Incorporation refers to the legal doctrine under which the Bill of Rights, originally applicable only to the federal government, made applicable to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The First Amendment’s protections against government establishment of religion and free exercise of speech and publishing, which extends to state and local governments and agencies, indicates these rights preclude ideological symbols in public schools to avoid government endorsement of exclusive movement politics. To be sure, the principle of free speech selectively protect certain displays, depending on the context and purpose, but as a general rule, a government endorsement of exclusive politics is constitutionally problematic.
It is generally problematic for the government to endorse exclusive politics because it undermines principles of equal treatment and neutrality, which are foundational to democratic governance. While the Establishment Clause specifically addresses religion, broader principles of the First Amendment and equal protection indicate that government should avoid taking actions that appear to favor one political ideology over others, particularly in public institutions like schools and libraries. Moreover, the clear intent of the Establishment Clause covers conscience, as the Founders made clear in their pronouncements and writings—am intent explicitly stated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Such endorsements alienate individuals or groups with differing views, thereby compromising fairness and inclusivity. This displays must come down.
To this end, Florida is seeking a ban on displays of Pride Progress, Black Lives Matter, and other political flags on government property. This is appropriate and necessary because government spaces, such as public schools and libraries, must be ideologically-neutral spaces if we are to have a free and open society wherein individuals are at liberty to develop their own opinions and feel free to express them.
A Pride Progress flag on the wall of a classroom put up by a teacher or an administrator is self-evidently government endorsement of a particular ideology. It would be the same if the Christian nationalist flag were hung on the wall of a classroom. It’s one thing for a student to express an opinion, and even have it appear on the wall of a classroom in a display where other students are allowed to express different and contrary opinion. But if a teacher or administrator endorses particular movement ideologies by posting their symbols, especially while restricting others, encouraging some expressions while discouraging others, then those have to be taken down and those endorsements sanctioned. Teachers and administrators represent the government. They therefore cannot impose their views on parents and students.
Flags and other symbology officially endorsing movement ideologies chill speech. Parents and children in public schools are less likely to object to gender or other ideologies—and more likely to adopt a given ideology—if the schools affirms any particular ideology by displaying its symbology. These aren’t private spaces. They’re public spaces. (See The LGBTQ Lobby Sues Florida; Whose Spaces Are These Anyway? Political Advocacy in Public Schools; Kids Resisting Indoctrination; Flying Pride Again—Or Are They? City of Green Bay Violates the First Amendment.) These spaces don’t belong to teachers and administrators. They belong to the people.
It may help to understand the importance of this point by imagining a Confederate or Nazi hanging on the wall of a public school classroom. To be sure, these particular flags can and should be shown in the context of a discussion about Nazi Germany or the Civil War. But to hang them on the wall to signal affirmation of the ideologies they represent would be scandalous. The public would rightly ask for them to be taken down. Why should it be different for any other ideology? It shouldn’t. Either that, or Nazi and Confederate flags can go up. I can hear the objection: “Are you seriously comparing the Pride Progress flag to the Nazi flag?” Yes, I am. Sincerely. BLM, too. All of it, except the American and state flags (which I will come to in a moment).
Such a law should not be controversy worthy. Ideally, it’s shouldn’t be necessary. If accomplished, Florida would simply be putting in positive law form the negative liberty articulated by the First Amendment—at its core the freedom of conscience and the principle of free expression. It’s a shame that it has had to come to this, but woke progressives don’t believe in ideologically-neutral spaces. They feel compelled by ideology to festoon our public spaces with their movement symbology. The desire to decorate public spaces in exclusive movement and political symbols has a clear intent: to push the ideology on children. Progressives want classrooms not to be centers of learning but of indoctrination. As George Leef observed in a recent National Review article: “One of the main goals of the so-called progressive movement, going back more than a century, was to capture our educational institutions and use them to shape the way people think.”
To advance their agenda, progressives feel they must instill in every successive generation woke ideology, and they need to get to future adults early in life to build in the foundational assumptions that will guide political decisions and ideological commitments. This is about turning America into something it is isn’t. Progressives don’t believe in individual rights and free minds. They believe in exclusive group rights, which means the interests of some groups must prevail over the interests of others, with many of the favored groups purely imagined communities. They don’t want free spaces where individuals can form opinions based on reason and freely articulate the results. That’s why they seek speech codes, required use of preferred pronouns, and all the rest of it.
An objection has been raised on social media that the American flag counts equally among other flags. We see the same objection over “cisgender” symbology, as if the gender binary and individuals displaying romantic attraction (and this includes homosexuality) is not the normal. The progressive goal is to make the normal exclusionary and objectionable. This is, of course, a core method of the queer praxis of transgressing normative boundaries—make the normal and ordinary problematic and strange. Calling a woman “cisgender” is propaganda aimed at socializing the false notion that there is more than one kind of woman. Calling a man a “trans woman” is propaganda aimed at socializing the false notion that a man can be a kind of woman. Suggesting that the American flag is an imposition in the same way a Pride Progress flag is follows the same queer logic. But the American flag is fundamentally different from movement flags because the American flag represents the nation as a whole—all the people—rather than a particular ideology, religious, or political standpoint.
Unlike movement flags, which symbolize specific and exclusive beliefs, causes, or groups, the US flag serves as a unifying emblem of collective national identity. The US flag is for all citizens, a nonpartisan reflection of the foundational principles of the constitutional republic—liberty, justice, and the rule of law. It represents our right as citizens, and this includes children, to be free from the imposition of a partisan group dominating a public space with the arbitrary approval of a government official. Just as queer (or most) parents would rightly not want the Christian nationalist flag hanging on the wall of his child’s classroom, parents would not want the Pride Progress flag hanging on the wall of their children’s classroom. This is the what the equality principle entails. This distinction is crucial when considering the purpose of public spaces like schools, which are designed to be ideologically neutral in order to establish ideal speech situations. Public schools are not indoctrination camps for the various social movements; they are politically partisan-free spaces for learning and developing the skills of critical thinking.
The presence of the American flag in public spaces does not violate the First Amendment because it represents the nation’s system of laws and rights for all, rather than any one ideological agenda for some against others. Movement flags violate the Constitution when displayed in public institutions as they signal affirmation of specific viewpoints, which contradicts the principle of state neutrality. The American flag is thus categorically different from movement flags because the American flag represents the nation as a whole—all of its citizens and people—rather than those of a particular ideological, religious, or political standpoint.
It’s a shame that all this is not obvious. It’s a shame that displaying of the US flag—or the flags of the various state required to establish a republic form of government, which is guaranteed to every citizens—in public spaces is an affirmation of shared national identity that values education and respects the sovereignty of the people as a whole, rather than an endorsement of any specific belief system. It’s a shame that people either cannot see that movement flags promote particular ideologies and policies, that their presence in public spaces represents government endorsement for those positions, which alienates individuals who do not share those perspectives. Of course, many do see this. Movement flags by design divide and function to antagonize. That’s the point—to chills the air of the space, to make parents and children who oppose gender ideology reluctant to speak against it for fear of reprisal. This is the effect of apparent state endorsement of movement politics. This is exclusive and unfair.
That we have to even have a law protecting our First Amendment rights testifies to the failure of our educational system, as well as the decades of woke progressive control over our institutions. But here we are. It must be recognized that progressives are at heart authoritarian. They do not believe in individualism but a hierarchy of group power. Since the authoritarians can’t help themselves (and don’t want to), we have to. The squealing betrays their motives.
freedom and reason 