#964: I Never Met a Banned Book I Didn't Want to Read

Nearly 2 years ago (January 2, 2022, to be precise), I posted essay #873 entitled What do Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield and Harry Potter All Have in Common? In that post, I discussed (railed against, to be honest) Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ push to ban innumerable books from public school libraries which, in his opinion, included dangerously “woke” and “immoral” characters, themes and words. At the time, he was convinced that he could easily defeat former POTUS Trump in the Republican primary by placing himself far to the right . . . on such issues as 6-week abortion bans, outlawing the teaching of Critical Race Theory, and anything that smacked of Woke philosophy.

To me, it is axiomatic that those who decry the danger of teaching “CRT” in public schools (which it almost never has been), principles of WOKE (which most of those who fear it haven’t any idea of its definition or meaning) or of banning hundreds of “dangerous,” “pornographic” or “immoral” books (which few have ever read) are living on another planet.  Somewhere long ago I read an aphorism which states that “A truly great library contains something in it to offend EVERYBODY.”  Having been raised to be a perpetual reader of classics, satires, plays and as much of the  world’s truly great literature as possible (with brief forays into the  likes of P.G. Wodehouse, Raymond Chandler and David Lodge), I have also read the vast majority of books that have been banned going all the way back to the first, Thomas Morton’s 1637 anti-Puritan work New English Canaan, in which he critiqued and attacked Puritan customs so harshly that even the more progressive New English settlers disapproved (and eventually banned) it. Hey, when a book compares you to a crustacean, it’s unlikely you’ll be begging the author for a sequel!  (For those who ask where I ever find the time to read so many books in consideration of my jam-packed schedule, I always answer with a chuckle, It’s one of the only benefits of having Crohn’s Disease!”  For those who have no idea what this means, you may want to familiarize yourself with its symptomology).

So what leads me to return to this topic once again? Has anything truly changed over the past 23 months? Well, yes and no. Here in Florida - the land of sunshine and political insanity - the number of books removed from public school libraries has grown exponentially. In Hernando County, north of Tampa, six picture books were recently removed from school libraries including the late National Medal of Arts winner Maurice Sendak’s classic In the Night Kitchen ("Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! We bake cake and nothing’s the matter!"), and Caldecott-Honor winner David Shannon’s classic No David! Why? For the simple reason that both books have illustrations that show kids’ naked bottoms, or in one case, a goblin’s bare derriere.  Shame, shame!  Can you imagine all the harm it would do for a 6-year old to realize that people - even goblins - have tucheses?

Then there's Collier County in southwest Florida, where more than 300 - count -’em 300 - novels have been taken from the shelves, packed up and put into storage.  Among the forbidden 300 are works by such monsters, atheists and pederasts as Ernest Hemmingway, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Flannery O’Connor, Ayn Rand, Leo Tolstoy and Alice Walker. 

A confession: I am currently finishing my second reading of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (which is banned from some libraries), and then diving into the literary wonders of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which is banned throughout school libraries in many parts of the United States.  The oh-so-moral harridans of Moms for Liberty need not worry about 10-year olds becoming infected with Anna – one of the first truly liberated women in all Western literature; I cannot imagine too many youngsters will put up with reading any novel of nearly 900 pages that doesn’t star Harry Potter.  

Governor DeSantis has criticized what he calls a “book ban hoax,” but PEN America (founded way back in 1922) said school book bans are on the rise nationally, and that in the 2022-23 school year Florida led the national and was responsible for 40% of them.  A Florida law (HB1467) passed last year by the state’s  Legislature and signed by Gov. DeSantis requires the Florida Department of Education to publish a list of all books objected to by parents and removed in any Florida school district.  The department urged all districts to consult the list.  

It appears to be working; parents are consulting the list and then contacting their local school board in order to have even more books banned. In Clay County (Northeast Florida) a father who leads a group called “No Left Turn in Education,” - has filed hundreds of book objections and told the state he plans to object to no less than 3,600 more.  All those who believe he has read all these books please raise your hand (the right one, not the left).

Before you get suicidal and start contemplating jumping off the front lawn, please read on; it just might be that the book-banners and staunch moralists have gone too far, and are finally beginning to be taken to task by the voting public.

• A Brevard County (East-central Florida) School Board member, backed by Moms for Liberty proposed removing all the books on the Florida list; fortunately, this brought out a lot of angry citizens to a board meeting; the proposal was quashed by a vote of 3-2. 

• A Pennsylvania school board that consistently engaged in banning books and Pride flags, as well as prohibiting transgender athletes from playing on sports teams, managed to slip a last-minute item into their final meeting before leaving office; hastily awarding a $700,000 exit package to the superintendent who supported their agenda. But the Democratic majority that swept the conservative Moms For Liberty slate out of office, hopes to block the unusual — likely illegal — payout and bring calm to the Central Bucks School District, whose affluent suburbs and bucolic farms near Philadelphia have been roiled by infighting for quite some time.  

• While reporting on various “off-year” elections held earlier this month, most political commentators and analysts owed the Democrat’s success to voter concern and anger over the Supreme Courts’ overturning of Rowe v. Wade; about how states with pro-choice amendments on the ballot played a major role in Democratic victories. What many of these same analysts and commentators missed was, at least to my way of thinking, an even bigger and potentially more important story:  the number of Moms for Liberty and Project 1776 -endorsed candidates who went down to defeat in state after state. These progressive successes came mainly in races for local boards of education and state legislatures.  This is big news.

• According to the American Federation of Teachers, groups like these lost close to 70% of the races where they made endorsements. And while conservatives made some modest inroads in places like the Houston suburbs, they fell short in many of the most high-profile races in swing states like Pennsylvania – where Democrats swept several school boards while rejecting the culture war – as well as Iowa, Ohio and Virginia.

  So why did so many Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidates perform so poorly? For one thing, their agenda was simply too extreme for most voters outside of the deepest-red districts. National polling from earlier this year found that the majority of Americans oppose book bans, trust teachers to make curricular decisions, and think schools should teach the history of slavery, racism and segregation.

  This dynamic was reflected in the repudiation of figures like Teri Patrick – a school board candidate in West Des Moines, Iowa, who once fought to criminally charge a school district because its library had two books about LGBTQ+ issues. Patrick was endorsed by Moms for Liberty but crushed in the election, receiving a measly 9% of the vote

  .

Hopefully, these are all good omens. As the late Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O'Neill famously said, “All politics is local.” Let Democracy work its way up from the town to the county to the state and eventually the both houses of Congress and the White House itself.

And getting back to books, let’s conclude with a thought from that most beloved of all American writers, Mark Twain, whose Huckleberry Finn is high up on nearly every list of literature that must never be read by a child: 

Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#944: Jefferson Monroe Levy, the 4th of July, and US

The Fourth of July 2023 isn’t even close to what it was - or even meant to be - back when Erica (my “slightly older sister”) and I were kids. Back in the late fifties and early sixties, what we nowadays simply call either “The Fourth” or “Fourth of July Weekend” (even if it comes around on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) meant going to the Van Nuys/Sherman Oaks War Memorial Park (where we learned to swim and dive as well as attend day camp in the summer) take a blanket, sandwiches and a thermos-full of lemonade - and watch the best-staged, most artistic fireworks display anywhere in the West. How did we know it was “the best in the West?” Simple: when you live within a couple of miles of the best “special effects” departments on earth, it’s bound to be great . . . and incredibly loud. Having the world’s tallest palm trees as a backdrop . . . well, it just couldn’t be any better.  And to top everything off, there would be the singing of the Star Spangled Banner by some star of the silver screen, usually backed by an orchestra from MGM, Paramount, Fox or even (G-d forbid!) RKO.  

Those were the days!  It was both patriotic (remember, there were veterans of WWI, WWII and the Korean  “police action” scattered throughout the crowd) and filled with pride for the country that our Founders had created.  Oh sure, we knew we weren’t perfect and not everyone was as acceptable as others (these were still the pre-Civil Rights Act days and Hollywood was not yet free of the horrendous “Black List”); but in the main, we still celebrated the dreams and ideals of our Founders.  We were still, for the most part “WE THE PEOPLE.”

Even as a kid of 8 or 9, I reveled in the thought that we, the Stone family, descended from the Schimbergs and Greenbergs of Maryland and Virginia, and the Kagans and Hymans of Minnesota and Illinois, were all part of the U.S., which we always pronounced as the single word: “us.”  We were among the few whose grandparents and great-grandparents neither spoke Yiddish nor had ever never set foot in New York.  And yet, we certainly never felt ourselves to be more of “US” than those who were of the first generation . . . either in America itself or Hollywood in general.

In the generations of our grandparents, great-grandparents and even more, the Fourth of July was far, far different than what Erica and I remember. While I have read about fireworks being a staple of 19th-century Fourth of July celebrations (signifying the “bombs bursting in air” at the battle of Ft. McHenry - a legacy of the War of 1812), it was the public reading of Jefferson’s magnificent “Declaration of Independence” which took center stage. These celebrations weren’t nearly as jingoistic (propagandistic) as those celebrations of a later age; rather they centered and brought to mind the words, thoughts and dreams of that most literate of all our Founders, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. And even after Jefferson died (ironically on the 4th of July, 1826, the very same day as his colleague/political nemesis John Adams), his words - among the greatest in all human history - were kept in the ears and memories of a grateful public . . . US:

                       Jefferson’s handwritten draft

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government . . .

Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924)

After serving two terms as POTUS (1801-1809), Jefferson returned to his estate at Monticello (Latin for Little Mountain), where he continued to live for the remainder of his life. For more than a quarter century, it was his habit to invite all the people from “down the hill” to attend his 4th of July celebration during which he read the Declaration of Independence from the very bookstand on which he drafted the original document. At the time of his death on the 4th of July, 1826, his estate was in severe disrepair; in 1831, the house and grounds were sold by Jefferson’s heirs (his daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph and her son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph) to one James Turner Barclay, a Charlottesville pharmacist. Three years later (1834), Uriah P. Levy (1792-1862), the first Jewish Commodore of the United States Navy, bought the 218-acre estate from Barclay for $2,700 (equivalent to $79,100 in today's dollars). Commodore Levy then undertook to have the long-neglected home repaired, restored, and preserved. He also bought hundreds of additional acres that had been part of the plantation, to add to what was left. Levy, it should be mentioned, was part of one of the oldest and most prominent Jewish families in America.

Uriah P. Levy used Monticello as a vacation home.  Toward the end of his life, the Commodore also restored the Charlottesville Town Hall, built in 1852, as a theater, and renamed it the Levy Opera House. This bold Greek Revival 800-seat structure is still in use today.

From 1837 to 1839, Uriah’s widowed mother, Rachel Levy, lived there fulltime until her death; she is buried along Mulberry Row, the main plantation street adjacent to the mansion (making her the only Jewish person buried on the grounds of Jefferson’s estate).

17 years after the Commodore’s death, Levy’s nephew, the patriotically-named Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924), who was a successful three-term New York congressman, businessman, and lawyer, purchased Monticello at public auction for $10,500 (a little less than $312,200.00 in 2023 dollars. He owned, cared for and completely restored the mansion and its grounds until it was purchased by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation forty-four years later  (1923). During the years he owned Monticello, Jefferson Monroe Levy poured nearly half-a-million dollars (over $15,000.000 in todays money) into the restoration of Monticello. Despite only using it as an occasional retreat, Jefferson Monroe Levy revived Thomas Jefferson’s 4th of July custom; on that date, the former Congressman would be there, among all the townies from nearby Charlottesville,  to attend his reading of the Declaration of Independence . . .  from the very same stand-up writing table-cum-podium upon which Thomas Jefferson had originally composed it.

There is far, far more to the Fourth of July than fireworks, hotdogs and beer, or sales at the local mall hyped and hawked by the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al.  (BTW, July 4, 1776 is not the date upon which the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence.  In matter of historic fact, independence was formally declared on July 2, 1776, a date that John Adams believed would be “the most memorable epocha [sic] in the history of America.” On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the final text of the Declaration, but it wasn't signed until August 2 of that year.) 

To me, the Fourth of July should serve as something akin to a “refresher course” in the miracle that is America; its founding principles and ideals, its historic promise, highs, lows and the many challenges and stumbling blocks which have always stood in the path of our Democratic Republic. For many of US, the promise of America is best and most succinctly expressed by the 3 Latin words which make up our national motto: e pluribus unum . . . i.e. “Out of many, one.”

America is unique among the nations of the world when it comes to combining pluribus - people of virtually all ancestries, origins, tongues, religions, histories native myths to make something brand new . . . unum - one people. This has long been our ideality - even when not precisely our reality. Throughout our relatively brief history (247 years and counting), we have accomplished great things as a Democratic Republic. We have also fought with one another, treated “others” as our enemies, sought to bar entry to those we feared or did not understand. We have been through generations when rights were greatly expanded and enjoyed, and times - like now - when rights have been contracted.

No one ever said that being part of US was going to be easy . . . or inexorable; indeed, it has always been a challenge. This was best summarized by Dr. Benjamin Franklin in 1787. According to James McHenry (1753-1816) a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention, who throughout that convention, kept one of the best and most compendious journals of all the compatriots in Philadelphia. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin ‘Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy? “A republic” replied the Doctor . . . if you can keep it.” (McHenry’s journal, by the way, is at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.)

And so it is: We are US; a most unique breed. Not necessarily the best . . . just the most unique.

May we continue attempting to live up to - and expanding upon - the very best of the ideals our Founders bequeathed to US.

May this Fourth of July be happy, healthy and most importantly, energizing.

E PLURIBUS UNUM

Copyright©2023, Kurt Franklin  Stone

Creating Solutions to Problems That Don't Really Exist: A Toxic Political Strategy

By the time you get around to reading this blog, Virginians will likely have gone to the polls to elect a new governor. Looking into my frequently unreliable crystal ball, I see 3 possible outcomes:

1) Former Governor, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who served as the Commonwealth’s 64th governor from 2014-2018 would be returned to office by a nose;

2) Republican businessman and Republican donor Glenn Allen Youngkin, a Trumpian clone, would defeat McAuliffe in a squeaker, or that

3) Younkin would lose in a particularly close race and then claim that McAuliffe stole the election from him.

Sound familiar?

McAuliffe, a seasoned poll and self-made millionaire, chaired the Democratic National Committee from 2001-2005 and then the National Governors Association in 2016-2017. He has long been close to the Clintons, and campaigned largely on his economic record from his single term as governor (Virginia only permits non-consecutive terms), supporting infrastructure improvements, voting rights, and President Biden's current “American Rescue Plan." McAuliffe has also managed to get in a few words about Donald Trump, letting it be known that his opponent is very much in Trump’s thrall and, like the former POTUS (who endorsed Youngkin no less than ten times during the campaign, is a multi-centimillionaire making his first run for office.

During the campaign, whatever support Youngkin showed for Trump was more tacit than obvious; the name T-R-U-M-P barely passed his lips even once. And one can be reasonably certain that he prayed that the de facto head of the G.O.P would not come into the Commonwealth to campaign on his behalf. So what were Youngkin’s main issues? At first, he avoided any discussions of divisive social issues in favor of praising of free markets and job creators, lower taxes, and balanced budgets (an historically typical Republican smorgasbord) and conservative activists actually knew very little about him other than the fact that he has a degree from Harvard Business School, a long and lucrative career in private equity, devout religious convictions and even a family love of horses . . . making him more similar to Utah Senator Mitt Romney than former POTUS Donald Trump.

Then, in the election’s final two weeks, he made a sharp right-hand turn and began promoting causes which animate and energize the conservative Republican base (read: Trump); now he began hammering away at the “danger and peril” of teaching of “Critical  Race Theory” in schools as well as transgender children. In other words, Youngkin no longer ran against Terry McAuliffe; now his targets were school bathrooms and sports teams to the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning writer, poet and essayist, Toni Morrison. What all these - and many other - “dog whistle” issues have in common (besides being “dog whistles”) is that they are arguing for “solutions” to “problems” which really do not exist.  Nakedly, they combine to make a political campaign strategy which is both toxic and represents a clear and present danger to the future of “small-d” democracy.

Candidate Youngkin has quickly made the banning of Critical Race Theory (“I’ll do this on the first day I’m in office”) the number one issue for his campaign. According to Fox News it has pushed him to a 54%-46% lead in various polls. (I for one take polls run on Fox, News Max or OAN with a dollop of salt). He wants to protect Virginia’s children from having to be “indoctrinated” with “. . . left, liberal, socialist notions that America is a racist nation . . . and will make our children into a bunch of Californians.” The fact of the matter is that Critical Race Theory is not part of the state-wide curriculum in Virginia . . . or Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona or any of the other states which have either banned it as a matter of law or are in the process of doing so. It is a toxic solution to a problem that does not really exist.

Here in Florida the State Board of Education unanimously approved an amendment to its rules this past June. The amendment instructs public school staff to teach topics around race "efficiently and faithfully," using materials that meet "the highest standards of professionalism and historical accuracy." It bans the teaching of Critical Race Theory, which the legislation describes as "the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons." It has the full-throated approval of Governor Rick DeSantis.

Why has Fox News mentioned “Critical Race Theory” more than 1,300 times in less than 4 months? What is causing state legislatures, governors, and candidates for school board across the country to be so adamantly opposed to something which exists far more in theory than in reality? What is it about the late Toni Morrison and her best-known, most widely read novel — Beloved - to so rile up the right? And by the way: how many have actually read it? (Watching the 1998 movie starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover doesn’t count).

For those who have neither read nor watched Morrison’s Beloved, it is a graphic, violent and harrowing novel, sort of a Sophie’s Choice transferred back to America’s post-slavery era.  It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1986.  In brief, the novel is based on the true story of a Black slave woman, Margaret Garner, who in 1856 escaped from a Kentucky plantation with her husband, Robert, and their children. They sought refuge in Ohio, but their owner and law officers soon caught up with the family. Before their recapture, Margaret killed her young daughter to prevent her return to slavery. In the novel, Sethe is also a passionately devoted mother, who flees with her children from an abusive owner known as “schoolteacher.” They are caught, and, in an act of supreme love and sacrifice, she too tries to kill her children to keep them from slavery. Only her two-year-old daughter dies, and the schoolteacher, believing that Sethe is crazy, decides not to take her back. Sethe later has “Beloved” inscribed on her daughter’s tombstone. Although she had intended for it to read “Dearly Beloved,” she did not have the energy to “pay” for two words (each word cost her 10 minutes of sex with the engraver).

These events are revealed in flashbacks, as the novel opens in 1873, with Sethe and her teenage daughter, Denver, living in Ohio, where their house at 124 Bluestone Road is haunted by the angry ghost of the child Sethe killed. The hauntings are alleviated by the arrival of Paul D, a man so ravaged by his slave past that he keeps his feelings in the “tobacco bin” of his heart. He worked on the same plantation as Sethe, and the two begin a relationship. A brief period of relative calm ends with the appearance of a young woman who says that her name is Beloved. She knows things that suggest she is the reincarnation of Sethe’s lost daughter. Sethe is obsessed with assuaging her guilt and tries to placate the increasingly demanding and manipulative Beloved. At one point, Beloved seduces Paul D. After learning that Sethe killed her daughter, he leaves.

The situation at 124 Bluestone worsens, as Sethe loses her job and becomes completely fixated on Beloved, who is soon revealed to be pregnant. While the lonely and largely housebound Denver initially befriends Beloved, she begins to grow concerned. She finally dares to venture outside in order to ask the community for help, and she is given food and a job. As the local women attempt to stage an exorcism, Denver’s employer arrives to take her to work, and Sethe mistakes him for “schoolteacher” and tries to attack him with an ice pick. The other women restrain her, and during the commotion Beloved disappears. Paul D later returns to the grieving Sethe, promising to care for her, and Denver continues to thrive in the outside world.

Admittedly, Beloved is not everyone’s cup of tea; Morrison’s writing style is both unique and difficult to plumb for the casual reader of fiction. Nonetheless, for those who have read it in its entirety, it is a novel that remains forever. From listening to and reading the remarks of those anti Critical Race Theory automatons who go on and on about how dangerous this book is and how it should be outlawed in public schools and universities, I get the impression that they have never read it. True, it is not an easy read. True, it shines a brightly uncomfortable light on a part of American history that many would care to avoid . . . or even believe never happened. But it is not meant to teach students to hate being white or turn them into anti-patriots. This is all stuff and nonsense dreamed up by those who believe banning books is a sure-fire way to solve problems which simply do not exist.

This is, of course, nothing new. American politicians began blaming immigrants for the nation’s economic woes as far back as the “Panic” (recession) of 1837. American “masters of morality” have urged the banning of books they considered harmful for well over a century (who remembers the folderol over Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead” ]which contained ‘that word’] and J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye [which dealt with such “immoral” issues as teen angst, alienation and the superficiality of modern society?]). The, of course, there was the Hollywood “Black List.” which accused innumerable actors, directors, screenwriters and even hair stylists of being “Fellow Travelers, “premature anti-Fascists” and “rotten Commies.” All these - and oh so many more - presented so-called “solutions” to problems that truly did not exist.

Some things never change.

So what is to be done about the stench of pro-gun-racist-white-power-anti-immigrant-Critical-Racial-Theory? Trying to talk sense to these social misfits and miscreants is a fool’s errand, tantamount to taming a rabid rhino. People who listen intently to the malicious, hateful cadences of the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Madison Cawthorns, Tucker Carlsons and Joe Pags of the world aren’t going to be disabused of what they hear or see through rational discourse. That is why so many still fully believe that the Clintons are pedophiles, Barack Obama is an African-born Muslim, that the Democrats are going to take guns away from all “real Americans,” ban the Bible and turn control of the country over to George Soros. Yes, it is sheer twaddle, but there’s plenty of it out there.

Political revolutions are just as frequently created from the bottom up than from the top down. Our attention must be even more laser-focused on school boards, town councils and county commissions as on state legislatures, governor’s mansions, Congress and the White House. I urge readers to attend school board meetings . . . not to outshout, but to listen and to learn and to grasp. I urge you to volunteer to register voters, to join campaigns and to never, ever except toxic political strategies where elbow grease is needed.

 We close with a thought from Toni Morrison which says it all: "There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal."

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone 

What in the Hell is "Critical Race Theory?"

Received a message the other day through Facebook in which the writer . . . whom I have never met . . . tried to get my goat by writing “For what it’s worth, you have the greatest governor in the country and Florida has become attractive to me in terms of relocation for the first time in my life.” My response was (I hope) pleasantly direct, mostly truthful, and carrying just a smidge of sarcastic humor: “It has long been a hard and fast rule with me that I neither argue, debate nor discuss politics unless I am getting paid. Having written this I will tell you that I've never been all that wild about Florida. I greatly prefer mountains (which we have in great abundance in my native California), which can be enjoyed from a great distance; oceans, on the other hand, require one to live close by in order to get any benefit. Also, I do like an occasional chilly morning and cold night . . . which is virtually impossible in South Florida. Have a great week.”  I have yet to receive a response.  I would suspect that the reader is an avid Trumpeter who has a world-class political crush on Donald Trump’s “Mini-Me,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. 

This week’s essay is not expressly about the Florida governor; we posted a piece about him (The Clone) this past March 2, so you know something of my thoughts and opinions about him. Rather, this piece is about an issue that DeSantis and most of his Republican colleagues have been increasingly putting under the political electron microscope for the past several months: “Critical Race Theory.” Simply stated, Critical Race Theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that racism is a social construct, and that it is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice (like racism or [dis]organized white supremacy), but  something embedded in legal systems and policies.

Through continually clanging the ultra-conservative claxon and demanding that the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) be made illegal (lest impressionable children be led to “hate the United States”), they hope to create yet another “Marxist” scare tactic which will keep their more gullible supporters on edge and champing at the Trumpian bit to replace Democracy with authoritarianism. Strategically, “Critical Race Theory” motors along the same highway as the spate of restrictive voting laws passed by the majority of Republican-controlled state legislatures (who would have us believe that the 2020 presidential election was rife with corruption and criminality on the part of the “Socialist Left”),  the gutting of any and every attempt to bring sanity and safety to gun ownership in America, and that illegal immigrants - with the blessing of Left - are increasingly entering the country in order to turn us all into Marxist slaves. These sorts of political canards are all meant to create fear of the so-called “Cancel Culture” and “woke,” and place as many restrictions as possible on anyone and everyone who disagrees with their reality.  This is the new reality for the erstwhile GOP - now called in many circles the “Q (Anon) OP.”

Republican governors and lawmakers across the country have been advancing legislation that would limit how public school teachers can discuss race in their classrooms; increasingly, educators say the efforts are already having a chilling effect on their lessons.

In recent weeks, Republican legislatures in roughly half a dozen states (including Florida) have either adopted or advanced bills purporting to take aim at the teaching of critical race theory. Conservatives have made the teaching of critical race theory a rallying cry in the culture wars, calling it divisive and unpatriotic for forcing students to consider the influence of racism in situations where they might not see it otherwise.

Instead of seeking to galvanize their core activists with such traditional Republican issues as less government, local control and tax cuts, GOP officials at the state level are now rolling out policies that flow from the woke/cancel culture fight. These include limits on public schools’ use of the New York Times’ 1619 Project which chronicles the role of slavery in American history and the teaching of critical race theory at public colleges. They consistently call Critical Race Theory “ . . . a Marxist framework that views society only through the lens of race-based oppression,” and claim “It is everywhere these days . . . In corporations, federal agencies, schools, and even the military; it sows hatred and division in the name of “dignity” and “equality.”

Warnings about the danger inherent in employing critical race theory in public schools and universities are spreading like wildfires in the West. In an article by the Associated Press’s Bryan Anderson it was noted that “Teachers and professors in Idaho will be prevented from ‘indoctrinating’ students on race. Oklahoma teachers will be prohibited from saying certain people are inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. The Tennessee schools will risk losing state aid if their lessons include particular concepts about race and racism."  At least 16 states are considering or have already signed into law bills that would limit the teachings of certain ideas linked to “Critical Race Theory.” It has gotten so loopy that one state lawmaker in Tennessee actually declared that the Constitution’s original provision designating a slave as three-fifths of a person was adopted for “the purpose of ending slavery.” (n.b. while it is true that many historians agree that this compromise gave slave-holding states more political power, it is far from the historic truth . . . except to modern-day members of the QOP.)

Even House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has gotten into the act.  Recently, he led his party in protesting a proposed Biden administration rule promoting education programs that address systemic racism and the legacy of American slavery, calling the guidance “divisive nonsense.”

In a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, McConnell, along with three dozen other Republicans, singled out a reference in the proposal to The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which was included as an example of a growing emphasis on teaching “the consequences of slavery, and the significant contributions of Black Americans to our society.”

“Families did not ask for this divisive nonsense. Voters did not vote for it,” the senators wrote. “Americans never decided our children should be taught that our country is inherently evil.”  

What is inherently evil, is rewriting, reinterpreting and re-legislating history in order to score points with people who know next to nothing about history.

There are 526 days until the 2020 election.

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

Cave Clinton and Keller!

Helen Keller at Age 20

About a week ago (Friday, Sept. 14 to be precise) the Texas State Board of Education took a series of key votes which would eliminate teaching the state’s elementary school children anything about such wicked, worthless nonentities as Hillary Clinton, Helen Keller, Oprah Winfrey, John Hancock or W.E.B. DuBois. Their rationale? By removing dozens upon dozens of significant historic and contemporary figures from the public schools’ social studies curricula, they would be saving time for teaching about more “relevant” figures such as Adolph Hitler, Jefferson Davis and Kay Bailey Hutchison. According to a study undertaken by members of the board, excluding any reference to Hillary Clinton will save teachers 30 minutes of instructional time (in the course of a school semester), and Keller a whopping 40 minutes.

In an op-ed piece she wrote for the Washington Post, Texas State School Board Chair Donna Bahorich insisted that neither partisan politics, ethnicity nor gender had anything to do with determining which figures would be eliminated. After all, both Democrat Sam Rayburn (a Texan who served as Speaker of the House for longer than anyone in U.S. history) and Republican Barry Goldwater (America’s first - and so far only - presidential candidate to have Jewish heritage) were on the “thumbs-down” list. Despite Ms. Bahorich’s assertion that those slated for history’s trash heap were determined solely by necessity, her words just don’t ring true. A fine-tooth-comb examination of the school board’s list includes such folks as:

• Benjamin Banneker, a free-born African American almanac author, surveyor and naturalist;

• Phyllis Wheatly: the first published African-American female poet;

• Stanley Marcus: one of Texas’ greatest success stories; the founder of Neiman Marcus;

• Jane Addams: the Nobel Prize winning “Mother of Social Work”;

• Thomas Jefferson

• Hyam Salomon: A Polish-born Jew who became one of the two greatest financial underwriters of the Revolutionary War.

Mel and Norma Gabler: The Textbook Tzars

As shocking and upsetting as this current campaign is, one must remember that in Texas, dictating who and/or what shall be either mandated or eliminated from both curricula (and especially) textbooks, is as old as the Alamo. With respect to the latter - textbooks - there is an old expression which teaches “What happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas when it comes to textbooks” To fully grok the underlying meaning of this bon mot, one must first enter the Orwellian minds of the late Mel (1915-2004) and Norma (1923-2007) Gabler. Back in 1961, while sitting at their kitchen table in Hawkins, Texas, the Gablers claimed that they found numerous errors in their son’s history textbook. What they believed they were uncovering were numerous factual errors and examples of secular humanism, the censoring of conservative political and social views in textbooks. And so, armed with anger and the Divine Spirit, they founded a non-profit organization they named Educational Research Analysts, whose raison d'être has long been to read, review and rate textbooks. As stated on their website, “We are a conservative Christian organization that reviews public school textbooks submitted for adoption in Texas. Our reviews have national relevance because Texas state-adopts textbooks and buys so many that publishers write them to Texas standards and sell them across the country.”

To this day, ERA’s particular areas of concern are:

• Scientific weaknesses in evolutionary theories

• Phonics-based reading instruction

• Principles and benefits of free enterprise

• Original intent of the U.S. Constitution

• Respect for Judeo-Christian morals

• Emphasis on abstinence in sex education

• Politically-correct degradation of academics

Hauntingly, these core issues have been making their way into textbooks for more than half a century . . . and not just in Texas. Remember their original statement: “Our reviews have national relevance . . . publishers write [textbooks] to Texas standards and sell them across the country.” What the Gablers were (and still are) to textbooks with ultra-conservative bent, the Texas State Board of Education is to public school curriculum. The main difference is that the Gablers, at least, were upfront about their intentions, while the State Board of Education is disingenuous to the max . . . hiding their agenda behind the false cloak of time management.

It is not terribly difficult to understand what Donna Bahorich and her colleagues have against Hillary Clinton and why they want any mention of her excised from public school classrooms; they hate everything about her and her husband the way a moonshiner despises a revenuer. But Helen Keller? What could they possibly have against Ms. Keller (1880-1968) who, in her day, was the most admired woman on the planet? I mean, here we have a woman who, despite being both deaf and blind since age 2, learned to read Braille, speak several languages, graduate from Radcliffe, write more than a dozen books, travel the world on behalf of peace, have her own film production company, become great friends with Mark Twain, visit every president from Theodore Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy at the White House, and become one of the founders of both the American Civil Liberties Union and International Workers of the World (the “Wobblies”)? What harm could there ever be in children spending a mere 40 minutes of their elementary school education learning about this amazing, iconic, heroic woman? Absolutely nothing, except for the fact that she was a woman, has long been suspected by conservative Christians of possibly being a lesbian, and made no bones about being a Socialist who stood up for the rights of other women, minorities and the poor. Then too, maybe Bahorich et al are latter-day eugenicists; people who don’t want school children to be exposed to people with disabilities . . . no matter how distinguished they are.

In Latin, “cave” (pronounced KA-vay) means “beware of.” So, the title of this week’s post, Cave Clinton and Keller is a tongue-in-cheek way of saying “Beware of Clinton and Keller!”

One could easily conclude that last week’s votes by the Texas State Board of Education (which will be recast again in November) are not all that surprising in the age of Trumpeters. And indeed, at first glance, it does seem to fit in with all the intolerance, civic illiteracy, nascent racism, anti-intellectualism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and Islamophobia that are the worst, most abhorrent ancillary aspects of Trumpism. One can also rightly fear that left unchallenged, the Texas State Board of Education’s lunatic Neo-Luddism may one day bring back the days when books were burned in town squares. The answer - and I believe there is one - comes not from changing presidents or members of Congress . . . although that certainly could not hurt. No, the real answers come from watchfully standing guard over the two institutions which have the most long-lasting effects on the nation: our school boards and our courts. Instead of spending their time arguing over whether or not classroom teachers - or even students - ought to be armed, our educational boards should pay heed to providing a quality education for every child; one that is free of partisan politics, religion or hidden agendas. Here in Florida, one of the biggest “successes” of the latest session of our state legislature is mandating that every public school classroom has a “In God We Trust” sign posted on the wall. Never mind that billions of dollars are being pulled out of public schools in the name of “school choice.” Never mind that the average classroom teacher must work a second - and sometimes a third - job just in order to live a middle-class existence. Never mind that mindless administrators are injecting their private agendas into what is taught or read. That a fundamentalist minority should have such chilling power over what is or is not taught to a generation of school children is but a few steps away from intellectual authoritarianism.

It is not Clinton or Keller of whom we should beware; it is the so-called guardians of education and public morals like Donna Bahorich (who, among other things, is the founder of Home Ed Plus, whose stated objective is “teaching classes from a Christian worldview perspective”) and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy De Vos, who wants to use America’s schools to “build God’s Kingdom.”

We began with the Latin word cave (“beware of”), and end with a Latin phrase from the great satirist Juvenal:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Namely, “Who shall guard the guardians themselves?”

44 days until the midterm elections!

VOTE!!!

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

            Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Question: What is the difference between reality and fiction? Answer: fiction must make sense; reality doesn't.  Thus said the late novelist Tom Clancy during an interview with Larry King back in the early 1990s.  A bit of research shows that Clancy had adapted his pithy insight from either Lord Byron ("Truth is always stranger than fiction"), Mark Twain ("Truth is always stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't"), G. K. Chesterton ("Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it") or perhaps Leo Rosten ("Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense"). Regardless of precisely who was responsible for the original quote (it may well have been Aristotle, or Thomas Aquinas, both of whom wrote extensively about the nature of truth) there are, on a daily, even hourly basis, innumerable examples which should all be stuffed into a file entitled 'YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!'  A handful of examples will suffice:

• The United States, along with France and the U.K. bombs chemical weapons plants in Syria; within 24 hours, the POTUS Tweets "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!" (Sound familiar?)
• '45 pardons former  V.P.  Richard Cheney's Chief of Staff, Louis "Scooter" Libby, thus firing a non-so-subtle shot across the bow of Robert Mueller III's investigation into all sorts of things. 
• Armed with subpoenas, FBI agents raid the home, office and hotel room of the president's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, whom the DOJ now admits is "under criminal investigation." In response, '45 calls the raid "a national disgrace" and further claims that "all lawyers are concerned and deflated" by the raid. 
• Former FBI director James Comey publishes a new book, A Higher Loyalty, in which he  says the president is both "unethical" and "untethered to truth." In response, '45 Tweets that Comey is a "weak and untruthful slimeball."
• This past Thursday, the president weighs in on rejoining the Trans Pacific Partnership, an eleven-nation regional trade pact which in pulling out of shortly after his inauguration, angrily termed "a rape of our country."  
• Despite innumerable ethical lapses, the president recently praised embattled EPA administrator (and former Oklahoma A.G.) Scott Pruitt for the "fantastic job" he is doing.  It brings back memories of another Sooner, Michael Brown, the first Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response (a division of Homeland Security) who, three days after Hurricane Katrina wipes out much of New Orleans' Ninth Ward, was told by another president "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" 
• Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin lashes out at teachers protesting to raise state education funding, claiming that the statewide walkout "inevitably" led students to be sexually assaulted and use drugs. The governor also disses protesting teachers for “hangin’ out, shoes off ... smokin’, leavin’ trash around, takin’ the day off.”

You just can't make this stuff up!

This last bit of nonsensical reality directly affects some of the most important and influential people in America: public school teachers. In recent weeks and months, the long festering infection caused by low teacher pay, disappearing pensions and their overall treatment has broken through the surface and become highly visible.  In more and more states - Kentucky, West Virginia, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma to name but a few - teachers have been staging walkouts demanding a living wage and urging that their promised future pensions not be cut.  It is an utter pity that teachers - people whose job it is to help shape the future of society - are treated like second-class citizens. Armed with bachelors and often masters degrees (the earning of which leads to a lot of debt) they often work for less money than the clerks who manage the mini-marts where they purchase gas.  Today, few public school teachers can afford to buy a house or raise a family without benefit of a second - or even third - job.  Teachers in many states are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits upon retirement; their defined-benefit pensions have been replaced with hybrid retirement plans that combine features of a traditional pension with features of the 401(k) accounts used in the private sector.  

For years, thoughtless people have argued that teachers actually have a cushy deal: they only work 8 months a year, have summers off as well as a week in winter and a week in spring. What seldom gets mentioned - let alone understood - is that teachers spend untold (and unpaid)  hours creating lesson plans, reading essays and grading tests, as well as spending hundreds if not thousands of their own dollars providing their students with pencils, pens, paper, Xeroxes and the like that are simply not in their schools' budgets. The very same politicians and legislators who urge the arming of teachers and providing  see-thru backpacks for students (without worrying about where the money is going to come from) cannot find enough money for books and other basic educational tools. 

All across the country, teachers are staging walkouts, protesting these conditions. It is interesting to note that these protests - some of which have already led to promised raises - are all taking place in red states - states which do not permit teachers to join unions. Mind you, they are not asking for "The Moon and Sixpence" (the title of a marvelous Somerset Maugham novel assigned to us by our eighth grade English teacher Mr. Blakely); they are merely asking that they be treated as professionals who are entrusted with educating our young.  They are asking for more than lip service; they are asking that legislators quit depriving public schools of needed dollars in order to shunt them over to so-called "Charter Schools" or keeping taxes low in order to make their wealthy donors happy.

Two of the biggest motivators in getting public school teachers out of the classroom and out into the streets were the election of Donald Trump (the least intellectually curious president in recent history) and the confirmation of Betsy Devos as U.S. Secretary of Education. The latter was seen as a direct slap in the face of hundreds of thousands of public school teachers.  Ms. Devos, a multi-billionaire heir to the Amway fortune has never been an educator, let alone a student at a public school. She, her siblings and her children were educated at private religious schools. She has devoted years and years - not to mention millions and millions of dollars - to the cause of Charter Schools and home schooling, and has frequently attributed the "downfall" of public education to G-d being removed from the classroom.  

There was a time - and not all that long ago - when teachers were paid a respectable, living wage and treated as members of an honored profession.  Most of us remember the names of a handful of teachers who made a profound difference in our lives.  These teachers instilled in us both a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge.  The purpose of learning was not, strictly speaking,  for the purpose of a future job.  Where today "learn-in-order-to-earn" is the unspoken meme, "learning-for-the-sake-of-knowledge" was the guiding principle back in the day. As the historian/philosopher Jacques Barzun noted in his 1981 book Teacher in America: "Teaching is not a lost art, but the respect for it is a lost tradition."  (I thank my history teacher, Mr. Cousins, for turning me on to Professor Barzun a long, long time ago.)

It is frequently said that "throwing more dollars at public schools won't make them any better."  Perhaps this is so.  However, making the respect and restoration of learning and teaching a prime plank in future political campaigns just may.  We owe it to the men and women who devote their lives to educating young minds - the young minds who will one day shape our future - to support those who treat education as far, far more than a convenient sound bite.

Fiction?  Perhaps.  But do remember Twain's dictum that ". . . fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't." 

452 days down, 1009 days to go.

Copyright© 2018 Kurt F. Stone