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The problem is that there is no room for debate from the left. None. You have professors being banned for supporting the meritocracy, apologizing for facts and research. My daughter's humanities magnet was based on CRT (you can look it up for yourself as they still have the same program in place -- corebaby.org). Because she grew up in Southern California and attended extremely progressive schools under the leadership of Barack Obama, she wasn't exactly inundated with racism day in and day out. Thus, when the school began the practice of dividing children and making the white children sit outside the circle and not participate because nothing they would say would be of value it was something my daughter didn't understand and couldn't process. She became depressed and hopeless. This was in 2015. Even before Trump took power. The extremism has been rising on the left to such a degree that Bret Weinstein was chased off campus at Evergreen in 2018. The idea that white people are oppressors and that there is such a thing as white violence is bizarre and an odd thing to foist upon young kids who can't possibly process this.

A ban is a silly thing to do because it is impossible. CRT is the entire world view of not just the left, but the entire establishment elite. You can't ban it even if you wanted to. But what we must fight for is critical thinking about critical theory. The debate has to be open. If it can't be, if it fundamentalism then it is a religion and should be kept out of schools.

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I'm a whole lot safer from the "illiberal right" than from the Left. The "illiberal right" isn't going to attempt to force me to get vaccinated or lose my job. The "illiberal right" won't "cancel" me and try to ruin my life and threaten my family if they don't like my opinions. The "illiberal right" isn't going to negate my parental authority and my right to raise my children. The "illiberal right" won't vilify me for practicing my religion. David French has to bend over backwards for moral equivalency. I'm not buying it. Remember he was the one the Neo-Cons, led by Bill Krystal, wanted to run to challenge Donald Trump. Someone needs to ask David French if he voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden in 2020. That will tell it all. Hey, David French, are you proud of your vote now?

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Oh, please--more dissembling from one of the least believable men in America. In his convictions, David French has all the consistency and courage of whichever way the wind is blowing. For all practical purposes, there is NO MORAL DOWNSIDE to objecting to, and fighting against, the nihilistic fascism of the Woke Left.

Far from being an attempt at fairness, this article piles on the unfairness by pretending the two sides are equally guilty. This has happened here over and over again, more's the pity

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I find logical fallacies in the push against CRT bans. We should not teach kids falsehoods. Period. No matter what “theory” someone has put there. If you are born with a Y gene there is no way to grow into a “real” woman. One may grow into a transgender woman, but they will never be an actual woman. Telling 6 year olds their bodies will fundamentally change based on their feelings is lying to them. There are people who believe in beating kids. We should not teach them this is a valid form of discipline because we know it is harmful. People believe that race is foundational to our individual being, but modern humans can’t be genetically divided into distinct races. We should not be teaching it. There is even a terrifying movement to be “accepting” of pedophiles…. That is wrong.

I am not in favor of banning hard conversations or discussing controversial theories in society. But we ban all sorts of things from places they are not appropriate - or at least we used to - especially in regards to children during their most foundational years.

There are ideas we SHOULD BAN from k-12 schools. For the sake of this healthy development of children. That is NOT the same as banning these theories where they belong in the university system and the wider society.

This constant conflating of what gets taught to 7 year olds at public with school with the woke, useless, illiberal mess our university system has become is infuriating. A 7 year old has very little in common with a 19 year old academically. That reality should be acknowledged.

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David French thinks we should teach all sorts of theories including critical race theory, but I'm pretty sure he's against teaching that the earth is flat, or that the universe is here through divine intervention or whatever that religious creationist stuff was.

In the United States, we teach proven theories like gravity exists, we don't teach racist separatist garbage.

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Give me a break. The only equivalency with the hate-filled Wokeists is the hate-filled Alt-Right, but the biggest difference between the two is that while Wokeists seem to have enough power to convince American corporations to adopt their racist agenda, the Alt-Right does not.

There is absolutely no similarities between normal conservatives and Wokeists.

This is a frighteningly ignorant and completely false strawman you've created, David French, but I shouldn't be surprised it's you who did it.

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Two comments in response to today’s essay:

1. Is anyone surprise that 5 years of insanity, censorship and bullying from the progressive/woke mob would not produce some reaction from the other tribe. It shocks me that we have not seen a dramatic rise in violence from the far-right, and we may yet.

2. Please don’t ever mention David French’s name or publish anything he writes again. First, he has been wrong about nearly everything that time has been allowed to shine a light on. Second, he is tethered to no real ideology other than some level of annoying lecturing social conservative piety. Third, he is the worst kind of elite Republican who had and has a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome - he should throw in with the hacks at The Lincoln Project. Please, please, please - spare me David French!

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What nonsense. There is no equivalency. Not surprised that a David French would try to make the argument.

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Perfect timing as a podcast comes on with audio of the now adult Greta Thunberg screaming incoherently in genuine terror about the ocean attacking her, thanks to the abuse she experienced at the hands of utopian collectivist scumbags as a child.

Psychological abuse and manipulation is effective, people. Especially with kids.

ALL of this crap has serious consequences and the people who supported and/or hand-waved the systematic child abuse that is now in full view will live in infamy.

“Why aren’t people having kids and repopulating the nation that we told them was despicable and dangerous? Why won’t the people we trained to believe capitalism is slavery take jobs? There’s no food. Why are black children, who we trained to believe that everyone secretly and instinctively hates them, hopeless?”

We don’t need a conservative alternative. We need to stop the people who are psychologically abusing children instead of teaching them about electrons.

You don’t debate a rapist in the marketplace of ideas. You intervene and stop the rape.

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“Let’s deal with the confusion first. The most notorious example of this came two weeks ago in Southlake, Texas, when a school administrator told teachers that, if they include a “book on the Holocaust” in their syllabi, then they also have to include one with “opposing perspectives.”

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Oh good a notorious example. Just like the notorious example of the tiki torchers by Youngkins bus.

There wasn’t a link to the audio (I didn’t see a link to the audio within the link provided either). If there was a link to the audio you could hear that the middle aged hag school administrator was a generic Democrat hack who was derisively slippery slope strawmanning the bill in a meeting to suggest that it requires both sides of the Holocaust. It doesn’t. You’re dumb if you think it requires that (or lying.......ahem).

Speaking of straw men, most of this faux conservatism is simply an embrace of the left-wing straw man that conservatives want zero government. No, we want limited government and banning **public funds** for porn and the exact curriculum the CCP would implement is one place that this limited government absolutely should jump in.

These are children.

Next we will have an underhanded bad faith column about how private companies can do whatever they want and simply cannot be regulated..........which I will read while glancing at the compelled speech (nutrition facts) on the side of the Diet Coke can on my desk.

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The anti-woke right is a position of "leave me the fuck alone and let me live my own life"

The woke left position is "government should dictate what you can do, say or earn based on your victim group identity."

It is funny when I read attempts at "right vs left" moral equivalency. I can see the left-tolerant attraction given the fact that the woke left position is adopted by our elite ruling media-chattering political class. How do you be recognized as one of the cool kids while pointing out the cohort of cool kids is mentally deranged? Maybe the cool kids are not really the cool kids?

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It's good to know what David French is thinking, and his misrepresentations of right wing "threat" and his own right wing "cred" are adroit. Don't fall for it, friends.

Common sense tells you all you need to know about CRT in schools. It's the New Racism and it's got to go.

Be anti-racist: oppose Critical Race Theory.

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Welcome to French-ism. This guy would have wanted to have Poland slowly and carefully weigh their options as the blitzkrieg overran their country in 1939. The Constitution is under a blitzkrieg attack and the fight is not for the faint of heart or French-ism.

Bari, thanks for giving Mr. Chamberlain..err, French a venue to show how he thinks. This isn't sarcasm, you do present different views and I appreciate that.

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Dude please, you and the Lincoln Project ought to get a room...........

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Schools have limited time with students and students, especially young ones, need to be taught a lot of stuff that'll be important to their futures. I'm pretty sure that doesn't include learning that they should feel guilty because some people who share their skin color did terrible things to other people with different skin color. Just who does that help, anyway?

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Unfortunately David misses the forest for the trees. I cannot pretend to be an expert on these CRT laws; they may or may not be poorly written. But French fails to address the possibility that there COULD be a good law combatting CRT. He just says these are bad. Well, maybe. The point I think is to try and not allow anyone to say essentially 'oh, you're skin color is X? Well then, you're an oppressor/oppressed.' Nobody should be categorized as something based on their skin color. But French completely ignores this to focus on some anecdotes, carefully chosen.

And yes the both sides ism is a problem. There is no equivalency here. The right is capable of being bad, sure. But the power is on the side of the left. They control the bureaucracy of the federal government including the military industrial complex; Hollywood; massive corporations; academia; the news media. To name a few. The right has nothing close to that level of influence.

He mentions some racist incidents, and that's deplorable no doubt. But how is it not just as bad to be smeared as a white supremacist or nazi for daring to disagree? That is truly awful.

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