The Fight Against Compelled Speech

A Virginia teacher says critical race theory has damaged community as frustrated parents demand changes, Fox News reports. Monica Gill, an Advanced Placement Government teacher in Loudoun County, Virginia is speaking out about what she calls “Marxist” ideas that have prompted intense infighting among county residents. “We’re told that we’re living in a county that’s suffering from systemic racism and I think that that whole notion has done nothing but damage our community and our school since they began pushing equity.”

Gill is wrong about critical race theory being Marxist. Among other things, CRT is Maoist. Mao, whose ideas and actions are associated with mass death, advocated thirdworldism. To be sure, he called his ideas “Marxist-Leninist,” but they weren’t (Mao Zedong Thought and the New Left Corruption of Emancipatory Politics). Mao’s ideas aped the jargon of historical materialism, but substituted the peasantry for the national proletarian as the revolutionary vanguard. Marx would never have agreed to struggle on the basis of race relations or racial categories. But that is precisely what Mao did, for example, in his support for black radicalism and race riots in the United States in the 1960s. Marx would have found this abhorrent. He understood that racism and ethnicism as forms of alienation (see Marxian Nationalism and the Globalist Threat; also Secularism, Nationalism, and Nativism).

Nonetheless, Monica Gill is correct in the longer quote shared above. The claim that the United States is systemically racist is false and divisive. Antiracism is more religion than anything else, and the US Bill of Rights specifically forbids unwanted religious indoctrination. That falls under both the “government shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion” clause and the “free exercise” clause. If you deny the analogy, you have to contend with the “free speech” clause, as well as the “assembly” clause. Ideological and political indoctrination is compelled speech, and compelled speech is entirely contrary to the right to free speech, thought, and association. Mandatory instruction and reception of critical race theory mythology is a blatant violation of the Constitution.

Understand that they are doing this to change our consciousness concerning justice. They are moving to replace the ethic of individual liberty and equality with group-based rights and an ethic of safetyism. If you are compelled to show up to a meeting in which this ideology is promulgated, and you are a fraud to speak up, then sit quietly. Nobody can force you to talk. Diversity, inclusion, and equity training is ideological—political indoctrination. It is not the role of an organization to compel you to believe a particular ideology or adopt and practice a particular politics.

From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction: “critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” Critical race theory is not trying to hide its agenda. It strikes at the foundation of western civilization. It is self-admittedly illiberal and authoritarian, rejecting the ethic of individualism and the principle of equality before the law. It literally defines our liberal traditions as the “perpetrator’s perspective.” It declares all white people responsible for the past and present actions of any one white person.

How such an illiberal and authoritarian doctrine found its way into public instruction ought to terrify you. Have you looked at what your kids are learning? Ask your teachers if this is being taught at your school. Don’t stand for this. Don’t let them get your children. If you’re interested in the facts that prove that critical race theory is false and irrational, subscribe to Freedom and Reason @ andrewaustin.blog. Read the essays here. If you need help in identifying the specific essays on this subject, let me know. We need to organize to resist this assault on the United States republic.