The cornerstone of tyranny is to delegitimize the opposition. In the age of terror, there is no easier way to delegitimize the opposition than to assert they are terrorists. The Justice Department, led by that petty tyrant Merrick Garland (thank God he isn’t on the Supreme Court), has asserted that parents and anyone in general concerned with critical race theory and other tools of educational propaganda are domestic terrorists. What a surprise. Not.

The reason that progressives consider any concern against federal indoctrination as tantamount to terrorism is because progressives cannot allow any opposition to their totalitarian whims. So much for tolerance and respecting other peoples’ opinions. This is always the impetus of tyrannical movements. Any disagreement threatens to shatter the illusion of Utopian totalitarian progress.

Ever since the 1960s, and especially since the 1980s, American education—primary and postsecondary—has vilified America and wanted to destroy the American inheritance. “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!” Education is a battleground for politics, progressives long ago made it so and now we’re seeing the monster they’ve created rear its totalitarian head.

If parents are in control of, or at least have an influence over, their children’s education, that means the next generation is not entirely enslaved to the state and those who run it. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that prophet of the Terror during the French Revolution, to Karl Marx, totalitarian theorists have yearned for absolute control over education. Why? Because they know that the future rests in the next generation. And to control the next generation from their youth through their adolescence all but ensures their subservient to whatever ideology is propagated from the halls of power.

Rather than see parents and other Americans engaged in the noble task of educational shepherding and instruction, progressives must consider all who differentiate themselves from the official handbook of progressivism as deplorable terrorists who threaten the construction of their paradise on earth. If they permit other actors in education to have freedom, then their control over the future is threatened and dreams for a new society tarnished. It’s the logic of educational progressivism and tyranny. They cannot abide by educational freedom. They must enforce uniformity to achieve their goals.

Make no mistake about it. The battles we are witnessing now over school boards and public schools, which have already begun to poison the well of some private and even religious educational institutions, will lead to progressive totalitarians targeting the very nature of those private and religious schools refusing to submit to their tyranny as hotbeds of domestic terrorism. Schools of any stripe not complying with the lies of the 1619 Project and critical hate theory targeting the very fabric, history, and spirit of America will be harassed by the full force of the American government in the hands of the petty progressive tyrants and bureaucrats who run them and staff them.

Every totalitarian movement bans books, bans art, and destroys the spirit of culture which feeds and nourishes the soul. While the more direct tyrannical movements of the past torched anything they didn’t approve in the flames of destruction, today’s tyrants—especially in the West—have a gentler approach which masks their lusts. They “substitute” or “replace” books, ideas, and people whom they do not like. They claim that the removal of dead White European males, all of whom, mind you, are racist and misogynistic from Homer to Shakespeare, and their replacement by contemporary authors (all of whom are ideologically leftwing and agree with drag queen story hour) will enrich our educational institutions and enrich the lives of students.

This is the Orwellian doublespeak they employ. The new vandals of tyranny do not say what actually moves their activism and policies: totalizing control over everyone who do not think and act like them. Banning is harsh, it sets off our alarms. Replace banning with substitution and cultural enrichment and most people won't bat an eye because they don’t take the time to read into what that entails and means. (And, of course, any conservative quoting Orwell is subject to ridicule by progressives because Orwell was a “democratic socialist” and therefore any conservative quoting Orwell is wrong on that account even though Orwell was also an opponent to the very tyranny he saw emanating from the far left in the 1930s and 1940s which has resurrected itself today in the very people criticizing conservative appraisals of Orwell; oh the irony.)

Progressives are now weaponizing the War on Terror to turn it against their fellow Americans; fellow Americans, we mustn’t forget, whom they despise. In their minds and eyes, they are cleansing the stained culture and nation from the very people who deserve to be castigated and imprisoned. Opponents of progressive totalitarianism are not humans, they are less than human, and because they are less than human they are deserving all the pain and humiliation they get for opposing the enlightened avatars of progress. How often do we hear this?

Not only are progressive tyrants in education destroying so much, they are also creating impoverished souls because of it. Yet impoverished souls are precisely what they desire to create. For impoverished souls hunger for something and that’s when their indoctrination truly begins. By being denied the nourishment of the past and yearning for something substantial, they are subsequently force-fed the puke of progressive propaganda as the only sustenance they can have. Impoverished and hungry souls don’t know any better.

If there is a silver lining that can come from the educational ruckus that has erupted across America it is that parents will take back control and exert influence over their children’s education. They must instill that spirit of awe, wonder, and love that was originally at the heart of Western education from the Greeks and Romans to Christians and early Americans who saw within their wellspring of culture a rich heart that could inspire the next generation to even loftier heights than the past. After all, the greatest works of recent memory grew out of that rich culture that progressives seek to destroy.

Those who seek to defend that rich and noble past are nothing less than patriots. Love, not hate, moves those who seek to defend all that is good, true, and noble about our past. And if “love wins,” we can be hopeful about the future of education as the heart of love has been awakened from the tyrannical overreach of progressives and their ilk.

Paul Krause is a writer, editor, and teacher. He is the author of The Odyssey of Love: A Christian Guide to the Great Books, The Politics of Plato, and contributed to The College Lecture Today and the forthcoming book Diseases, Disasters, and Political Theory. He is the incoming editor of VoegelinView.

Image: Library of Congress via Picryl // public domain

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