Parents across the country are standing, and voicing their disagreement with school boards for the teaching of Critical Race Theory in our public schools, and the Washington Post has labeled many of these concerned parents as an “angry mob”. Our current Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has gone so far as to call these parents “domestic terrorists”, and is ordering the FBI to put them on its terrorist watch list. Meanwhile, not one person involved in the 5 months of rioting which burned, looted and killed throughout our major cities in the summer and fall of 2020 has been put on that list. To Garland and the FBI, committing acts of domestic terrorism, does not make you a “domestic terrorist”, having the “wrong” opinion about what your child is taught in school, makes you a “domestic terrorist”. How can these people live their lives knowing they are this hypocritical, and that far outside of the truth?
But it is all very easy for them. They no longer have to defend their position from criticism or another point of view, they simply have to label their critics a diminishing or derogatory term, and their critics are completely neutralized without having to legitimately neutralize their opinions. If the parents who are standing up against Critical Race Theory are “domestic terrorists”, then their concerns about teaching their children to judge themselves and others based solely on the color of their skin are immediately negated.
We see this all the time. The term “hater” is often used to silence the people who hold differing opinions. We have conflated disagreement with hatred to the point that if you disagree with somebody, you’re called a hater even if you have never done, said or even thought of anything hate-filled. Nobody wants to be viewed as hateful, so people will back off certain opinions if those opinions brand them a “hater”. And now because your opinions make you a “hater”, ironically that gives the people who are vilifying you for your “hatred” the justification to hate you for your opinions. So, the people who call others haters, are in fact the biggest haters of them all, just as those who call for tolerance are always the least tolerant.
There used to be an expression, “agree to disagree” which means simply because we disagree on something does not mean we are adversarial, does not mean we are enemies. But we no longer live in that world because we no longer simply challenge the assertions or conclusions of people with different opinions, we immediately challenge their humanity, their morality, their very goodness.
This is happening throughout our country on almost every issue. Anyone who questions the LGBTQ agenda is called “homophobic”, or “transphobic”. If you question climate change, or the multi-trillion dollar bankrupting solutions offered by our ruling class, you are called “anti-science”, or a “climate-denier”. Questioning Dr. Fauci, or the safety and efficacy of mask mandates and vaccines, and you run the risk of being labeled a “science denier”, or an “anti-vaxxer”. Very rarely is legitimate, intellectual debate engaged in on these issues because our current so-called debates are not legitimate pursuits of the truth, but games of who cast pin the most disqualifying label on the other the fastest. And the price of playing this game, is the truth.
And this is having a devastating impact on public discourse in this country. In the United States of America, there are citizens who are being canceled, silenced, and censored because they hold the “wrong” opinions. This is happening here, in America, the “land of the free”, the “home of the brave”. And those who object to this censorship and thought-control are the ones who are called fascists and totalitarians. It all becomes very Orwellian.
We have seen this on college campuses across the country. Many colleges and universities have set up safe spaces to protect college students from opinions they disagree with, and the holders of these opinions are deemed imminent threats. Even though these people are not an actual physical threat to anyone’s safety, they are labeled as such so their opinions will be shut down. Now many colleges are charging their students to rat out their fellow classmates if they happen to hold these contrarian opinions that could be deemed a threat to these safe spaces.
Michigan State University has implemented a “Culturally Inclusive College Sharing System” which allows the university to “track and respond to behaviors and situations that work to support or detract from [its] goals of a safe and supportive environment.” In other words, if you hold opinions that are different than the official position of the university, you will be tracked and monitored, and potentially ostracized by the university. All this vilification does is steepen the divisions within our communities and the country, polarize people, make them more entrenched in their positions, and less willing to listen to other opinions. It divides, it does not unify. It brings hate, not love.
Jesus approached it completely differently. He said, “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you.” We shouldn’t hate those with different opinions than ourselves. We shouldn’t censor or cancel those who say things that are contrary to our belief systems. Instead, we should love our fellow country men and women, and respect their right to their opinions, and be willing to engage with them in discourse with a legitimate pursuit of the truth.
The people on the left continually say that “diversity is our strength”. Diversity is our strength, but not necessarily the singular diversity they are referring to. The diversity which is our strength is the diversity of thought, not solely of skin color. If we lose our intellectual diversity, if we become homogenic in thought as certain cultural forces are driving us to become, we will lose the life blood of what makes America the greatest country this planet has ever seen. If we, the people, become so short-sighted and narrow-minded that we continue to put short-term partisan victory over the long-term national stability, unity and success than we do not deserve the country we all have had the privilege to have inherited. And once that great country is gone, humanity will never see its likeness again.
Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.