Regular readers and listeners know that I and many others have been warning for some time about how coronavirus has been the perfect “never let a crisis go to waste” opportunity to launch a 9/11-styled war on liberty. This is how the so-called pandemic has been used by governors, legislatures, public school bureaucrats, teachers, and their unions to form an all-powerful alliance to order coronavirus school shutdowns in the name of protecting the health of our children. But now we’re learning how it’s not about health at all; it’s about shutting down anyone whose politics and/or religion interfere with their tyrannical ambitions.
In an August 20 article, I wrote about how remote learning was killing our children based on an opinion piece I featured written by Dr. Katarina Lindley, a Texas physician who lived in Yugoslavia as a child. Dr. Lindley showed us how coronavirus hysteria and remote learning tyranny wasn’t just destroying liberty, it was literally killing our children mentally and physically.
Touchdown! That wail may go unheard this fall as youth sports are among the latest activities to face the chopping block because of COVID-19. As a practicing physician and mother of five, I urge community leaders to rethink their strategy. Students need to return to their classrooms and athletic fields. The scholastic, social and physical well-being of the younger generation depends on it.
The consequences of keeping children cooped-up at home far outweighs the risk of the virus. While the chance of a school-age child dying of COVID-19 is less likely than being struck by lightning, isolation is eating away at the mental health of our youth and even pushing some to do the unthinkable. Last month, an El Paso teen tragically took her own life; her mother noted pandemic-induced isolation was partly to blame.
It’s not a standalone event. CDC Director Robert Redfield commented in July, “there has been another [lockdown] cost that we’ve seen, particularly in high schools. We’re seeing … far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID.” Suicides in Chicago are up 13 percent compared to this time last year, while cities like Fresno, California, have experienced a 70 percent jump.
It’s obvious the consequences of at-home learning and skipping out on extra-curricular activities are not limited to failing to grasp long division or missing out on kicking the winning field goal. Given the stakes, … getting kids back in the school setting should be the default position for community leaders. The stance is also supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, National Academy of Science and CDC.
Sacrificing children for the good of the state has been the practice of tyrants ever since the days when the Canaanites and the Phoenicians sacrificed their children to Moloch — a practice that continues today under the name of abortion.
Sacrificing our children to government through school closings in the name of health is tragic enough on its own, but an article on The Center Square tells us about how tyrants are sacrificing them to destroy the politics and religion of those they disagree with:
In response to state and local government shutdowns reportedly designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, school districts and local governments implemented different reopening guidelines and timelines – but did so more because of politics or competition with private schools than because of science, a new report published by Brown University found.
The EdWorking Paper published by The Annenberg Institute at Brown University authored by Michael T. Hartney from Boston College and Leslie K. Finger from the University of North Texas found that “the most critical decision facing the nation’s school boards – whether or not to re-open in person and to what degree – appears to be closely related to the partisanship of a local school district.”
According to an August 2020 Pew Research Center report, “Contrary to the conventional understanding of school districts as localized and non-partisan actors, we find evidence that politics, far more than science, shaped school district decision-making,” the authors wrote. “Mass partisanship and teacher union strength best explain how school boards approached reopening.”
(emphasis mine)
Successful religious institutions were having an impact on school closing decisions:
Public school districts were also impacted by competition from private schools, primarily Roman Catholic schools, which because they remained open, increased the likelihood that public school districts stayed open for in-person instruction in the same geographic locations.
“The choice to leave one’s public school for a private school represents a real threat to public schools during the pandemic,” the authors write, whereas “public schools are less available or their instruction is less desirable, private schools become increasingly attractive.”
The authors “expect public school districts in areas with more Catholic schools to be more likely to remain open” [because] Roman Catholic schools enroll slightly more than 37 percent of all students attending private schools, and are generally less expensive than other private schools, the authors note.
By contrast, in a handful of cases, states, cities and counties specifically restricted private schools from re-opening — in New Jersey, California, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for example.
Overall, the findings “have important implications for our understanding of education policy and the functioning of American local governments,” they argue.
(emphasis mine)
In the Dr. Lindley opinion piece I quoted above, she wasn’t fearmongering about coronavirus hysteria leading to tyranny, destroying liberty, and killing our children; she was speaking from personal experience:
These events remind me of my challenging childhood in Yugoslavia – which was characterized by government control and the suppression of individual freedoms. Sadly, the U.S. is inching in that direction with every additional pandemic rule and restriction. I wake up every morning wondering how many rights we will lose today in the name of fighting COVID-19.
When you understand the principles laid out in the Constitution, it’s clear that what we have today is our Founders’ worst nightmare. The Founders wanted a federal government strong enough to secure the blessings of liberty, but not strong enough to threaten civil society and our freedoms.
Coronavirus school shutdowns have become another way to destroy liberty, spread socialism, and create a full-blown police state and tyrannical government, and our children — and now our politics and religion — are being sacrificed as a result.
Can this be reversed? Not if you’re looking to the politics of the GOP. The party Ronald Reagan called home abandoned the principles of liberty spelled out in the Constitution a long, long time ago. Besides, conservatives no longer have a place in the Republican Party and likely never will again.
Our politics and our religion have been targeted by coronavirus school shutdowns in the war against liberty. Are we going to let this tyranny continue? Are we going to let the sacrifice of our children continue?
Or are we going to fight?
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
Follow the Strident Conservative on Twitter and Facebook.
Subscribe to receive podcasts of his daily two-minute radio feature: iTunes | Stitcher | Tune In | RSS
sp;
