Category Archives: Libertarianism

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Outside agitators: Hard-core libertarians from across the country, like Mike Parag of Delaware, converge at the annual Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancester, New Hampshire.

One muggy June day in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, Bill Marsh, a Republican from the picturesque lake town of Wolfeboro, rose to buck his party. The chamber, newly under Republican control thanks to an alliance between conservatives and libertarian activists, was considering an amendment that would ban mandatory vaccinations amid a global pandemicall mandatory vaccinations, covering diseases from COVID-19 to mumps to hepatitis. Marsh, a retired ophthalmologist who has pushed fellow Republicans to take pandemic precautions more seriously, framed his objection as pro-business. He asked, Why would we interfere with private businesses right to protect themselves, their employees, and their patrons?

The amendments sponsor was Terry Roy, a veteran, devout Christian, and self-described constitutional conservative. He spoke next in defense of the measure, launching into a rambling diatribe that referenced child labor, slavery in the American South, Chinese bats, and the dangers of fluoridated tap water. Does my body, my choice only apply to abortion? he said, according to a House transcript. What about new advances in science? What if we determine someones characteristics can be genetically altered in utero? Would we allow mandated gene therapy? After all, propensity for carrying certain diseases costs billions in health care. What about vaccines for the flu? Will employers mandate those next?

Roys amendment narrowly failed, 193182.

Retribution for the speech was swift and decisiveMarshs speech, that is. Within days, Marsh resigned from his committee, Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs, after party leadership informed him that he would be removed as vice chairman. Later that summer, Roy was appointed vice chairman of the influential Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, replacing another wayward conservative who had disobeyed the partys radicalnew leadership.

A key factor in the extremism, and the extraordinary conservative successes, of this New Hampshire legislature is a group of libertarian activists known as the Free State Project. Founded in 2001 in hopes of establishing a government-free utopia, the Free State Project encourages liberty-minded people to move to New Hampshire to help push its politics even further toward low taxes and minimal state intervention. As of 2021, there are more than 5,000 Free Staters in New Hampshire. Despite their small numbers, they have built a well-funded and organized political apparatus that has elected roughly 45 Republicans to the New Hampshire House of Representatives. The libertarians vote as a bloc that, with a slim majority, the party cant do without.

With Free Staters at their back, Republicans this year have cut taxes in the already income-tax-less state, banned critical race theory and late-term abortions, and launched whats likely the most sweeping education voucher program in the nation. Under House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, a Free State mover, anti-authority libertarians have joined with anti-elite populists to shoot down anything that smacks of expertise or specialized knowledge. Recently, a joint House-Senate committee tabled its acceptance of $6.3 million in federal funds for addiction counseling in the opioid-ravaged state, with members saying they needed to see proof that counseling even works.

Over the past two decades, Free Staters have walked a long path from obscurity and ridicule to undeniable power. And as popular Republican Governor Chris Sununu eyes a 2022 U.S. Senate run, he may remember that a Free Stater, Aaron Day, is often credited with spoiling the 2016 Senate race for Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte. A year from now, the potentially vulnerable Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan may try to tie him to the libertarian extremism he has refused to reject, observers say. And if Sununu wins, hell enter the U.S. Capitol with a group of constituents he cant afford to offend.

The founder of the Free State Project, Jason Sorens, is a mild-mannered college professor with a mop of brown hair, a boyish smile, and a knack for making even the most outlandish ideas sound like simple arithmetic. During the 2000 elections, Sorens, then a graduate student at Yale, watched with dismay as the Libertarian Party failed to earn more than 1 percent of the national presidential vote. If disaffection with the major parties wasnt enough to swing elections, what was? Despair turned to anger over the course of the long New Haven winter, and then to determination. One day, Sorens sat down at his computer, queued up some heavy metal, and started a manifesto.

Libertarian activists need to face a somber reality, he wrote: nothings working. There are too few libertarians, spread too thinly across the United States, to make a difference through partisan politics, he argued. The only way to break free from oppressive government is to move together to one state, take over its political system, and use threats of secession to force the federal government to leave its residents alone. Uprooting ones life would be inconvenient, yes. But, he wrote, our forefathers bled and diedbecause of the Stamp Tax! The Free State Project requires nothing of that kind, and the stakes are so much higher. How much is liberty worth to you?

In July 2001, Sorens sent the 2,000-word broadside, titled Announcement: The Free State Project, to an obscure libertarian publicationL. Neil Smiths The Libertarian Enterpriseexpecting little response. Then the emails started coming. And coming. People from all over the country wanted to sign up.

For its first few years, the Free State Project existed just as an idea, an internet forum where liberty-minded folk could fantasize about freedom from government overreach during the height of the war on terror. Far-flung libertarians signed a pledge to move together to one place and change its politics, often with the assumption that it would never actually happen. But in 2003, the movement took a significant step toward reality. In a nationwide vote, members chose their Free State. Would it be Texas, independent and suspicious of authority, but perhaps too populous for a small group of activists to influence? Wyoming, sparsely populated, but geographically expansive enough to make coordination difficult? In the end, it was New Hampshire. Population 1.2 million, with no income tax, the land of Live Free or Die was small enough, and libertarian enough, for a little band of determined freedom fighters to swing even further toward liberty.

The revolution had begun. It lookedwell, a bit clownish. The pledge to move to New Hampshire did not technically take effect until 20,000 people, the number Sorens calculated would sway state politics, had signed. Until then, it was the most zealous, with the fewest connections to society, who chose to make the move. In 2004, as chronicled by the journalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling in his book A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears), New Hampshire got an early look at its colonizers-cum-liberators in the form of a grizzled, gun-toting posse of men who settled in the woods of Grafton, a town of some 1,100 with low taxes and no zoning regulations. Calling themselves the Free Town Project, the early movers took aim at local government, savaging the budget and constraining the town librarians bathroom breaks to a portable toilet. Bears, lured by the trash left outside the freedom fighters woodland shanties, made increasingly bold incursions into human settlements, which the Free Towners and another, separate commune of anarchists drove back with firecrackers, pistols, and nail-studded booby traps. (And, in one case, a llama named Hurricane.) Human society, meanwhile, nearly broke down. At annual town meetings, the Free Towners demanded that Grafton eliminate its police department and secede from the United Nations, which, they feared, might one day levy taxes or even invade. At one of these meetings, which regularly ran past eight hours, Free Towners reduced the moderator to tears.

Antics like these soon expanded beyond Grafton, dominating headlines about the Free State Project for its first decade. In Keene, New Hampshire, a group of Robin-Hooders declared war on the citys parking officers starting in 2009, following them with video cameras and popping quarters into meters to foil local governments ticket-hungry schemes. Every summer in the White Mountains, Free Staters gathered for the libertarian version of Burning Man: PorcFest, a cryptocurrency and substance-fueled celebration with few rules, many assault rifles, and a giant wooden porcupine that the Free Staters (known as prickly, independent Porcs) set ablaze at the festivals end.

It wasnt until 2016 that the Free State Project reached 20,000 signers, the magic number that triggered the move to New Hampshire. After a triumphant press conference in Manchester, the states largest city, Jason Sorens and other Free State VIPs retired to an after-party at a local speakeasy bar. (The password: TRIGGERED.) Its happening! Sorens said giddily, imitating the popular meme of an arm-waving, celebrating Ron Paul. But Sorens, by this time the respectable face of the movement, with scholarly publications and an appointment at Dartmouth, had doubts, too. He no longer believed in secession, and he feared that the extremists in Grafton had cast a bearded, AK-47-wielding shadow on his brainchild. If all government should be eliminated, he mused, should we just let the roads fall apart? A sheepish grin stole across his face. I dont knowmaybe that makes me a bad libertarian.

Sorens wasnt alone. For years, mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike viewed the Free Staters with suspicion. That included former Speaker Shawn Jasper, who, as recently as 2017, warned fellow Republicans that they must distance themselves from the Free State Project. Sununu, however, has understood the importance of courting the liberty faction since his first run for governor, in 2016. The Free Staters preferred candidate, Frank Edelblut, came within 1,000 votes of defeating him in the Republican primary. After winning the general election, Sununu offered Edelblut, a financier and homeschooler with no public school experience, control of the state department of education. It was a preview for a danceneutralizing a rival, while recruiting from his basethat Sununu would do for years to come.

All the while, the Free State Projects numbers and influence have been growing. Five years ago, the group claimed 2,000 movers and 17 legislators. Though only about 3,000 more people have arrived since then, far from the hoped-for 18,000, the movements legislative numbers have nearly tripled in that timea function of outside investment and the peculiar structure of the New Hampshire legislature.

The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 total members, an enormous number of citizen legislators who receive nominal salaries and often run with little to no opposition. In recent years, political organizations such as the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity appear to have recognized that these seats offer good value for their money. In the 2020 cycle alone, the groups New Hampshire chapter spent nearly $847,000 on statehouse races and other statewide elections, often in support of Free State candidates, according to state filings. Meanwhile, as the Republican Party nationally has taken a populist, anti-elite turn, libertarians and conservatives are ever more unitedin what theyre against.

Jason Osborne moved to New Hampshire from Defiance, Ohio, in October 2010. He had signed the Free State pledge years earlier, during graduate school, and mostly forgotten about it. But as he looked for a place to raise his four-year-old daughter, he was drawn by the prospect of a like-minded community in New Hampshire. A few months before his move, he took the stage at PorcFest 2010 to belt a karaoke rendition of Minority, by the left-leaning punk band Green Day. He sang, with equal doses of irony and prophecy,

I want to be the minority

I dont need your authority

Down with the moral majority

Cause I want to be the minority.

Once in New Hampshire, Osborne, who manages his familys student debt collection firm, Credit Adjustments, Inc., gave generously to libertarian causes and built a profile in the community. He won his first election in 2014, and was elected majority leader this year. His financial profilehe donated $50,000 to a PAC financingliberty-oriented statehouse candidates this cycleand ability to deliver a growing libertarian base made him a strong choice for the leadership role. In an interview this fall, he said he hasnt attended Free State Project events such as PorcFest since 2013, though he remains part of the legislatures liberty faction, which includes sympathetic native New Hampshire-ites.

Osborne portrays himself as a bottom-up consensus builder, but under his leadership, the party has been strict in enforcing unity, and not just in the case of Bill Marsh. In summer 2021, nine-term state Representative Lynne Ober intentionally called a premature vote that threatened Republicans plans to kill Sununus paid family leave proposal and limit the governors emergency powers amid the pandemic. As punishment, leadership stripped Ober of her regular-session committee role. She and her husband, Representative Russell Ober, resigned from the legislature.

Punishments for speaking out havent been confined to Republicans. After the January 6 insurrection, Rosemarie Rung, a Democrat from Merrimack, was stripped of her committee assignments by the Republican speaker for tweeting a condemnation of a New Hampshire police chief who had attended the rally before the Capitol riot.

If there is irony in libertarians embracing a party controlled by a distant plutocrat who tried, and failed, to institute authoritarian rule, the Free Staters do not accept it. Sorens and other libertarians said they didnt believe Donald Trump had the same sway over the Republican Party in New Hampshire. But Sorens, now director of the Center for Ethics and Society at St. Anselm College, still has his doubts. He worries especially that libertarians will become more conservative as theyre embraced by Republicans. But, he noted, libertarians can still find things to appreciate about the party of Trump; for instance, the former presidents noninterventionist policy abroad.

And take the ban on critical race theory, an infringement on free speech from which liberty-minded people theoretically should recoil. Yet it was a Free Stater and friend of Sorenss, Keith Ammon, who brought forward that bill in the House. Here, Sorens hesitated. He thought college students and professors should be able to debate whatever ideas they wished in the classroom. But, he added, I also dont think I want teachers shaming five-year-olds because of their whiteness.

Whatever their methods and allegiances, the Republican majority has achieved results. This June, the legislature passed a $13.5 billion budget for the next two years, cutting nearly $300 million from Sununus original proposal. Onto the budget they tacked a ban on abortions beyond 24 weeks (unless to save the mothers life); the aforementioned ban on divisive race education in schools; a program creating education freedom accounts (essentially vouchers) that redirect public school money to private schools and homeschooling; and a raft of tax cuts.

Though familiar in Congress, the tactic of loading the budget with measures unlikely to pass on their own is new to New Hampshire, says House Minority Leader Renny Cushing. Cushing, an eight-term Democrat from the liberal seacoast region, offered grudging respect for Osbornes abilitiesHe knows how to count votesbut says he feared this would become standard practice in the New Hampshire legislature, giving minority constit-uencies such as libertarians and evangelicals a vehicle to push through policies the state as a whole doesnt want. And despite libertarians assurances that theyre willing to ally with Democrats to protect civil liberties and other shared priorities, Cushing says he hasnt found that cooperation to be forthcoming. I think the allure of the appearance of power quickly trumps any principled origins they may have had that caused them to migrate to New Hampshire, he told me.

If there was to be a breaking point between the legislatures liberty faction and Sununu, the law they passed limiting the governors emergency powers seemed to have potential. Free Staters and their allies resented Sununus mask mandate and limits on public gatherings, and even sent rifle-wielding protesters to picket his house, forcing him to cancel his outdoor inauguration earlier this year. But he has since repealed the precautionslaxer than those of surrounding states to begin withand has largely stayed silent as this legislature does its work.

Looming ahead is 2022. Heir to a political dynasty that has sent members to both the U.S. Senate and the governors mansion, Sununu has both the establishment pedigree and broad appealincluding to libertariansthat could make him a strong challenger to Hassan, especially during midterm elections in a purple state. Virtually everyone surveyed this fall agreed that he would have to keep the libertarian wing in mind, though opinions varied over the degree. Some libertarians, including Sorens, were skeptical of Sununus dependability, but Osborne had fewer doubts. In 2016, Hassan defeated incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte by a margin of 1,017 votes. Aaron Day, a Free Stater running as an independent, received 17,742.

He cannot afford to lose us, Osborne said.

Despite some recent successes, Sununus embrace of the libertarian faction has put him in a double-edged position that could turn against him in a matchup with Hassan, who can link him to the extremism of the Free State Project. Cushing, for his part, says he thought that the anti-abortion legislation passed this year, both in New Hampshire and places like Texas, would hurt Sununu in a race with Hassan. This September in the town of Bedford, Catherine Rombeau narrowly won a special election for state representative, giving Democrats two of seven seats in the conservative strongholdfor the first time ever. The backlash may already have begun.

By this fall, Bill Marsh, the physician chastised for his speech against an anti-vaccine bill, appeared to have learned his lesson. If he wanted to remain a Republican under New Hampshires new political order, it was best to be silent.

In a brief, cautious conversation in early September, Marsh referred a reporter to the Houses daily journal, which memorialized, as he put it, the speech that ticked everyone off. Otherwise, he said, I dont want to say anything that could jeopardize what I need to do going forward.

About a week later, the state Republican Party hosted a large rally in opposition to President Bidens nationwide vaccine mandate. For Marsh, this was the final straw. In December 2020, then Speaker Dick Hinch had died of COVID-19 after attending two unmasked, undistanced rallies of House Republicans. Marsh, who respected Hinch, publicly denounced Republicans role in the speakers death. For months afterward, he worked tirelessly to promote anti-COVID regulations that could survive libertarian backlashwork that was now being undone. On September 14, Marsh, a Republican since campaigning for Ronald Reagan in 1976, changed his affiliation to Democrat.

I still do see myself as a conservative, Marsh said in an interview afterward. I just dont think that Republicans are holding to the principles they once avowed. I cant call this conservatism. Its more likelibertarianism.

See the rest here:
The White Mountain Boys - Washington Monthly

Gen Z is politically homeless and increasingly so. In just a year, 2020srecord-breakingyoung voter engagement has plummeted astronomically. This year, the California recall election saw a48 percentdrop in young turnout as compared to 2020, and the governors race in Virginia also experienced a62 percentslump in voters under 30.

This comes as Gen Zs faith in President Biden and the Democratic Partys effectiveness has faltered. Theyreportthe largest generational drop in approval of Bidens performance, tumbling20 percentsince June to a mere 43 percent last month. We appear to be growing politically apathetic and that should come as no surprise.

Gen Z came of age in the lesser-of-two-evils era of American politics. The first major political event many of us were old enough to understand was the election of 2016, when we watched our families tear each other apart over politics at the Thanksgiving table. While older Americans experienced a slow-slide into divisiveness, a disjointed America is the only one Gen Z has ever known and, frankly, many of us are fed up.

With roughlyhalfof Gen Z registered as independents, my contemporaries are dumping the partisan system in droves, and were looking for alternatives. The third party options before us, however, are uninspiring to say the least. The two largest are theLibertarian Party, which attracted a meager1 percentof the popular vote in 2020, and the progressiveGreen Party, which couldnt even pull in a third of a percent. For dynamic young voters, these lethargic and ineffective parties are far from a logical fit.

Thats where former presidential and mayoral candidate Andrew Yang would like to step in. Last month, he launched theForward Partywith the slogan, Not Left. Not Right. Forward, with a platform that endorses various alterations to our democracys status quo, includingranked-choice voting,independent redistricting commissions,accessible and secure voting, andopen primariesto increase voter engagement in choosing candidates.

I personally feel terrible that we left your generation such a disaster, Yang told me in a recent phone interview. I get why young people are becoming apathetic. You look up and say, This system is not designed to work for me or my generation. Why should I have faith in this? And the answer is that you shouldnt. If I were a sensible young person today, I would feel there isnt a place for me politically.

Yang, 46, wants to modernize policies to keep up in the digital age by establishing aDepartment of Technology,protect personal data as a property right, and even formallyendorse cryptocurrenciesand blockchain technologies, which promises to be particularly popular with young voters who make up astaggering majorityof crypto buyers.

The plan is to animate those who are fed up which is most of us at this point and to point out that the system is rigged, he said. The Forward Party is unifying independents, libertarians, disaffected Democrats and disaffected Republicans who want to make a process change that will allow new points of view to be heard.

The Forward Partys economic platform, however, has proven quite controversial. Policies include handouts of money in the form of democracy dollars for donations to political candidates and a $1,000 monthly universal basic income, which has drawn awidearrayofcriticism. While many Americans see UBI as better suited to a socialist state than the United States, its a clear point of generational dissonance. More thantwo-thirdsof Gen Z hold a favorable view of the policy, at a two-to-one rate over older Americans.

While Yangs vision is definitely bold and perhaps utopian, it just may gain traction among a generation desperate for change. Gen Zs mountingvoting powerand general disaffection are going to shake things up and future third party alternatives will likely meet their demands in the coming years.

Id say this to a young person trying to figure out where to go: Do you really think that the Democratic or Republican Party will be the vehicle thats going to change things for your generation, or do you think its going to be a new upstart party that changes the game? Yang asked. If you think that its the latter, then join us because were making common cause with everyone whos fed up with the status quo.

Rikki Schlott is a 21-year-old student at NYU.

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Why Gen Z is fed-up with our two-party systemand will force it to change - New York Post

EUREKA, MONT.

Looking back at the Capitol riot, Tasha Adams ponders her time as an Oath Keepers wife and asks: What if I had not supported him?

Him is her estranged husband, Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group whose members stand accused by federal authorities of having played a crucial role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. During nearly 23 years of marriage, Adams says she devoted herself to Rhodes aspirations. She worked as an exotic dancer to help put him through college, assisted in writing his papers and encouraged him to successfully apply to Yale Law School. When he was looking for direction in life a cause Adams helped him start the Oath Keepers.

Over the next few years, Adams became disillusioned by the far-right organization and her marriage. The Oath Keepers, she says, increasingly promoted conspiracy theories while engaging in extremist activities and rhetoric that demonstrated racial and ethnic biases. Meanwhile, her husband became emotionally and physically abusive, she says. In 2018, hoping to put Rhodes and the organization behind her, she left him and filed for divorce.

With congressional committees and federal investigators examining the threat posed by domestic extremists and their contribution to the insurrection, Adams has been conducting an exploration of her own life and culpability in the forming of the Oath Keepers. Her journey provides behind-the-scenes insights into how a Las Vegas car valet transformed into the leader of an organization that sought to overturn a presidential election.

Column One

A showcase for compelling storytelling from the Los Angeles Times.

If I hadnt helped him start it, I mean, there would probably still have been an insurrection, Adams, 49, says in an interview in this old logging town, not far from where she lives. But what would it have looked like? That is what Im trying to figure out.

Adams has not been shy about sharing her experiences tweeting critically about Rhodes and his organization, while launching an online crowdsourcing campaign to fund her divorce. Last month, she spoke at length with investigators for the special House committee examining the Capitol riot.

Eureka, the town not far from where Tasha Adams lives, is known as an old logging town.

(Tailyr Irvine / For The Times)

Dissecting what transpired in any relationship can be a fraught endeavor. This story is based on Adams recollections, as well as reviews of court records and interviews with two of her adult children, Dakota Vonn Adams and Sedona Rhodes, who confirmed their mothers account. More than a dozen current and former officers and board members of the Oath Keepers did not respond to requests for comment.

Rhodes did not respond to repeated phone calls and text messages. The 56-year-old has not been charged in the insurrection. He has said the Oath Keepers were in town to provide security for advisors to then-President Trump and supporters and did not intend to enter the building.

Adams, who speaks in rapid-fire sentences that frequently end in quips, starts each day by firing up a laptop on her kitchen countertop, scanning for news about the Oath Keepers.

She has read how 18 Oath Keepers have been indicted on conspiracy charges for forcing their way into the Capitol, and she has studied prosecutors damning portrait of Rhodes. They allege in court papers that Rhodes urged Oath Keepers to come to Washington to fight for Trump.

He was on the Capitol grounds during the insurrection, prosecutors say, and provided live updates to his members storming the building. Theres no indication that he entered the Capitol during the riot. Rhodes described the rioters as patriots and later compared the insurrection to the Boston Tea Party, prosecutors say.

Adams met Rhodes when she was an 18-year-old dance instructor at an Arthur Murray studio in Las Vegas, and he was a 25-year-old student.

She was the daughter of strict white Mormon parents who ran a window manufacturing business. Rhodes was an intense and worldly former Army paratrooper who maintained his military physique and parked cars for a living. He told her of growing up in a multi-ethnic Christian family, spending summers picking fruit alongside relatives. Rhodes has described himself as a quarter Mexican and part Native American, invoking that heritage at times to deflect against allegations that the Oath Keepers are sympathetic to racists.

Adams says she was drawn to Rhodes life experience because it was so different from mine.

An archival photograph of Tasha Adams during her honeymoon with Stewart Rhodes rests on a table.

(Tailyr Irvine / For The Times)

They had been dating four months when Rhodes accidentally dropped a .22-caliber handgun and shot himself in the face, blinding himself in the left eye. She says she felt obligated to assist him.

I was suddenly taking care of a man with a hole in his head, Adams says.

With Adams contemplating becoming a professional ballroom dancer, the couple struggled to make rent; she says Rhodes began to press her to find a more lucrative trade.

Every day, Adams recalls, he was like, You should be a stripper and make more money. She took up exotic dancing, earning $100 a night.

They married in 1994, and she worked at a high-end strip club until she had their first child, Dakota. Each night, Adams says, she helped Rhodes with his assignments at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and nurtured his dreams of becoming a lawyer.

I wanted a house with a treehouse for Dakota. I thought, man, I struck the jackpot, she says, describing her emotion upon Rhodes acceptance by Yale. Im married to a future Yale Law School graduate!

But Rhodes turned down high-paying internships his first year and took a nonpaying summer gig at a conservative think tank. He was more interested in causes than money, says Adams, adding, I knew then I was never going to get the treehouse. She says Rhodes charted a similar course after graduating in 2004, working mostly in smaller practices or as a freelance writer of legal briefs.

Rhodes had always been interested in politics, Adams says, and they both subscribed to libertarianism, a philosophy that promotes free markets and limited government. They fervently supported one of its staunchest adherents, then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

While volunteering for Pauls 2008 presidential campaign, Rhodes and Adams met veterans and former police officers who were drawn to the candidates libertarian views. Thats when Rhodes decided to form the Oath Keepers, a group focused on recruiting veterans, military personnel and police officers and encouraging them to remain true to the oath they swore to defend the Constitution and to disobey orders they consider illegal.

Adams says she liked the idea and believed in the groups focus. Its goals aligned with her libertarian views of limited government, and she saw it as a good way for her husband to tap his charisma to earn a living. She says she envisioned Oath Keepers as a a cigar club of like-minded libertarians.

I thought it was something he could do well, she says. What a great name, right? I thought, wow, we are going to sell a lot of T-shirts and motorcycle jackets.

By the time Rhodes launched the Oath Keepers in March 2009 two months after President Obama took office Adams says she realized the group was not going to be a cigar club, nor a libertarian version of the ACLU.

In a blog post that month, Rhodes wrote that his groups principal mission was to prevent the destruction of American liberty by preventing a full-blown totalitarian dictatorship from coming to power. Our Motto is Not on our watch!

Adams says she accepted Rhodes vision for the Oath Keepers because he seemed to mostly be pushing the boundaries of free speech and advocating for limited government.

For its first couple of years, the Oath Keepers operated on a tight budget. Adams says she handled its mailing lists and ran its website, keeping it updated with links to events, missives from Rhodes and links to news stories about the group.

According to pages captured by the Internet Archive, much of the site was dedicated to testimonials from members, many current and former military personnel, who expressed enthusiasm about joining the organization and its mission. I find no higher calling than to join forces with the Oath Keepers, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow Americans in our own defense, wrote a member who identified himself as an Air Force officer in June 2009.

In November 2009, a person who identified himself as an Army veteran posted: Its time to stand up for liberty and truth above all else. To Reclaim the Republic for the people, by the people, of the people from the hands of tyranny. The poster added he was particularly concerned about puppet politicians, the Central Banking gangsters, the U.N. ...

With the rise of the tea party movement, the organization grew rapidly. At its height in 2015, the Oath Keepers had about 35,000 members, Adams says. Anti-hate groups have pegged its top membership at no more than 5,000.

Adams says she stepped away from the group in 2010 or 2011 and focused on raising her children. She and Rhodes would eventually have six. In her spare time, Adams blogged a bit, describing herself as a homeschooling, breastfeeding, homebirthing, libertarian, freedom fighting, gun-toting really cool mom.

On the blog, she described her husband as being cute and sexy and extolled his rise from being a down-on-his-luck car valet to leader of the Oath Keepers.

Adams cringes when she reads such posts. I was creating the world I wanted it to be, she says, not the one it was.

At the Oath Keepers height, in 2015, Adams says, the organization had about 35,000 members.

(Tailry Irvine / For The Times)

In 2013, Rhodes announced that the Oath Keepers would create teams, prepared with military-style training, to respond to the implosion of society. Until that point, such training had been prohibited, Adams says, because Rhodes didnt want his group to be considered a militia.

There is a stigma attached to militias, she says. And he wanted to avoid that.

Suddenly, she says, Oath Keepers were running around playing army.

The Oath Keepers in 2014 and 2015 assisted ranchers and miners in Nevada and Oregon in armed disputes with federal authorities. Rhodes also deployed Oath Keepers in 2014 to Ferguson, Mo., to patrol and protect businesses during protests unleashed by the shooting of a Black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, by a white police officer.

Rhodes was criticized by anti-hate groups for that action, and he was chastised by a local Oath Keepers leader for engaging in a racial double standard by failing to assist Black residents accusing law enforcement of abuses. Adams says she raised similar concerns with Rhodes, particularly after the Oath Keepers had defended white ranchers and miners.

Members of the Oath Keepers have generally avoided the kind of inflammatory rhetoric utilized by white supremacists. The groups bylaws prohibit anyone from joining who advocates, or has been or is a member, or associated with, any organization, formal or informal, that advocates discrimination, violence, or hatred toward any person based upon their race, nationality, creed, or color.

But experts say such circumspection belies how the Oath Keepers actions, and statements by members, have assisted in the spread of racist language and hate.

Members of Oath Keepers think of themselves as rejecting racism, yet they and allied groups have served as de facto security for neo-Confederate and alt-right groups, Sam Jackson, a professor at the University at Albany-SUNY wrote in his eponymous book about the Oath Keepers. In other words, like most of the contemporary patriot/militia movement, the [Oath Keepers] is not organized around a perceived racial identity, but neither is it as free of racism and bigotry as it likes to claim.

Jackson noted that Rhodes has wielded his Mexican heritage to push back on claims that he or the Oath Keepers are in league with racists, even as his group has disseminated videos that display bigotry toward undocumented migrants and Mexicans. Rhodes has compared Latino and Black Lives Matter activists to jihadist terrorists and well funded Marxist and racist agitators. He has said that illegal immigration was an invasion and described as dirtbags the mostly Black NFL players who protested racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem.

Adams says she once believed that anti-hate groups were exaggerating the dangers the Oath Keepers posed because Rhodes convinced her the criticism was unfounded and a ploy to raise money.

After Ferguson and the armed standoffs, however, Adams says her views changed. While Rhodes and leaders did not tolerate discriminatory language I never heard him say anything like the N-word, she says, and he would get rid of anyone who did the estranged wife believes her husband and other Oath Keepers nevertheless exhibited racial and ethnic biases in several, frequently subtle ways. She cited their refusal to back Black residents protesting police abuse in Ferguson, their harsh rhetoric about immigrants and their vision for America. They described America as if they were looking out at a crowd at a baseball game, she says, and seeing a sea of white faces with rosy cheeks.

She adds that the Anti-Defamation League is correct in describing the Oath Keepers as a large right-wing anti-government extremist group. And the Southern Poverty Law Center is accurate, she says, in claiming the Oath Keepers is based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy Americans liberties.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in 2017.

(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

Among the conspiracy theories that Rhodes advocated on the Oath Keepers website and in frequent appearances on conservative TV and radio shows: A U.S. military exercise in 2015 might be a prelude to a coup, baseless claims about voter fraud in the 2016 election and a deep state takeover of the U.S. government. Later, after the 2020 election, he fully embraced and promoted unfounded conspiracies that the election had been stolen and supported Trumps efforts to stay in office.

Adams says she tried to temper Rhodes conspiratorial rhetoric because it didnt serve any purpose except make him look crazy.

By 2016, Adams says, Rhodes had become an ardent supporter of Trump, putting aside early doubts: Stewart thought Trump was too pro-government and pro-spending. Adams added that her estranged husbands attraction to the former president is obvious in hindsight: They are very similar in that they both push conspiracy theories. Its like watching a demagogue be attracted to a demagogue.

It was not possible to independently verify Adams descriptions of her role in the Oath Keepers. Jackson, the author and professor, says she did not come up in his research of the group. I would be surprised if they were coequals, the professor says, referring to Adams and her husband. He declined to speculate further on Adams role in the organization, saying he did not delve into Oath Keepers private lives because they could be difficult to untangle.

Living in remote areas of Montana, Adams says she had no friends, and her life revolved around keeping her husband happy and raising and schooling her children.

Those who know Adams say they rarely saw her outside the presence of Rhodes. Marcy Kuntz, Adams midwife for three births starting in 2006, recalls that Adams didnt speak much about herself, except to apologize for failing to pay bills on time. She was always accompanied on appointments by her husband.

Kuntz delivered the babies at Adams homes, which were generally located deep in the Montana woods. The house was busy, with all the kids, Kuntz says, and I got the sense that her and her childrens world was in that house. They didnt get out much.

She seemed like a very private person, adds Kuntz, who has spoken to Adams a few times in the years since she separated from Rhodes. You could tell she supported what Stewart did as his wife, as a wife supports a husband. ...

In retrospect, it is clear he was very controlling. She kept it all to herself for so long.

Adams and two of her adult children say that by 2015 a year after her sixth child was born they were becoming increasingly disenchanted with Rhodes as a husband and father. He was gone for long stretches, leaving her to raise their children in an isolated part of Montana, said Adams, Dakota and Sedona.

When Rhodes was home, he belittled and berated his wife and kids, kept tabs on their whereabouts and engaged in physical abuse, according to Adams and the two children, as well as allegations included in court records filed by Adams.

In a 2018 application for a restraining order, Adams alleged Rhodes grabbed their then 13-year-old daughter by the throat. Whenever he is unhappy with my behavior (say I want to leave the house he doesnt like me to leave), he will draw his handgun (which he always wears), rack the slide, wave it around, and then point it at his own head, she wrote in the application, which was denied by a judge. It is not clear why the judge declined to grant the order.

According to Dakota and Sedona, their father didnt just promote conspiracy theories he brought them home. One night the power and phones went out, Dakota says, and his father became convinced the FBI had cut the lines, presaging a raid.

Tasha Adams, seen in the reflection of a window, ponders her time as an Oath Keepers wife and asks herself what would have happened if she had not supported her husband.

(Tailyr Irvine / For The Times)

It took us 45 minutes to pack the vehicles, says Dakota, 24. If the FBI was really coming, would they have given us that much time? We drove off and about an hour later, he was like, I guess they arent coming. So we turned around and went home to bed.

Sedona, 22, says her father once ordered the children to dig a tunnel so the family might escape if authorities raided the house. It had a plywood roof, and he had the little kids go through it to get used to it, Sedona says.

Adams and her children say it took years of enduring such behavior for her to see the truth.

Your reality gets warped. He controlled our reality, says Dakota, who succeeded on Nov. 8 in legally changing his name from Dakota Stewart Rhodes because he disdains his father.

His mother was also concerned that Rhodes could use his legal expertise and connections to keep the children. She says she put those fears aside in 2018 and filed for divorce. Rhodes moved out of the house, and appears to live out of state. The divorce case, which was filed under seal, remains unresolved, in part, because Adams says she is in debt to her lawyers.

Earning a living selling used clothes on the internet, Adams has been pecking away at a memoir and says she has been thinking about getting a college degree in extremist studies. Her goal, she says, is to teach about the dangers posed by extremist groups and their leaders.

Among the questions she thinks she can answer for students: How has Rhodes managed to avoid arrest while other Oath Keepers were indicted in the riot on conspiracy charges? In dissecting her life as an Oath Keepers wife and following coverage of the federal prosecutions, Adams says she has a theory: He is very good at getting others to take the risks.

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She helped her husband start a far-right militia group. Now the Oath Keeper's wife says she has regrets - Los Angeles Times

Thirty-two years ago the Berlin Wall fell, a Cold War victory viewed as one of the crowning achievements of the movement conservatism associated with Ronald Reagan. An important development in its own right, this anniversary of the wall's fall is an opportunity to take stock of conservatives who want to replace the "dead consensus" of Reaganism with something else.

We've seen social conservatism take on a bigger role in the political coalition at the expense of individualists (often described as libertarians, no matter how big the government continues to get under the GOP's watch), winning a recent election in blue Virginia by campaigning on parental control of local public schools. Conservatives have begun thinking through some of the contradictions between Reagan's vision of a secure Main Street and untrammeled Wall Street, especially as big corporations side against them in the culture wars.

The most ambitious Republicans are seeking the approval of these new strains of the right. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has fought both public and private COVID-19 restrictions that rankle the base. Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) made pilgrimages to the National Conservatism Conference, a gathering of the right's new nationalists.

And yet with former President Donald Trump back on the golf course, much of this still feels like a work in progress. The conservatives for the common good have sounded libertarian, even libertine, about the pandemic except for the fact that they're willing to regulate masking and vaccination policies by private companies, too. There are arguments for why the "free market" doesn't simply mean businesses get to do whatever they want. But the overarching philosophy here, to the extent there is one, is that members of my political coalition get to do whatever they want in defiance of the wrong people trying to tell them what to do.

Perhaps the new conservatism's answer is that this is how the left has always done things, and a movement too committed to abstract principles to take on its own side in an argument will always lose. But, for the moment, old-fashioned "tear down the wall" conservatives have more to show for their efforts than the newfangled "build the wall" crowd.

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The post-Reagan GOP is still a work in progress - The Week Magazine

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.

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

Of all the speeches at this months National Conservatism Conference, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawleys call for men to abandon video games and pornography for work and family has drawn the most attention.

The Washington Post, NPR, and Axios all followed up with stories questioning Hawleys premise: that through policy choices and cultural messages, the Left has devalued men and weakened the nation.

The Washington Posts coverage by Christine Emba was the most encouraging as Emba readily admitted that increasing numbers of men are disconnected from their work, families and children. And that mens labor force participation has fallen from 80 percent in 1970 to 68 percent in 2021. And that more men are deciding to opt out of higher education. And even that pornography is a problem.

Embas only real beef with Hawley appears to be that he should be pressed to offer solutions.

But Hawley did!

We must rebuild an economy in this country in which men can thrive. And that means rebuilding those manufacturing and production sectors that so much of the chattering class has written off as relics of the past, Hawley said before offering a policy solution. We can start by requiring that at least half of all goods and supplies critical for our national security be made in the United States.

Hawley then moved to tax policy, noting, We must make the family the center of political life. There is no higher calling, and no greater duty, than raising a family. And we should encourage all men to pursue it.

I believe the time has come for explicit rewards in our tax code for marriage. Forget the marriage penalty. There should be a marriage bonus. And we should allow the parents of young children to keep more of their own money as well, Hawley said.

Now, one can argue about the feasibility of Hawleys domestic manufacturing requirement or attack his marriage bonus as social engineering, which many of our libertarian friends like to do, but these are real policy solutions being offered to solve the defining problem of our time: the disintegration of the American family.

If anything, we need more politicians like Hawley willing to lead on the issue.

Read more:
Josh Hawley is dead right about men and marriage - Washington Examiner

U.S. Rep. Cindy Axnewill seek reelection in Iowa's 3rd Congressional District, she announced Friday, officially closing the door on a possible run for governor in 2022.

Axne, a West Des Moines Democrat, previously ruled out running for the U.S. Senate,but shehad left open the possibility of running for governor.

She announced the news during a Friday morning taping of Iowa Press on Iowa PBS.

"Folks, I'm going to be running for the United States Congress here in Iowa's 3rd District," she said.

The news comes just days after Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said she would compete in the 1st District rather than stay in a newly redrawn 3rd District.

The pair of announcementshelpsolidify the field of candidates that will competein the 3rd District, which includes Des Moines and is expected to be among the most hotly contested races in the country.

More: Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks will run for reelection in new 1st Congressional District

Already, outside organizations like the National Republican Congressional Committee have been targeting Axne with attack ads as they try to unseat vulnerable Democrats.

Axne is one of only a handful of congressional Democrats in the country to win in a district Trump carried in 2020, though she won by a narrow margin. Axne beat Republican challenger David Young by just 1.4 percentage points, 49% to 47.6%. Libertarian candidate Bryan Holder earned about 3.4% of the votea share that some Republicans said undercut Young's effort.

This election cycle, Axne will compete in a new set of counties reorganized under the3rd District as a result of the state's redistricting process.

More: Iowa lawmakers accept second redistricting plan, setting up next decade of politics

Overall, the partisan makeup ofthe new district remainslargely unchanged, with Democrats continuing to account forabout 36% of registered voters and Republicans making up about 34%.

But some geographic shifts could make Axne's reelection campaign more difficult.

Polk and Dallas Counties, the two largest population centers, still anchor the 3rd District. But it loses several counties along the state's western border that Axne had focused on during her previous two terms while addressing severe flooding there, helping her to makeinroads with voters. Instead, the district gains several other rural counties that tend to favor Republicans that Axne has not campaigned in before.

Axne said her job is tomeet those new voters "and tell all those folks that I'm there for them and I've got their back."

"Its about taking my voice out to the people that I would be representing, hearing from them, listening to their concerns and talking with them about how Ive already been putting policy in place to benefit their lives and address those concerns," Axne said. "But also the policy that Im currently working on thats helping them."

Those issues include securing more money for biofuels, lowering prescription drug prices, improving mental health care for veterans and addressing the nation's supply chain problems.

Many of those subjects, Axne said, can be addressed through President Joe Biden's agenda, including a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that Biden plans to sign Monday and a $1.75 trillion "Build Back Better" bill that would include money for child care, lower prescription drug prices and pay for education and climate change initiatives.

"I believe that once we get the infrastructure bill signed into law, the Build Back Better Act signed into law, next year folks are seeing expansion of those child care centers, theyre seeing more money in their pocket because of the earned income tax credit or the child tax credit," Axne said."I think about the folks here who are on insulin. Were going to cap it at $35 a month."

No Democrats have announced a challenge to Axne, but a handful of Republicans are competing in a primary election as the party seeks to unseat her.

Among them are state Sen. Zach Nunn of Bondurant, who currently leads the Republican field in fundraising. Nunn raised $281,905 in total receipts during the fundraising quarter that ended in October, giving him $213,779 in cash on hand.

Political newcomer Nicole Hassoof Johnston raised $170,863 and finishedthe quarter with $134,670 in the bank.

More: Why Iowa Democrat Cindy Axne voted for $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan

Retired State Rep. Mary Ann Hanusa, a Council Bluffs resident, previously announced she would run in Iowas 3rd Congressional District. But as a result of redistricting, her home county of Pottawattamie now sits in the 4th District, which is more heavily conservative and represented by incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra.

Hanusa told the Des Moines Register she had been waiting on Miller-Meeks' decision before deciding what to do with her own campaign. Had Miller-Meeks chosen to compete in the 3rd District, Hanusa said she would not have challenged her.

"Obviously deference went to Mariannettes decision," Hanusa said. "So now that thats been made, I will look at the situation and consider everything.For right now, the campaigns still on."

Since launching her campaign in April, Hanusa has raised $103,619, including $65,826 in the third quarter. She has$44,718in the bank.

More: A year out, Iowa candidates raise money for 2022 elections; Finkenauer, Hinson rake in most

Gary Leffler, a Republican activist from West Des Moines, has filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, but he has not yet filed financial reports.

Axne goes into the race with about $1.6 million in cash on hand afterraising $757,831 during the third quarter.

Despite outraising her opponents,she knows she's facing an onslaught of ads from national Republican groups.

"I am the number one targeted race by the National Republican Campaign Committee," she said. "They want to take me out so that they can have the House."

In a sign of how competitive the race will be, state and national Republicans quickly issued statements criticizing Axne following her reelection announcement.

"Axne has spent the past two years hiding from Iowans and cozying up to Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden," Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann said."Axne represents a continuation of Biden and Pelosi's disastrous agenda and Iowa Republicans are committed to fighting back to stop it."

Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com or 515-284-8244. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR.

Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.

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Cindy Axne will run for reelection in Congress, closing the door on Iowa gubernatorial bid - Des Moines Register

On the latest The Fifth Column episode, cohost Kmele Foster reiterates his argument, previously expressed in a coauthored New York Times op-ed, that banning critical race theory in schools is bad. While discussing to what extent public opposition to this form of racism fueled Republican success in last weeks elections, Foster again claimed there is zero evidence that this particular strategy [of banning CRT in schools] is working.

In practice, these bills create a great deal of uncertainty about how curriculum should be constructed and what constitutes a kid being made to feel uncomfortable or being told they should feel shame on account of their race, he claimed.

He cited a school board meeting in which teachers questioned whether they should now teach the other side of the Holocaust. That is a direct result of these idiotic bans of critical race theory, Foster claimed. Later he also noted that Texas lawmakers are asking state institutions to report whether they are using public resources to buy and promote anti-American and racist books, claiming thats a prelude to book bans.

For one thing, even if Texas lawmakers do take action after they gather this information, they will not be banning books. They may refuse to expend public resources on certain books, but that is not banning them. Actual book bans, actual censorship, would mean what happens with successful full-bore cancel operations from the left: The person with the book is unable to publicly publish or distribute it, even on his own time and dime.

Its a bit like what Twitter and Facebook do to presidents and members of Congress, which libertarians and classical liberals (like Foster claims to be) are always telling us is totally fine because Facebook and Twitter are private companies and they should not be forced to publish and distribute speech they dont agree with.

Well, fine, then, lets spread this libertarian goose sauce around equally. If Twitter shouldnt be forced to platform Donald Trump and Republican Rep. Jim Banks, the good taxpayers of Texas also shouldnt be forced to pay for, distribute, and platform speech they dont agree with through the government institutions they are supposed to democratically control.

Thats not a book or a speech ban, at least according to the reasoning of libertarians like Foster. If any government declines to fund their activities, such speakers and authors would still be free to speak and publish as they wish. They would not be free, however, to force other people to subsidize their speech. (This also gets into how government and monopolies today control public squares and what should be private life by subsidizing and legally preferencing only one politically favored side, a very big aspect of all this that must be saved for additional discussions.)

To Fosters point about college-educated teachers alleged difficulty in understanding pretty obvious laws, it seems likely to me that any nincompoops asking about teaching both sides of the Holocaust are trolling. Its clear what they are legally supposed to teach and not, they just dont want to comply with the law, so theyre getting pedantic, like a middle schooler or a Jesuit. [Update: It turns out Fosters characterization of this story was based on fake news, and I was right: this was a biased curriculum director falsely characterizing the Texas law to local teachers.]

Its only hard for teachers to figure out what they are now allowed to teach if they dont want to understand the message. Just dont be a racist, and youre good. The problem is, some teachers seem to believe they deserve public sinecures to preach the gospel of anti-white hatred. Thats why they just cant accept the laws obvious intent and meaning and move on.

This blends into a point Foster also made in the podcast that I think is dead-on accurate.

Maybe, as opposed to taking a side in an idiotic culture war, if you try to circumvent the whole thing and focus on things that actually matter, like developing pedagogy thats better, like establishing curriculum that works in a more serious way, he said. Im sorry, if you think that the culture war is going to be over because someone passed a ban in Virginia, go look at Texas. Theyre still having problems.

Setting aside the absurd reductionism I know of nobody who thinks CRT, yet alone all the culture wars, will be instantly solved by a state ban Foster is right that CRT bans are not enough. One proof is in those very teachers who are resisting the will of the voters who fund their salaries and supply children to their classrooms.

Critical race theorys hold on the U.S. education and corporate systems is the poisonous fruit of a poisoned tree. To root it out will require a lot more than state and local bans. It requires of the right exactly what the far-left is doing: Systemic thinking.

That means not taking an isolated, whack-a-mole approach that lawmakers might prefer so they can just pass some patch on the problem and send voters home with a pat on the head. It means making a comprehensive, holistic assessment of how so much of American local, regional, state, and even national leaders participate in and even condone open, government-supported racism.

Why are there any teachers, let alone entire unions, teachers colleges, entire teacher training systems, curriculum factories, testing companies, the whole education cabal supporting open racism and anti-American hatred? How is it that such important drivers of American society not only condone but energize hatred against their own predecessors and way of life? How is it not obvious to so many so-called leaders of American society that this ideology they put hundreds of millions of dollars behind is contemptible and incompatible with truth, justice, and the American way?

The very existence and widespread use of CRT is an indictment on the entire system. As such, it requires not merely a one-off response like a ban. It demands a comprehensive evaluation of the entire education system and a total reorientation of its priorities and methods. The neo-racists are right about one thing: Racism in America appears to be pretty systemic. What theyre wrong about is what kind of racism, as well as the right way to address it.

Earlier this year, commentator Richard Hanania made the point, on which I built several related arguments, that critical race ideology has been furthered by U.S. laws and institutions since the 1960s. It hasnt been imposed on America from space aliens, and it hasnt grown entirely organically, its been fostered by years of legal and policy accretions.

So thats another area in which Foster is wrong. Attempts to ban critical race theory from classrooms, Foster also said on the podcast, Dont make any differentiation between what youre doing in kindergarten and twelfth grade, that is f-cking censorship and that is not how you go about changing the culture. The book banners never win, -sshole, full stop.

On the contrary: Taking control of public and private speech, and tilting the many interlocking education monopolies in favor of leftist ideology, has absolutely been a winning strategy for hard-left ideologues. If speech banning didnt work so very, very well, theyd let Trump back on Twitter and conservatives on CNN.

You 100 percent do change culture by changing laws. Thats exactly how we got critical race theory everywhere, as Hanania pointed out this summer: Wokeness is law, he pointed out, going on to detail multiple ways in which government policies force schools and employers into racism in the guise of combatting racism.

If it is law, it can be changed. And it should be, because racism is evil. So, yes, ban teachers from preaching racism on the taxpayers dime. But dont stop there, because government-sponsored racism doesnt stop there, either. Not even close.

Photo U.S. Army photo by Bob McElroy

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Kmele Foster Is Right: Banning Critical Race Theory Isn't Going To Stop It - The Federalist

The future of America depends on abandoning the illusion of neutrality.

Tom Klingenstein is right in his latest speech. I might quibble over small details, but what matters is that Klingenstein is indubitably correct about many big things: above all, that the Right cant reverse the tide of wokeism until it begins to minimize the influence of libertarianism. As he says, Libertarian-influenced Republicans tell the wokesters: You can live your way, just allow us to live our way. To which the woke respond: You must live our way or we will punish you.

If there is one lesson we must draw from the experience of the past few decades, and especially of the past few years, it is precisely this one. There has never been, and there will never be, a neutral American public square. It is a fantasy that we could ever or should ever make cacophonous debate and disagreement our only true ideals, leaving each to penetrate the mystery of human life on his own, or to figure out whether there are two genders or 107. One claim or other will coercively predominate.

Yet neutrality is precisely the visionan illusion, reallyunder which much of the establishment Right has labored and continues to labor. Klingenstein, with his characteristic lucidity and forthrightness, sees through it.

Thisshouldntbe that hard. All it requires is taking an unflinching glance at U.S. society as it exists today, rather than as the libertariansor better yet, right-liberals or conservative liberalsmight wish it to be. The claim that there are more than two sexes, or that 1619 is Americas true founding, is enshrined as public dogma. Americans who reject it risk being unpersoned by Big Tech, fired from their jobs, treated as domestic terrorists by the national-security apparatus, and so on.

It matters little that much of this coercion is meted out by private firms rather than governmental actors. This meaningless formal distinction is one of the right-liberals most enraging sleights of hand; whatever their subjective motivations in insisting upon it, objectively, it puts them on the side of the soft totalitarians.

The right-liberals flash as badges of honor their various commitments: to neutrality, to pluralism as a very-high good, to a society defined above all by disagreement. But really, they are marks of a great and craven abdication. For at least two generations, they have garnered prestige and profitable sinecures of various sorts on the promise of doing no more than perpetuating the endless discussion of liberalism. The right-liberals have asked voters for political authority, while determined not to exercise it on the side of truth. The wokes, meanwhile, are definitively ending the discussion, and they seek office to wield raw power.

My generation of right-wingers has a clear task, and it is to follow Klingensteins call to sideline right-liberalism and libertarianismmore than that, to bury their sclerotic institutions, abandon their illusions, and expose the ugly material realities churning behind their tired watchwords and slogans.

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Save AmericaReject Libertarianism - The American Mind

American science fiction writer

Poul Anderson

Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926 July 31, 2001)[4] was an American science fiction author from the 1940s until the 21st century. Anderson wrote fantasy novels, historical novels, and short stories. His awards include seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.[5]

Poul Anderson was born on November 25, 1926 in Bristol, Pennsylvania to Scandinavian parents.[6] Shortly after his birth, his father, Anton Anderson moved the family to Texas, where they lived for over ten years. Following Anton Anderson's death, his widow took the children to Denmark. The family returned to the United States after the outbreak of World War II, settling eventually on a Minnesota farm.

While he was an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota, Anderson's first stories were published by John W. Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction: "Tomorrow's Children" by Anderson and F. N. Waldrop in March 1947 and a sequel, "Chain of Logic" by Anderson alone, in July.[a] He earned his B.A. in physics with honors but became a freelance writer after he graduated in 1948. He placed his third story in the December Astounding.[7]

Anderson married Karen Kruse in 1953 and moved with her to the San Francisco Bay area. Their daughter Astrid (now married to science fiction author Greg Bear) was born in 1954. They made their home in Orinda, California. Over the years Poul gave many readings at The Other Change of Hobbit bookstore in Berkeley; his widow later donated his typewriter and desk to the store.[citation needed]

In 1965, Algis Budrys said that Anderson "has for some time been science fiction's best storyteller".[8] He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) in 1966 and of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), also in the mid-1960s. The latter was a loosely-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors led by Lin Carter, originally eight in number, with entry by credentials as a fantasy writer alone. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972.

Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[9][10] The Science Fiction Writers of America made Anderson its 16th SFWA Grand Master in 1998[11] and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2000, its fifth class of two deceased and two living writers.[12] He died of prostate cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. A few of his novels were first published posthumously.

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Poul Anderson - Wikipedia