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We Are in a War for our Constitutional Republic in Every State
Arizona is a swing state that has swung hard left in key offices and will likely go entirely woke if Arizonans do not fully mobilize the working class against the real upper class. We must do so in every state for the sake of ourselves, the rising generations, and our constitutional republic. We are late in the game, as the Arizona Department of Education has already shown.
Before you reflexively roll out the usual line about “conservative” and how “class” is a leftist concept, read this excerpt from “A Modest Proposal for Republicans,” then go read the whole article after this post.
Yeah, yeah, “class” sounds Marxist, class warfare and all that, you’re supposed to be against that kind of thing, right? Wrong. Economic class warfare is Marxist, but here in the US class isn’t a purely economic concept. Class is also about culture. You’re already doing class warfare, you’re just doing it blindly and confusedly. Instead, do it openly, while using the words “class” and “classism”.
Trump didn’t win on a platform of capitalism and liberty and whatever. He won on a platform of being anti-establishment. But which establishment? Not rich people. Trump is rich, lots of his Cabinet picks were rich, practically the first thing he did was cut taxes on the rich. Some people thought that contradicted his anti-establishment message, but those people were wrong. Powerful people? Getting warmer, but Mike Pence is a powerful person and Trump wasn’t against Mike Pence. Smart people? Now you’re burning hot.
Trump stood against the upper class. He might define them as: people who live in nice apartments in Manhattan or SF or DC and laugh under their breath if anybody comes from Akron or Tampa. Who eat Thai food and Ethiopian food and anything fusion, think they would gain 200 lbs if they ever stepped in a McDonalds, and won’t even speak the name Chick-Fil-A. Who usually go to Ivy League colleges, though Amherst or Berkeley is acceptable if absolutely necessary. Who conspicuously love Broadway (especially Hamilton), LGBT, education, “expertise”, mass transit, and foreign anything. They conspicuously hate NASCAR, wrestling, football, “fast food”, SUVs, FOX, guns, the South, evangelicals, and reality TV. Who would never get married before age 25 and have cutesy pins about how cats are better than children. Who get jobs in journalism, academia, government, consulting, or anything else with no time-card where you never have to use your hands. Who all have exactly the same political and aesthetic opinions on everything, and think the noblest and most important task imaginable is to gatekeep information in ways that force everyone else to share those opinions too.
Now consider the Arizona Department of Education’s “School Improvement: Equity and Diversity.”* Sounds benign on the surface:
“In order to empathize with someone’s experience you must be willing to believe them as they see it and not how you imagine their experience to be” – Brene Brown
A CALL TO ACTION
School Support and Improvement, we will lead with equity. We want to reaffirm and reinforce our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion given current events that highlight persistent racial biases in our society. We are committed to listening, learning and taking action to ensure we are addressing inequities in ourselves, our services and systems.OUR SHARED CORE VALUE OF EQUITY
Our role is to support LEA and schools to develop systems and structures ensuring success for ALL students. We know that we must intentionally create dialogue and take appropriate action to support schools in addressing inequities and developing high quality, equitable environments that are inclusive of ALL students. We cannot expect each and every Black, Latinx, Native and Indigenous, and marginalized Asian child to thrive academically and reach their full potential if they are not being nurtured and supported in the most fundamental ways and that includes personal safety, and social, emotional, and mental well-being. We believe we have a collective responsibility to transform and create equitable systemic changes so ALL students in Arizona can thrive.OUR COMMITMENTS TO ACHIEVING EQUITY
Why then all the fuss by a City Journal contributor writing on Twitter on March 2? First, the Arizona State Superintendent of Education is an elected position.
Superintendent Kathy Hoffman was elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction in November 2018, and assumed office in January 2019. Superintendent Hoffman has spent her entire career working in public education, first as a pre-school teacher and then as a speech-language pathologist. She began her career in the Vail School District in Southern Arizona before joining the Peoria School District.
Second, the 2018 election, with possible fraud in the largest county (election administration controlled by a Democrat), resulted in a “progressive” Democrat, Kathy Hoffman, taking over the reins of Arizona K-12 education.
She is a native of Oregon who moved to Arizona and has taught special needs, and elementary age children in Tucson and the Valley. Ms. Hoffman said she was propelled to run by the Women’s Movement following the electoral college victory of Donald Trump and the ascension of Betsy DeVos, an opponent of public schools, to Secretary of Education.
So, a leftist became Arizona’s Superintendent of (K-12) Education in the 2018 midterm election, and leveraged the 2020 pandemic plus BLM riots to push the Critical Race Theory narrative, just as even the Department of Defense did. It took a while to pull the materials together for the delayed resumption of in-person classes, when heavy indoctrination could be imposed with teacher and peer pressure unchecked by parents looking over their children’s shoulders and stopping the abuse.
Christopher Rufo dug into Arizona’s online government documents and found a treasure trove to spark political and legal opposition to Critical Race Theory indoctrination in K-12. He did so as part of his campaign to build a lawfare coalition to stop federal and state critical race theory training.**
SCOOP: The Arizona Department of Education has created an "equity" toolkit claiming that babies show the first signs of racism at three months old and that white children "remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness" by age five.
Let's review the resources in the toolkit. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/g4Sk6X0VuO
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 2, 2021
Read the whole tweet thread with documents rolled up at the American Thinker: “Meeting the threat of three-month-old babies.” Ah, but you just followed the link above to the Arizona Department of Education and none of these terrible materials are there. Is this fake news? Far from it. The leftists controlling the Arizona Department of Education scrubbed the web site, apparently after their poisonous program was exposed to the world, and more importantly after the RepubliCAN’T party was put on notice that a state agency over which they have political power, through legislation and possible court action,*** had been nationally exposed.
Here is the archived website with all the leftist Critical Race Theory materials on full view: “Web Archive School Improvement: Equity and Diversity.” Note that this was published before the 2020 election, the now-deleted content captured on the webpage in September and October. Here is the first topic on the page:
Building the Understanding of Race & Equity
Educational Equity means that every student has access to the right resources they need at the right moment in their education, despite race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, language, nationality/immigration status, disability, family background, family income or zip code.
In our work, we will define Racism as prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people based on their membership of a racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized. It is the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.
So, what is Systemic Racism?
When Do We Discuss Race? Are kids too young? They’re Not Too Young
Watch
Netflix – When They See Us Ava DuVernay stopped the world when she told the stories of the (now) Exonerated Five. This is a cautionary tale for some on the dangers of making the narrative match a racist agenda and insight into the fear of Black families across the country, and world.
Fruitvale Station Directed by Ryan Coogler When advocating around police brutality, we often lose touch with the humanity of those we fight for. In this masterful film, we see a glimpse of what is stolen from us each time police use excessive force.
NetFlix – Dear White People This has drawn controversy from many who have been afraid to push past the title, but it’s great insight to the inner workings of Black student activists and their campus experiences.
Netflix – 13th Ava DuVernay exposes the extreme injustice in our criminal justice system, defining just how deep-rooted institutionalized racism is.
If Beale Street Could Talk Directed by Barry Jenkins Activism can be very glorified by those privileged to be advocating from the abstract. This film—part love story, part drama—gives us a look into what is truly at stake for those facing wrongful incarceration head on.
The Children’s March Youth-led activism has been on the rise since the fearless survivors of Parkland sparked a 21st century gun violence movement. To understand the shoulders on which we stand, learn about the children of Alabama that brought a racist police chief and segregation to its knees.
I Am Not Your Negro Directed by Raoul Peck James Baldwin has provided novels, personal essays, and prose to last many lifetimes! The film adaptation explores the extended history of racism through Baldwin’s recollections and personal observations.
Listen/Watch
Kimberle Crenshaw The Urgency of Intersectionality: Following 2016, ‘intersectionality’ became quite the buzzword, yet gets used out of context often by both the Right and Left alike. Hear from the black woman who coined the term in the ’80s as to how we use intersectionality to defend Black women.
Baratunde Thurston How To Deconstruct Racism, One Headline At A Time: Racism isn’t funny, but in this TED talk you’ll learn about the pervasive nature of racism and laugh out loud way more times than you’ll be able to count.
Verna Meyers How To Overcome Our Biases? Walk Towards Them: #AllLivesMatter is the new color blind and both terms are proof that people fear being accused of biases more than they feel committed to addressing them. Let’s lose the shame and take bold steps deeper into your allyship.
Rayna Gordon Don’t Be A Savior, Be An Ally: Sometimes with the best intentions we still fall short. Hear from Rayna about thoughtful allyship that seeks to uplift and support not take over or “save.”
CBS News : Tony Dikoupil talks with white Americans about racism. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/tony-dokoupil-talks-with-white-americans-about-racism/#x
The New York Times: A Conversation on Race – A series of short films about identity in America New York Time Series on Race
Read
What White Children Need to Know about Race by Ali Michael and Eleonora Bartoli
Unafraid of the Dark by Rosemary L Bray: Racism feels like this big scary monster which can make some of us feel like we don’t know where to begin in dismantling it and others feel it’s not relevant to them at all. Bray sets the record straight with these vignettes and anecdotes about what racism looks like in practice but also how police interventions can work to alleviate the pressures.
When They Call You A Terrorist by Patrisse Khan Cullors: Cullors co-founded Black Lives Matter over five years ago alongside two other Black women organizers. Years later, she reflected on her own journey to that moment and what it means to be labeled a terrorist by the government that has sought to erase you and those you love.
100 Ways to Support – Not Appropriate from Native People by Simon Moya-Smith “Natives have been so cancelled out of the American conversation that people don’t even know where to begin to include us…a collection of do’s and don’ts.”
Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High School
Debbie Irving 21 Day Challenge 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge
Dear White Parents of My Black Child’s Friends I Need Your Help by Maralee Bradley
That first link, “They’re Not Too Young” yields this result:
What you will never find on this list, or any other prepared by Kathy Hoffman’s collaborators, are such resources as:
“Equity and diversity” is entirely about permanently poisoning hearts and minds, policing the ethnic/color lines, and trapping racial minorities in permanent dependency. The rest of the intersectional game is further compartmentalization and grievance enforcement to the same political end. This is not a West Coast or New England problem. It is an American problem, threatening every state.
* Thanks to @kozak for posting the core graphic and American Thinker link earlier today in “Racist Babies.”
** The Daily Signal reports the lawfare coalition, so far:
In addition to the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth and Poverty, members of the coalition include the Southeastern Legal Foundation; the Upper Midwest Law Center; Jonathan O’Brien with Schoolhouserights.org; the Los Angeles-based Pivtorak Law Firm; Wally Zimolong of the Wayne, Pennsylvania-based Zimolong LLC; and Eric Early and Peter Scott of Early, Sullivan, Wright, Gizer & McRae, a law firm with offices in six U.S. cities.
*** See “Critical Race Theory Heads to the Courts” in Commentary Magazine describing the circumstances of a lawsuit brought by a black single mother with a mixed race son who appears “white” and who was subjected to a Maoist classroom environment. The pleadings filed in federal court in Nevada, are posted at Schoolhouserights.org:
- Plaintiff’s Complaint for Injunctive Relief, Declaratory Relief, and Damages — Here is where the mother and son, Gabrielle and William Clark, get to tell their story.
- Emergency Motion for Preliminary Injunction and Application for Temporary Restraining Order
- Reply to Defendant’s Response in Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction and Temporary Restraining Order — This is pretty devastating stuff. The leftists are clearly trying to run the clock and expect a win at the 9th Circuit and then in a cowed U.S. Supreme Court, led by Bush’s man John Roberts.
See also Doe v. Villa Duchesne, filed by white parents on behalf of themselves and their daughter in Missouri state court, against Villa Duchesne High School, an elite Catholic girls prep school. This is a much weaker, perhaps poorly drafted, complaint which even fails to raise the obvious federal statutory and constitutional issues.
Published in Culture
There is no fight. The war is over. We lost.
Let the Underground begin.
The part of the toolkit that kills me is the assertion that only white children are racist, which ignores the reality of blacks demanding their own dorms, student unions, and graduation ceremonies . . .
This is why I would push for every classroom to have a web cam streaming every class so that parents can indeed monitor what their children are being taught.
I think this is the money quote from the original linked article:
Perhaps we aren’t doing all we can to win. Maybe too many of us are still afraid or unwilling to stand up and be counted and set an example of real people saying unapproved things. Maybe, when more of us do that, it will make a difference.
The Republican Party used to be for the support of the lower classes. Read any history book out there about the struggle of the Pullman Strikers or the Haymarket rioters, and it was Republican politicians and the party members that offered help to the beleagured.
Of course eventually unions became money laundering orgs for crime and for the Democratic Party.
The Dems are cancelling out the concept of lower class needs and concerns, in favor of a color line. Better to offer Oprah, Chris Rock and Chappelle reparations than to actually do something that affects those struggling on the bottom end of the economic ladder.
Great post. But, Good Lord how hard it is to attempt a conversation with those who just aren’t interested in seeing. I was exchanging texts with my niece yesterday (she won’t ‘fess up to it but I know she and her husband voted for Biden). Her life is truly wrapped up in her grandchildren (4 of them) and we were texting about the situation with the Dr. Seuss books.
She agrees that the country is going to h*ll in a handbasket but each time I try to zero in on those responsible for it, I get a response along the lines of “Yeah, I really worry about what they are trying to do to the country.” She’s an intelligent woman but I can’t break through to get her to admit who “they” really are, no matter how hard I argue that it’s her grandchildren who are going to suffer the most.
Argh!!!
The age of Teddy.
There’s been huge pushes by California pundits to paint the Republican Party as the reason for CA’s failures.
For the life of me, I can not figure their reasoning.
There is no fate but what we make.
Illinois beat them to it, with “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading” standards. The acronym for that is in your keyboard: CTRL. Our own @Illiniguy wrote a post about it a few weeks ago.
So glad I don’t teach any more and so glad our son graduated from high school a few weeks ago. Yes, early, in Utah, where they don’t have this insanity.
I strongly disagree with your thesis. I wrote a reply saying why. Like about 2o-30% of my laboriously drafted replies, it disappeared before I posted it.
I only mention this to whinge. I feel better now! Thank you.
Good post and linked substack article. I do think there is something to the class warfare argument. Republicans will need something coherent to rally around. I think pushing back against CRT will be important but there needs to be something more and the class issue is key.
If it is of some length, please have a go at an original post and link here in the comments. Is the disagreement over the class portion of this post?
Yes. See:
* https://ricochet.com/859412/culturally-responsive-teaching-putting-activism-before-learning/
* https://ricochet.com/879677/culturally-responsive-teaching-political-activism-through-the-back-door/
The thesis we object to is that orthodox ideological Americans (“conservatives”) think that class is a leftist concept*.
In fact we recognize that social class is a permanent feature of human society. If we though that is is a leftist concept, we would be stupid and abysmally ignorant. We concede that you may be right, and that we may be wrong, but we reject the proposition that we are stupid and abysmally ignorant.
Give them what they want. If blacks want segregation, why deny them?
I’m a Marxist except I side with the bourgeoisie (Niall Ferguson)
Losing is a choice not destiny
GOP opposed slavery and was the party of ‘free labor’
My understanding is that Republicans were and are pro-working class but not pro union
As we should be
the never ending race card
Nothing to figure out — these pundits have no reasoning — they need brain transplants like Jonah Goldberg
why not do both?
push back against CRT
also push back against transgenders competing in women’s sports
and bathrooms
I know people who voted for Trump because of the bathroom issue in 2016
this is an interesting question
When did class become an issue?
Karl Marx?
French Revolution?
In a way, they’re right. By abandoning any hope of fighting the Democrats and regaining a majority of seats (which admittedly would be difficult), they have. I’m not saying I’d do anything different except pack my bags and leave . . .
Giving welfare benefits to illegal aliens
giving driver licenses and mail ballots to illegal aliens
illegal aliens changed the demographics of CA and paved the way for more mail ballot fraud
State legislators need to grow a pair and flex their muscles.
Exactly my point.