Since COVID’s start, “it was evident to me that the loss of human connection would be detrimental to our students’ development,” laments Canadian schoolteacher Stacey Lance at Common Sense. “Overlooked has been the deep shame young people feel: Our students were taught to think of their schools as hubs for infection and themselves as vectors of disease.” When in-person school returned, one student confided “that she was terrified of taking her mask off.” She didn’t want to be responsible for someone dying. Clearly, we’ve betrayed our children. “The risks of this pandemic were never to them, but they were forced to carry the burden of it.” 

At City Journal, Jim Quinn debunks the New York Civil Liberties Union study “Cop Out”: “The report’s snappy title and its conclusion — that the New York City Police Department can’t be trusted to discipline itself — are not supported by the actual data” from the Civilian Complaint Review Board. For one, the NYCLU “trumpeted that less than 1% of CCRB complaints result in serious police discipline.” Yet “only 7% of all the complaints — and only 3% of the improper use-of-force complaints — were substantiated when scrutinized by the CCRB’s own independent, non-NYPD investigators.” The NYCLU also ignores cases whose outcomes included “instruction,” “command level instruction,” “reprimand,” “formalized training” and “warned and admonished.” Counting those, “the NYPD imposed discipline in almost 76 percent of the substantiated cases where the CCRB recommended discipline.” 

“Insisting that art serve social justice is a narrow vision of what art is meant to — and can — do,” warns Joseph Horowitz at American Purpose. Think “of an important 20th-century painter — say, Mark Rothko — and chances are” his or her work doesn’t fit the bill. Neither does that of “America’s preeminent 20th-century novelist, William Faulkner.” Yes, Faulkner’s South festers “with glaring injustice. But Faulkner is no John Steinbeck, advocating for the poor. He would not fit the funding guidelines at hand.” Indeed, “insisting that plays, paintings, and symphonies expressly serve social justice quite obviously risks marginalizing the arts by erasing part of what they stand for” — and it’s often “a trap to justify the arts based on such practical benefits as social reform and economic impact.” Such a “zero-sum game exacerbates divisions that already rip the social fabric.”

“What happened in Colleyville provides an object lesson in intelligence failure and the toxic effect of wokeness on the FBI,” blasts Roger Kimball at Spectator World. When British terrorist Malik Faisal Akram — in America despite being on MI5’s “radar for years” — took hostages at a Texas synagogue, “the G-Men climbed into their SWAT gear and shades, revved up their scary armored vehicles, flipped off the safeties on their guns, grenades and tear gas canisters” — and made sure “their megaphones had fresh batteries.” The agent in charge said Akram “singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community,” despite hearing him rage against the Jews in his last phone call. Heck, it even “turns out that the hostages freed themselves,” thanks to the synagogue’s quick-thinking rabbi distracting the captor with a chair.

“Public-health officials should aim to do more than merely minimize the spread of disease,” explains Tomas J. Philipson at The Wall Street Journal: “They should seek to reduce the total harm caused by both infection and heavy-handed attempts to prevent it.” Just as “we don’t close highways to minimize accidental deaths, despite the existence of dangerous drivers,” lockdowns and school closures can be “more costly to society than the damage done by an illness.” That’s why “efforts to stop the spread should focus on older people, who are at higher risk of severe illness and not as active in the economy as younger people.” President Biden should make total harm reduction “his administration’s objective now — and that includes the harm done by lockdowns, school closings and unproductive restrictions on economic activity.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board