The problem with government schools, specifically liberal education, is that it is full of liberals, and until very recently, conservatives just dropped off their kids and wondered why later their children wanted to attend gay rights parades suddenly. More conservatives, real conservatives, are starting to get involved in school boards, and there is some hope out there that Republican values will guide public schools away from the runaway train that always follows Democrats. And when I say Republicans, I’m not talking about softies like Charlie Crist, formally a Republican, now a Democrat, or Mitch McConnell, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney types of RINOs. To be Republican and considered conservative, in the way we are talking, you need to be resolute in your values and not willing to yield to the whims of Democrats. In politics, you might not always get what you want, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it. You can push back and fight for what’s right, even when you are outvoted in a government body. The conflict has a value all its own. But too often, conflict is avoided in public education, starting on school boards. They hide hard decisions behind lawyers, who are progressive disasters of an occupation all their own, and a whole topic for many other days. And they hire radically progressive superintendents who can make the teacher unions happy and create a façade of management by giving them the keys to the car and then wondering why they don’t come home at midnight as promised. Then to hide all the bad behavior that evolves when the rooster running the henhouse starts showing signs of corruption, the school boards go on lockdown on virtually everything because it’s their only move. On the one hand, they look permissively incompetent; on the other, they look publically ineffective.
As more and more conservatives start entering the school board business, unlike how it has been in the past, especially in Florida, where under Ron DeSantis, we are seeing a real coalition of education reform occurring, school systems are actively looking to gain control of the media to control the narrative, which often isn’t good by default. The problem is you can’t put that many liberal people in one institution and then expect them to all behave. So many bad things start happening, leaving the school system, putting all their efforts into trying to keep those bad stories from the public. That’s why they want to get control of the media, then try to hide behind a façade of lawyers to protect them from public opinion. But that’s why there are so many laws in favor of transparency. Whenever a government body does the work of taxpayers, that is why precisely there are so many records kept meticulously on everything. Because traditionally, we can’t trust public officials to do the right thing without vast amounts of oversight. It drives liberals crazy because they want to operate with supreme authority and hide their bad behavior behind social status and professional titles. But history shows that it is precisely the seeds of corruption that we must always be cautious of. That conflict is why the Biden White House wants very much to have a disinformation board of some kind to regulate what people can say about government institutions and to limit free speech dramatically. Governments, by their nature, are prone to corruption without oversight, and liberals simply don’t like that much scrutiny because they know they can’t live up to the expectations. So now that more conservatives are getting on school boards across the country, governments increasingly want to limit free speech by any means necessary because they can see the writing on the wall, which means an end to their way of life.
There is an assumption by liberals that if they capture an institution, such as journalism, just like in the game of chess, they win the game by gaining control of the pieces. But that’s not the reality; citizen journalism has proven to be much more effective than the mainstream sources, who aren’t part of the game. Those chess pieces aren’t even on the board of play to capture, so in the world of the liberal education view of things, they don’t know how to fight this whole First Amendment thing or the concept of a Second Amendment to defend the First. Or a Fourth Amendment that prevents government authorities from imposing themselves on a population by force to control what they think and what they say to others. This whole Bill of Rights is a disaster for the corrupt who seek jobs in public education to hide their bad behavior from the world and apply it to the safety of like-minded people who gravitate to the public education profession. I’ve been covering bad behavior in public schools for a few decades now, and I’ve seen and heard absolutely disgusting things, leaving contemplation to wonder if any of it is worth it. Public education, because most of the participants lean liberal politically, has a lot of bad characters in it who should not be teaching children anything. I don’t come close to reporting every story I know about because if I did, I’d have time literally for nothing else. Public schools are such negative places with so much bad conduct occurring that I personally find them revolting. But if not for citizen journalism, certainly not the lazy losers in the mainstream outlets, public schools would be so much worse than they are. If not for people poking around in meeting minutes and occasionally speaking at the school board meeting, mostly complaining, but for a good reason, public schools would be much worse than they even are now.
I would recommend often calling the bluff on those pinheaded liberals who want to control the flow of information with threats that might end up in a courtroom. These people can’t afford such situations because there are public records. After all, there are witnesses, and there is usually lots of evidence. Public schools want more than anything to shut people up and keep things contained because so many laws force them into transparency. One thing they can’t do is afford to have people talking in more public forums, like courtrooms or at Friday night football games. Because of free and open communications and the flow of information and people’s opinions on that information, it’s really the only check that keeps behavior under control in the public schools. Otherwise, there would be many more stories of sex with students, abuses of power, and sheer crime that is often present wherever community oversite isn’t present with the First Amendment. Liberals would like to have supreme control of social circumstances where expectations are never set to limit their bad behavior, but thankfully that is not the world we are living in. Instead, we are going in the opposite direction, as more conservatives get on school boards and start to bring those values to public education. Maybe then, and only then, will there be a chance for government schools to work. But less free speech, less oversite, more centralized control from a Biden White House of what can be said and how it’s defined is simply not an option and never will be. Because that causes deviant behavior, not enough oversite, and people are afraid to speak up when it’s required. The way to keep things honest is to say something when you see something and keep things from being shoved under the carpet, so innocent people are none the wiser.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 