Wish Them Truck: Convoys Hit the Road for Freedom
“Liberty [is] like muscles. If you don’t exercise it, you lose it.”
Police helicopters whirred overhead. Dozens of police vans and cruisers idled at strategic intersections. From the noise in the nation’s capital Wednesday night, you would have thought a massive manhunt was underway — or that leaders expected fascist wannabes to torch the city any moment. D.C. Police have placed 500 extra officers on the clock, round the clock, as a “Civil Disturbance Unit” all week long. The only thing missing from this scene is a culprit.
If you believe the hollowing-out-their-legacy media, Washington is about to be overrun with a dangerous truckers’ protest imitating Canada’s Freedom Convoy. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assumed unprecedented emergency powers to ruthlessly suppress the mostly peaceful truckers’ protest against vaccine mandates and other government overreach. Somehow, desk reporters tried to make blue-collar workers, standing up for their lives and livelihoods, out to be the bad guys. California Pastor Rob McCoy warned the press will smear American truckers with the same broad brush. “They’re going to be vilified,” he said, “in a manner that’s not worthy of what they’re doing.”
One trucker convoy traveling from California invited McCoy to “pray for them and send them off” on Wednesday, he explained. “There wasn’t a piece of trash to be found. They were loving. They sang ‘Amazing Grace.’ We prayed for them. There was nothing violent… [There were] flags waving, citizens excited about their voice being heard.” What a contrast to the 2020 rioters who burned, looted, and attacked police, the most expensive riots in U.S. history.
McCoy understands personally why the truckers are standing for freedom. “Liberty [is] like muscles,” he explained. “If you don’t exercise it, you lose it.” That almost happened during the coronavirus pandemic, as California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) tried to shut down churches as “non-essential.” McCoy’s church had to determine where they would obey the governor’s command to lock their doors, or Scripture’s command to be “not neglecting to meet together” (Hebrews 10:29). When they chose to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29), the State of California “tried to fine us $3,000 every time the doors of the church [building] were open.” McCoy’s church “amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines,” and he personally faced contempt charges for not paying the fines, until finally the highest court in the land rebuked California for blatantly abusing the right of religious freedom.
“When you punch the bully in the nose, they go away,” McCoy said. “Now, with mask mandates and everything else, they exempt the church because we were willing to make a stand.” That principle holds whether you’re driving the Word of God home to consciences, driving an 18-wheeler to Washington, D.C., or driving a minivan to a school board meeting. The people of America have recognized it’s time to take a stand and say, enough with these endless mandates, shifting goalposts, and snooty bureaucrats running our lives. “No virus on the face of the earth… merits the suspension of our inalienable rights,” McCoy affirmed.
The powers that be didn’t bat an eye when violent mobs ruined livelihoods and destroyed our cities two years ago. But it turns out they do have a boogeyman in their closet. When pastors, parents, and yes, truckers, too — the people of the United States — rise up to reassert their God-given freedoms, that really scares the dickens out of the Left. McCoy concluded, “be vigilant to protect this nation that was ‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’” And pray for the truckers — for wisdom, protection, and success. Then honk your horn in solidarity.
Originally published here.
Florida Works to Bring Education into the Sunshine
The Left’s worst nightmare is an informed parent. And in places like Florida and Missouri, legislators are doing everything they can to build an army of them.
For conservatives in the Sunshine State, it’s been a rocky road with the media and Democrats — who seem determined to misrepresent the legislation they’ve introduced. Even President Joe Biden weighed in, calling it “hateful” to give parents a voice in their children’s education. “I want every member of the LGBTQI+ community — especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill — to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are. I have your back,” he tweeted, “and my administration will continue to fight for the protections and safety you deserve.”
As usual, the proposal has nothing to do with LGBT discrimination. That’s a convenient talking point for a party who hasn’t found a way to combat parents’ newfound influence in education. Dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill by the Left, Florida State Rep. Joe Harding’s (R) proposal is actually aimed at transparency (not that anyone would get that honest assessment from the radical media). On “Washington Watch” Wednesday, Harding explained that Republicans are fighting two things: Democrats and a faulty narrative. “It’s a shocker the media would spin [this] to benefit a result they’re trying to get,” he said sarcastically. “Really shocking.”
In reality, Harding pointed out, the bill is really simple. From kindergarten through third grade, H.R. 1557 would put a stop to discussions about sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom. “There are some discussions at that point that would be better having at home,” Harding agreed with parents. Secondly, schools would be required to tell parents about “significant changes in their child’s mental or physical health” — like, for instance, second-guessing their gender. It all goes back, Harding said, “to the fundamental belief that… parents should have the ultimate decision in their children’s [lives] — and that the parent knows their child better than a bureaucrat in a school district. Period.”
Lastly, in a unique twist, Florida Republicans want to give all parents the right — and means — to sue the school district if they aren’t getting the information they need. If a mom or dad can’t afford to hire an attorney, the state board of education would hire a magistrate and pay for it. “We operate in the sunshine in Florida, we often say,” Harding told listeners, “except when it comes to our students’ education. And we’re going to fix that.”
He’s right. Making sure that the “public servants” abide by the law is extremely challenging, as I know very well from my time in serving in the Louisiana legislature. You must have a means of enforcement. These days, we can’t expect the education establishment — which is usually behind these bad ideas — to police themselves. Right now, we have third graders who can’t read or write, but they can tell you what the 52 genders are. That needs to change, and it’s going to take measures like this one to stop the sexual indoctrination and jump start the learning.
Missourians must agree, because they’re pushing a parental rights bill too. FRC’s senior fellow for Education Studies, Meg Kilgannon, isn’t exactly surprised. “We spent last year educating our kids through the pandemic,” she pointed out, “and it’s sort of a Rosie the Riveter situation, where when we were needed, [parents] were there. [Schools] were expecting us to work and do the job. And now that they’re back in charge, they want us to go home and go back to our lives and just let the ‘experts’ handle it. And fortunately, parents are not just sitting back. They’re seeking more information from their schools. And when they are not getting it at the school level, they’re going to their state legislators…”
FRC Action has been proud to be a part of that movement, encouraging parents through events like our School Board Boot Camp. This weekend, we’re taking the training on the road to Lynchburg, Virginia for a special education summit with the Noah Webster Educational Foundation. (Details here.) The goal is to replicate that in more and more states.
Meanwhile, if you’re one of the people looking for a way to make a difference, Meg Kilgannon encourages you to connect with us and get engaged. But also, as she reminds everyone, “The people that we’ve encouraged to run for school board who have done it and are now serving need our prayer support and our practical support so that they can do their jobs on behalf of all the nation’s children.” Maybe you aren’t on the local school board. Maybe you don’t have kids in the public school. You can still use your voice: in the debate and in prayer for these state efforts and parents, fighting to bring light to a dark world.
Originally published here.
Ukraine’s Day of Infamy
It seems unfathomable that a week ago, the world’s televisions were full of triumph and sport, international spirit and respect. Those same screens are unrecognizable now, as people from every continent woke up to a new reality: war. As images flash across monitors of explosions along the Ukrainian front, there’s a certain disbelief that any of this is real. Families, hunkered down in bomb shelters. Children, pinned with bright stickers listing their blood types, parents’ names, and phone numbers. Mothers and fathers, braced for news that their soldier sons have fallen. A new winter is blowing through the West, and no one is sure how — or where — it will end.
While air raid sirens wailed ominously through the morning, people packed into subway stations or sat terrified in the miles-long traffic jam to escape the city. “We try to be brave,” one woman told a U.S. reporter, “because we have children, and we don’t want to show them that we are scared.” Outside, the shelling only intensified. On Fox News, Alexey Goncharenko, a Ukrainian parliament member, begged the United States to help. “They’re killing innocent people just in this minute,” he pleaded. Many Ukrainians are already dead, the interior minister confirmed, as footage of flaming helicopters and collapsing apartment buildings sent shockwaves through Europe.
In Chernobyl, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the nuclear power plant was under attack. It fell barely an hour later into Russian hands. At the same time, trains carrying hundreds of vulnerable children raced to get orphans out of Luhansk.
Here at home, Americans watch helplessly as the largest land war in Europe unfolds since 1945. In one powerful piece of video, CNN’s Clarissa Ward becomes visibly moved by a group of Ukrainians kneeling together on the cold stone of a Kharkiv square to pray in the early morning hours. In the desperation of the moment, heedless of the chaos around them or the freezing temperatures, they appeal to their one hope: God. “It speaks to the state of ordinary Ukrainians here,” Ward says solemnly, “who have done absolutely nothing to deserve this, who have no quarrel with Russia, who have no desire for war or conflict… who will ultimately be the one to bear the brunt of this multi-pronged, major attack by one of the world’s most sophisticated militaries.”
And of course, the frustration in the U.S. — especially among Republicans leaders — is that so many of these horrors could have been prevented. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flat-out called it a “failure of American leadership.” “[Putin] saw — from his soil — American pipelines shut down, southeast gas lines shut down, and President Biden meets him and just wags the finger,” he concluded. “He saw opportunity, combined with his deep desire to rebuild a security zone around his own country, and he said, I believe I can do this and the cost to me will be exceedingly low, and so far, I fear, he’s been proven correct.”
The United States buried the best weapon it has to protect Ukraine and the rest of the West: American oil and gas. “We could turn this around tomorrow with American energy,” House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) explained on “Washington Watch,” “except that for the last year, [Biden] crushed the American energy industry. President Biden could do a lot of things today… open up federal lands… green-light the Keystone Pipeline. You know, they haven’t approved a single pipeline in the United States of America. So it’s hard for us to move energy [and] to produce energy in America… He’s begging Russia to produce more oil. And now you see the fruits of those failed policies.”
As conservatives have said from the beginning, it’s a national security issue when America becomes dependent on foreign oil. We should have learned that lesson during COVID when the supply chain went haywire. And yet, starting on day one, Oklahoma Representative Kevin Hern (R) pointed out, “Biden sent a message to the world that we were going to start depending once again on foreign oil… Hours after he was sworn in, he killed the Keystone pipeline through executive order. Then he moved forward and he declared a halt to all oil and gas leases on public lands across America. He stopped them…”
If there’s one thing President Biden should be doing, Hern insisted, it’s “looking inward here and seeing the decisions that he’s made. All he needs to do is reinstate the Trump policies.” Get back to Made in America energy. Embrace the energy independence that can safeguard the Western world. If America were producing the kind of fuel it’s capable of, we could be exporting a lifeline to all of these European countries who, in desperation, are turning to Putin’s sources.
Even Barack Obama understood that, Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.) pointed out. “The last year of the Obama administration, they opened up [the] exporting of oil. So even [Biden’s] boss [recognized] the impact of us being dependent on foreign oil… [And yet], he’s taken us right back to where we were in the dark days of the 70s, where we saw escalating oil prices, creating inflationary effects… The American people need to see the clear consequences of the president’s actions, how reckless he was with one stroke of a pen to kill a critical piece of infrastructure…”
For America, time is short. For European countries in Putin’s sights, it’s even shorter. “The longer this goes on, the harder it is to mobilize what needs to be done here,” Daines warned. “And the consequences of that are going to be felt for the next generation.”
In Kyiv, where innocent blood is being spilled in sovereign streets, those consequences are unimaginable. Halfway around the world, parents will be digging graves, in part because of choices the free world made. May the Lord have mercy on them — and us.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
