Idiots don’t run the show

On Thursday, Idaho House District 1 Representative Heather Scott held an event in a church in Kootenai, live streamed for those who couldn’t attend, announced in an email with the subject line, “Smut in Our Idaho Libraries and What You Can Do About It.” A game plan, she wrote, to remove inappropriate materials from our schools and libraries. On his website, Idaho District 1 Senate candidate Scott Herndon lists as issues topics including transgenders in sports, critical race theory and strengthening parental rights over the sexual topics taught to their children in public schools.

I’m sure these issues have, did and do rile some, but I personally don’t recall any among my acquaintances ever raising the topics up in discussion, except to recall with fondness the educational merits of poring through the stacks of National Geographic when I was a bairn in grammar school. I was also appreciative of the old Readers Digest feature, “I am Joe’s …”

Both were cherished parts of my education, both far more risqué and revealing than anything offered in the texts and workbooks I looked at but mostly just skimmed through in order to appease the teacher and get a passing grade.

I’m old, but the only “race theory” I recall being taught came not in grade school, but in Sunday school, and I still remember the words; “red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in his sight,” he, of course, being Jesus.

As I recall, both libraries and schools are represented by the most distinguished of representatives; those elected to unpaid positions of highest trust.

From kindergarten until my dad retired, I never started and finished a year in the same school and I never had a teacher try to indoctrinate me. They did their best to help me excel.

Until the clamor and din raised of late by the righteous right seeking offices from which they might impose their morals and ideals on RINOs, Democrats, liberals, socialists and all others who make light of their self-righteous rhetoric, it never dawned on me to think I was anything less than a good citizen of these United States of America, despite the fact I was born in Germany, son of a Missouri private and a German girl proud to be a Hitler Youth.

I earned accolades and good citizenship awards in school, not by being a cog in a machine, but by being a unique individual in a diverse society.

Herndon, “a self-taught home builder with a previous career in finance and computer programming, built his own home in Idaho in 2005, acquiring skills which he developed into a full-time career as owner and operator of Scott Herndon Homes,” writes” “Critical Race Theory is an ideology that suggests America is inherently racist, and those particularly who are white and male need to check their ‘privilege.’ Whereas Marxism promoted class division between capitalists and workers, CRT is a leftist replacement of Marxism that promotes class division based on race. Sometimes operating under the guise of ‘equity’ and ‘social justice,’ critical race theory is an academic subject that is now deeply rooted in many American public institutions. In public education, critical race theorists would separate all students into the oppressors and the oppressed..”

Jim Woodward, an engineer who served aboard the most sophisticated nuclear submarine in the U.S. Navy, sees it differently.

“Key to anyone’s success are knowledge and skills,” he writes. “Both come through education in whatever form it may take. Educated and trained people provide for themselves, for their families and for the industries that generate economic vitality for our state. We need to provide the best possible education for our children whether it is preparation for college, technical, or vocational education. Our children must have the ability to think and act for they are the future of North Idaho. As children become adults, we can provide educational opportunities locally through satellite campuses, on-line learning, and on-the-job training such as apprenticeships and internships.”

I can’t speak for others, but I stand against manufactured fear, fear based on catch phrases and hyperbole.

This nation never needed a wall, but many heard the cry of an idiot and took up his cause. This school district is one of the most accomplished in the world; so many teachers who graduated BFHS and came home to teach. Even our superintendent grew up in Boundary County public schools.

They do not indoctrinate; they do not teach nor promote the inappropriate.

They take pride in their student’s successes and skills.

This election May 17 isn’t between Republicans and Democrats. It is between democracy and dictatorship.