At first, we laughed off the idea. We were certain it was just another in a long line of twisted progressive fantasies designed to defame America’s founders, divide people up by race as victims and oppressors, and set them against each other. But when critical race theory (now with its own familiar acronym, CRT) was weaponized in the New York Times-inspired 1619 Project, the progressive balkanization of America was kicked into overdrive in the public and private education establishment. And then came the George Floyd affair.
Progressives seized their moment in the sun by brandishing the tragedy as they would a weapon, shaming Americans into supporting an avowed Marxist organization, employing their legion of useful idiots in the media to falsely position BLM as a racial justice movement – and making suckers of the millions of innocents drawn to what should be the noble cause of genuine racial justice.
Repudiating Collectivism
But now, fueled by the permission concept, in this case the voters’ thorough repudiation of all things Democrat and progressive in the 2021 elections, freshly emboldened legislatures are shedding the shackles of white guilt and wokeness and attempting to stop CRT dead in its tracks – state by state. Indiana Republicans celebrated the advent of 2022 by filing bills in the state House and Senate not just banning the teaching of principles such as white privilege and America as a systemically racist nation, but going one significant step further in specifically repudiating collectivism. The proposed legislation would require students to be taught that “socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded.”
The legislation would also prohibit certain teachings, such as that “any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation” is superior, inferior, racist or sexist, or that any person should feel consequent “discomfort, guilt, anguish, responsibility or any other form of psychological distress.”
Importantly, the bill would also require schools to create a curriculum review committee, consisting of parents, teachers and community members, and would permit parents to review the curricula and opt out of certain items.
If the bills become law, Indiana would become the tenth state to pass legislation specifically aimed at banning the teachings central to CRT. At least 18 other states have considered similar bills, most not specifically naming CRT but instead prohibiting instruction in its core concepts.
Has CRT Met Its Match?
The heart of any movement can best be defined by how its proponents react when one of their signature issues rises to front and center and the spotlight shines on them. In the case of progressives during their defining moment in the summer of 2020, instead of seizing the rare instance when most of the nation was at rapt attention and ready for the long-delayed conversation on constructive police reform, progressives chose to set the country ablaze.
They lit the tinderbox with their words proclaiming America guilty of the original sin of systemic racism, thus rendering the nation beyond redemption. They shoved their demented racialist worldview down our throats. They effectively served as co-conspirators with the Antifa-inspired psychopaths in the destruction of countless thousands of lives and livelihoods.
But as egregious and unforgivable as their actions were in the wake of George Floyd, none of it compares to the damage progressives have wrought by poisoning the minds of rising generations. The leaders of tomorrow are being force-fed a diet of collectivist, neo-Marxist claptrap that is allowed to pass as legitimate cultural theory only because of the cowardly and gratuitously deconstructionist education establishment and scandalously uncritical mass media. In the outraged and freshly emboldened legislatures of one state after another, this plague on the land may well have finally, mercifully met its match.
~ Read more from Tim Donner.
