Guest Opinion: Calling out the Idaho Freedom Foundation – Idaho County Free Press

For political conservatives, countering big governments alluring but empty promises are challenging. The task is tenfold harder when libertarians pretend to speak for conservatives.

The Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) was founded, in part, with a bequest from activist Ralph Smeed. A mentor of my old boss, Senator Steve Symms, I spent many hours escorting Ralph around Washington, D.C. He rejected the label conservative, proudly claiming to be a libertarian.

A mutual acquaintance recently mentioned Smeed when talking about the IFF, noting If Ralph could see what it is today, hed be appalled.

Who could predict that Smeeds legacy would today be aiding President Bidens Attorney General, Merrick Garland, to keep parents away from public schools?

Garland has threatened parents passionate about their kids education. Using a letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) as a fig leaf, he directed the FBI to investigate a disturbing spike in irate school board patrons.

Keep in mind, Garland heads the same Justice Department refusing to investigate the free speech of Antifa protestors marching down burned and vandalized city streets.

Professor Maud Maron, of Cardozo Law School, an advisor to the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, criticized Garlands move, noting that actual violence should be condemned without reservation, but the incidents cited by the NSBA are not criminal and they definitely do not warrant federal intervention.

Garlands motive is obvious. His own son-in-law sells social-emotional learning assessments that use a racial lens to pigeon-hole students, an approach opposed by many parents. He doesnt want parents challenging school boards and wishes they would stop advocating to improve their public schools. He is joined in that cause by IFF President Wayne Hoffman.

Hoffman has been pushing to get parents to quit public schools altogether. He presumably doesnt know or doesnt care that many rural Idahoans have no alternative. And he may be funded by purveyors of private schooling and home-school curricula, although the IFF is notoriously quiet about who pays their bills.

Hoffman recently attacked public schools for teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT). He conveniently neglected to mention that this turn toward Marxism surfaced early in elite private schools.

Even worse, Hoffman bungled the definition of CRT, a mistake that led Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin to a fruitless survey of statewide curricula. Critical Theory is more about tactics than content. Its insidious outlook on the world is imbedded deep in educational philosophy, influencing how some teachers think, but rarely showing up as a topic in a K-12 classroom.

And getting the theory wrong has had devastating consequences. One teacher in Idahos Magic Valley offers an inspiring syllabus using the Minidoka Internment National Monument as an object lesson. Students learn how widespread fear can lead a government to heavy-handed tyranny despite a constitution that guarantees individual rights. Could any topic be timelier?

After Hoffman scolded legislators for not doing enough to ban CRT, that teacher was warned to downplay the Minidoka lesson a direct result of Hoffmans focus on what history is taught, not how the history either illuminates or obscures constitutional principles.

Making IFF even more problematic is its political grassroots drawing from anti-government voices, including some uncomfortably allied with civil rights objectors. A vocal faction of IFF activists recently affiliated with an organization opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

To have any credibility, those of us who oppose CRT need to stand as unequivocal defenders of civil rights. IFF cannot do that.

The democrat running for governor of Virginia has said, You dont want parents coming in on every different school jurisdiction saying, This is what should be taught here. The IFF delivers that same message.

Parents educational choice is a long-desired conservative goal. Libertarians prefer private education. When IFF undermines public schools while parents have limited private alternatives, that sound you hear is principled libertarian Ralph Smeed rolling over in his grave.

Trent Clark, of Soda Springs, is the acting chairman of United Families Idaho and has served in the leadership of Idaho business, politics, workforce and humanities education.