This deep dive article from today's Washington Post on the education of a right wing school board member is well worth reading because it reveals almost directly the truly messed up and poisonous right wing discourse that political normies, let alone progressives, only rarely come directly in contact. Even more beautifully though, the article gives us the full-on right wing's and even conservative's fundamental ideological misunderstanding of political philosophy rooted in their own fears, prejudices, and frankly ignorance--the last in the sense of being initially uninformed, and then compounded with misleading information.
Notice how this woman initially explains her political philosophy about being about "liberty" and "freedom." Then, we get almost immediately what she MEANS by those terms:
“As soon as you start to give privileges to one group, you are taking away from or neglecting others,” Wenhold said. “So, I do think that the solution is going back to teaching our kids that we are all equal in the eyes of God.”
There it is. The zero-sum political philosophy rooted in fear and prejudice. And the line about "God" I'll get to in a bit.
But, first things first. This poorly educated middle aged white woman is concerned that telling white, heterosexual, evangelical right wing Christinan folks in particular they can't publicly discriminate any longer against darker skinned people, non-Christians, or non heterosexual people is itself discrimination. It is, but in a sophist's way. And it is cynical prejudice posing as fairness. To accept such thinking against anti-discrimination laws creates a fundamental contradiction that negates or undermines basic civic rights for a whole bunch of people who are not, well, white, heterosexual, evangelical right wing Christians. The way out of the seemingly "logical" conundrum is why any practical and morally based political philosophy needs to continually recognize tensions that require an enlightened society to balance "liberty" and "equality." If we go too far in one direction, we undermine the other. And even with DEI, we are not at the "too far" in favor of "equality," folks. Really, we're not.
This woman's fear of earth-bound equality is so deep that it initially drives her to want to decry somehow the unfairness in trying to promote more young women to take courses in STEM. Her twin sister wisely informs her not to make a commotion about the award the school district won to promote more high school females to go into STEM, but her miseducation remains troublesome to her and lingers in her mind.
When teaching government/civics high school classes, I did my best to explain the need to balance "liberty" and "equality" and that the true understanding of those terms arise in the particular, not airy philosophy. I would also archly explain to my civic students to be wary of any speaker or writer they hear or read who begins with a cry for "liberty" or "freedom". It is usually a cry for the right to discriminate against, or repress other people. I would then remind the students who had me in US History classes how those who most often spoke and wrote about "liberty" and "freedom" in their speeches were the ones trying to defend their "right" to literally own other people.
This woman, though, provides us something else. She implicitly recognizes her stance as problematic and prejudiced against even her own gender. So, in her statement about what she meant by "liberty" and "freedom," she added the absolutely vacuous phrase ""we are all equal in the eyes of God." So, lady, we're supposed to wait till we're dead to have "equality"? How convenient for you, Whitey-Normie. How convenient.
Again, recognizing the balancing and overlapping meanings of airy terms such as "liberty" and "equality" allows us to promote a society that allows all to meaningfully participate in our civic or daily public lives. This is consistent with the best values of our main Founders (Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams, and Hamilton) who understood and accepted the value of balancing "liberty" and "equality" as one which is continually modified through experience. It is why, for example, Madison was so insistent, during the Constitutional debates, in making sure the word "slavery" did not appear in the ultimately drafted Constitution. Madison and others at that Convention wanted to create a document for posterity--notwithstanding the frustration Jefferson voiced from France against the Constitution document by saying the "tree of liberty" needs re-watering with the "blood" of people every 20 or so years. Jefferson's presidential administrations are about Jefferson's practical learning curve as many historians long ago determined. That Jefferson followed most Federalist policies after gaining the presidency is one of the nation's first ironies of History.
What is amusing is the woman was elected to the local school board, yet knew NOTHING about budgeting. She admitted she had to talk a lot with a fellow board member, asking a myriad of questions of how a budget is formed and operates. She appears to know NOTHING about what it takes to build a curriculum. She admitted, too, she never read the Declaration of Independence or Constitution before taking that grifty-right wing adult course, though that was the clarion cry of her candidacy. The same with the Federalist Papers and so-called Anti-Federalist Papers.
As Daffy Duck liked to say, "It is to laugh."
My former students can tell you how dense those documents are, and that the Constitution is not well understood without learning at least some case law interpreting words over historical time--just as Madison predicted and explained in Federalist Paper no. 37. My former students would also have a lot of fun asking her, even after her taking that grifty-course, to explain Federalist Paper no. 10 in light of Federalist Paper nos. 37 and 41--Madison wrote all three--and in light of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). I would forgive my former students for not remembering the case law, though. Some may remember the case law holdings, though, and I think more than some would remember how we read in class the quote from then-Congressman Nathaniel Macon (Jeffersonian-NC) who, during Madison's administration (1809-1817), who declared he would oppose any and all Hamiltonian economic development legislation because, if Congress can legislate to build a canal, it can pass a law limiting or ending slavery. Thus, the opposition to at least domestic policies from Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR to LBJ to Bernie Sanders go back to the beginning of the Constitutional Republic and is ultimately built on white supremacy and enslavement of darker skinned people.
The reason I taught what I did in high school history and civics/government classes was to show there is a constitutional basis to support a constitutional vision of federal economic activism and even strong civil rights from the start of the Republic--and especially after the Reconstruction amendments. I then taught it is a conceit to think it is only that vision or the conservatives' constitutional vision. Learning constitutional history also helps expose how most right wingers in our nation who call themselves "Constitutionalists" or "Federalists" (including the misnamed "Federalist Society") are really anti-Federalists, with far more in common with Patrick Henry's anti-Federalist politics than the early Federalists, including Madison--until Madison entered Congress and realized his bread was buttered with Virginia enslavers. That crafty Madison! :)
What the article's ending shows most amusingly is the right wing woman realizing being on a school board and dealing with the practical day to day of running a school district is the opposite of the bullshit she was fed in her grifty-right wing history course for miseducated adults who already believe in magically based delusions. And really, it is not difficult to assume how this pathetic person, back in her high school days, was likely a mess who often fell asleep in, or skipped out on, civics/government and history classes. I admit I once told my mostly guys in the back of the classroom, who worked hard not to listen in class, "Don't worry, guys. In twenty or thirty years, you'll run for office as right wingers trying to tell the nation a whole bunch of wrong things you could have avoided while in high school. And also tell us all about 'liberty' and 'freedom'!"
And we'd all, including them, laugh.
