The 'Patriot Act' Shouldn't Apply to Patriotic Parents Protesting Racist, Anti-American Curricula

On September 29, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent a letter to President Biden asking that he examine angry parental protests of local public-school district school boards for instituting objectionable and destructive K-12 classroom policies and curricula under “the PATRIOT Act in regard to domestic terrorism, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, [and all other] applicable federal laws …”

NSBA, which claims to represent “90,000 school board members who govern our country’s 14,000 local public-school districts educating more than 50 million schoolchildren,” requested a joint expedited review of the matter by the U.S. Departments of Justice, Education, and Homeland Security, along with the FBI.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland wasted no time responding to the NSBA letter. On October 4, he issued a memorandum directing the FBI to mobilize against parents who present “potential risks” of violent opposition to issues ranging from teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and age-inappropriate, sexually explicit curricular materials, COVID mask mandates, and other concerns in K-12 schools.

AG Garland’s memo directed the "[FBI], working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum.”

The directive also stated: “These meetings will facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response."

Although no credible instances of violence have been cited, it is entirely accurate to recognize that a growing number of school parents, elementary in particular, are challenging local school boards regarding irreparable harm to children introduced by indoctrination of historic CRT guilt and anti-cultural liturgy which characterizes our nation as a “systemically racist” society.

It is also legitimately questionable why AG Garland, whose son-in-law Xan Tanner, co-founded Panorama Education, a company that according to a Becker News report distributes CRT materials, didn’t recuse himself from acting on the dispute.

Panorama produces data mining surveys for schools, including “equity and inclusion surveys,” and conducts “professional development” training in the areas of equity and inclusion for teachers and administrators.

According to a Techcrunch press release , the company’s financial backers include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a group formed by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

Panorama CEO and co-founder Aaron Feuer has reported that the company now serves 13 million students in 23,000 schools across the U.S. Its customers include more than 1,500 school districts — 50 of the largest 100 ones — serving about one-quarter of all American grade 6-12 students.

NSBA is by no means the only major public education organization supporting critical race theory indoctrination and fighting parents who object.

In July, the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, also moved to openly promote the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools, as well as to oppose any bans on instruction in both that Marxist ideology and the widely discredited New York Times “1619 Project.”

The union agreed to “research the organizations attacking educators,” doing what it referred to as “anti-racist work,” and to “use the research already done and put together a list of resources and recommendations for state affiliates, locals, and individual educators to utilize when they are attacked.”

Meanwhile, according to the National Education Department — even prior to learning losses from pandemic school closures — a majority of American fourth and eighth graders couldn’t read or do math at grade level.

Although an Economist and YouGov poll released earlier this year found that most Americans who had heard of critical race theory viewed it unfavorably, the Biden administration had planned to offer grants to school districts that implemented CRT, before reversing course following pushback from GOP lawmakers.

Those lawmakers are responding to demands of disgruntled parents with not only a right — but indeed, a foremost obligation — to condemn policies and teachings that are antithetical to American and family values: diktats that would eliminate standardized tests like the SAT, do away with high-school entrance exams, and scrap special programs for high-achieving students — all in the service of more “racial balance.”

Especially heated outrage is being voiced by moms, dads and teachers in Virginia’s Loudoun and Fairfax counties who are understandably intolerant of indoctrination that teaches the very kind of discriminatory and destructive thinking that all concerned Americans have been fighting against.

They have responsibly refused to stand idly by as arrogant academic ideologues teach their kids to judge one another by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character; malign their country as systemically and irredeemably evil rather than celebrate America’s virtues; and witness their tax money wasted on failed schools, failed curricula, and failed outcomes.

Astonishingly — even for a traditional blue state Democrat politician, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe recently said: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

As Black Wall Street Journal opinion writer Jason Riley observes, “A focus on teaching students ‘social justice’ when most of them can’t even read and write at grade level probably isn’t the best way to attract the ‘diverse’ student body that the left craves.”

Riley adds: “Teaching schoolchildren to obsess over their racial differences is wrong at any time and in any context… but doing so as the nation becomes increasingly diverse is sheer madness.”

And no, the Patriot Act doesn’t apply to such patriotic acts of parental protest at school-board meetings … or anywhere else.

Weaponization of federal police powers against them represents the only related national threat to be truly worried about.