In what might be one of the most bleakly ironic appeals of the year, Viola Garcia and Chip Slaven, the President and Interim Executive Director, respectively, of the government-parasite-filled National School Boards Association (NSBA) on September 29 sent an open letter to Joe Biden calling on him to deploy a wide array of federal forces against parents and other taxpayers who speak out against leftist pedagogy in public schools. And -- SHOCKER -- the Biden Administration has jumped into action.
Because nothing more perfectly says “openness” and “diversity of opinion” than tax-funded school bureaucrats calling for the intimidation into silence of those who have to pay their salaries.
The letter says:
On behalf of our state associations and the more than 90,000 school board members who govern our country’s 14,000 local public school districts educating more than 50 million schoolchildren, NSBA appreciates your leadership to end the proliferation of COVID-19 in our communities and our school districts. We also appreciate recent discussions with White House and U.S. Department of Education staff on many critical issues facing public schools, including threats school officials are receiving.
So, separate from the political intent of the message, one also can note the troubling fact that this organization and its members have such power over 50 MILLION kids and over the people forced to pay for the ideology these school boards push on the kids.
Then there’s the political intent of the letter, which is to portray as “terrorist threats” those concerned parents who turn out at local school board meetings, and to claim a bizarre federal role via, of all things, the Constitution’s “Interstate Commerce Clause” to investigate them.
NSBA believes immediate assistance is required to protect our students, school board members, and educators who are susceptible to acts of violence affecting interstate commerce because of threats to their districts, families, and personal safety.
Even IF this absurd claim of “affecting interstate commerce” were valid, federal intervention would be inappropriate because, as James Madison wrote during the Founding Era, the Interstate Commerce Clause was written to stop states from imposing tariffs on each other, not to allow the feds to micromanage anything that, in some way, could have a glancing effect on some aspect of interstate trade.
Then, there’s the NSBA argument that vigilante-like parents and other taxpayers are keeping “watchlists” on schoolboards, that these folks are errantly claiming school districts are hell bent on teaching racist Critical Race Theory, and that people are mistaken if they believe school-based interests have worked to keep schoolrooms closed and keep classes operating on-line. They write:
Other groups are posting watchlists against school boards and spreading misinformation that boards are adopting critical race theory curriculum and working to maintain online learning by haphazardly attributing it to COVID-19.
So, parents and taxpayers can’t keep track of which school board members stand on what policies? Why do candidates for office stand on certain policy positions if people shouldn’t be allowed to find out?
And records have NOT shown that powerful school union interests DID work with the CDC to keep schools closed longer? Perhaps this report, stating precisely that, comes from a parallel universe.
To top it off, the NSBA claims that people are misinformed if they believe boards are adopting CRT, and they mix in hints that those who are misinformed are engaged in threatening protests. They cite a leftist Non-Governmental Organization called The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) and its “Fact Sheet: Demonstrations Over Critical Race Theory In The United States.” But, about CRT demonstrations, that document, itself, admits in a footnote:
ACLED does not code whether an event was in favor or against CRT…
As author and journalist Jeff Reynolds observes for Legal Insurrection:
ACLED’s so-called “fact sheet” attempts to make the case that opposition to CRT only became widespread after President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning it from trainings for federal employees in 2020.
The obvious implication is that opposition to CRT is in itself a racist ideology. In making its case, ACLED cites a report from Media Matters for America, David Brock’s far left media watchdog site.
Ahh, yes, David Brock and Media Matters… Very unbiased and trustworthy.
Adds Reynolds:
To hear NSBA, AASA (The American Association of School Administrators), ACLED, and Media Matters tell it, the opposition to CRT in schools is nothing more than a Fox News creation designed to rile up uneducated (and, by implication, racist) conservatives.
Then, the NSBA makes more broad and unsupported claims, citing AN EDITORIAL from the Everett, Washington, “Herald” in which the editors decried not actual violence, but noisy and outspoken TAX-PAYING parents, at a school board meeting, and the NSBA authors use terms like “threats” and “acts of violence” to prep for their big tag-team show with the feds:
As these threats and acts of violence have become more prevalent – during public school board meetings, via documented threats transmitted through the U.S. Postal Service, through social media and other online platforms, and around personal properties – NSBA respectfully asks that a joint collaboration among federal law enforcement agencies, state and local law enforcement, and with public school officials be undertaken to focus on these threats.
Is citing the US Postal service – another attempt to claim a federal role in investigating ANYONE who speaks out against their local school board?
If a specific person sends through the USPS a specific threat to a specific person or named group of people, that person can be investigated on a federal level.
NSBA offered no evidence of this. But they continue, with the coup de gras:
NSBA specifically solicits the expertise and resources of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center.
And, as Reynolds notes, wouldn’t you know it, White House Press Secretary Jen Paski responded to the NSBA letter expressing similar “concern." Then, late in the day Monday, October 4, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he and the Bidenistas are going to mobilize the FBI against these parents -- er, sorry, better to use the government terminology, "against these Threats."
It's almost as if this has been a big publicity stunt by like-minded collectivists to shut down dissent, federalize EVERYTHING, and reinforce the narrative that those who oppose CRT and other leftist pedagogy in government schools are terrorists on the brink.
Would that include people like DailyWire’s Matt Walsh? After all, he recently spoke to MRCTV when he appeared at a school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia, to protest the board propagandizing kids with LGBTQ sexuality and Critical Race Theory, (CRT, by the way, assumes a person is guilty of implicit racism simply on account of his skin color -- i.e. it is a racist ideology, itself).
Would Walsh, not the government-backed bureaucracy calling on the fed security state to “investigate” parents like him – be the threat?
This might strike a resonant Orwellian chord with those who understand collectivist propaganda.
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