Early on Wednesday morning, Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) took the podium to address supporters in Chantilly, Virginia. From the start, to many Virginians, Youngkin represented a powerful grassroots candidate, who inspired voters throughout the commonwealth of all demographics. As the race progressed, education particularly turned out to be an important issue. And, for a significant part of the electorate, the most important issue.
A major part of Youngkin’s victory speech touched upon education, as highlighted by Tim Hains for RealClearPolitics:
There is no time to waste. Our kids can’t wait. We work in real people time, not government time. So on day one, we are going to work. We’re going to restore excellence in our schools. We will invest the largest education budget in the history of the commonwealth. We’re going to invest in teachers, new facilities, special education. We are going to introduce choice within our public school system. How about that? Choice within the public school system. We’re going to start with charter schools and going to make a down payment and close the gap on giving parents an opportunity to select where their kids go to school. Friends, we are going to embrace our parents, not ignore them.
We’re going to press forward with a curriculum that includes listening to parents’ input. A curriculum that allows our children to run as fast as they can. Teaching them how to think, enabling their dreams to soar. Friends, we are going to reestablish excellence in our schools. We are fighting for parents and students and teachers in our schools.
.
What a great idea – teaching children how to think!
Although today, that really sounds very radical.
Thank God. Our prayers have been answered! We have elected a leader and a Patriot, not some worthless politician who is married to a FAILED ideology. We defeated Nazism and Communism so why do we want to let their agenda creep back into our country through the Progressive Democrat Party?
“Communism” was never defeated in this country; it merely changed its name to “PROGRESSIVISM”:
United States Supreme Court
BARENBLATT v. UNITED STATES (1959)
MR. JUSTICE BLACK, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS concur, dissenting.
To apply the Court’s balancing test under such circumstances is to read the First Amendment to say “Congress shall pass no law abridging freedom of speech, press, assembly and petition, unless Congress and the Supreme Court reach the joint conclusion that on balance the interest of the Government in stifling these freedoms is greater than the interest of the people in having them exercised.”
This is closely akin to the notion that neither the First Amendment nor any other provision of the Bill of Rights should be enforced unless the Court believes it is reasonable to do so.
Not only does this violate the genius of our written Constitution, but it runs expressly counter to the injunction to Court and Congress made by Madison when he introduced the Bill of Rights.
“If they [the first ten amendments] are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the Legislative or Executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights.”
Unless we return to this view of our judicial function, unless we once again accept the notion that the Bill of Rights means what it says and that this Court must enforce that meaning, I am of the opinion that our great charter of liberty will be more honored in the breach than in the observance.
But even assuming what I cannot assume, that some balancing is proper in this case, I feel that the Court after stating the test ignores it completely.
At most it balances the right of the Government to preserve itself, against Barenblatt’s right to refrain from revealing Communist affiliations.
Such a balance, however, mistakes the factors to be weighed.
In the first place, it completely leaves out the real interest in Barenblatt’s silence, the interest of the people as a whole in being able to join organizations, advocate causes and make political “mistakes” without later being subjected to governmental penalties for having dared to think for themselves.
It is this right, the right to err politically, which keeps us strong as a Nation.
For no number of laws against communism can have as much effect as the personal conviction which comes from having heard its arguments and rejected them, or from having once accepted its tenets and later recognized their worthlessness.
Instead, the obloquy which results from investigations such as this not only stifles “mistakes” but prevents all but the most courageous from hazarding any views which might at some later time become disfavored.
This result, whose importance cannot be overestimated, is doubly crucial when it affects the universities, on which we must largely rely for the experimentation and development of new ideas essential to our country’s welfare.
It is these interests of society, rather than Barenblatt’s own right to silence, which I think the Court should put on the balance against the demands of the Government, if any balancing process is to be tolerated.
Instead they are not mentioned, while on the other side the demands of the Government are vastly overstated and called “self preservation.”
It is admitted that this Committee can only seek information for the purpose of suggesting laws, and that Congress’ power to make laws in the realm of speech and association is quite limited, even on the Court’s test.
Its interest in making such laws in the field of education, primarily a state function, is clearly narrower still.
Yet the Court styles this attenuated interest self-preservation and allows it to overcome the need our country has to let us all think, speak, and associate politically as we like and without fear of reprisal.
Such a result reduces “balancing” to a mere play on words and is completely inconsistent with the rules this Court has previously given for applying a “balancing test,” where it is proper: “The courts should be astute to examine the effect of the challenged legislation.”
“Mere legislative preferences or beliefs . . . may well support regulation directed at other personal activities, but be insufficient to justify such as diminishes the exercise of rights so vital to the maintenance of democratic institutions.” Schneider v. Irvington, 308 U.S. 147, 161. (Italics supplied.)
United States Supreme Court
BARENBLATT v. UNITED STATES (1959)
MR. JUSTICE BLACK, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS concur, dissenting.
(B) Moreover, I cannot agree with the Court’s notion that First Amendment freedoms must be abridged in order to “preserve” our country.
That notion rests on the unarticulated premise that this Nation’s security hangs upon its power to punish people because of what they think, speak or write about, or because of those with whom they associate for political purposes.
The Government, in its brief, virtually admits this position when it speaks of the “communication of unlawful ideas.”
I challenge this premise, and deny that ideas can be proscribed under our Constitution.
I agree that despotic governments cannot exist without stifling the voice of opposition to their oppressive practices.
The First Amendment means to me, however, that the only constitutional way our Government can preserve itself is to leave its people the fullest possible freedom to praise, criticize or discuss, as they see fit, all governmental policies and to suggest, if they desire, that even its most fundamental postulates are bad and should be changed; “Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government.”
On that premise this land was created, and on that premise it has grown to greatness.
Our Constitution assumes that the common sense of the people and their attachment to our country will enable them, after free discussion, to withstand ideas that are wrong.
To say that our patriotism must be protected against false ideas by means other than these is, I think, to make a baseless charge.
Unless we can rely on these qualities – if, in short, we begin to punish speech – we cannot honestly proclaim ourselves to be a free Nation and we have lost what the Founders of this land risked their lives and their sacred honor to defend.
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
– Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists
For the record, they won the BATTLE OF DEMOCRACY on 6 January 2021.
Welcome to the NEW WORLD ORDER.
Nice
BUT
Let’s actually see if there’s going to be a real difference or if it’s just that
A SPEACH
How about addressing other issues like back door taxing ( PERSONAL PROPERTY TAX )
Allowing other businesses to come to the Eastern Shore
Addressing ground water and air pollution created by toxic chemicals and waste from chicken farms and farms .Reinstate the need for photo id to vote just like you need to board a plane or buy a car or cash a check .
A lot more than just education is on the table .
Hope he doesn’t blow it and is what he says he is and doesn’t get voted out next term because the opposing party is already calculating how to do just that.