Micro-response to a Lansing City Pulse article
Or, "David says something about the progressive technocracy again"
Well, it is the overarching threat of our time, friends.
A friend passed this article along to me today, “Five local school boards targeted by right-wing group”. The article is in the Lansing City Pulse, a hyper-progressive local newspaper, and I don’t recommend you actually read the article unless you’re doing a study on how the progressive propaganda sandwich is made these days, since that is what the piece is.
The article is about Turning Point USA putting certain local school districts on a “watch list”… for reasons that are barely explained in the article at all actually, though one would intuit it involves those districts adopting policies disliked by conservatives. Instead the article is basically a giant word salad to constantly prod you with the idea that groups like Turning Point are Bad, Dangerous people guilty of all kinds of isms and obias, and promoting harassment with their lists and such1, and you’re going to be one of the good and brave people who opposes them, right? (And then let’s contact every local police department for comment, not because there is any threat that deserves their comment, but to imply that there is a threat that deserves their comment, because that also is a common tactic in the propaganda these days.)
But I did just want to give you two quick snips from the article. I photographed a paper copy. The first is from a school board member for a school district in New Jersey actually.
I do at least appreciate the clarity here. It is outrageous that parents think they should decide what is in their children’s curriculum rather than experts and professionals! This is progressivism today. It is their self-conception, at least, that every decision, and I do mean every decision, should be made by “experts”. I’ve pointed out before that the Michigan Revised School Code, still in effect, has excellent language about:
It is the natural, fundamental right of parents and legal guardians to determine and direct the care, teaching, and education of their children. The public schools of this state serve the needs of the pupils by cooperating with the pupil's parents and legal guardians…
If I read the Code notes correctly, that language was actually added in 1996. But progressives today do not believe this is true. The modern Democratic Party would never affirm such language.
But there are other problems with this “the experts should decide”.
What really matters is the ideology, not the expertise. As the reaction to the Great Barrington Declaration showed especially well, if real experts arrive on the scene who think differently than the ideology, some defect shall be found to disqualify the experts. What matters above all is the ideology. (This is also why politicians in California [not experts] find it perfectly fine to threaten doctors [real experts] who speak other than the Party line.)
Why would you think that some “expert” who works in an office building a thousand miles away knows better what this kid needs than their parent who is with them every day? Your college degree may be valuable, but even the best person on their best day is looking down on the scene from a very high perspective. (And most of the people writing the rules are not even close to our best people on their best day.)
And finally… worth noting that just like the communists of yesterday, the progressive technocrat doesn’t see your children as belonging to you in any fundamental way. The interests of the state may supersede your desires for them at any time. Their biological attachment to you is basically seen as an accident… an easier belief to hold when their atheistic materialism sees basically anything that happens in the universe ever as also an accident. The idea that God has given you any special authority is laughable to them.
And then finally, also from the article, just because you are reading this here:
FEAR THE SUBSTACK. Fear any medium, really, that allows the promotion of ideas contrary to the Party.
And, of course, always accuse the other side of employing what is actually your tactic. Progressive activists routinely make such lists, and they hope the lists will lead to targeted harassment. Usually such harassment involves financial cancellation and the like, but if other things happen… For example, the man who conducted a shooting at the Family Research Council in 2012 actually mentioned finding FRC on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of “hate groups”. I doubt that fact bothered the SPLC one bit.
Your Substack comment reminded me of Acts 4:17, "But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in this name.”