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“Parental Rights” Is the New “Repeal Obamacare”
The Republican Party has found a new election marketing strategy based on the idea that parents ought to have some say in what their children are taught in taxpayer-funded public schools. The Washington Post (running interference for a Democrat candidate who gaffed on the issue) adamantly insists “Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids’ school curriculum. They don’t.” Democrats are in the position of claiming it’s completely right and proper to use public schools for social justice and racialist indoctrination, while at the same time calling it a made-up, “phony culture-war” issue that “nobody cares about.” (And then immediately announce the Kamala-Brandon “National Strategy on Gender Equality.“)
It’s kind of like in 2010 when the Republicans latched onto the unpopularity of Obamacare as their silver bullet to take back the House. They managed to take back the House, but they never actually followed through on the “Repeal and Replace” thing. So, it’s doubtful “parental rights” are anything more than another marketing gimmick.
Just like when Republicans run on Border Security and not only do nothing about it, but actively thwart anyone who tries. Or when Republicans run on “Fiscal Responsibility” and then sign off on budget deals giving Democrats more spending than they asked for. Or when they campaign on reducing the “size and scope” of Government; but it actually increased by 70% under George W. Bush who gave us the Patriot Act, the TSA, and No Child Left Behind. If you’re old enough, you may remember Republicans running on “Tort Reform.” That was almost thirty years ago, and no torts have been reformed. School choice has been in the party platform even longer, but didn’t even make it into NCLB.
If you want to see how serious the Bush-Republican-Establishment is about protecting parental rights in schools, consider how angry (sorry, I meant “deeply concerned”) the editors of The Dispatch and The Bulwark have been over Ron DeSantis and other Republican governors attempting to restrict the teaching of CRT. “That’s not who we are,” they huff. It’s simply ungentlemanly to stand in the way of Democrats using public schools for racialist indoctrination.
If the Republicans latch onto this issue, it may possibly win them some seats. And after, maybe, a symbolic vote or two, it can then be tossed aside so the party can get back to the business of keeping securing tax breaks and cheap labor for the only voters they actually care about: the big donors.
Published in Elections
Please don’t be so defeatist on this important issue.
Repeating what I said on Elizabeth Vaughn’s thread: Terry McAuliffe may be in the wrong state to be harassing parents. Virginia is home to the very successful Parental Rights organization. This organization is working on passing the Parental Rights Amendment.
Republicans sometimes forget that one very large group of people who left the Democrats for the Republican greener pastures were parents who wanted school choice.
The Parental Rights Amendment stands a chance of passing. People need to get behind this amendment in any way they can.
I see this more as a local/state issue. Sure the Congress critters can use it as a campaign issue, but it must ultimately be decided through local elections. The only thing the DC guys can do is stay out of the way.
I’m not defeatist, I’m a cynic. And I got this way because of twenty years of broken GOP promises.
I know. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. :-)
I am hopeful that there will be leaders who come along to set things right.
I’ve been following ParentalRights.org for a long time. For me, it is a tiny sliver of hope in an otherwise very bleak education landscape.
Education is such an emotional subject in my house that my husband and kids don’t say the word anymore. :-) :-)
Let’s just say that when it comes to my kids, I don’t play well others. :-) It’s me or the State. We’re not doing this together. :-)
I raised three kids. The one I home-schooled (because he was a “discipline problem”) is doing the best of the three; so…
Yes. And this applies to anyone who supports them.
Yep.
The Republicans hate us as much as the Democrats do. They clearly sneer at us behind closed doors. They have never delivered on anything.
A conservative school board is preferable to a liberal school board, and I support any effort (however incremental) to push schools in that direction. Still, I think parents underestimate the depth of the ideological rot, and they also misunderstand its causes. Administrators and teachers aren’t turning the kids woke; other kids are turning the kids woke (largely via the Internet), and administrators and teachers merely play a supporting role.
My aunt teaches in a rural district with a conservative school board. Multiple students in her classes claim to be transgender and want to be called “they.” She asked her sixth-graders to write biographical essays, and she ended up with a face full of Internet jargon — students confessing interest in “goblincore” and “fairy grunge” or praising “genderfluid” TikTok stars as their greatest heroes.
Good luck rooting that out of schools. I’d say the danger posed by ideological teachers decreases with each grade level. A woke kindergarten classroom is a dangerous thing. By high school, peers are more of a threat than authority figures.
Human beings are hardwired to be argumentative. I suspect that the more effort the schools put into brainwashing, the more argumentative many students will become.
That has happened in China. The kids are not interested in Marxism or Communism. That is a surprise to the old revolutionaries.
A lot of upscale parents in Northern Virginia would not object to mandatory student participation in Hitler Youth, Castro Young Pioneers, or The Communist Youth League in public schools if they were convinced it looked good on applications to Princeton, Duke, or Stanford. teaching actual American history or English lit might result in lower scores on AP tests now written by the woke.
The best way to think of things is that the Democrats and Republican are rival criminal gangs. Sure one might be a bit more helpful than the other but in the end they are still criminal organizations.
Honest question, when was the last time this wing of the Republican party was relevant? When was the last time they had a new idea or contributed a solution to the problems they pretend to care about?
Republicans did try to repeal Obamacare. It was the vote of one Republican and not all Republicans who prevented it. Fortunately, that disgusting SOB is dead and hopefully on a spit in hell. Your cynicism leads you to be defeatist.
Good point. The Family Rights/Pro-Family issue is a great litmus test. So far, the Catholic Church is silent on what should be an easy movement to support.
No school taxation without school representation.
No, it is the constant failure of the Republicans to make good on their promises.
It was not “One Republican” it was the whole party, who was not ready to act the moment they could have. The GOP could have had legislation ready to go. They did not.
Republicans (voters, not just politicians) over time, decided they liked Obamacare. I don’t think there’s much danger that they will like the idea of having no say in their kids’ educations.
Interesting article. From which:
That’s a Dodge. CRT may not be explicitly taught to students, but teachers are indoctrinated in it and expected or required to integrate its tenets into their lesson plans.
What are its tenets? The article claims that these aren’t White children being taught to hate themselves, their families and their country. So what’s the awful heart of it?
At the heart of CRT is the idea that race is every person’s primary definitive characteristic. Whatever else they may be, their racial identity is paramount. The word for this is “racialism.”
CRT further holds that American society – because it was built by “dead, white men” – is structurally racist because white people built the society in a way to ensure their supremacy within it. All other races are victims of this structural racism.
https://www.city-journal.org/critical-race-theory-portland-public-schools
A very worthwhile primer on what CRT is and how it manifests itself in the public education system.
That in no way contradicts the OP’s claims, based in long, bitter experience of serial lies/betrayals by the Congressional Republican Party and the RNC, only partially interrupted in 2016 by Donald Trump’s victory. Lyin’ Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell then spent the next two years actively colluding with Democrats to hobble the Trump administration so that all those bitter clinging deplorable hobbits would be taught to get back in their place and bow to their RNC betters, showing up just to vote for the Chamber of Commerce candidates.
You are a realist.
Funny because bitterly true.
Not true. The kids are fully enabled by the administrators and teachers AND the radical leftist adults controlling the kids minds through deliberate design of the social media platforms. Not a bug, the primary feature.
Except the Cultural Revolution was powered by the “kids” directed by Mao.
No. It was the long fraud, led by Lyin’ Ryan and McConnell, that produced no real, credible, substantive substitutes. That was deliberate. The pathetic, fraudulent “repeal” they finally floated, when forced to it by a true maverick president, was defeated by not one but two key votes. Everyone knew that Susan Collins would vote FOR keeping Obamacare, because she ran on it and won. That took the Republicans down to 51-49. Lisa Murkowski voted to kill the “repeal.” She was only in the Senate because her daddy appointed her and then, when the Republican voters of Alaska threw her out in a primary, replacing her with a Tea Party conservative, Mitch McConnell jumped in and helped her win as an “independent” by promising that she would get to keep her important committee assignments. McConnell did this to stop the wave of real reformers who threatened his clique’s corrupt rule.
McCain did just what McConnell really wanted, based on McConnell’s long pattern of real, substantive behavior.
AND. McCain was a bitter, twisted, willing tool of Putin in his last term.
That’s really interesting, thank you. Predictably, I guess, I’m less triggered by it though there’s certainly a lot of jargon in there. I found this quite thought provoking:
That strikes as it might be true – for people of all ‘races’.
The lying and lack of strategic thinking about this makes me crazy. These people are worthless. Three senators and 100 Congress people.
There is no value added by the Education Edifice anymore. Just cut a check to the parents. The aggregate value would go straight up.