Rebecca Friedrichs Still Hates The Teachers Unions

In 2014, Rebecca Friedrichs, after twenty-some years in the classroom, decided to go ahead and be the face of a lawsuit that would be derailed when Justice Scalia died. The court would eventually get to take their shot at unions with the Janus case. But while Friedrichs may have lost a lawsuit, she did manage to launch a career as a far-right Christianist spokesperson. She has done plenty of work for other folks, while pushing her own group, For Kids and Country.

If you want to catch a full catalog of the many people she objects to, you can catch her latest op-ed in the Washington Times, the right-wing outlet.

Yeah, this lady.

She's casting a wide net here, and she's come up with more old boots than actual fish. She starts by going after the 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter. She does the standard nod to black lives while still All Lives Mattering it ("Again, don’t get me wrong. Black lives do matter! Indeed, every human life is sacred.") At the same time, she wants you to know that Black Lives Matter are Very Naughty:

But the organization named Black Lives Matter is not what it claims to be. Like the unions, it’s a Trojan horse of anti-American, anti-family beliefs masquerading as defenders of good.

Friedrichs needs to bring up the union because they are part of this whole anti-American plot. She notes that some historians disputed the project, but not the NEA.

Instead, the NEA coordinated directly with The New York Times, the Pulitzer Center, Southern Poverty Law Center and Black Lives Matter to put 1619 into the hands of educators and activists. Their goal? To assert a false but preferred narrative to advance a political agenda.

Then she connects this to other "pseudo-realities" being pushed onto "our culture." Fluid genders. Hysterical weak environmental claims. Families aren't the center of society, and and children don't respect authority. History is reframed to assault "our Judeo-Christian culture." Friedrichs gets increasingly wound up, calling the project rubbish. "How dare they!"

But her own grasp of history is weak.

The pilgrims sacrificed every earthly possession and their very lives to secure God-ordained liberties for every race, status and creed, guiding our Founders to their “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal.” They inspired a free constitutional republic based on biblical principles that’s a beacon of hope in a very dark world.

Well, no. There are things to admire about the Pilgrims, but their desire to establish freedom for every race, status and creed is strictly imaginary. Exhibit A: the tendency of the Puritan-led Massachusetts Bay Colony to execute Quakers who came to proselytize. Nor was the republic based on Biblical principals.

But darkness always seeks to destroy light, so now our kids are forced to learn revisionist tales promoting atheism, racial division and ignorance of truth.

The union is part of a coalition aiming to destroy America. Really.

The NEA, The New York Times, their coalition and those they’ve indoctrinated have fallen for the devil’s oldest trick — pride. Fancying themselves “progressives” they’re stuck in the dark ages. Their false history actually subverts the progress we’ve made — creating hatred and divisions where there’s been healing, and ripping open old wounds and ignorance most Americans have overcome. They’re retraumatizing and legitimizing a victimhood mentality, forcing a chip onto the shoulders of black Americans and heaping mountains of undeserved guilt on those of white Americans. It’s dangerous; it’s destructive; and it’s dishonest. It’s also ripping our country apart.

Whoa. So either you can see what's wrong with all that, or I can't hope to explain it to you. B ut "forcing a chip onto the shoulder of black Americans" is a pretty astonishing reframing of US history. Yup-- Black folks would have been perfectly happy with how things were going if te left hadn'g somehow forced them to get all cranky.

But I brought this piece up to make one point. Back in 2014, it might have been possible to think, "Well, you know, people who oppose fair share might kind of have a point, and maybe she's just a lady who has a legitimate objection to having to give money to a union she disagrees with, and not some sort of rabid union-hater looking for any excuse to bust unions and their political power." Years later, she's clearly that second, union-hating one. It's nice to give people the benefit of the doubt, but they don't always deserve it. Friedrichs has turned out to be what she always appeared to be-- a shill for the folks who want to get rid of the union because A) unions lead to the help getting uppity and B)  because they tend to support the Democratic party, they are an obstacle to permanent GOP rule.