The Culture Panic Disrespect for Parents and Children

Two stories just broke, and both underline a feature of the culture panic crowd-- a disrespect for both children and their parents.

In Wisconsin, the school board of Watertown voted to silence the high school band, forbidding a performance of “A Mother of a Revolution!” is a 2019 composition by Omar Thomas. It was commissioned by the Desert Winds Freedom Band to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Thomas wrote that the piece "is a celebration of the bravery of trans women, and in particular, Marsha ‘Pay It No Mind’ Johnson." The work is an instrumental piece with no lyrics.

The controversy was, of course, that the piece referenced an LGBTQ activist. Now, the board, which in the past two years has been commandeered by the culture panic crowd, already had a "controversial issues" policy (aka "Don't Say Gay") in place, carefully framed as protection for parental rights. Teachers are supposed to give parents a chance to opt out of anything that might contradict their religious beliefs. The band director at the school informed parents of the piece via letter last October, and gave the option to opt their child out of the piece. Three students were opted out; two later changed their minds. 

Parents had ample opportunity to express themselves, and when the board decided to vote on censoring the piece less than a week before its scheduled performance, more parents and students spoke up, rather loudly, right up through last night's very contentious meeting.  

But as we have seen time after time after time, the "parental rights" crowd is only interested in the rights of certain parents. Parents who express support, acceptance, or just, you know, acknowledgement of the existence of LGBTQ persons-- those parents' rights don't matter so much. The board voted 7-1 to ban the piece. (You can listen to the piece, just under 5 minutes long, and decide how gay you think it sounds.)

At one point in the meeting, you'll hear board vice-president Sam Ouweneel remind board members "This is a perfect example of what everyone sitting at this table ran on, which was ending indoctrination in the classroom and ending radical curriculum." No word yet on whether the board will also forbid the works of Tchaikovsky and Cole Porter.

Yes, yes-- indoctrination. Because students' brains are like putty in the hands of adults. Children are dopes.

What else explains moments like Representative Virginia Foxx's response to a letter from a fourth grader who wrote her a letter as part of a class assignment. Ten year old Christian Mango researched and wrote about electric vehicles and his proposal for a tax rebate for buying one. His mother shared the response from Foxx, which was generally condescending, until it became insulting:

Incidentally, please ask your teacher to explain propaganda to you. While I will never be able to know, my guess is that your teachers will not give you a good educational experience and help you learn to think as they are too interested in indoctrinating you. How sad.

Foxx, who sits on House Committee on Education and Labor, has long had a bug up her ear about "indoctrination," though she usually picks on public schools. Mango is a student at a private Christian school.

Her assumption here is clearly that the child is a dope, incapable of forming any of his opinions on his own. Nor did she feel the need to include any of his parents in this communication. The note became public when his mother showed it on Instagram. Christian’s mother praised his educators as “amazing teachers who are lifelines for these kids,” and told Foxx that “teachers don’t deserve the contempt and disrespect you have shown.”

The culture panic crowd consistently commits a cardinal sin-- assuming that everyone who disagrees with them is either evil or stupid. They hold onto the notion that there is One Truth and only people who embrace that One Truth deserve respect, attention, or a voice. They are a callback to Wilhoit's Law: 

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

That may not be all conservatives, but it certainly fits the culture panic crowd. 

And children? Children are chattel. "Children do not belong to the government," they declare, meaning "they belong to their parents." They are property, to be arranged like furniture, and if the living room couch is in the wrong place, well, someone must have moved it because the couch certainly has no ability to move itself. 

It's frustrating and (as shown in Watertown videos) anger-fueling. Can we trust young humans to take in a full range of information about the world, trust them to sort through it all, and respect their freedom to build their own model of the world? Not if the culture panic crowd has anything to say about it.