The left hopes to blame all the world’s ills on the crowd that illegally entered the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021—and even those who did not enter.
Participation in the rally on the Mall is now used to purge conservatives from America’s school systems.
The “warning shot across the bow” is an article from Education Week, the national trade paper of elementary and secondary school administrators. The title is almost as ponderous as it is alarming – “Should Educators, Board Members Be Disciplined for Supporting Anti-Democratic Beliefs?”
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It is a curious indictment. Democracy is supposed to defend the right of citizens to hold diverse opinions, even if unpopular. This right can only be taken away if the person acts illegally upon those opinions. Thus, in the January 6 event, measures could be taken against those who broke the law, not the overwhelming majority who attended the rally on the Mall peacefully and legally.
Thus, for the vast crowd that attended this rally, democratic process (and rule of law) would dictate no action, however diverse the opinions might seem. In theory, “anti-democratic” views are just as valid as democratic ones in the forum of ideas.
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A healthy democracy would supposedly welcome the peaceful expression of diverse opinions. However, for the left, it seems diversity is closer to conformity to its views. Anything not acceptable to the left can be conveniently labeled “anti-democratic.”
A Pretense of Democracy
Yet the Education Week article implies that its definition of democracy should be the standard that determines who is allowed to teach the young. It quotes Harvard University Professor of Education and Ethics Meira Levinson. “You really want to be careful when you advocate firing district employees for their speech, and at the same time, it is true that their speech is anti-democratic…then there’s good reason to act.”
This new-found belief in democracy is a smokescreen.
Socialists are happy to claim fealty to democracy when it helps their cause, yet history shows that they are quite willing to take power without it. The Antifa and BLM riots over the summer were hardly expressions of broad-based popular support. Intersectionality and Critical Race Theory do not reflect the will of the majority of America’s people. Yet Education Week is more than happy to support these imposed “anti-democratic” initiatives with headlines like “Dismantling Systemic Racism in Schools: 8 Big Ideas” and “Training Bias Out of Teachers: Research Shows Little Promise So Far.” Both articles accept the radical ideology of Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist as the standard for America’s schools.
Symbolic Victims
The Education Week article presented two object lessons – Kirsten Hill, an elected member of the Ohio State Board of Education, and an unnamed “middle school teacher in the Prince William County district in Virginia.” Both attended the pro-Trump January 6 rally. Neither was among those who entered the Capitol Building.
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The imbalance in the article was apparent in that three of Mrs. Hill’s detractors were quoted at length. One of the teacher’s accusers gets five paragraphs to state his views.
The only opposing view was that of one of Mrs. Hill’s colleagues. She asserted her faith that “each and every board member is committed to providing the best opportunities and outcomes for every student in Ohio.”
Nobody mentions that both people were well within their Constitutional rights of free assembly. The left’s thought police cannot even prove that the indicted victims harbored thoughts that promoted illegal action. Everything is purely subjective—and highly political.
“Weeding Out” the Schools
For over a century, America’s schools are run according to a leftist ideology. However, within that bureaucracy, many individual teachers and school board members adhere to traditional educational ideas. They have fought a long uphill battle to bring some balance into classrooms. For years these brave dissenters were tolerated so that the bureaucracy could deny its almost total control of the schools.
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The Education Week article is one sign that the left is no longer willing to allow ideas other than theirs to have a place in the “dialogue” they claim to want. Too many schools are becoming – or have already become – “social justice” indoctrination camps. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao would find the pattern familiar.
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