapt learning tasks to personalized needs.

So what they will do is I could take a group of 100 kids, and they're all let's say in twelfth grade and I'm able to ask them all a series of questions while I'm monitoring them with skin conduct ants or pressure monitors or whatever it is. And then I'd be able in theory, this is all in theory, to collect that data over fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade and so on and stratify those children maybe by the time they get to high school and say, "okay, over the last 10 years every time I ask Tommy and Billy and Sally a mathematical question, they clam up, they freak out and they get the answer wrong" and now I can use that data to steer them or whatever it may be. But this data mining, if I can collect data ‑‑ and don't get me wrong. I'm not against data. That's all I do all day long is analyze data. I love data, but I love data in the free market. I don't love data in the government. And if parents could opt out, if parents could choose to have nothing to do with this, then that's one thing. But ‑‑

GLENN: No, but it won't work that way. You create too ‑‑

ANDERSON: ‑‑ opt out of Social Security taxes if I could.

GLENN: You will create two class systems. If you opt out of the government collecting 20 years of data on your kid, they will make it so no one will want to hire you because I know exactly what I'm going to get from Nic. If I hire Nic, I know who he is because I've got this 20‑year research study done by the government. But I don't know who you are.

ANDERSON: Correct.

GLENN: And why is it that you are so freaky that you didn't want in this system in the first place, right?

ANDERSON: This is funny because you mentioned a few minutes ago, you know, where are we going? I mean, this is sci‑fi stuff that if I mentioned this to you 10 years ago, you would have called me a conspiracy theorist, and here I am. I'm holding the document in my hand.

GLENN: And let me tell you something. And Nic, they are still saying ‑‑ I mean, you have Republicans coming out and saying this is conspiracy theorist stuff.

ANDERSON: Right.

GLENN: They are saying that today. We're not talking about making this up and drawing conclusions. It is in the Department of Education's own textbook.

ANDERSON: That's right.

GLENN: It is in their plan.

ANDERSON: You know, in 1840 a man named Frederick Bastiat. You can read his book, it's 100 pages long called The Law. And he said if you suggest the doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is directly said, quote, you're a dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws. You would shake the basis upon which society rests.

GLENN: Explain that.

ANDERSON: If any one of us stands up, Mia Love did this year in Utah saying, no, we've got to get rid of the Department of Education. She was lambasted, you know. This is a fascinating thing to me that if I stand up ‑‑ and I do this all the time in arguments against the FDA. We do not need the Food and Drug Administration. If you think the Department of Education's bad, the FDA's ab horn. And I know this because I study medical devices all day long. But if you stand up and you say, "We just don't need the FDA, they need to go away, or the United States Department of Education," it is said of you you're a dangerous experimenter, Nic, you're a utopian, you're a theorist, in the modern day terms you're a conspiracy theorist. But no, I need to get rid of the Department of Education, they need to get out, it needs to be privatized. And I mean, this is the stuff that makes heads at MSNBC explode is that, well, what are the poor kids going to do? Incidentally I call MSNBC an intellectual coloring book for adults. You know, I don't really want to think; I just want to doodle. But I mean, MSNBC, this is what makes those brains explode is that they can't fathom a world where the government stays out in the free market, takes care of education. You would get a better education for cheaper, and kids could ‑‑ you could collect data on those kids and it would be private amongst the parents and the children. And then the child, when he does graduate in high ‑‑ high school in twelfth grade, could have his own data that he could present to a university and say, "You know what? I have real data. I don't have the government‑collected data garbage that all my peers have."

GLENN: They have some pictures ‑‑

ANDERSON: They could have that and the free market could do it.

GLENN: They have some pictures in this. They have chairs that monitor the kids, they have these wristbands that they put on. It's really disturbing‑looking stuff.

ANDERSON: Right.

GLENN: Is it just the pictures look bad? Are these like assault pictures because the wristband is black? I mean, you know ‑‑

ANDERSON: Right, exactly. It's black. So it's ‑‑ does it have a pistol grip?

GLENN: I mean, the facial expression cameras that will be on each of our kids, the pupil cameras, those ‑‑ that's disturbing, isn't it?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Yeah, the pupil dilation and the skin conduct ants are based off the same principle that there is the sympathetic nervous system, which we all know as the "fight or flight" you know. So if I asked your kid, like the picture in the documents, one of those web cams and it would be able to detect your kid's pupils dilating meaning, "I'm shocked and I don't know the answer to the question."

GLENN: Right. But it also could be –

ANDERSON: like point out America on a map of North America, which most kids can't do.

GLENN: It could be also like your parents have guns, you'll see the pupil dilate and you'll see, why are you nervous about that, right?

ANDERSON: That's right. That's right.

GLENN: Nic, thank you very much. We'll have you on again, Nic Anderson, medical technology analyst and owner of NC Anderson Consulting. Again if you do anything on Common Core, make sure you burn it to disc because they are erasing it all and it is extraordinarily dangerous.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.