Florida Gov. DeSantis Refuses to Let Schools Become 'Indoctrination Centers,' Stands Against Critical Race Theory
Ron DeSantis keeps proving why he’s the governor liberals love to hate.
He not only eked out a whisker of a victory against a radical Democrat in the 2018 governor’s race and helped win the Sunshine State for former President Donald Trump in 2020; he’s also put on a real-time demonstration for the nation of how the coronavirus can be handled without turning government into tyranny.
And with an announcement this week about Florida education, he took things to a whole new level.
During a news conference Wednesday in Naples, DeSantis announced a new “Civic Literary Excellence Initiative,” a $106 million program to, according to a news release from the governor’s office, “make Florida a national leader in civics education.”
And he made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that critical race theory, an intellectual abomination that liberals have been imposing in education systems around the country, would have no place in Florida’s public schools.
Gov. @RonDeSantisFL announces Florida’s curriculum will “expressly exclude…Critical Race Theory.”
“There’s no room in our classrooms for things like Critical Race Theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.” pic.twitter.com/7y2b40GqDk
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) March 17, 2021
“Florida’s civics curriculum will incorporate foundational concepts with the best materials, and it will expressly exclude unsanctioned narratives like critical race theory and other unsubstantiated theories,” he said.
“Let me be clear: There’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.”
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That’s not the kind of language Americans are hearing in states run by Democrats – and it’s not what they’re going to be hearing from the Biden/Harris administration over the next four years.
Critical race theory, a leftist fetish that has achieved a kind of sacred status among liberals, teaches essentially that systemic racism pervades every aspect of American life.
It’s not exactly new to the intellectual scene. A CNN report from October dated its modern form to the 1970s, but it has a new influence over liberals of the 21st century.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump banned its use in training materials for federal programs. But with the change in administrations has come a change in attitude. Under the Biden administration, the concept has even infected the American military.
It’s not going any further in Florida, though, if DeSantis has any say over it.
“Our schools are supposed to give people a foundation of knowledge, not supposed to be indoctrination centers, where you’re trying to push specific ideologies,” DeSantis said, according to The Associated Press.
In a previous age, that would have been a stunning statement of common sense. The fact that it’s newsworthy that an American governor would take such a position is one of the more dismaying signs of the times.
But newsworthy it is. And it’s some of the rare news these days that conservatives can be happy about.
That showed on social media. Of course, there was a flood of empty-headed insults in the liberal-dominated platform of Twitter (“white supremacy” and so forth), but plenty of grateful praise, too.
Good! Grateful my daughter, son-in-law, and three grandsons 10, 9, 7 moved to Florida in 2019. Boys have been in school since last Aug. Forget the woke wackos.Teach my grandsons knowledge that will be invaluable in helping shape their futures. No political spin.Just the facts.
— Marty Davis (@MartyDavis) March 17, 2021
Good. CRT is a vehicle to teach & normalize racism while pretending to combat it. Teach the next gen to view everything through the racial lens, what you get is people who do just that.
It’s a flawed, and frankly evil, ideology. Runs 100% counter to civil rights leaders’ goals.
— Frost (@captfrost7) March 18, 2021
Good, honest, sensible leadership.
— Kyle Hunter, FRMetS (@KyleHunter) March 17, 2021
Now I understand why all my neighbors in New York are moving to Florida. It’s the last refuge of the United States of America!
— Matthew F. Guilbault, Esq. (@MFGuilbault) March 17, 2021
Naturally, DeSantis is roundly despised by the nation’s establishment media, while objective failures like California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo remain protected – or at least tolerated.
DeSantis has been in liberal crosshairs since defeating then-Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in 2018 by a scant 32,000 votes out of more than 8 million cast. But his performance in office no doubt contributed to the election results in 2020, where Trump beat Biden in the battleground state by about 51 percent to 48 percent.
(Considering the path Gillum’s life took since the election, Florida voters might have really dodged a bullet there. In 2020, Gillum went into drug rehab after he was found barely conscious and inebriated in a Miami Beach hotel room with baggies of crystal meth and two male companions – one of them a drug overdose victim who was also a gay escort. Democrats always find a way to make things interesting.)
DeSantis has been an outspoken, defiant conservative in office, including honoring conservative icon and Florida resident Rush Limbaugh by ordering flags at the Palm Beach County Courthouse, Palm Beach City Hall and the state Capitol in Tallahassee to be flown at half-staff in recognition of Limbaugh’s death in February, according to The Associated Press.
But his success handling the COVID-19 pandemic has to have been particularly galling to liberals.
Unlike New York and California, large states governed by Democratic governors, Florida under the DeSantis administration has had its schools open this year and its economy running. Its unemployment rate was 4.8 percent in January, according to the Miami Herald, about half of the unemployment rates posted by New York (8.8 percent) and California (9 percent), without either of those states’ draconian lockdowns.
And to top it off, DeSantis isn’t facing a credible recall election threat like Newsom – who violated his own coronavirus quarantine orders. He’s not facing calls for impeachment like Cuomo – who not only might have sentenced thousands of senior citizens to death by ordering nursing homes in the Empire State to take coronavirus-infected individuals, but could also well be a serial sexual harasser of women who work in his office (or come within reach at social occasions).
So DeSantis has outperformed Democrats in objective ways even the establishment media can’t quite ignore. CNN on Wednesday even published a story about Florida’s economic success. It had a backhanded headline, implying that DeSantis is in no position to claim credit, but it was still an acknowledgment of the facts.
DeSantis is, in short, by all appearances, a competent governor who believes in the core freedoms of American life, governs accordingly and has been a success doing it.
Now, he wants the state to have an education curriculum that reflects that — a declaration that he’s not afraid to take the political battle into the educational academic realm, where “progressives” have been spreading their poison for so long.
There’s not much that liberals could hate more.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
