Tyranny is anti-fragile: liberty is fragile Liberty is taken for granted: tyranny relegated to a rhetorical shibboleth. The nature of both was sanitised or anesthetised. Pronouncing on liberty and freedom was seen as the occupation of odd archaic kook Jeremiah’s.
This week US Attorney-General Merrick Garland's Memorandum on School Board meetings was a high powered broadside of overreach directed against liberty by weaponising the rule of law and the Department of Justice. Specifically, it engaging its several of its divisions: The FBI, The Civil Rights Division and the National Security Division of all things!
The Department of Justice is staffed with some uncompromising left-wing radicals. Some of whom were connected to the former Obama regime: e.g. Susan Hennessey, Kristen Clark, Lisa Monaco (Deputy US A-G) and of course Merrick Garland. This represents the capture of an agency and welding it to the dictates of the Democrat Party.
The FBI, CRD and NSC are to shut down speech, and deem verbal dissent to CRT as domestic terrorism under The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. The Patriot Act,,/i> as it is also called, concerns real McCoy domestic terrorism: not differing ideas and First Amendment Rights.
All the coercive brute powers of the central administrative state have been marshalled to crush “the dissent of Moms” to Marxist ‘critical race theory. Mark Levin has likened the actions of the US Attorney General to the Stasi given the direct line of communication proposed to the FBI to deal with voluble Moms.
Yet the FBI was never troubled about the 2020 US summer of the mayhem of riots, burning of buildings, assaults and killings and the Department of Justice failing to charge offenders who were released. Despite acts of a terrorist nature to burn down- with police inside- the federal courthouse in Portland by organisation's committed to overthrowing the US government.
The usual triggering tools are those of therapeutic socialism, feelings of harm and threats. Months of school board meetings have had parents across the ethnic and racial divide unite in condemning and objecting to the indoctrination of their children with pernicious and divisive Marxist Critical Race Theory and Transgenderism.
Proceedings of school board meetings and the ruminations of kooky teachers have been regularly published in media outlets like Rumble and also picked up by conservative media. Bannon’s War Room, for instance, sees the engagement by parents as a democratic populist movement, involving Traditionalist values and educational norms, confronting, in a democratic and public forum, the radical minority elite tyranny. School boards have been captured by left-leaning folk and the teacher unions. The Unions get to control the employer of teachers.
The following points show the degree of erosion of the rule of law in the USA by Marxist Progressives in this case.
First, jurisdiction, schools and school boards are funded by the state counties’ taxpayers and not the federal government; and state law prevails.
Secondly, school boards are democratically elected bodies. That gives parents a say in their children's education: not to accept silently the dictates of Commissar Crazies. A trend from the superintendents, boards and bureaucrats is that parents should have no say, which means that Boards and teachers pushing political, racial and sexual agendas should not be open to comment, criticism or censure.
Thirdly, school boards conduct proceedings in public meetings as behoves their democratic function. Board members may consider an objection to their ideological position as harmful and emotionally threatening but that does not justify FBI intervention, deeming dissenting viewpoints as domestic terrorism and justifying prosecution under the ,I>US Patriot Act 2001. Equally, parents find the political agenda objectionable and inappropriate.
Fourthly, the popular push back by parents- who are after all the electorate and constituency for school boards- has put the radical leftist, the Unions and the National School Boards Association (which is not entirely representative) on the defence then onto the offence by enlisting federal power. It is a step, as is the Attorney General’s prompt response, to safeguard ideological heterodoxy, that says a lot about the political temperature in the USA at present.
Finally, an ongoing trend of the Biden- Obama 2- Administration is the by-passing of the constitution. Euphemistically it is called a "workaround" rather than what it is an intentional breach. “Workaround” emasculates 10th Amendment State powers, rights, separation of powers over education. A trend that has been seen clearly in the election context where the states have the powers not the federal government under the US Constitution. Education and school boards are individual state and county areas, not federal ones.
What has occurred is increasing attendance at meetings and vocal objection and push back against Marxist indoctrination. Some of the most eloquent statements in opposition to CRT have been from Black Americans Mothers. Others from Chinese Mothers, and other ethnic groups who have grown up in socialist and repressive regimes have been the voice of experience which challenges Marxist religious ideation.
Christopher Ruffo has noted the heat of democratic opposition an investigative journalist who has written extensively on s CRT issues. He says that:
Garland’s memo follows a National School Boards Association request that the Biden administration investigates threats to school board members and classify sometimes-heated parent protests as "domestic terrorism." The NSBA suggested that some of these parents should be prosecuted under the PATRIOT Act and federal hate crimes legislation.
The school board association letter, however, is riddled with falsehoods, errors, and exaggerations. It begins with the claim that “critical race theory is not taught in public schools,” despite a vast body of evidence, including my own reporting, showing that the teaching of CRT is widespread in public schools. Even the national teachers’ union has admitted as much and called for CRT’s implementation in all 50 states.
The NSBA deliberately misrepresents debates at school board meetings as “threats” and sometimes vociferous and angry speech as “violence.” The letter refers to dozens of news stories alluding to “disruptions,” “shouts,” “argument,” and “mobs,” but, contrary to its core claim, cites only a single example of actual violence against a school official: a case of aggravated battery in Illinois, which is obviously condemnable, but hardly the justification for a national “domestic terrorism” investigation. https://www.city-journal.org/b...
The Attorney General’s memo seems to fulfil the NSBA’s intentions if not expectations. A question of a contrivance in the NSBA's letter is an open one.
Senator Hawley in a Senate hearing this week stated most articulately that actions by the Attorney General were unprecedented in US history and that the effect was to "chill” First Amendment Free Speech rights and to intimidate parents into submission. https://www.dailysignal.com/20...
An eye must be cast upon those 6 January protestors still in detention waiting for trial and without bail for minor charges to see what political dissent looks like in the face of weaponised legal system state tyranny despite some Judges calling out the prosecution’s approach.
There may be a fly in the ointment. Does the Attorney General have a conflict of interest explaining the one-week time frame from the National School Boards Association letter to the President resulting in such prompt action?
Mark Levin's mid-week podcasts have been railing with vigour against the Attorney General's actions. He has pointed out that the US Attorney -General may have a conflict of interest through family interests. His daughter is married to a man who founded a company, Panorama, which has multi-million dollar contracts in the supply of “Equity” and Race (presumably CRT) materials to 10% of the 14,000 school boards in the US. Mr Levin has called for a special counsel to investigate.
We should also keep an eye on our own Ministry of Educations' dabbling in critical race theory. We have no bulwarks as the US does of elected boards and local state control but nationalised and imposed policy and curriculum.
Liberty is often seen as a tree. As its branches are gradually shorn off, limb by limb, the shade and shelter of freedom and liberty are lost.
Weaponising of justice and the rule of law is a sure way to put the chainsaw to the trunk of the tree of liberty and by a man who was a candidate for the Supreme Court and the senior legal officer of the United States Government.
Graham Hill MA (Hons) LLB (Hons)
Nelson, 8 October 2021
Other related articles:
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https://www.washingtontimes.co...
https://www.dailysignal.com/20...
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