The guns that spoke at Lexington
Knew not that God was planning then
The trumpet word of Jefferson
To bugle forth the rights of men.
Richard Hovey, Unmanifest Destiny (1898)
Civil wars and revolutions usually get under way because the people in power are clueless and simply ignore the danger signals flashing all about them. Chris Bray at Tell Me How This Ends nails it:
If you haven’t read that letter from the National School Boards Association, for crying out loud read it. It’s an alarm bell ringing in the late stages of an imperiled free society. The letter warns that “threats and acts of violence have become more prevalent,” and concludes that “these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” Then the letter gives specific examples of the terrorist attacks. Here are some:
“School board meetings have been disrupted in California , Florida, Georgia, and other states because of local directives for mask coverings to protect students and educators from COVID-19.”
“During two separate school board meetings in Michigan, an individual yelled a Nazi salute in protest to masking requirements, and another individual prompted the board to call a recess because of opposition to critical race theory.”
“In New Jersey, Ohio, and other states, anti-mask proponents are inciting chaos during board meetings.”
“In other states including Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Tennessee, school boards have been confronted by angry mobs and forced to end meetings abruptly.”
Earlier this month, a student in Tennessee was mocked during a board meeting for advocating masks in schools after testifying that his grandmother, who was an educator, died because of COVID-19.
That’s the violence: people are showing up to school board meetings and saying, often loudly and angrily, that they disagree with local school policy choices. A crowd mocked someone; “another individual prompted the board to call a recess because of opposition to critical race theory.” It’s terrorism. Here’s the last of a long list of specific federal actions that the NSBA explicitly requests: “We also request the assistance of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to intervene against threatening letters and cyberbullying attacks that have been transmitted to students, school board members, district administrators, and other educators.”
They want a police state because of “cyberbullying” – people saying on the Internet that school boards are making bad policy.
But really, read the whole damn thing, and pay close attention to every word: “Additionally, NSBA requests that such review examine appropriate enforceable actions against these crimes and acts of violence under the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute, the Conspiracy Against Rights statute, an Executive Order to enforce all applicable federal laws for the protection of students and public school district personnel, and any related measure.”
Criticism of school boards should be addressed using the Patriot Act in regards to domestic terrorism. May posterity forget that you were once our countrymen.
The organizing force behind this kind of assault on mere disagreement – these people are criticizing us, why aren’t they being arrested? – is the view of an isolated and out-of-touch governing class, a dead-end technocratic elite that regards all of its presumptions as self-evident and incontestable. And it’s extremely familiar.
It ends where it ends. Years after Hutchinson complained about the stupid and pointless opposition to the Stamp Act, he would be baffled to see his successor reject his interpretation of the growing resistance to parliamentary authority (and ultimately to the authority of the king). The military governor General Thomas Gage, Bailyn writes, “appeared to be arguing that the rebellion was not simply the work of a few ruthless demagogues deluging and inflaming an otherwise well-disposed but inert population; he was faced, he claimed, with a general, popular and widely- and deeply-shared movement of resistance, and he did not think it could be suppressed with less than twenty thousand troops.”
Officials in London thought Gage was an alarmist, worrying too much about a manageable threat, and they demanded that he crack down.
Our governing class is precisely this stupid.
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Andrew McCarthy, who knows Garland personally and insists he would rattle on about rights of free speech in professional settings, professes to be baffled by this turn of events. Here’s a hypothesis: he never understood Garland’s motives. To creatures like Garland, free speech belongs to peers, and from that they can confer a franchise on clients. Pakistani muslim revanchists are clients and have free speech at the discretion of PLU. An irate hardware merchant from Evansville, Indiana is neither a peer nor a client. And there’s no ‘conflict-of-interest’. Such strictures govern them not PLU.
Not just the kindling, are they bringing, but they are holding a lit match in their right hand and a gallon of gasoline in their left hand.
It’s going to get ugly.
A Star of David was sown into the clothing of Jews during their persecution. That distinction was to dehumanize an entire race. Children would beat up their Jewish classmates and humiliate them prior to the final solution. We will not let these new Socialists get to that stage in Our Land of the free. No sir.
A Holy Rosary in our left hand and iron conviction in our right.
We haven’t started this fight but we will end it.
Don’t mess with the family!
Hands off, you dogs of Marxism.
Andre McCarthy of late has well demonstrated for a couple of years now Don’s point about the higher-ups being clueless. Although his is the kind that seems to be willfully clueless about how corrupt the company he keeps is.
Well, I’m not seeing it in my town in Massachusetts, the school board & superintendent here voted down any and all CRT in schools.
Interracial parents are on the front lines; crazy for a child to be told their mother and father, are victim and oppressor, oppressor and victim.
Interracial marriage kills CRT in it’s tracks and the Left knows it. That is one reason why we never ever hear of VP Harris being the first VP in an interracial marriage, yet we always always hear that she’s black.
Gee…wasn’t Obama black and white? Somehow the white part was forgotten by the media.
interracial marriage kills CRT in it’s tracks
Isn’t that the truth! I represented a business man who was accused of racial bias. At his deposition I introduced opposing counsel to my client’s black wife and their three kids. The case was dismissed soon thereafter. The wife had the best take on the situation: “A grifter is a grifter no matter what color they are!”
I read one pundit saying a big thanks to Mitch McConnell for keeping this creature off the Supreme Court.
Like his boss, Garland’s moderation was of tone only. And now the mask is off.
McCarthy’s problem is knowing someone professionally is not the same as really knowing them. Especially in the environment of a large governmental agency, where one’s personal beliefs are subsumed to the larger functions and mission of the bureaucracy.
Shorter version: don’t endorse the personal integrity of anyone you really don’t know.
Gee…wasn’t Obama black and white? Somehow the white part was forgotten by the media.
Obama’s only significant connection to the domestic black population prior to age 19 was his grandfather’s hookah-smoking checker-playing chum Frank Marshall Davis. Mr. Davis was an eccentric in a half-dozen ways, very unlike ordinary blacks. Obama had no known connection to the West Indian population. He lived in Indonesia for four years (but somehow never learned the language). He grew up among Honolulu’s haole bourgeoisie, which had some natives but was at the time chock-a-block with people who loved the climate more than they loved their home town. His buds at Columbia appear to have been Pakistani expats.
David Garrow did turn up a black girl he dated at Occidental College The two other women of consequence in his life were haut bourgeois, one white and one white/Japanese. The latter turned down a marriage proposal from him.
One woman who knew him at Harvard Law School thought him an artificial construct – someone who had manufactured a personality quite different from the one he’d had previously. (Steve Sailer has emphasized this breach around about 1988). He and Mooch form an unattractive dyad, as it seems constructed around conspicuous consumption and hanging with celebrities. His few personal friends appear to be people connected with Valerie Jarrett.
David Garrow did turn up a black girl he dated at Occidental College
My mistake. Miss McNear (now Mrs. Stein) is white.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/10/anybody-fighting-joe-biden-is-helping.html
Disconcerting that this morbidly obese cretin used to be a prominent Republican pundit.
That fits so many people these days that I wasn’t sure whom you were talking about at first.
Yeah I’m confused who Art is talking about too. The link to althouse is an article talking about Johnathan Chait – who’s pretty much always been a liberal. Otherwise there’s a whole lot of names referenced at the links.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2021/10/06/south_dakota_is_a_moral_sewer_and_should_be_abolished_553404.html
I gather Gov. Noem must be over some target. You’ll recall that George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey were South Dakota born and bred and McGovern was buried in Sioux Falls. I guess that was then.
You realize also that the author of this is 64 years old and has been an opinion journalist for 40 years, working as a young man for The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and The New York Times editorial page during AM Rosenthal’s tenure. IOW, for and around people urging the Democratic Party in that era to do away with shticks and inanities which were making it unpalatable to ordinary voters. This is the sage counsel of the older generation. Another person working the same side of the street in those days was Robert Reich, who is 11 years older than Timothy Noah. You should see the bilge he pushes on Facebook. These people did not used to be fanatics.
eah I’m confused who Art is talking about too.
Robert Kagan
Prior to Trump I read with edification his books, as I also did those of his brother Frederick and those of this father Donald Kagan, the late, great classicist. The nomination and the election of Trump transported him to a realm quite distinct from the one the rest of us inhabit.
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1445464876017614854
While we’re at it, I think we can figure that the patron of The Dispatch is Pierre Omidyar or someone similar.
Gotcha. Thx, @Art.
I’ve just seen some of Reich’s video clips on youtube and elsewhere and they are not good for my blood pressure.
As for the Dispatch… yeah what is in the water there? I used to have marginal respect for David French for at least getting out there and fighting in the actual courts and stuff. But him and Goldberg lately…
Well, I actually suspect it is the new meme of dismissing any possible honest criticism as one of a variety of “trolls” – so we’re watching an entire class of people act without any kind of feedback.
As for the Dispatch… yeah what is in the water there? I used to have marginal respect for David French for at least getting out there and fighting in the actual courts and stuff.
Bar one year as a JAG in Iraq, he hasn’t practiced law since 2004. Interestingly, he’s still an active member of the Kentucky bar, but the online registry contains a note that he is not taking cases. He actually lives in Tennessee, 100 miles from the Kentucky border. I don’t think he’s ever worked for an ordinary law firm, btw.
As for the Dispatch… yeah what is in the water there? I used to have marginal respect for David French for at least getting out there and fighting in the actual courts and stuff. But him and Goldberg lately…
Well, I actually suspect it is the new meme of dismissing any possible honest criticism as one of a variety of “trolls” – so we’re watching an entire class of people act without any kind of feedback.>>>
Reich switched off everything save his id on Election Day 2016. He’s never coming back.
As for the so-called conservatives, the election of Biden and their tepid reactions to President Sundown’s endless Rampage Through Normsville just confirms that they have been “adagio progressives” the whole time.
I’m less disappointed with Goldberg, who was always more of a humor columnist than a deep thinker. French, on the other hand, has outed himself as a cold, nasty pharisee who makes bank catering to the Christian-hating prejudices of the left.
He’s a moderate fellow, don’t you know? You will if you sit through one of his prolix essay sermons–he never stops making that clear.
And a moderate progressive at that, as his endless tacking, difference splitting and left-curious forays demonstrate.
Hard-core progressives want your beliefs and way of life dead and buried. French the Moderate Progressive is there to tell you why you deserve it.
Dunno. Something off about David French. I once did some research on him, but have forgotten details. IIRC, he grew up in an evangelical subculture in an ordinary family, attended an obscure evangelical college, yet somehow landed a berth at Harvard Law School. After completing law school, he lived in New York City for a time, then decamped to Kentucky. From 1997 to 2004, he worked for an evangelical outlet called the Alliance Defending Freedom. For one year he was employed as a JAG and for several years he had a salaried position at National Review, otherwise, his livelihood is a puzzle. If you check their IRS 990 forms, you discover that NR has a history of paying doctor’s salaries to people within a certain charmed circle (Lowry, Kevin Williamson, Goldberg), but I don’t recall he was there all that many years.
Did you notice one of the headlines quoted in the article? “Kamala Harris Might Have to Stop the Steal/Constitutional scholars are already worrying about another January 6 crisis, and they warn that the next election might be harder to save”.
It seems “fortifying elections” is so 2020. Now they should be “saved”. It could hardly be more blatant.