There is a worn-out cliché that if the Left did not have double standards, they would have no standards at all. But the cliché really is not funny anymore. The examples of our ruling class imposing one set of rules on us serfs while exempting themselves from anything that would restrict either their affluence or absolute dominance abound: from the maskless elites at fancy galas and restaurants being served by masked and dehumanized servants, to the egregious treatment of participants in the January 6 protest at the Capitol, in contrast to the elite perpetrators of the Russia hoax—an actual attempt to thwart the democratic process—who are hailed as heroes and get lucrative book deals.
The latest affront comes in the form of a Department of Justice effort to combat what it said to be an “increase” in “threats of violence” against school officials and teachers across the country. According to Attorney General Merrick Garland, “[t]hreats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values.” This alleged increase in threats from parents unhappy about public school mask and vaccine mandates, as well as the indoctrination of school children through the teaching of critical race theory and pornography disguised as sex education, simply cannot be tolerated. According to Garland, the Justice Department effort is necessary because “[t]hose who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”
The Justice Department cites no actual examples of violence or threats of violence against school boards or school employees; indeed the rhetoric changes quickly to complaints of harassment. It is not impossible to imagine that frustrated parents have expressed themselves rather vociferously from time to time. The fact that no real examples of “over-the-top” behavior has been forthcoming from the Justice Department, however, indicates that “harassment” simply means parents have expressed opinions about their children’s educations contrary to the opinions of officials. This, we know, cannot be tolerated. As former and aspiring Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe reminded everyone recently, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Shut up, peons, and don’t interfere with the “experts” who know what is best for your children!
The Justice Department’s effort does not stem from any concern about violence or threats of violence against public school officials or school boards. The sole purpose is to stifle what is obviously becoming a growing and powerful movement across the country. Parents have awakened to the rot that pervades our public schools. This rot became increasingly apparent with the disruptions caused by COVID-19: most public schools (with no scientific justification) moved to “remote” learning, which opened the eyes of many parents to what their children were and were not being taught, and to the fact that teachers unions were more interested in advancing partisan agendas than in getting children back to school.
It should have been easy to predict that the Biden Administration would move quickly to quell this “uprising” of parents who have decided to retake control over what and how their children learn. After all, the Left’s dominance depends upon the continued indoctrination of America’s children from a very young age all the way through the universities. Children must be taught to believe—as a matter of faith—the tenets of the progressive Left: e.g., that climate change is an existential threat, that America is a fundamentally racist country, that racism is part of whites’ DNA, that redistribution of wealth is an imperative.
The latter article of faith—the imperative to redistribute wealth and thereby create a permanent dependent clientele for the Democratic Party—provides the most recent example of the Left’s duplicity. While parents speaking out at school board meetings is harassment that will not be tolerated, Joe Biden refused to condemn the egregious and continuous harassment by leftists protesting Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. Sinema was accosted while at Arizona State University by protestors who illegally entered the locked classroom building where she was teaching, to the point of following the senator and some of her students into the restroom. Protestors harass Sinema and Manchin outside their homes, their offices, even their boats in an effort to intimidate the senators into voting for the $3.5 trillion spending bill that is the centerpiece of the Left’s agenda. When Biden was asked to condemn these acts of harassment, his response was that it was all just “part of the process.”
Americans are beginning to recognize that their ruling elite breezily lives by one set of standards while imposing an entirely different set of standards on their subjects. The overriding goal is to maintain power—and all of the benefits that come with it. It is true that the progressive Left currently holds most of the reins of power: the federal government, the media, the entertainment industry, and the educational establishment. They use this dominance to make us all believe that there is no point in resisting, and there will be dire consequences for those who try. But there are still many of us who believe that the people—not the government or the ruling class—are sovereign, that parents should have the primary role in deciding how their children are raised and educated, that the fruits of honest labor belong to the person and not the government, that the rule of law means that laws apply equally to rulers and ruled. We still possess the means to fight back, and fight back we must.
We may not succeed, but we cannot give in: we must choose the possibility of noble failure over base success. We can take courage from Abraham Lincoln, whose words from over 180 years ago seem eerily fitting to our times:
I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons on the waves of hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course with the hopelessness of their effort; and, knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without contemplating consequences, before high heaven and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country’s freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending.