UK primary school bans “mum” and “dad,” American belief in God plummets (and other stories)

A roundup of important news and interviews from around the interwebs.

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In the latest woke stupidity, some Brighton primary schools in the UK have banned the words “mum” and “dad” in order to avoid offending children living with gay couples or coming from broken families. Parents, predictably, are very unhappy about this.

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For the past couple of years, I’ve been writing about how short-term political gains may not be the good news we suppose—because a growing mountain of data indicates that the younger generation has utterly abandoned the values that undergirded traditional civilization, while embracing the emerging new ideologies. Here’s the latest bit of data that underscores the sea change we are witnessing:

Back in 1993, two-thirds of American adults told pollsters from the General Social Survey they “know God really exists” and had “no doubts about it.” As recently as 2008 this certainty of belief in God topped 60 percent.

But during the 2010s faith in a higher power eroded at an unprecedented rate. By 2016 the share of confident believers had fallen to 57 percent. And by 2021 — the most recent year with available data — unwavering faith fell below 50 percent for the first time.

(Technically, it dropped to 49.7 percent. Given margins of error with survey data like this, you typically shouldn’t go out to decimal points, as that implies a level of precision that isn’t really warranted by the data. But “fewer than half” makes for a much more dramatic headline, so it’s what I’m going with today. I’ve got a family to feed, etc.)

This is, as they say, a very big deal.

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I’m still working through a mountain of information on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For now, Rod Dreher has two excellent blog posts laying out why so many conservatives are so torn about what to do. “The Long War Upon Us” and “Russia’s Shame” are worth the read—they are an introduction to the debate about what this all means, what is coming next, and how the West should respond. I spent months researching Putin’s Russia a couple of years back and spent several weeks there doing interviews (and coming within 100 feet of the man himself), and I will write about this when I’m more confident of my own position.

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More soon.