The Police State Comes to America
In light of the Biden Administration’s unprecedented actions in recent days to silence parental dissent against what’s happening in America’s government schools, I have decided to make this essay open to the public. If this moral and political abomination is allowed to stand, the government of the United States will have taken one very large step toward becoming an authoritarian regime.
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On September 30, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter to the Biden administration denouncing the nationwide parental protests taking place at school board meetings against Critical Race Theory, Critical Gender Theory, pornography in the classroom, mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and remote learning. It turns out that parents all over the country are upset about the indoctrination and censorship in America’s government schools. An army of moms (and dads) have been asserting their parental responsibilities and their constitutional rights by showing up to school board meetings and voicing—sometimes angrily—their contempt and disgust for those school boards and teachers promoting and sanctioning ideas and ideologies opposed by the parents.
The NSBA letter (see here) begins rather ominously by declaring that “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat” and that “immediate assistance” is therefore “required to protect our students, school board members, and educators who are susceptible to acts of violence affecting interstate commerce because of threats to their districts, families, and personal safety.” The NSBA is essentially declaring a “State of Emergency” for America’s government school system. Let that sink in for a moment.
A few questions are in order.
First, what does it mean to say that America’s government schools and education leaders (i.e., school boards, administrators, and teachers) “are under an immediate threat”? Writing as though it were the Defense Intelligence Agency, the NSBA is warning the U. S. Department of Justice that there is a system-wide and “immediate threat” to America’s schools. This language smacks of that used by the U.S. Department of Defense in assessing genuine terrorist threats. The NSBA letter reads as though it were a “Terrorism Warning Report,” which assigns “Threat Level” warnings for the White House. Using DOD language, the threat level to America’s schools, school boards, school administrators, and teachers would be considered “high,” according to the NSBA.
Second, what exactly is the “threat” to America’s school system and its leaders? The letter speaks vaguely but ominously of repeated “threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation” and of school officials facing imminent “physical threats.” Eventually, the NSBA letter drops the pretense of alleging supposed “threats” of violence and smuggles in stronger language that asserts repeatedly as fact that actual “acts of violence” are being committed against school board members across the country. It’s classic bait-and-switch. The letter says several times that actual “acts of violence have become more prevalent during school board meetings.” The overwhelming tone of the NSBA letter makes it sound as though there is a nation-wide pandemic of real physical violence being perpetrated against school officials. But there is, of course, a self-evident problem with this assertion. It’s not true, which means that it’s a lie. The NSBA provides zero evidence that there is a nationwide pandemic of violence against school officials. Instead, it lists a handful of examples of parents mocking and denouncing school board members.
Third, who exactly are the perpetrators of these threats and acts of violence? Not surprisingly, the NSBA letter is remarkably vague in identifying and describing the source of this national pandemic of intimidation and violence. According to the NSBA, there are dark and nefarious forces—“extremist hate organizations” it calls them—conspiring and directing American parents to stand up for their children. These alleged “hate groups” are “targeting our schools and educators” by disseminating “propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula.” But it gets worse, much worse. In the most stunning and outrageous accusation of all, the NSBA claims that these “heinous actions” should be classified as a “form of domestic terrorism,” which means of course that the perpetrators of these actions (i.e., America’s momma bears) should now be classified as domestic terrorists. Of course the NSBA’s lying eyes belie what all Americans have been witnessing for months now, which is ordinary, everyday moms and dads showing up to school board meetings to challenge a government education system they consider to be corrupt and damaging to their children. To be more precise: this is a spontaneous movement that is being led principally by America’s moms, who are rising up in righteous indignation against an Education Establishment that claims to know better than parents do what is in the best interests of their children.
Fourth, who exactly is being subjected to these threats and acts of violence? Well, it turns out that according to the NSBA it’s not just school board members, school administrators, and teachers who are being violently assaulted: it’s America’s children who are also being violently assaulted by mobs of crazed mothers. The subject line of the NSBA letter states that it is requesting assistance from the federal government to protect America’s “Public Schoolchildren” from threats and acts of violence. The letter also speaks of “acute threats and actions that are disruptive to our students’ well-being.” This is silly, disingenuous, and inane. The NSBA is suggesting that America’s parents are committing acts of violence against their own children despite the fact that parents are participating in school board meetings in order to protect their children from what they consider to be a predatory government school system. But as if threats and acts of violence against children were not enough, the NSBA letter also claims that parents who challenge school boards are “affecting our nation’s democracy at the very foundational levels, causing school board members . . . to resign immediately and/or discontinue their service after their respective terms.” The letter goes on to say that such actions are “a clear and present danger to civic participation.” Say what? Isn’t that how democracy actually works? Civic participation is a clear and present danger to civic participation? Finally, the NSBA letter claims several times (with zero evidence) that parents venting their anger at local school board meetings is somehow negatively affecting America’s “interstate commerce”!!! I’m sorry, but this is nuts.
And lastly, exactly what kind of “assistance” is the National School Boards Association requesting from the federal government to counter the domestic terrorism of America’s mothers? Broadly speaking, the NSBA is asking that the federal government “investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials through existing statutes, executive authority, interagency and intergovernmental task forces, and other extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of our children and educators, to protect interstate commerce, and to preserve public school infrastructure and campuses.”
As with threats from Islamic terrorists, the NSBA is asking the federal government for assistance in “monitoring the threat levels” from America’s moms. And precisely what kind of assistance is the NSBA asking for? It is calling on the Biden Administration to leverage the expertise, resources, and coercive force of the following departments and agencies of the United States government:
Department of Justice
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Education
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its National Security Branch & Counterterrorism Division
U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center
U.S. Postal Service
As well as any other federal agency with relevant jurisdictional authority and oversight
To top it off, the NSBA is requesting that federal law enforcement agencies arrest and prosecute parents for “crimes and acts of violence” under the
Gun-Free School Zones Act
PATRIOT Act (as it relates to domestic terrorism)
Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act
Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute
Conspiracy Against Rights statute
Let’s be clear about what the NSBA letter means in practice: first, it is dog-whistling a message which says that protesting parents are engaged in “domestic terrorism and hate crimes” (including, presumably, against their own children); and, second, it is requesting that the Biden administration use the full coercive power of the United States government—power that it has only previously been used against Islamic terrorists and foreign enemies of the United States—to monitor, investigate, arrest, interrogate, prosecute, convict and jail upset parents who are protesting AGAINST the teaching of systemic racism (i.e., CRT), pornography in the classroom, and the unscientific mask mandates for children.
The NSBA letter is saying, in effect, that complaining parents are the moral equivalent of jihadi terrorists, who are out to commit acts of violence and terror against America’s school board members, its teachers, and, yes, even the children. As such, these parents should be treated as a national security threat, and they must be dealt with by all means necessary.
The NSBA letter is a blood libel against America’s dissenting parents. In a decent, free, and just society such a letter would be condemned and dismissed out of hand, but that is not the kind of society in which we live today.
Rather than tossing the NSBA letter in the trash where it belongs, the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, read it and immediately ordered the FBI and America’s National Security State to mobilize its immense power against parents whose only real crime is to take seriously the education of their children. He did this within just a few days of receiving the NSBA letter.
I encourage you to read—and to read slowly—Garland’s official memorandum sent to the Director of the FBI and to various other law enforcement agencies, offices, and divisions.
Garland’s letter is a moral, political, and constitutional abomination. To say there are serious problems with the Attorney General’s Orwellian letter would be an understatement. The letter asserts, for instance, that “there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” It claims as fact a “rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.” Neither the NSBA nor the Justice Department have provided any credible or meaningful evidence to support this unfounded claim, nor does Garland’s passive-aggressive letter specify what it classifies as “criminal conduct” or “domestic terrorism.” (Not surprisingly, Garland’s letter neglects to mention that some school board members and the teachers’ unions have been harassing and threatening parents for months. See here, here, here, here, and here.) The simple fact of the matter is that virtually no violence has occurred at school board meetings this year.
In support of the NSBA request, Garland’s memorandum announced that he has directed the FBI and each U. S. Attorney to convene meetings immediately with “federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district” in order to “facilitate the discussion of strategies” for dealing with threats against school officials. The Department of Justice will also “open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response. In other words, the government will establish “snitch” lines against parents. If a school board member doesn’t like what they hear in a public meeting, they will be able to report (presumably anonymously) threats of harassment and intimidation.
But there’s more. In conjunction with Garland’s letter, the Department of Justice issued a press release in which it announced that the DOJ will be creating a task force “consisting of representatives from the department’s . . .
Criminal Division
National Security Division
Civil Rights Division
Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys
FBI
Community Relations Service
Office of Justice Programs
The purpose of this Star Chamber will be to “determine how federal enforcement tools can be used to prosecute these crimes.”
America’s security state has not been mobilized like this since 9-11. Recall, for instance, that the Justice Department’s National Security Division was created in 2005 to conduct “counterterrorism and counterespionage” operations against foreign enemies threatening the United States and its citizens, enemies such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS—ya know, the kind of individuals and organizations that commit mass murder as their day job.
The Biden Regime is now turning the full apparatus of America’s security state against ordinary American citizens who are challenging the hegemony of America’s Education-Industrial Complex. Dissenting parents who are unhappy with the substance and method by which their children are being taught are now to be designated and possibly prosecuted as domestic terrorists! To wit: the FBI and the National Security Division will now be in charge of monitoring school board meetings and parent organizations around the United States.
But we need to be crystal clear about who these alleged “terrorists” really are. Have you ever wondered what the new Merrick Garland version of a “domestic terrorist” looks and sounds like? You might start by taking a good look at your mother, your wife, your sister, or your daughter.
Where will all this lead? Should we not treat “domestic terrorists” in the same way that we treat international terrorists? (Asking for a friend.) I’m told there are now a lot of empty bunks (with a view) at Guantanamo Bay. Should America’s domestic terrorists receive the full Khalid Sheikh Mohammed treatment?
But even if it were true that there have been a few isolated threats of physical violence, how is this an issue for the FBI and the full apparatus of the National Security State rather than for local law enforcement? It’s not. This is massive power grab and a serious threat to the rights and liberties of millions of ordinary Americans.
Let’s not kid ourselves. We all know what this is and is not about. It’s NOT about alleged threats of violence against school board members. It’s about targeting political opponents, criminalizing dissent, and weaponizing the FBI and the National Security State against parents who are protesting peacefully and lawfully against indoctrination and censorship in America’s government schools. It’s about turning complaining parents into domestic terrorists for the crime of being parents. It’s about turning America’s mothers into the legal equivalent of Islamic jihadists. It’s about intimidating parents. It’s about using the coercive force of the State against our First Amendment rights to free speech, to assemble peaceably, and to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It’s about silencing parental opposition to the Education Establishment. Make no mistake about it, that’s what this about.
More fundamentally, what Garland’s letter is really saying is that the federal government is entirely responsible for the education of your children. You have no rights and no authority to determine the content of your child’s mind. That is for the government to determine. Your old-fashioned view that your children are actually your children is no longer relevant.
Merrick Garland’s directive may very well be the single most disturbing abuse of government power in American history since the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. It is, in effect, a declaration of war against the American people.
Garland, a man once nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States, has corrupted the mission and power of the United States Department of Justice. He must be removed from office. He is a threat to both the lives and freedoms of ordinary Americans.
This must be opposed.
In the meantime, WALK AWAY. Actually, RUN, as fast as you can.