In 2008 political commentator J.B. Williams ran an article describing why President Obama’s Democratic Party was “not your grandfather’s Democrats!” After all, although while campaigning in 2008 President Obama often said although he loved America, he just as often said he hoped to “fundamentally change” it. More recently, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said the same. Such statements are never questioned. I’d venture that few husbands have the courage to try saying this to their wives on their anniversary—“Honey, I love you so much but can we agree that you need to fundamentally change?” You either love something for what it is, or you want to fundamentally change it into something that it’s not. There’s not much wiggle room here. Just as J.B. Williams so clearly argued back then, President Obama’s words, actions and appointments all gave evidence to counter his claim of professing “love” for our nation. Today’s Democratic Party, still under the tutelage of Barack Obama and his protégés, seems to be no different. It continues to make decision after decision that runs counter to the best interests of the American people and our traditional values. Just as Jefferson argued in the Declaration of Independence, “when a long train of abuses … pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design” – well, it’s time once again to take note of such designs and to call out those who want such ‘fundamental change.’ Just as Jefferson provided enormous detail and facts “to a candid world,” the day-in-day-out actions of today’s Democratic Party provide ample evidence to their un-American beliefs.
The 1960s and 1970s were unquestionably the height of this nation’s commitment to equality of opportunity for all Americans. The Warren Court upheld individual rights and freedom to an unprecedented degree. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution were cited repeatedly in advancing equal opportunity for all Americans—regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or handicap. It might be said that the Warren Court succeeded in ‘fundamentally changing’ America. Today’s Democratic Party, however, has steadily marched away from the belief in the rights of individuals and has now fully embraced group rights and nefarious doctrines such as ‘disparate impact is tantamount to racism’ and ‘critical race theory.’ Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the field of education. A few examples in the spirit of Jefferson might prove helpful.
Despite sixty years of fighting to end racial segregation in education, we’ve now witnessed decades of self-imposed segregation at virtually all institutions of higher learning. At many universities, minority students can choose to segregate in ethnic or racial housing and may sometimes even demand or reject room-mates due to race. To assist race-based admissions, colleges continue to hide aggregate qualifications of freshmen based upon race. It took a Supreme Court case to reveal that one university gave added bonus admission points to Black students that equated to those awarded to students who earned perfect scores on the SAT. Increasingly, our university system is moving away from merit-based admission policies. Ironically, Asian-students are no longer considered minorities on some campuses while in other cases Asian parents are suing Ivy League schools because of past discriminatory policies.
Related to having separate policies based upon race, last week, Columbia University announced it would authorize six separate graduation ceremonies for students who identify by non-traditional genders. Apparently, the California University system’s policy of allowing students to identify as any one of six separate genders has now been adopted nationwide. Along these lines, in an effort to be ‘more inclusive,’ Democrats in Congress recently introduced “The Gender Equality Act” which—like so many other Democratic measures—does the exact opposite of what its name states. Allowing an infinitesimally small number of transgendered males to compete in women’s sports places all female athletes at a tremendous disadvantage! The disparity of the sexes in sports is obvious—to everyone but Democrats. For example, there are currently over 300 high school boys who have faster sprint times than the fastest woman in the world. In 2017, a high school boy’s team composed entirely of players under the age of 15 easily defeated the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. The immediate response was to forever cease having adult women’s soccer teams compete with adolescent boys-not allow transgendered men to compete on the women’s team! There is already abundant evidence that trans-women athletes are taking substantial competitive scholarships away from women who have devoted their entire lives to their athletic careers. Rather than publicly protest this injustice, however, most girls remain silent for fear they will endanger their own college admissions as being transphobic. Whereas in the 1970s & 80s our nation used to ridicule and question the gender of certain Communist East German or Russian female track-and-field athletes in order to maintain a level playing field for all, it now appears Democrats have fully embraced such lunacy and inequality.
Nor is it just in sports or college admissions that today’s Progressive Democrats seek to undermine traditional American educational values. The racist indoctrination of so many students at the post-secondary level has now permeated into the curriculum of the K-12 system. The study of America’s past and other social science courses are now saturated with racial bias and falsehoods. Questionable new curriculum as exemplified in the NY Times “1619 Project,” “White Privilege Classes” and the Black Lives Matter educational teaching modules are now used in thousands of schools across the country. Since our nation has deliberately failed to implement national accountability on subjects like American History or Civics—the only subjects that lack such assessment—Leftist teachers and school administrators are free to use these false doctrines and un-American teaching activities with little fear of the consequence of poor test scores.
The use of un-American content in grades K-12 began with a two-pronged assault on traditional American history. Incendiary books that characterize America as the worst nation in the world with regard to human rights and racism have long been used in many urban districts. The Portland City Schools “Afro-centric” curriculum model was adopted by many other cities in the 1980s. The second phase is now taking place, however, and it involves our best students and most academic schools. Since the nation’s best schools—many of them private—feed their students into the Ivy League, which has now fully embraced such Leftist un-American content in their own institutions, they feel the need to similarly adopt the same nefarious content in their own classrooms to make their graduates ‘more acceptable’ to admissions committees. Nor are merit-based programs at K-12 themselves safe from elimination. The San Francisco and New York school districts are leading the way in eliminating any merit-based criteria for student admission to their high-performing middle and high school STEM programs. Soon, high academic standards for such specialized programs may be a thing of the past. It’s not uncommon today for the parents of such students to have to meet in private to discuss the problem for fear of retribution. Those whose children attend Los Angeles Harvard-Westlake school are just one example.
Nor are the faculties in the Social Science and Humanities Departments balanced in terms of ideological philosophy. Study after study has revealed the overwhelming Leftist views of these and other educators, whether it’s the faculty of Ivy League institutions or the members of the National Education Association. As a result, today’s students often lack any perspective other than the view now dictated by the Progressive Left.
The result of these above trends is now the purging of any content and authors with whom the Left disagrees. The works of well established ant-racist authors such as Mark Twain, Harper Lee and Dr. Seuss are ‘banned’ today, but books that hold extremist views on race by authors such as Malcolm X, R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, Robin D’Angelo, Ibram X. Kendi, and others are ‘suggested’ readings--even in places such as the U.S. military.
Parents who have fled the nation’s public schools and who have enrolled their children in Charter Schools or private schools to protect them from such harmful indoctrination are now literally being pursued by Leftists. In Florida, a measure (HB 105) has been introduced to revoke Charter School contracts and will allow the impounding of the salaries of school principals who do not embrace ‘suggested’ race-based curriculum modules. Other states are threatening to do the same. No such legal attempt has been made to do this in any other curriculum area that a principal doesn’t comply with. Even the lowest-performing public school principals aren’t threatened with the loss of salary for repeated low test scores.
In these and many other ways, Democrats today have declared war on accepted American educational values. Can those who seek to end equal opportunity and who wish to turn their backs upon the gains of the 1970s and 1980s be anything but traitors to the rights of individual Americans today? As Jefferson once declared, when such a ‘long train of abuses’ takes place, it’s time to call out the traitors for who they are.
In these and many other ways, Democrats today have declared war on accepted American educational values. Can those who seek to end equal opportunity and who wish to turn their backs upon the gains of the 1970s and 1980s be anything but traitors to the educational rights of individual Americans today? As Jefferson once declared, when such a ‘long train of abuses’ takes place, it’s time to call out the traitors for who they are.
Jack Bovee
Fort Myers, FL
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa—the National Social Studies Honor Society, and a former elementary school principal. He may be reached at JSBovee@aol.com.
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