Mississippi Miracle

[Offthemat]

 

POSTED ON MAY 10, 2026 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CONSERVATISM, CRIME, EDUCATION

  

SIGNS OF CONSERVATIVE RESURGENCE

It is no secret that red states are trouncing blue states by every metric, including the most important one: where people want to live. Everyone knows about Florida and Texas, but other red states are thriving, too, and they are doing it by applying conservative principles. Mississippi is a good example.

Long downtrodden and the poorest state in the U.S. since the Civil War, Mississippi is coming back strong. It has reformed its education system along conservative lines. This is how Google’s AI describes what many have called the “Mississippi Miracle,” citing, interestingly, the New York Times:

Mississippi schools improved by implementing a rigorous, statewide, and scientifically backed approach to literacy, shifting from near the bottom in national rankings to leading in 4th-grade reading improvement by 2026. The transformation, dubbed the “Mississippi Miracle,” was driven by mandatory early reading intervention, intense teacher training, and strict accountability.

Not electronics, but “rigorous” and “scientifically backed” techniques including, in place of social promotion, a refusal to accept inability to read in the third grade. And this in a state where 60% of K-12 students lack the supposed “privilege” of being white.

Crime is another issue on which red states are clobbering blue states. In places like New York and California, we see one appalling story after another, where judges turn courtrooms into revolving doors.

 

 

On crime, too, Mississippi may be leading the way:

 

DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton is promoting the billboard campaign, saying, “We are going to be loud and clear that DeSoto County does not coddle violent criminals. If you bring violence across our state line, we are going to prosecute you aggressively and hold you accountable.”
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WREG quoted Barton noting, “Safety is achieved through enforcement. Safe communities do not happen by accident. They happen because law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, and citizens refuse to surrender their communities to violent criminals.”

Fifty years ago, a sign like that one in Mississippi would have been viewed as retrograde, a relic of older times. Today, we can see it, like Mississippi’s education policies, as a harbinger of a brighter future based on sound–i.e., conservative–policy.

And, by the way, is there any chance District Attorney Barton is interested in moving to Minnesota? We could use him here.

 

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/05/signs-of-conservative-resurgence.php

Edited May 11 by Offthemat