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The following is an Epoch Times TV video interview transcript. This is the link to the 43-minute video: https://www.theepochtimes.com/alvin-lui-how-schools-are-weaponizing-inclusion-empathy-and-social-emotional-learning-to-indoctrinate-children_5007771.html?ea_src=ai_recommender
Alvin Lui: How Schools Are Weaponizing ‘Inclusion,’ Empathy, and ’Social Emotional Learning’ to Indoctrinate Children
“My great grandfather ran from communism. The people that dragged him out of his little bakery shop and beat him weren’t soldiers. They were college kids—the Red Guard. And I see that that’s what they’re creating now with a lot of these kids.”
After watching the destructive impact that progressive policies were having in California, Alvin Lui packed up and relocated to the Midwest. But in Indiana, he saw the same ideology taking hold.
“So I realized that if I didn’t try to at least do something … that I can’t complain. And I have nothing to complain about because I grew up in the time where I might be able to do something about it, even if it’s just a couple of parents at a time,” says Lui.
Today, Lui is president of Courage Is A Habit, which creates resources for parents to help protect their children from ideological indoctrination masquerading as education, from pronoun ideology to “social emotional learning.”
“When you weaponize parents’ kindness against them to guilt them—to emotionally blackmail them so that they give up control of their kids—there’s no way that you’re the good guy,” says Lui.
We discuss how transgenderism is being pushed in schools by teachers, administrators, counselors, and social workers, who aim to drive a wedge between parents and their children. We also look into how social media corrupts young minds and predisposes them to depression and a negative body image.
“Social media really messes with girls’ minds, right? Men? We get it too, but not as badly as girls. This is why the transgender cult affects girls more than boys,” explains Lui.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Alvin Lui, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Alvin Lui:
Thank you, it’s such an honor to be here. I’m really excited about our conversation.
Mr. Jekielek:
Well, I am too. I’ve been coming across these very, well-designed materials that seem to be floating around the internet, explaining in very simple terms things related to gender ideology, what parents should know in relatively simple language that anybody could understand. I found myself wondering where’s all this coming from? I kept seeing the “Courage is a Habit” moniker popping up, and then I discovered Alvin Lui.
Mr. Lui:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
You’ve been very active in trying to educate parents, especially, but also kids, around the realities of what’s being taught in schools these days. And you’re a parent yourself, obviously. Just give me a sense of how this all began. When did you realize that something was amiss?
Mr. Lui:
I’m originally from California. I was born and raised in California, and I moved my young family from California to Indiana in April of 2020. Now, that was right in the beginning of the pandemic. We didn’t move because of the pandemic. It was already planned, and we moved to Indiana. The Midwest is wonderful. We couldn’t be happier.
But then, I started seeing the same seeds starting to grow that ruined California. To be frank, I was just tired of fighting. In California, you’re just fighting all the time. At the time, you didn’t realize that a couple of generations of kids had already been indoctrinated in academia in K-12. Because California is always ahead on what the rest of the country is seeing now. When I saw this in Indiana, what was interesting is that everybody reacted the way we did 20 years ago. “Oh, it’s not that bad. Oh, it’ll fix itself.” In Indiana, and especially in the Midwest, they’ll go, “It will never happen here.”
Mr. Jekielek:
We’re talking casually about 20 years of indoctrination, but what exactly was being taught back then, and what were people being indoctrinated with?
Mr. Lui:
Instead of teaching children rigorous academics in school so that they could be independent, successful people, they were teaching them a certain brand of politics. It wasn’t, “Here is the Left, here is the Right,” and then let them make the decision. It was, “Here is the woke ideology. Here is one side, and the other side is bad.” When you do that, children will naturally grow up, of course, to vote one way. And that’s what happened in California.
Everybody laughs at California about how they got that way. They got that way because they were indoctrinating the children to vote only one way, and to vote that way even if it’s to their own demise. When I saw the same thing in Indiana, I saw the same seeds being planted, it was like watching the same movie again, except I knew the ending. At that moment, when I realized this, I realized there was really nowhere to run.
My great grandfather ran from Communist China when he was already an older man. That’s how my father got here, and my siblings and I were born here as well. Moving from California to Indiana is nowhere nearly as dramatic, obviously. We’re very lucky to still live in this country. But I realized that there’s nowhere for my children or anybody’s children to run. There’s nowhere to go.
As I always allude to, nobody’s escaping the United States to go to Cuba in the middle of the night. I realized that if I didn’t try to at least do something, even in the tiniest form, that I can’t complain. I have nothing to complain about, because I have grown up in a time when I might be able to do something about it, even if it’s just a couple of parents at a time.
Mr. Jekielek:
20 years ago, there wasn’t as close a tie between voting for the Democratic Party and say, woke ideology.
Mr. Lui:
Right.
Mr. Jekielek:
And by no means is it a one-to-one thing, even today. It’s definitely much more prevalent.
Mr. Lui:
Sure.
Mr. Jekielek:
Was it the voting that you noticed, or was it the ideology that you noticed, or both? Are they always tied together? What do you mean by that?
Mr. Lui:
It was a lot of young people having opinions and thoughts that, when questioned, they would fall back on a lot of rhetoric and a lot of slogans. One of the things in California is the whole issue of illegal immigration. They have convinced generations of people that letting floods and floods of illegal aliens into the state has no impact on your finances or your safety or anything, no matter what facts, and no matter what kind of statistics you show them. That doesn’t matter.
They just go, “No human is illegal.” Growing up there, it’s like fish that don’t know they’re wet, right? When you’re growing up there, you have no idea because you grew up there. Then, when you start having kids, and you’re just trying to build a business, you start to go, “Why is it like this here in California? And then, you start traveling. The thing about people in California is they don’t travel very much. That’s the funny thing. They just stay around California.
When you start traveling to other parts of the country, you start to ask, “Why is this state using their tax dollars so well? They don’t have any of the GDP of California, yet their roads are better. Their infrastructure is better. This is better. That’s better. Schools are better. Their safety is better. Why is that?” That’s what started me kind of working backwards.
Mr. Jekielek:
Okay, I understand. Then, you decided, I’m going to get out. I’m going to go to Indiana.” You realized now that there’s nowhere else to go. So, you got busy doing something, and it was like, “Okay, I must make educational materials that everyone can understand.” How did that happen?
Mr. Lui:
I had a small nonprofit in Indiana, focused on a very local level. I live in a very nice city called Carmel, Indiana. Even there, the school board and the schools already have these ideologies in there, the transgender ideology and the critical race theory. They have porn in schools. The superintendents straight up lie and say, “No, I don’t think we do,” and we present it to them at the school board and read it out loud, the same thing. This is in a really nice, affluent place. But then, I also realized that it’s something that is going to blanket the whole, entire country. It is not a red state, blue state thing, and to be fair, it’s not even the Democrat-Republican thing. It really isn’t.
Mr. Jekielek:
Right.
Mr. Lui:
It’s really just an attack on children’s innocence. It’s a complete attack on separating children from families. We can talk a little about how they’re doing that, and some of my tools are about explaining that, but that’s really what it is. My great grandfather ran from Communism. The people that dragged him out of his little bakery shop and beat him weren’t soldiers. They were college kids, the Red Guard. I see that’s what they’re creating now with these kids is this revolutionist thinking; to hate America, to hate American values, and to drive a wedge between the family. You have to drive a wedge between the parents and children first before you can get them to be revolutionists. Throughout history, that’s always been the playbook. That has to be the first step.
Mr. Jekielek:
How is that wedge being driven?
Mr. Lui:
In K-12 today, the way they’re driving that wedge is using both race and gender. It’s coming through a mental health program called Social Emotional Learning, and it sounds really great. They use terms that all parents love, like empathy, personal responsibility, and responsible decision making. All those things sound great, but they’re doing what we call language contamination.
So, for example, empathy. You and I and probably everybody watching, all the just normal people watching, we generally know what empathy is. In the schools today, when they bring in social emotional learning, what they mean is, today, when a little girl is in a dressing room or a locker room, if a boy walks in and is changing next to them, now, they have to have empathy. This is not using empathy. They’re weaponizing kindness, and they’re weaponizing empathy. They’re not using it in the way that we think of it.
Now, about school counselors. We did a big expose on school counselors and social workers. They are redefining two words, safe and abuse. We always believed that if a child is unsafe, it’s because they’re being neglected at home, beaten, or starved, that kind of thing. Today, they’re not safe if you don’t succumb to the transgender ideology—if you don’t use their pronouns, if you don’t let them have breast binders, if you don’t let them take puberty blockers.
Then, the schools say, “The parents are unsafe. They’re causing the suicides. They’re neglectful and abusive, but we’re the safe space.” And what’s interesting is that if you redefine a term, you don’t have to change the laws. You just expand on that existing law to be able to separate the kids from their families, which is why we see a lot of these stories now becoming more and more prevalent across the country.
In Maine, there was a social worker that gave a breast binder to a 13-year-old. You have one in Wisconsin where they’re transitioning a minor against the wishes of their parents, and there’s a lawsuit there. On and on, you’re seeing that, and it’s happening mostly due to the counselors and the social workers. It’s coming through the mental health program, Social Emotional Learning.
We can go into more detail, but in a nutshell, that’s how they’re using it to separate the kids from their family, by sexualizing kids early. When the parents disagree, because what parents wouldn’t disagree with this, they use that to say they’re unsafe and they’re abusive.
Mr. Jekielek:
Of course, there are parents who are abusive.
Mr. Lui:
Right.
Mr. Jekielek:
And there are parents who create unsafe situations at home.
Mr. Lui:
That’s right.
Mr. Jekielek:
It’s just that the concept of that has now been redefined to include people who are trying to create a loving home.
Mr. Lui:
Right.
Mr. Jekielek:
But because it doesn’t fit with the gender ideology specifically, now they are the abusers.
Mr. Lui:
That’s right. You know, it would be like, let’s say there are parents that say, “I don’t ever feed my child fast food. Everything has to be freshly made.” Okay, great, but imagine if those parents went to school and they wrote the policy, and they said, “If you feed your child McDonalds, you’re abusive.”
The problem is, with Social Emotional Learning and all these really arrogant teachers and school board members and counselors and social workers, they believe they know better. They know better. They want to push their idea of what good parenting is onto everybody else, but that’s not what a government entity is supposed to do. This is a public school.
If they are truly abusive, we already have programs existing that protect those kids. Is it a perfect system? No, of course not. We see a lot of these terrible stories where the system does miss it, but the answer isn’t to do a blanket-wide program in the schools and say, “All parents are abusive and continue to expand on that.” That’s how you separate children from their parents.
Mr. Jekielek:
We hear about Social Emotional Learning as multifaceted tool to bring people into this way of thinking, but it’s just a survey. What’s wrong with a survey?
Mr. Lui:
The survey is how they continually do a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can talk about the data mining. The data mining is actually very, very, important, and that’s something that every parent can do. Every parent should be getting their kids out of this data mining survey. Before I talk about the survey, let’s talk about why Social Emotional Learning is so deceptive. I spoke earlier about empathy. You use empathy, but that really is about trying to get girls to suppress their natural rejection of having a male in the locker room and changing next to them. But let’s take another example of Social Emotional Learning—responsible decision making.
Mr. Jekielek:
Who would disagree with that?
Mr. Lui:
Who would disagree with that, right? What parent does not want their children to have responsible decision making? We teach them that from a very young age. Pick up your toys, right? It’s responsible decision making through the lens of a critical race theorist. It means that if you’re white, when you become voting age, you need to vote for things like reparations. That’s your responsible decision. You need to give up certain things because of white privilege.
And if you’re not white, you need to be taking down the systems that are oppressing you, and everybody else. It doesn’t matter how successful you are in life, you’re being oppressed. That’s your responsible decision making. That’s you being responsible. Let me give you an example, and this is an analogy that I use for parents who are just getting into this, because a lot of this can be very nebulous.
Mr. Jekielek:
By design.
Mr. Lui:
By design.
Mr. Jekielek:
Yes.
Mr. Lui:
Yes, when parents go to school and say, “You’re pushing political indoctrination. You’re pushing critical race theory,” and you’ve already heard this many times, Jan. “We’re not teaching it. We’re not teaching critical race theory.” Okay, I’m going to say it, they are correct. They are not teaching critical race theory.
But California actually has a critical race theory program before you graduate high school, but most other states don’t. If you teach critical race theory, it means that you have a class, like 5th year critical race theory. Parents can opt their kids out. Kids don’t have to take it. That’s fine.
They’re not teaching kids what critical race theory is. They are teaching students on how to think and behave and live like a critical race theorist. Let me give you this example. Let’s say you and I decided to start a private school. You and I sit down and say, “Our goal is to create world-class mathematicians. These students coming out of our private school are going to win the most Nobel prizes ever for mathematicians.
Mr. Jekielek:
Mathematicians, yes.
Mr. Lui:
Yes. You and I sit down and that’s our plan, but of course, we can’t sell it like that because most parents don’t want to pay that much money for a private school, unless it’s a well-rounded private school. So, we advertise it as a very high-end private school. We have sports, we teach history, we teach science. We do all those different things.
But our school is structured in a way where as soon as the students walk in, the hallways have math formulas and pictures of historical mathematicians. During personal development, our teachers read books about how mathematicians have changed the world, and how important math is.
You and I are sitting at these beautiful seats. Well, they are engineered through math. That is how they are engineered, how they’re holding our weight. Everything that we’re looking at here is based on math angles. Teachers wear t-shirts with formulas. When we have assemblies, we bring in mathematicians from NASA, from Big Tech, from finance.
Then, after a couple of years, parents come to you and I, and say, “Jan, Alvin, I really like your school, but your school seems really heavily focused on math.” We’re like, “No, no, no, all we do is just teach basic algebra, pre-cal, calculus, and geometry.
If you and I created a school like that, what are the chances of kids graduating high school, as a K-12 private school, where all of them are extraordinarily good at math, better than the average person, even if they don’t have an aptitude for it? And the ones who have aptitude for it, they are going to go off and win Nobel prizes.
Now, take everything I said and replace the word math and mathematician with critical race theory and critical race theorist. They’re teaching children to live it and to be it, to think like one and to behave like one, and to structure their whole life purpose to push that mission.
Mr. Jekielek:
Tell me about school counselors. You were saying how they’re the biggest purveyors of this. That feels like there’s a lot of purveyors. Why are school counselors so significant here?
Mr. Lui:
There’s a lot of attention given to teachers and school board members, superintendents, and rightfully so. However, the teachers largely affect the culture of a classroom. School board members can spend the money on data mining. I’ll get back to the data mining. They can sign the contracts for the teachers, but they don’t generally impact a culture of a particular school.
They will impact the school district, but that particular school board member is not affecting that middle school, but the school counselors do. The school counselors and the social workers, they’re the ones in the break room. They’re the ones in the back, wagging their fingers at everyone when they’re not using the right pronoun and not using the right slogan, whatever the slogan happens to be.
The American School Counselor Association, I’ll refer to them as ASCA. They are the largest organization that trains all school counselors and social workers in K-12. They have a chapter in all 50 states. They’re the ones that drive the mission and the training and the objectives for school counselors and social workers.
They had an annual conference in Austin last July. The conference was called No Limits, which by the way, we found that very obtuse. When you’re around kids all day and you call your conference No Limits, we thought that was kind of on the nose. But we made sure that we went, and we grabbed their videos, their training, their speeches, their power points, their slides, and their handouts, because we knew that parents did not know that counselors are complete ideologues today.
They still think that they’re the nice guidance counselors we had when we all were growing up that helped you with your academics. Maybe you didn’t feel so good, and they talked to you a little bit, but if they thought there was a real problem, they’d bring your parents in to try and work with the parents. That’s long gone and no more, but it’s hard to prove that.
We decided that we are going to use their own words in their own habitat to expose who they are. We found so much. Some of it was online. Some of it was in that conference. Since then, we found a lot of different things, all the webinars and things. We created something called Behind Closed Doors. If anybody wants to see this, you can go to COURAGEISAHABIT.org, that’s COURAGEISAHABIT.org, and under School Counselors, you’ll see our Behind Closed Doors expose.
We’re going to do a lot more this year. We found all these videos and all this training of them essentially driving the transgender ideology and telling these counselors to keep secrets from parents. If you’re in a state that doesn’t have good parental rights laws, you can behave differently than if you’re in Florida. We have the head of their Ethics Committee, her name is Caroline Stone. She’s been the head of the Ethics Committee for 20 years.
In their opening monologue to kick off the conference, she talked about how a young school counselor came to her and said, “I took a minor girl to go get contraceptives against her mother’s wishes. I’m a little nervous about it now. What should I do?” In her advice to this counselor, Stone says, “There were three things I could have done. I could have told the counselor, ‘You have to convince the girl to own up to her mom. Number two, you can call the mom and own up to what you did, or number three, hold your breath and pray.’” And she goes, “Everybody, what do you think we should have told her to do?” And everyone said, “Number three.” And they laughed and had a grand old time.
Video:
And then, she explained that she had just taken a child to get contraceptives at a clinic because her mother wouldn’t let her have them. She said, “What do I do?” “Okay, school counselors, solve this for me. Do you, 1, do you tell her go back and convince the student to tell her parent? Or do you tell her, 2, call the girl’s mother yourself and confess? Or do you tell her, 3, ‘Hold your breath and pray?’” Turn to your neighbor and tell your neighbor what you’re going to tell her.”
“Three.”
“Three, I’m there. See? You are all ready to be part of the Ethics Committee. So, sign up.”
Mr. Lui:
If I told you this story without video proof, everyone’s going to say, “You’re lying. You’re exaggerating. There’s no way that’s true.” Behind Closed Doors is showing them in their natural habitat.
Mr. Jekielek:
It’s obvious to everybody in the room what the answer is already. She’s not even telling anybody. It’s just a kind of a private joke. That’s what you’re saying.
Mr. Lui:
Right. There are all these videos and handouts. There are some handouts where the question was, “If students aren’t comfortable with calling someone by a different name or pronoun, what should we do?” And the handout says, “You can re-educate them and have a talk with them or you can turn them in for bullying and harassment.” So now, if you’re a family that sends your kids to public school and says, “I don’t believe in calling someone a different pronoun. I don’t want to participate in this.” Now they are the ones that are bullies and they are harassing. Now, you’re pitting students against each other.
Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, because it’s one thing when someone says, “Hey, I’d like you to call me X. “ Then, someone can make a decision. “Sure, I’ll call you X,” or, “I won’t because I don’t want to.” And that’s fine. It’s different when it’s a coerced thing. If you don’t do it, then it’s called bullying and harassment.
Mr. Lui:
Right. It’s very popular and it’s true to say that children are being brainwashed. But really, what Courage is a Habit really also focuses on is not just that the children are being brainwashed. The parents are being brainwashed first, because parents know how to stand up for their kids. Parents have been standing up for their children for eons, crossing oceans, crossing deserts, risking life and limb just to give their children a better life.
What is so special about this time when parents have no idea how to stand up for their kids is because you point a finger at a parent’s face and call them some label, whatever the label they want to call it. Why? What’s so magical about that? It’s because parents are brainwashed. They have weaponized people’s natural kindness and empathy.
Let’s say the parent says, “My 11-year-old saw this pornographic book,” and the mom and dad are just livid, and they had a head full of steam. They go into the principal’s office, ready to just hold his feet to the fire, and they say, “What is this? Why are you showing this to my 11-year-old?”
The principal goes, “What’s the matter? You want kids to feel bullied? You don’t want them to fee included?” The parent goes, “Well no, that’s not what I mean.” All you have to do is just tug at one of the brainwashing levers, and then the steam comes right out of the parents.
Mr. Jekielek:
I want to go back to these surveys, because you describe the Social Emotional Learning process, of which the survey is a key feature of this brainwashing. How is it brainwashing? There is also this data mining component that you alluded to earlier.
Mr. Lui:
Every time parents push back against these really radical policies, oftentimes, the answer is, “This is data driven. It’s evidence based. Research shows.” They never tell you from where. They just say that, and then most parents think, “I don’t have an answer for that.” What they’re alluding to is these surveys, these Social Emotional Learning surveys that they give in class that the parents never see.
There are also health surveys that come from the Department of Education that the parents can see. But in any case, with these types of surveys, they can call them climate surveys, health surveys, or social emotional learning. We can split hairs on those surveys, and there are differences, but the point that I want parents to understand is that data is being manipulated to justify more Social Emotional Learning, and more radical policies.
It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The problem with these surveys is, most of the time, they ask very innocuous questions that most parents won’t find offensive. There are some questions that are pretty offensive, especially when it gets to the older grades. The middle school and high school talk about sex and anal sex and blow jobs, and they ask those questions. That was when parents had a reaction. It’s also the innocuous questions that are equally as dangerous.
I will give you an actual Social Emotional Learning question. “What is your level of confidence that you can complete the work assigned to you in school?” What is so dangerous about that question, right? In another time and place, that’s probably a pretty good question. But instead of using that question to really help the child do more work, they will then use that answer when the kids answer, “There’s too much work. I can’t.” Of course, kids are going to say that a lot. A lot of kids are going to say that.
They’ll say, “The school climate is oppressive. The system is oppressive. Certain students of color cannot complete their work because the school is not inclusive enough.” The suggestion to improve academics would be to include more LGBTQ books, more Black Lives Matter flags or the GSA clubs so that children feel included. Then, they’ll be able to do their work. But of course, we all know when you bring that stuff in, all that does is destroy academics. It destroys actual personal responsibility, because now they’re thinking more about activism than education. Next year, they run that survey again. Guess what? The scores are even lower. And that’s just one question. There are a lot of these questions.
Mr. Jekielek:
Okay, basically you’re saying that woke ideology is baked in to how you analyze the questions.
Mr. Lui:
Correct. There’s a lot of companies that give these surveys as sales surveys. One of them is Panorama. On their website, they talk about how we look at these answers through an equity lens. Anybody that studies even a little bit of this knows that is through the lens of a critical race theorist. Every answer that is given will be interpreted through the lens of an equity lens, through the lens of a critical race theorist, and then they will justify bringing more policies.
It doesn’t matter how you answer it, it will always justify bringing in more policies. For example, there’s never a school that got one of these surveys and said, “Hey, we’re doing really good on inclusion. We can tamper down now on the inclusion and the books and the flags. We can stop that this year and we can do something else.” It’s always more.
Mr. Jekielek:
The other thing that struck me about these surveys is that they would provide very individualized information about which students are more susceptible to being indoctrinated.
Mr. Lui:
Absolutely. Here’s a question that they were giving to young kids that will fit exactly what you just said. How many times a week do you have dinner with your family? What’s wrong with that question? Actually, they shouldn’t ask that because that’s very personal. It has nothing to do with the school. But if a child answers, “Oh, we have dinner with my parents at home four days a week.” Okay, chances are, the parents are probably involved. They’re having dinner four times a week. If the child goes, “Zero or one,” they are a little more vulnerable, with maybe not as much adult supervision.
Mr. Jekielek:
Is there any evidence of these things being used in such a way?
Mr. Lui:
Sure, because Social Emotional Learning is completely in the schools. Every time you ask, “Why do you need this?” they go, “It’s because it’s evidence based. It’s data driven.” That’s why they collect the data. This is also why when parents try to see the SEL surveys, they are told they can’t see them, because it’s a private company and they have proprietary rights. Literally, we are spending taxpayer dollars, tens, if not hundreds of thousands, depending on how many years they’re doing it, to hire these companies to survey your children, and then not showing you the questions, and then manipulating the data to bring in more policies. When you ask, they’ll say, “Oh, this is data driven. It’s evidence based.” You ask, “Can I see the survey?’ The answer is, “No.”
Mr. Jekielek:
Basically, I think critical race theorists will say, “Well, everything is brainwashing.”
Mr. Lui:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
Really, so we’re just brainwashing the right way.
Mr. Lui:
Sure, whatever religion you believe, whether you believe in a religion or not, I think that parents should have the authority to pass their values on to their children and their family, whatever they believe. When you weaponize parents’ kindness against them to guilt them, to emotionally blackmail them, so that they give up control of their kids, there’s no way that you’re the good guy in this. For example, every time you push back against a transgender cult, they’ll immediately say, “If you don’t agree with this, your child is going to kill themselves.”
Mr. Jekielek:
Many people on this show have talked about how they were told, “If you don’t help, if you don’t participate in the social transitioning at the beginning for your child, they will kill themselves, or there’s a high likelihood that they will commit suicide.”
Mr. Lui:
Right. With the tools Courage Is A Habit, we try to help parents learn to think past emotional blackmail, because when you get into that emotional blackmail box, it’s very hard to see outside of it.
Mr. Jekielek:
Because you care about your kids.
Mr. Lui:
You care about your kids.
Mr. Jekielek:
Right.
Mr. Lui:
Right. So, we try to help parents not stay on defense, but to go on offense. When you go on offense, it pushes you outside of that dark box. There are several ways that we try to help with that. We give parents questions to respond to this, and then they can fire back at these transgender activists, what we call child mutilation advocates. At Courage is a Habit, we call them child mutilation advocates or CMAs.
We do not parent using that standard with anything when it comes to children. “I’m 13 years old. If you don’t let me run away with that 40-year-old man, I’m going to kill myself. If you don’t let me get a tattoo, I’m going to kill myself. If you don’t let me drink alcohol, I’m going to kill myself. If you don’t let me see that boy, I’m going to kill myself. If you don’t let me go to that R-rated movie, I’m going to kill myself.” We don’t ever succumb to that, but when it comes to this, we succumb to it. Why? It’s because you’ve been brainwashed. Because that’s obviously not true.
Mr. Jekielek:
But it’s usually not the kid saying it. It’s someone who’s supposed to be a trusted figure, like the counselor or the school principal.
Mr. Lui:
Right. Again, if it’s a principal or someone who’s trusted, we teach parents how to fire back at that. We would say something like, “So, if I don’t call them by the right pronoun, they’ll kill themselves? Are you going to say that when they do the breast binders? If I don’t give them breast binders, they’ll kill themselves? If they don’t get puberty blockers and hormones, they’re going to kill themselves? If I don’t let them have surgery, they’re going to kill themselves?”
The problem is these parents get brainwashed, because they believe if we just call them by the right pronoun, they won’t kill themselves, and then, it will all be over. They’re only good with it if you walk them into it slowly. It’s like a long con, right? “This is a pronoun. Don’t worry about it. Just call them by a different name,” and then it’ll all be over, right?
They’re weaponizing their kindness, and it starts with something very simple, like allowing porn, and not drawing that line. By the time the child gets to surgery, there’s nothing the parents can do about it, because they’ve already put the child through the system. They’re already separated. The parental rights are gone because long ago they’ve already been deemed abusive and unsafe.
Mr. Jekielek:
If they go against any step in this inevitable process.
Mr. Lui:
Right. One of the tools that we put out is called the Safety and Inclusion Express, and you can download it on COURAGEISAHABIT.org. It’s called the Safety and Inclusion Express, and it takes the parents through each of what we call the train stops. And the pronoun is the ticket. It’s the stamping of the ticket that gets the children on the train, and there’s no exit from this train. You can get on the train if you agree with it. If you don’t, then you’re outside and at each stop along the way, you’re getting further and further away as a parent.
The Safety and Inclusion Express talks about how if parents want to get ahead of this, the best chance of you winning this fight is at the pronoun level. The problem today is that the puberty blockers and the hormone blocker or the cross-hormone surgery drugs and the surgeries are so horrific that parents are ignoring the pronouns, thinking that at least they are not drugs, and they are not binders. But once you get them on that pronoun ideology, the chances of them moving to the next level is higher, and at each step it’s harder for the parents to pull them out.
Mr. Jekielek:
They have something that maybe does need treatment, that does need support.
Mr. Lui:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
But that thing is pushed aside in favor of this being the solution.
Mr. Lui:
Absolutely. Instead of treating the underlying issue, they’re moving them into this horrific cult. What we don’t focus on enough is the addictiveness of social value. Most of these kids, because they have certain issues, have already felt outcast socially. And we all did, who among us hasn’t felt that way growing up? And then, we learn where our niche is, where our strengths and weaknesses are, and then we grow out of it.
All of us get uncomfortable, and girls in particular, because the body image through social media really messes with girls’ minds. Men get it too, but not as badly as girls. This is why the transgender cult affects girls more than boys. A lot of these kids, especially the autistic kids, don’t feel socially accepted. They feel kind of picked on. They feel like they don’t fit in anywhere.
So then, you get this group that comes along that says, “If you join us, you have instant social value.” You are heard, you are seen. You’re celebrated. You get the enormous love bombs. For those watching that don’t know what a love bomb is, it’s just this enormous outpouring. “You’re so brave. You’re so stunning. You’re so beautiful.”
For most of these kids, especially when they’re on the autistic scale, this is the first time they’ve gotten this almost celebrity-like status among their social group and their peers. That is very addictive. It would be addictive to adults, this kind of fame. For a little kid, there’s no chance that they’re not going to fall prey to that. It’s the endorphins and it’s like that gambler’s high.
But once you say, “I’m gay or I’m bi,” you get that love bomb. Then, you have to move forward to say, “I’m trans or I’m binary.” And then, when that love bomb ends, you got to move to the binders. Because each step that you take, each more aggressive step you take, the cult rewards you with more of it.
This is why parents have the best chance of stopping it at the pronoun level, and to find out why your child wants to go towards that, because there’s an underlying issue as to why. But, once you let them into this and they feel that instant shot of celebrity and fame, it is very difficult to get them off it.
With some of the detransitioners’ stories, when they finally say, “I made a mistake,” the nasty messages and the outcasting from the people that have love bombed them is really horrible. That’s what a cult does. A cult loves you only if you succumb to all their rituals. The moment you miss one ritual, they will punish you. In fact, one of the very early tools that we created during the Summer of 2022 was called “Cult Fiction.”
For a time, it was our most downloaded tool. We studied the eight steps that successful cults in the past have used. You start listening to the survivors who come out of the cult, and you read some of their testimonies. So, there’s a pattern on recruitment. There were eight things that these cults would do, according to the members who are now out of the cult, and we matched it up to what is happening at schools through Social Emotional Learning, and how they’re getting the kids into the cult. We matched it up into eight steps as to exactly what they’re doing.
Mr. Jekielek:
You just offered a lot of very disturbing realities. How many parents are involved in Courage is a Habit? How many people are you communicating with? How big a thing is this? How many parents know that all of this is reality.
Mr. Lui:
Certainly, we reach parents all across the country, and we’re very privileged to work with a lot of great organizations that reach a ton of parents; Parents Defending Education, Moms For Liberty, and Moms For America. I know the Heritage Foundation does great work. I would say that more parents do need to wake up to what’s happening. But at the same time, over the last year-and-a-half, thousands and tens of thousands of parents have woken up, which is why we have this pushback and this movement.
We have also done a lot in a very short time, and we’re up against people who are really well funded. These people are not working with a $500,000 budget. They’re not working with a million-dollar budget. They’re working with hundreds of millions and it’s very well coordinated. It’s in every single school district. As parents, if you think it’s not in your school district, I assure you it is, even if it’s not as extreme as California.
Mr. Jekielek:
And it’s also in the private school system as well.
Mr. Lui:
It is definitely in the private school system.
Mr. Jekielek:
Some people tell themselves it won’t be there, but it is.
Mr. Lui:
It is. So, it’s really important for us to give parents a call to action and things to do. It’s a bad habit for people in our space to talk about the problem, but not offer solutions. There are two things I would say every parent can do. Get your children out of the data mining because that’s the bloodline to a lot of this. They use that data to justify and push more, and they’re spending money on it. So, you can really throw a wrench in this if you get your kids out of data mining.
At COURAGEISAHABIT.org, if you look under the tab or the button “SE Social Emotional Learning Opt Out,” or “SEL Data Mining Opt Out,” at the end of each of those tools is our opt-out form. Now, does that guarantee that they’re not going to give your kids a survey? No, a lot of these schools, depending on how extreme they are, and how radical they are, they might just ignore you. But the point is, now you’ve got some leverage legally, because you’ve already turned it in and now you’ve got them on record as ignoring it.
There are some things you can do, but you have to start with that opt-out form. Then, the second thing would be going to the Behind Closed Doors items, where there is a form where you put your school on notice, and the school counselors, that they are not to meet with your child formally or informally without your consent.
Because if you think about it, if you, as a parent, want to pick a dentist or a therapist or a pediatrician, what do you do? You don’t just blindly close your eyes and pick one. You research. You read reviews. You ask for referrals. These mental health professionals, you don’t know who they are. You’ve never met them. If you’ve met them, you met them for five seconds.
Why are they talking to your child about really personal things like sexuality and your home life? They wouldn’t do that with anything else you pick for your child. If you sent them to a music class, you would research the heck out of that music teacher. You would get referrals. I know a lot of parents do that, especially moms. So, you have to exercise your rights because you still have them today.
Mr. Jekielek:
Alvin Lui, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mr. Lui:
Thank you for having me. This has been wonderful talking to you.
Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Alvin Lui and me on this episode of “American Thought Leaders.” I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.
You can find all of the resources mentioned in this episode at the Courage Is A Habit website.
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