Offering another prime opportunity for people to study the way government pits people against each other, a California high school teacher has been revealed to have suggested that kids pledge allegiance to the “Gay Pride” flag.
A California school district is investigating a teacher after she posted a video admitting that she encouraged her students to pledge allegiance to a gay pride flag after she removed the American flag from her classroom.
The teacher is Kristin Pitzen, of Newport Mesa School District in Orange County, and in her now-infamous video she turned on her cam inside school blithely to offer:
Okay, so during third period, we have announcements and they do the pledge of allegiance, I always tell my class, stand if you feel like it, don’t stand if you feel like it, say the words if you want, you don’t have to say the words.
Which seems like a nice expression of fairness and care for the opinions of others, but hides a larger lesson.
Teacher mocks the American Flag and suggests to students they can say the Pledge of Allegiance to the pride flag: pic.twitter.com/1QTS5xjPln
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) August 27, 2021
Writes Colton:
’Except for the fact that my room does not have a flag,’ she said, explaining that she removed the flag during the pandemic and then whispered to the camera, ‘because it made me uncomfortable.’
Okay. So her feelings and opinions have been reflected in how she set up her class.
But what about the kids’? When the time came to recite, one student wondered about the pledge and the lack of an American flag to which he could offer his pledge.
Adds Colton:
In the meantime, I tell this kid, ‘We do have a flag in the class that you can pledge your allegiance to. And he like, looks around and goes, ‘Oh, that one?' and points to the pride flag.
That has upset lots of parents and other taxpayers, alike.
Colton explains:
The Newport Mesa School District told Fox News on Saturday that the incident is under investigation, but could not provide more details as it does not ‘discuss employee related matters.
‘We are aware of this incident and are investigating. While we do not discuss employee related matters, we can tell you that showing respect and honor for our nation’s flag is a value that we instill in our students and an expectation of our employees. We take matters like this seriously and will be taking action to address it,’ public relations officer for the district, Annette Franco, told Fox News.”
So, the tax-paid “public relations officer” of the tax-funded school district offered a comment about the willful act of the tax-funded teacher – a comment that offers platitudes about instilling a value to “respect and honor” the American flag.
Does anyone else notice the ironic paradox here?
This is an exceptional moment to see that the public school platitudes about “respect and honor” for the flag, and the patriotic feelings they attempt to tap, are utterly dislocated from the actual concept of liberty underlying the United States founding and the historical reality of its period: a reality that did not rely on government-funded schools.
The US government -- as established under the Articles of Confederation, and, later, the US Constitution – is based on the philosophy of John Locke, and his expression of Natural Rights so familiar to people like Thomas Jefferson. The idea is that you have the right to be left alone by me and I have a right to be left alone by you.
It’s called “negative reciprocity” or “mutual hands-offedness” – so I recognize and respect your right to your life, property, and freedom of association, and you do the same. We don’t demand things from others and we don’t claim a positive – as in “posited” by politicians – right to the fruits of others’ labor.
Education is an excellent example of how people have mistaken the idea of rights, and twisted it into an a-priori claim on another person, a form of enslavement.
As I have discussed with students, if one believes there is a “right to” government-provided education, because, after all, a kid might not be able to educate himself or herself, then, by implication they likely mean that the government can seize the earnings of person A to pay a teacher to instruct the child of person B.
Which, of course, means that person A is being forced to work for the government, for a certain number of hours per day.
So, if we can enslave that third party in order to pay the teacher, why not remove the middle-man, and enslave the teacher? If there truly is a “right” to education, then that must mean a child has a right to enslave a teacher and make him or her work, under penalty from the government.
Obviously, this is not something most collectivists would accept, because it rips away the artifice of civility and exposes the compulsion behind paying for public schools.
And this compulsion is what causes such dissent and disagreement between taxpayers.
Even though the teacher is not compelling any student to say any pledge, many thousands, perhaps millions, nationwide might disapprove of her only offered option, and, at the heart of the problem is not whether one supports “Gay Pride” or “National Pride” or anything else.
The heart of the problem is that all taxpayers are compelled to pay into the system, so they are pitted against each other and cannot turn to free market options to show what they like best.
Related: H.S. Student Suspended, Investigated by Police, for Pro-Second Amendment School Project | MRCTV