The coronavirus pandemic was obviously tragic in many ways, killing many of the most vulnerable, disrupting life, and causing job loss and economic hardship for millions. But in other ways, the experience has helped people gain perspective about important social problems.
One of them pertains specifically to education. The abandonment of in-person instruction by teachers unions was very revealing. It showed that unions are powerful organizations with no concern at all for children’s education. The learning loss they have caused has harmed schoolchildren.
On the other hand, though, a forced increase of involvement in their children’s day-to-day education experience has also helped parents wake up to the inanities that certain far-left school boards are forcing upon their children.
The school boards are not happy about the scrutiny. They have in some cases tried to keep parents out of public meetings. They are so out of touch and so entitled that they resent being held accountable by irate parents who have started showing up at these meetings.
Parents are unhappy at having their children indoctrinated with toxic racialist ideologies such as critical race theory, which attempts to make children feel bad about the color of their skin. They have raised the problem of pornographic materials and even child pornography that has been made available in some school libraries, supposedly in the name of tolerance for alternate lifestyles. Some parents have also come to meetings upset about school mask mandates that have little or no scientific basis.
As outrageous as it is for these board members to resent the public they are supposed to be serving, they are now crossing a much brighter line. They are literally asking the Biden administration to designate parents as terrorists for shouting at them, insulting them, and at some meetings behaving in a rowdy fashion. They want the White House to use the powers of the PATRIOT Act against the parents they are supposed to be serving. And unfortunately, it appears that Biden’s White House is at least remotely considering such a thing.
The National School Boards Association sent a letter Thursday to President Joe Biden complaining that school board members feeling the heat are actually victims of “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
The letter demands that the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security intervene to stop the angry parents, using such tools as “the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act,” and “the Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute.”
In order to justify this genuinely insane crackdown on rowdy people at school board meetings, the letter cites a rather unimpressive handful of cases where people were hurt or arrested or disruptive at meetings, or where school board members ended meetings rather than face an angry crowd of parents. It shouldn’t even have to be said, but none of these things — even the ones involving criminal behavior — constitute terrorism. Are we really supposed to turn this into a homeland security matter and curtail people’s constitutional rights just because someone inappropriately shouted “sieg heil” at a board meeting to mock a Michigan school board’s supposedly authoritarian behavior?
We certainly do not condone threats or violence. But what we really don’t condone is government suppression of activism. Parents have every right to get angry and participate in the process. The real issue is that many school boards would like to go back to operating in secret, the way they did before COVID. That’s why they are asking the Biden administration to use literal Nazi-like tactics in order to suppress dissent. It’s funny how the Left’s idea of “resistance” as a positive thing, or of dissent as the highest form of patriotism, vanishes the very moment the resistance is turned upon themselves.
“Obviously, these threats to school board members is horrible,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said when asked about NSBA’s unusual request. “They’re doing their jobs,” she added. She said that the White House would consider federal action, but that most such situations would be handled locally.
That is the wrong answer. The correct answer is “Hell no! We don’t do things like that in America.” There was a time when liberals understood this. Many of them were skeptical of the PATRIOT Act precisely because they feared some idiot might come along later and use its powers against political dissenters.
Biden must now decide whether he wants to be that idiot. We sincerely hope that he forcefully rejects the idea.
