The Biden Administration is engaged in a massive effort to promote radical Leftist policies across the board. Its latest move against American parents is a direct challenge to the cherished American traditions of limited government and the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
On October 3rd, Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote the director of the FBI and U.S. Attorneys throughout the country:
In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation's public schools. ... Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation's core values.... The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate."
Garland's "Memorandum" included an order unleashing the feds in a nationwide campaign against parents who complain about the miseducation of their children:
To this end, I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum. These meetings will facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.
One wonders, just what "threats" require this nationwide offensive directed at parents who dare to enter the public square to express their views regarding the education of their children? The memo doesn't say. It gives zero specific examples of any real threats, because there haven't been any.
The Left does have reason for concern, however. Around the country, in school board meetings and in public discussion, increasing numbers of parents have been exercising their rights of free speech and assembly.
Why is that any surprise?
Parents are incensed about the introduction of pornographic and blatantly ideological material into the curricula of their local public schools. Among these programs we find Critical Race Theory (CRT), a thinly-veiled racist attack of Marxist inspiration on white Americans. Its inclusion in school curricula echoes Garland's recent assertion that "White Supremacists" are the greatest domestic threat to the Republic.
Taken together, these materials constitute heavy-handed propaganda for the Biden Administration's radical remaking of America. The goal is to rewrite American history, disparage our political culture, and undermine civic comity. Garland's threatened clampdown represents an unprecedented use of raw federal force to silence the growing opposition to this attempted cultural revolution.
But America's parents have decided that they will not be silent any longer.
For more than a year, tens of millions of American families have been intimidated into silence by the Left's destructive efforts to transform the country. The violence, the lockdowns, repeated mandates that "keep us safe," the arbitrary limits on travel, employment - even on family social gatherings - have been unprecedented. To millions of Americans, the endless succession of arbitrary and increasingly hostile diktats seem designed to determine how far such oppression can go before the public says, "Enough!"
Many parents, whom public "educators" are now labeling as "terrorists", have made it clear that they refuse to comply anymore.
In response, the U.S. Attorney General has declared war on parents - a declaration of war made without any credible foundation in law - ordering the DOJ and its police agency, the FBI, to harass and browbeat into silence those parents who dare speak out publicly against these radical programs. One is reminded of the behavior of Communist East Germany's Stasi Secret Police, or of Orwell's Thought Police.
At the same time that Democrats are defunding police forces in major cities, enabling the rise of a historic crime wave, Garland is directing massive funding and resources to criminalize and silence Constitutionally protected dissent.
What prompted Garland's sudden Memorandum? Some observers point to a September 29 letter to the White House from the "National School Boards Association" (NSBA), which bills itself as "The Leading Advocate For Public Education."
The NSBA is a lobbying group representing the public-school industry. It is run by Garland's son-in-law, Xan Tanner, whose company just happens to sell CRT training material to school districts. If that sounds like Attorney General Garland has a conflict of interest, it is because he does.
Tanner's letter demands that the Federal Government launch a war against those parents, claiming that school board members face "physical threats because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory (CRT) within classroom instruction and curricula."
So CRT is a myth, and millions of parents have nothing to worry about, so shut them up and send them home, says "The Leading Advocate For Public Education." CEO Tanner alleges that the accusations against CRT, "gender equity," pornographic textbooks, and other classroom outrages have no foundation in fact.
In Tanner's version of reality, the objections of parents to this radical Leftist agenda constitute "acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials [that] have increased ... these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes ."
After labeling millions of parents as potential terrorists, Tanner directs his father-in-law to do the following: "Given this, NSBA requests a joint expedited review by the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Homeland Security, along with the appropriate training, coordination, investigations, and enforcement mechanisms from the FBI, including any technical assistance necessary from, and state and local coordination with, its National Security Branch and Counterterrorism Division, as well as any other federal agency with relevant jurisdictional authority and oversight."
That's right. America's "Leading Advocate For Public Education" now declares that millions of parents are domestic terrorists.
The NSBA is not your average lobby. It is an arm of the government education syndicate, which is supported by America's most powerful and radical political player - the public school unions.
Once upon a time, associations of educators met occasionally to consider improvements in teaching methods and content. That all changed in 1976, when they became genuinely politicized and demanded a federal "Department of Education" to remove governance of public schools away from local control to the federal bureaucracy. In exchange for their support, Governor Jimmy Carter agreed to all their demands - after all, there are public school teachers in virtually every Zip Code in America. The support of the teachers unions was indispensable to Carter's narrow victory that fall, and to every Democrat election victory in the decades since.
There are well-documented allegations that Garland's "surprise" Memorandum was actually secretly prepared weeks before by the Department of Justice, and that the NSBA letter by Garland's son-in-law was simply a stage-managed ploy to justify the Attorney General's unprecedented power play.
The Inspector General at the Department of Justice is investigating .
There is only one group in Washington whose influence matches that of the Public Education syndicate and that is the pro-abortion lobby. Given that abortion is the Prime Mandate of the Biden Administration, pro-lifers should be asking themselves, "Are we next"?
The education unions are indeed powerful, and Garland's Memorandum demonstrates the Biden Administration's support of their agenda of educating an entire generation of young Americans to hate their country, its institutions and, if they are white, even themselves. But if you are weaponizing the institutions of government against your political enemies, why stop with parents?
Joe Biden is even more committed to serving Planned Parenthood than he is the teachers unions. His Administration's abortion agenda is the most radical we have ever seen in this country.
If pro-life initiatives continue to advance on the state level, and if the Biden Administration recognizes the possibility of a seismic change on the ground and in the courts regarding the abortion issue, will Garland next set his sights on pro-lifers as the new "terrorists"?