In Regent University Commencement, Youngkin Criticizes Higher-Ed Conformity; Earle-Sears Named Alumna of the Year

In a commencement speech at Regent University, Governor Glenn Youngkin told graduates to follow two guides: mentors and a “compass that points us in the direction of core values that define us.” He told them that they were not called to comfort, and criticized conformity in academia.

“Sometimes we are called to speak up, to say unpopular things, to invite ridicule and scorn. If I could offer one critique of higher education today, and I mean this in the most global sense, it’s that there’s too much group-think, too much conformity to modern doctrine, too much intolerance that rears itself in the form of a canceled culture,” Youngkin said.

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Virginia Community College State Board Wants Patrick Henry Community College to Change Its Name

Virginia’s State Board for Community Colleges (VCCS) wants officials at Dabney S. Lancaster Community College (DSLCC) and Patrick Henry Community College (PHCC) to revisit decisions to not change their names, according to a press release. According to PHCC Board Chair Janet Copenhaver, the VCCS board will change the name if the PHCC board does not.

“They sent us a letter back last week saying that they voted unanimously not to accept that name and that we had ‘x’ amount of time to come up with a new name or they would rename it.

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Commentary: The Turbulent True History of the ‘Good Ole Days’ of Politics

Founding Fathers, Reagan-Bush, Trump

by Jeffery A. Rendall   It’s only natural in times of political turmoil – like what we’re experiencing now and for as long as I can remember – that people harken back to yesteryear for a more tranquil period when everyone got along swimmingly and went out for drinks after each encounter regardless of the rhetorical fights they engaged in earlier that day. We all recall the good ‘ol days as if there was never any conflict; people had manners “back then” and even political enemies found it within their beings to bury the hatchet in their minds rather than in someone else’s back. But was it really that way? A thorough perusal of history reveals that today’s political brawls aren’t much apart from those of the past. Even America’s Founding Fathers were hardly immune from the backbiting and triviality that’s so much in evidence today. Take James Madison and Alexander Hamilton for example. Jay Cost wrote at National Review last week, “One point that I do not linger on in [my new book] is how the two of them came to ascribe bad motives to each other. In Madison’s reckoning, Hamilton was a would-be monarchist who sought the destruction of the republic itself.…

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Constitution Series: How and Why the First Ten Amendments – the Bill of Rights – Were Proposed and Ratified in Less Than Three Years

    This is the fifth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23. The first ten amendments to the Constitution – the Bill of Rights – were proposed in Congress and ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the states in less than three years, a speed of action that seems improbable, given the undeveloped state of travel and communications at the time and the lengthy process more recent amendments to the Constitution have undergone. But the urgency with which the new nation acted upon the Bill of Rights simply confirms this key point: the secular covenant by which the citizens of the United States agreed to be governed consists of both the Constitution document delivered to the country by the Constitutional Convention, and the Ten Amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights proposed by the Congress and ratified by the States. There were four distinct phases in the formation of this secular covenant, or “solemn agreement,” and had not all four phases been completed, the agreement might not have held. (1) The Constitutional…

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