My whole adult life – my whole professional life – I have read and heard complaints about teachers as being too liberal. The values that teacher expose pose a tyrannical threat to America because liberals pose a tyrannical threat to America. Teaching well established science is unacceptable. Teaching well established history is unacceptable. Teaching literature from subdominant perspectives is unacceptable. Multi-culturalism? Culturally relevant and/or responsive pedagogy? Unacceptable.
American colleges and universities? Too liberal. A threat to freedom of speech. A threat to liberty.
Public education has been under assault for…well, it has been under assault my whole lifetime. Certainly my whole professional life.
Yesterday and today – January 6 and January 7, 2021 – I simply could not stop contrasting those complaints that I have heard and read for too many decades with what I saw on my television and saw online.
I do not mean the seditious insurrectionists who would overthrow democracy.
I mean the uniformed and armed elements of our government who would overthrow democracy, who stand by for tyranny and are all too willing to crush liberty.
Understanding Tyranny and Liberty
These terms are so often misused that I feel it necessary to explain what I mean by then.
Our Founding Fathers were incredibly focused on tyranny. They signed onto the Declaration of Independence, which describes the tyranny with which they were concerned. Read it.
They wrote of violence done against them (“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.”).
They wrote of denying elected representation in government (“For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent,” and “For suspending our own Legislatures.”).
They wrote of acting and interim appointments. Really. They did. (“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices.”)
They wrote of refusing to be a leader of all the people (“Declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.”).
And yeah, I’ll mention it again, “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people,” ‘cause the writing is just that good.
It is pretty damn easy to see what tyranny is, if you actually read our founding documents. It is pretty easy to see what our government was set up to guard against.
Similarly, it is not that difficult to understand what liberty means. It never meant freedom to do anything you want. It meant keeping religion out of government and government out religion. It meant freedom to assemble. It meant trial by a jury off one’s peers. Read the Bill of Rights https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript and not just your favorite one of those amendments. Keep reading beyond them to find out other forms of liberty that were most important to the giants of American history.
They did not think that rules to protect public health were a threat to liberty.
January 6, 2021
I would like the events of yesterday to be inexplicable. I would like to say that I was surprised. But they are not and I was not. I was infuriated, but not the least bit surprised.
I certainly was not surprised by the civilians. And, frankly, I was not that surprised by the police.
The police let the seditious insurrectionists in. The police posed for selfies with them. And when some of them were ready to leave, the police gently escorted them out, even holding their hand to help them down the steps of the capitol.
I know it is cliché to mention it now, but contrast that with actions taken last summer against largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters around the country. With protesters against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. With disabled protesters against repealing the ACA. That’s the same city. The same steps. The same building.
Look around the country. The way the police treated protesters in Ferguson. The way they treated murderous armed militiamen in Kenosha. You know that I could go on and on.
The conspiracy to attack the Capitol to stop the constitutional processes that undergird the peaceful transition of power in the country was organized openly on the Internet. Members of Congress asked about security days ago. The Capitol Police then let the seditious violent insurrectionist into the Capitol.
Were they overwhelmed? How could they possibly have been overwhelmed!? We saw just last summer that our governments’ armed forces know how to put down protesters, how to clear out protestors, how to protect themselves while aggressively suppressing thousands of people.
The only truly surprisingly thing yesterday was the boldness of the claim that the governments’ armed forces and police were simply overwhelmed and could not stop the violent seditious insurrectionists. Even NPR used the word “unprecedented” this morning.
But it was not unprecedented. We saw this in April in in Michigan.
There really are only two possibilities. Either the $400 million/year Capitol Police leadership’s incompetence rises to the level of the Bush Administration’s that lead to 9/11 – and thank god the violent seditious insurrectionists did not intend to kill all the members of congress who did not support the delusional fantasies of their megalomaniacal authoritarian strongman wannabe – or leadership of the Capitol Police did want to stop them. And the vast majority off of the law enforcement officers who support this this President – who never won a majority of the American electorate or had an approval rating above 50% – did not really want to stop them, either.
Law and Order
I choose to the more consistent option. I saw the armed and uniformed branches of our governments and their actions. I saw how they treat protesters on left and domestic terrorists on the right. I saw the violent armed seditious insurrectionists, including those who lionize the literally traitorous sedition to perpetuate slavery in America and lionize the avowed perpetrators of genocide. I saw that the armed and uniformed branches of our government stood by for hours as the violent seditious insurrectionists ransacked the capitol.
I have read that each of the tiny number of people actually arrested yesterday was armed. How many more arms were there? There were pipe bombs. Even as our members of congress were still in the building, these violent seditious traitors were allowed to do what they willed, treated with kid gloves and allowed to leave freely.
The importance of respecting “law and order” has been a rhetorical cudgel used by the right since before I was born. It has been used against those protesting for equal rights, for access to the very things that our nation’s Founding Fathers demanded. And yesterday, there were these incredibly weak innovations of “law and order.” This time, they were not accompanied by the violence of our government, even though this time the supposed violators of law and order were, quite literally, violent seditious insurrectionists seeking to stop the peaceful handover of power, as dictated by our laws and our Constitution.
It is quite clear what the greatest threat to liberty within our government and among our public servants is. It clear who would support tyranny.
It ain’t the teachers, the school or the universities.
References
“Pro-Trump rioters escorted down steps of US Capitol by police,” even holding hands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9hjfQ3xgIA
Teargassing largely peaceful protesters https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-church-visit-angers-church-officials
More than 300 protesters arrested as Kavanaugh demonstrations pack Capitol Hill https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04/politics/kavanaugh-protests-us-capitol/index.html
Disability advocates arrested during health care protest at McConnell’s office. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/disability-advocates-arrested-during-health-care-protest-at-mcconnells-office/2017/06/22/f5dd9992-576f-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html
National Guard Troops on steps of Lincoln Memorial https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/national-guard-trump-mob/
Selfies with Capitol Police. https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520?s=20
Google search for: liberal bias in public schools https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=liberal+bias+in+public+schools&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Google search for: covid restrictions tyrany https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+restrictions+tyranny&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUztWZiYruAhW2GFkFHRJECMsQ_AUoAnoECAcQBA&biw=1324&bih=792
Chronically attacks on public education. https://thenewpress.com/books/wolf-schoolhouse-door
Again chronically attacks on public education. https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/derek-w-black/schoolhouse-burning/9781541788442/
Capitol Police opening the gates for the violent seditious insurrectionists. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/capitol-police-opened-gates/
Political partisanship in the Secret Service so extreme that many agents cannot be trusted to protect the next president. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/12/31/nation/secret-service-is-making-some-staff-changes-presidential-detail-that-will-guard-president-elect-joe-biden/
84% of Police Offices Supported Donald Trump in 2016. https://www.policemag.com/342098/the-2016-police-presidential-poll
Violent Michigan Insurrectionists Overrun the State Capitol.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/30/michigan-protests-coronavirus-lockdown-armed-capitol
2020 Video of Violent Insurrectionists Overrunning a US Capitol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_jWONaP-4U
Capitol Rioters Planned for Weeks in Plain Sight. The Police Weren’t Ready. https://www.propublica.org/article/capitol-rioters-planned-for-weeks-in-plain-sight-the-police-werent-ready
Capitol Police told member of Congress that they were ready for January 6. https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1347314075710185475
Pipe bombs found in DC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/06/fbi-says-it-is-investigating-suspicious-devices-in-washington.html