Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
Do parents have no right to object if the tenets of critical race theory — that America is shot through with “systemic racism,” that whites are privileged from birth and blacks oppressed — are taught as truth about the country to which they have given their loyalty and love?
Virginia is a newly blue state, with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, that Joe Biden won by 10 points.
Hence, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe was an early and solid favorite to regain the office he vacated in 2017. But if McAuliffe loses Tuesday, the defeat will be measured on the Richter scale.
For if he does lose, it will be because of an elitist belief McAuliffe blurted out during a debate with Republican rival Glenn Youngkin:
“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions. … I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Yet, during his own term as governor, one Virginia school district pulled copies of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Huckleberry Finn” out of the schools because of the books’ use of racial slurs.
What McAuliffe was saying was that the knowledge, truths and beliefs imparted to children in public schools are to be determined by school officials and teachers alone. Parents have no role and should butt out.
His dismissal of any parental role in education did more than cause a backlash against McAuliffe. It put on the national agenda an issue that will be engaged and fought long after this Virginia governor’s race is over.
Former President Barack Obama was not amused at Virginia’s reaction to McAuliffe’s rejection of any parental role in education.
“We don’t have time to be wasting on these phony, trumped-up culture wars,” said Obama during a campaign stop for McAuliffe.
But to the voters of Virginia, who have been moving to Youngkin since McAuliffe made his now-famous remark, these are real issues.
For what their children are taught and not taught in the public schools to which parents consign them from age 5 to age 18 are matters of grave concern for those parents. For it will affect the kind of adults and citizens their children will become.
“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man” is a saying attributed to the Jesuits’ founder St. Ignatius of Loyola.
These schools are helping shape what children come to believe about the moral, social and historical issues tearing our country apart. These schools are helping shape the men and women these children will become.
Consider. Under the landmark Supreme Court rulings in Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges, abortion and same-sex marriage have been made constitutional rights. Yet both decisions contradict biblical truths, Catholic doctrine and natural law.
While both decisions are today the law of the land, have parents no right to object if public-school teachers instruct their students that these decisions were right, moral and just? Do students and parents have no right to dissent, both inside and outside the classroom?
According to the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” American history began when the first slaves arrived in Virginia, not when the colonies declared independence in 1776 or when the Constitution was ratified.
Do parents have no right to object if the tenets of critical race theory — that America is shot through with “systemic racism,” that whites are privileged from birth and blacks oppressed — are taught as truth about the country to which they have given their loyalty and love?
For generations, statues to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson stood on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. Now that the statues are torn down, both are reviled as “traitors.”
Yet, until he was 40 years of age, George Washington was a loyal British subject. But when Virginia rose up against the British Crown, Washington joined the rebellion. Robert E. Lee was also a loyal U.S. soldier and hero of the Mexican War, until his home state Virginia seceded.
Both men were slave-owners. The great difference: Washington was victorious at Yorktown, and Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
President Dwight Eisenhower regarded Lee, whose portrait he hung in the Oval Office, as among the greatest of all Americans.
Whose view of Lee should be taught? Eisenhower’s or Harvard’s?
The question raised by McAuliffe is: Who decides? Who, in the education of America’s children, decides what is historically, morally and socially true? And who is allowed to participate in those decisions?
The nation is today divided over whether America is a good and a great country, or whether it has been irredeemably stained by its sins against the indigenous peoples and slavery. As the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl said, “History is indeed an argument without end.”
Again, the question: Who decides which version is taught in the public schools that are paid for with the tax dollars of the parents who send their children there?
Middle America’s view of the country is more than a little distant from the Ivy League’s, and somewhat closer to Merle Haggard’s. “When you’re running down my country, you’re walking on the fighting side of me.”
Whatever happens Tuesday, “the McAuliffe issue” will be on the table in the elections of 2022.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
I do for my kids. You do for yours. How about that.
Plus, I do not like to use the word “teaching”, as it implies the filling of a vessel. I like to think of it as a seed I have been entrusted with, of which I do not know the type of plant yet. Plus, it does not come with instructions. I must observe and care for it as best as I can, adjusting the conditions based on the observations in order for it to unfold into the plant it was meant to become from the beginning.
Svarga – Actually, there is an instruction manual and one basic instruction all parents should follow:
Raise up a child in the ways of the Lord and when he grow old, he will not depart from it.
I’ve made $84,000 so far this year working online and I’m a full time student. I’m using an online business opportunity I heard about and I’ve made such great money. It’s really user friendly and I’m just so happy that I found out about it. The potential with this is endless. Here’s what I do… https://bit.ly/LatestJobs1
Every time I read an article like this my first thought is, “My God, we should have picked the cotton ourselves.”
My second thought is, “My God, the Jews are at it again.”
ICE – I think that first thought almost every time I turn on the local news.
My grandmother lived in the coalfields of West Virginia, where there were nationalities and races from every country that mined coal. She used to say she would rather have black people as neighbors rather than Jews any day.
If VA is still using Dominion voting machines mcasshole will win. It doesn’t matter what parents think or what was said in a debate.
It’s almost as if people have forgotten 11/3/2020….
It will be another ‘much to do about nothing’.
The ONLY way to control what your children learn in school is to either educate them yourself or pay for their education yourself and use your power as a consumer to get what you want from the school you purchase services from. When you happily endorse the actions of the government as they STEAL from your neighbors, businesses, and other property owners to pay for your child’s education, you are going to get a product tainted by that immorality and violence. Those other victims of government theft are also going to want to be part of the decision making process and their goals might not be yours.
Considering it will take at least 80% of the vote to overcome the massive election fraud (it’s likely even that would not be enough), McCauliffe losing would indeed be a miracle.
“The nation is today divided over whether America is a good and a great country, or whether it has been irredeemably stained by its sins against the indigenous peoples and slavery.”
Get over it!! When in human history has there not been slaves?? It’s a human issue; not unique to America.
“Virginia is a newly blue state…that Joe Biden won by 10 points.”
“…will be on the table in the elections of 2022.”
These two statements grate on my nerves. How am I supposed to take you seriously, Pat??
Pat is still living his glory days in the Reagan administration. His rambles are sometimes quite amusing, but usually just show his senility coming through.
Public schools’ raison d’etre is indoctrination; the government needs obedient drones who are just smart enough to push the levers and pull the knobs that keep industrialized comforts humming along, but not smart enough to start drawing inferences and noticing the endless brainwash.
There has never been any other reason for public schools to exist.
Pat is either a hopeless fool or another gatekeeper running interference for his paymasters.
The real question is how a government ostensibly formed and tolerated for the purposes of securing individual rights came to have the kind of power over its subjects that nullifies a parent’s right to rear his own child.
You will notice that Pat never breathes so much as a hint calling into question the underlying structure of our comfortable serf system.
either? or?
Well…. yes. Good point.
“The real question is how a government ostensibly formed and tolerated for the purposes of securing individual rights came to have the kind of power over its subjects that nullifies a parent’s right to rear his own child.“
Because men didn’t do their jobs as the 4th branch of government? Checks & balances and all that jazz. Just a wild guess…
Btw…I’ve been searching all over for something called a ‘laser disc’ player to no avail. Recently won some tunes that I’m dying to listen to. I’m checking museums next.
I think it has more to do with the fact that most people are not meant to really think very much. The vast majority of humankind has never considered the legitimacy of government at all. I don’t mean if the particular government that impinges upon their life is good or bad, but rather how it came to be organized in the first place, and for the purposes of achieving what goals?
The vast majority of humanity perceives government in the same way he perceives the weather, or the boiling point of water, or the lifespan of the house fly. That is, he perceives government as a fact, or a phenomenon, that exists as though by magic. It just IS, and it is taken for granted in the same way gravity acting upon his dropped mug of Schlitz is taken for granted.
He sees its effects and grumbles occasionally about the pain in the neck these effects sometimes represent, but it does not occur to him to wonder how or why his reality was so established. This is just how things are.
This unquestioning attitude produces acquiescence and passivity. How can one be outraged by outrages perpetrated by the government when you have no clear idea what its PURPOSE is to begin with?
Hmmm…giving the unintelligent a voice. Sounds like a flawed form of government to me. Maybe not the best idea in human history.
If you continue much farther down this road you’re going to wind up as either a Monarchist or a National Socialist 🙂 Both will make you very popular at children’s birthday parties and family reunions!
It is my opinion that government is only legitimate insofar as it serves to defend the person and property of the individual. That is its only legitimate reason to exist at all. But once 99% of any population loses sight of this, they will obey any dictate the Rulers choose to to lay upon their necks and pretty soon you have seatbelt laws, mandatory health insurance, and income tax. There is no limit to what they will accept ( koff koff Covid vax! koff koff), because they are not capable of comparing what the dot Guv is doing with what the dot Guv was organized to take care of in the first place.
It has never occurred to them to define for themselves the purpose of legitimate government in the same way it has never occurred to them to ask why yellow exists.
Most people are simply not suited to abstract thinking. They have no real curiosity about things. I don’t mean this in any arrogant, “Look How Much Better And Smarter I Am!” sort of way, either. It’s just an observation.
Mankind was not created to ponder deeply about how civilizations should function. They were created to serve God. But here we are in this Fallen world, and wisdom dictates that somebody has to be in charge.
Giving every Tom, Dick and Harry a voice in how this gets accomplished is a sure recipe for the misery you see beginning to bloom all around you.
“If you continue much farther down this road you’re going to wind up as either a Monarchist…”
Yes, King Ivor, I may have one foot in and one foot out.
After being involved in political life in Colorado and screaming at the top of my lungs to the commoners that they need to wake up and take some action…I very clearly saw that no one cared nor did they even want to learn. They were content. They wanted to be led, even if that meant losing their freedom. Heartbreaking really, to me at least.
So….you DO indeed have a point. Eat that up, because I may never say that again!
The parents could make the school board (and a majority of the rest of the government in these no longer united states) tomorrow if they removed their children from the schools tomorrow. But, in point of demonstrated fact seen all through the country, people would rather be poisoned, and have their children poisoned than go to the trouble of simply refusing to ingest (or allowing it to be forced on their children) the poison.
” I’m too busy”, “It’s too much trouble”, “Where else will I find a job”, “What will we do with them all day”, “It’s just that one school, not ours” and on and on and on.
Face it TBP’ers: The VAST majority of the residents of what used to be a great nation are content with the condition and vector of change. The proof of that is that the VAST majority do whatever is asked of them regardless of who asks or how ridiculous it is, if only to gain a convenience like flying or having your children out of the house all day so you can work a job you would never do for free in service to people who you know have no respect for you.
It won’t last forever, but we are not near the end of it yet. Not until people actually begin to refuse to participate. I bet it will be a god long while yet, and I pray that I am mistaken
As an elder citizen I have done every thing I can to be uncooperative in the NWO takeover of our great country. I went to my annual eye appointment yesterday. It ended on the handicapped ramp with an interesting talk with the opthamologist in the rain. I will trust God to take care of my sight and not any doctor.
All politics is local and McAuliffe localized a state election. You can bet they are working overtime printing more ballots for him, as his numbers tank. Watch for the late night ballots to swamp his republican challenger, giving the Clinton acolyte a solid victory.
If ya’ can’t beatem, cheatem.
The FBI needs to be de-funded and abolished. They long ago declared war on the American people and the Constitution, and they need to reap the consequences of thinking they are the absolute authority over the people who employ them. There is no such thing as a legitimate law enforcement agency that is not directly accountable to the people. That means the only legitimate law enforcement agencies, are duly elected Sheriffs.
You know what’s even more accountable – 100% private security services.
Judge Dredd gets to differ.
They also need to get the treatment, aka like the Praetorian Guards and Janissary got when their people had enough of them.
Jeez, does anyone think for a minute that the count will be legitimate? “They” have mailed out tons of absentee ballots that no one requested, to be delivered at 3 am by trucks, counted maybe, and with armies of lawyer thugs standing by to challenge any and all results against the narrative. Meanwhile, the gopers of the uniparty stand by with mouths agape, wondering what to do next.
The bottom line is prob does not make a hell of a lot of difference, uniparty, but it might just be worth it to see the loathsome “terry” go back to the clintons.