“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.” —Thomas Jefferson (1781)

Recently, there was a “near miss” in the conservative state of Tennessee. It involved our second-largest conservative county — and it exposed a well-planned strategy by a socialist cadre of outside “community organizers” endeavoring to turn a Republican congressional district Democrat. They didn’t conjure this up on their own.

The template for their activity is one being tested in other Republican districts across the nation by organizations with different names but similar goals. These efforts are modeled after the “Rules for Radicals” framework established by the original “community organizer,” Saul Alinsky, and they advocate socialist Cloward-Piven model policies. They are dark-money funded indirectly by leftists like George Soros and his ultra-wealthy “Archenemies of Liberty,” including Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, and Jeff Bezos.

That leftist club, and its Democrat Party collective of congressional socialists, has been busy with a visible campaign to rig electoral demographics state by state, dispensing with the Electoral College in order to guarantee the perpetuity of leftist rule.

But the Left is also engaged in a much more subversive strategy to transform our constitutional republic into a permanent populist democracy: a district-by-district strategy.

In Tennessee, a group of former Obama “organizers” emerged from their rat holes after Donald Trump’s unexpected defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump won Tennessee by 61% to Clinton’s 35%, which put the state directly in the Left’s crosshairs. Since then, pockets of leftist activists have worked to erode conservative districts — one by one. The template they are utilizing to achieve that goal is being propagated in at least four other Republican-controlled states right now, in preparation for rolling it out nationwide.

The Left’s first Tennessee target is the 3rd District held by my Republican friend, Chuck Fleischmann. While neighboring Knox County (Knoxville) in the 2nd District mirrored the statewide results for Trump in 2016, Hamilton County’s Trump support was softer, 55% Trump to 39% Clinton. Thus, the 3rd District became their test bed.

What follows is a profile of how these leftists embedded themselves in this district, ingratiated themselves with the wealthiest community liberals and their influential foundations, and set about to ultimately, turn the district from right to left. If you live in or near a marginal Republican congressional district, look for a similar quiet but invasive pattern of infiltration. If it’s not already in that district, it’s coming.

The largest urban center in the 3rd District is Chattanooga. That city is now controlled by a wealthy leftist Democrat, Andy Berke. He had set his political sites on the Senate seat that will be vacated by Lamar Alexander in 2020 — until Berke’s alleged “affairs with multiple female subordinates” derailed those plans. While Hamilton County repeatedly ranks at the top of national lists for beauty and recreational activity, under Berke’d Demo administration, Chattanooga’s management ranking has dropped precipitously, now dragging bottom at number 147 out of 150.

Unlike Chattanooga, Hamilton County’s school board and commission was controlled by conservatives ahead of the 2018 election — until a group of Berke-backed community organizers from Barack Obama’s political machine set up shop in Chattanooga. They founded a thinly veiled political front called “UnifiEd” and set about their first task of unseating conservatives on the county school board and commission — stepping stones to 3rd District control.

Like so many malignant leftist initiatives, UnifiEd was, ostensibly, established “for the children” and promised to “improve education.” I mean, we’re all “for the children,” right?

That’s how these organizers and their benefactors, the latter themselves being the beneficiaries of generational wealth and privilege, attracted large donations from many unsuspecting marks and local foundations to fund their nefarious political charade. While their wealthy leftist backers knew exactly what they were funding, many of the donors to whom they provided access, did not.

UnifiEd parlayed its wealthy leftist connections as bona fides for their next asks — legal, but similar to how Ponzi schemes attract investors — often sweeping up unsuspecting donors in the process. And there is now substantial buyer’s remorse among some of those major donors. (You can read more about the UnifiEd organizers here, and how they used their wealthy benefactors’ connections here.)

Notably, it was this same group of wealthy UnifiEd backers who ensured that lower-income families in Hamilton County would not be eligible to participate in Tennessee’s Education Savings Account program — which provides parents of children in failing government schools a $7,000 per-student portable cost equivalent that they could then apply toward the tuition of a non-government school. The UnifiEd backers took this action to make sure that failing public schools wouldn’t be subjected to competition from non-government schools.

When UnifiEd was founded, its board promised, “What we won’t do is endorse individual candidates.”

But after Trump’s election, they knew they had to step up their game. So UnifiEd’s director, former Obama for America activist John “Jonas” Barriere, set up a political action committee, UnifiEd Action PAC. According to Barriere, “The goal of the political action committee is to advocate for the work that has traditionally been done by UnifiEd but in a different way.”

Different indeed — they used those funds to support the election of county school-board and commission pawns in order to control those political bodies and thus be able to implement their leftist agenda. And contrary to their original commitment not to endorse candidates, the PAC publicly endorse their slate of candidates. PAC president Lorie Runge claimed their objective was to achieve meaningful change funding candidates “at every level of local office … candidates who are ready to take bold action.” You know, all “for the children…”

Moreover, their objective included the long-term control of Chattanooga/Hamilton County school curriculum. So egregious are their “education initiatives” that this week, even Newsweek magazine published a story about UnifiEd’s mandated “teacher training on white privilege,” one segment asserting: “People of color cannot be racist because they lack the institutional power to adversely affect white lives.” This is what the wealthy leftists prescribed for Hamilton County teachers…and of course, some of them are drinking every last drop of the Kool Aid. They in turn, are indoctrinating the students in our county with this garbage – at taxpayer expense.

Our columnist Patrick Hampton, notes that this absurd curriculum will “make things worse and actually sets us back to the 1950s and 60s when people were segregated and some hated each other based on color.”

As for UnifiEd’s small cadre of “student activists” charged with recruiting other students within schools, one of them was arrested on double homicide charges.

Fortunately, a small group of conservatives in Chattanooga shed light on UnifiEd strategic agenda — better late than never! Consequently, the organization’s first big post-2018 goal, a $34 million “education” tax increase proposal for non-classroom personnel, was defeated by the Hamilton County commission in June of this year — after a couple of commissioners finally figured out UnifiEd was serving as the de facto political arm for a handful of wealthy leftists who are directors on the boards of three local foundations.

Now, Obama’s well-funded socialists and their wealthy benefactors are licking their wounds – and plotting their next move.

In retrospect, it is notable that the Hamilton County Republican Party was not engaged in an ideological or political battle with UnifiEd. They had become complacent as is the case in many “safe” conservative districts and were totally unprepared for how this group of leftists operated — not only working wealthy liberals and foundations but recruiting and training activists with the most up-to-date strategies. And they better get prepared because, though these leftists lost the first battle, they are not going to retreat. Though they, ostensibly, represent the “public interest,” like similar groups across the nation, they are backed by wealthy liberals, and consequently are not publicly accountable.

If these leftist cadres haven’t yet infiltrated a Republican district near you, consider the template they deployed here — using the “for the children” mantra to take over governing bodies as a step toward both controlling the future of your children’s education, and the broader goal of controlling that district. There are no safe conservative districts any longer, and conservatives in those districts need to become activists!

Note: Because The Patriot Post operates on a very tight budget, both in terms of manpower and financial resources, our editorial and publishing efforts would suffer if individual staff members took time off at multiple times throughout the year. Thus, we take a break and cease our operations for a week in August to provide all of our editorial staff with the same week off. As always, I thank you for partnering with us in support of Liberty. Your steadfast support helps us to secure the blessings of Liberty in our day and extend it to the next generation. We’ll be back on our regular publication schedule on Monday, August 12. Until then, on behalf of your Patriot Post team and National Advisory Committee, thank you for standing on so many fronts in defense of Liberty!

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776