The Patriot Post® · Fighting for Freedom

By Gary Bauer ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/81166-fighting-for-freedom-2021-07-08

Former President Donald Trump announced yesterday that he is launching a major class action lawsuit against the Big Tech giants — Facebook, Google and Twitter. Trump is seeking a court order demanding “an end to shadow banning, blacklisting, banishing” and other forms of social media censorship, which he denounced as “completely unlawful and un-American.”

Here are a few excerpts of the president’s remarks:

“Freedom of speech has always been understood as a bedrock of our liberty… It is not granted to us by government, but by God, and no one should have the power to take that right away.

"The founding fathers inscribed this right in the very First Amendment to our Constitution because they knew it was essential to the preservation of our Republic. In the words of George Washington, ‘If freedom of speech may be taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led like sheep to the slaughter.’

"Unfortunately, today, this fundamental right and liberty is under incredible threat… Social media has given extraordinary power to a group of big tech giants that are working with government, the mainstream media and a large segment of a political party to silence and suppress the views of the American people.”

Trump noted how Facebook, YouTube and Twitter banned any discussion of COVID-19 originating from communist China. Well, guess what? Now even the Washington Post editorial board says it’s “time to get serious about finding” the truth. Better late than never, I suppose.

Trump warned that there is “no better evidence that Big Tech is out of control” than the fact that “they banned the sitting president of the United States… If they can do it to me, they can do it to you and anyone else.”

Underscoring that very point, Trump introduced several people who have also been banned by Big Tech who are joining the president’s lawsuit.

One is a Wisconsin teacher who questioned the need for children to wear masks at all times in school. Another is a Colorado doctor who was banned for posting a video on how churches could safely reopen during the pandemic. Big Tech also banned two black “Angel parents,” whose son was killed by an illegal alien. Their advocacy for commonsense immigration laws got them kicked off Twitter.

President Trump vowed to carry this battle beyond the courts to state legislatures and the ballot box.

The Media Attacks

The media reaction was predictable. Commentators mocked and dismissed the lawsuit as ridiculous and unlikely to succeed. But what really jumped out at me was that reporters for the financial network CNBC said this was just a publicity stunt by “a waning political figure.”

So this “waning” figure is the leading candidate for the 2024 GOP nomination by nearly 40 points. He leads Kamala Harris by four points in a potential 2024 race. In the last two weeks, he drew massive crowds of 15,000 people in Ohio and 25,000 people in Florida, something I doubt any other current political figure could do.

“Credible” politicians would love to be “a waning political figure” if they had Trump’s numbers.

NEA Embraces Marxism

The nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association (NEA), is all in on Marxism. It passed a resolution at its recent national convention wholly embracing Marxist critical race theory. Just consider the text of the approved resolution:

“The NEA will…

  • Share and publicize … information already available on critical race theory (CRT) … and fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric…

  • Provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.

  • Publicly convey its support for the accurate and honest teaching of social studies topics, including truthful and age-appropriate accountings of unpleasant aspects of American history… The Association will further convey that in teaching these topics, it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks … including critical race theory…

  • Conduct a virtual listening tour that will educate members on the tools and resources needed to defend honesty in education including but not limited to tools like CRT.

  • Commit President Becky Pringle to make public statements across all lines of media that support racial honesty in education, including but not limited to critical race theory.”

It’s important for you to read the resolution and see it for yourself. Why? Well, among other things, there are at least six references in that resolution to promoting, defending and using critical race theory.

Yet some left-wing commentators and politicians are gaslighting the American people, telling them that critical race theory isn’t being taught in the schools and that it’s a “conspiracy theory.”

Tell that to the NEA!

These are the same people who claim that Antifa is a myth or an idea, and that Republicans are trying to defund the police. Once again, the left is blatantly lying to you!

While the NEA is trying to imply that teachers are struggling mightily to resolve racial issues, it’s clear they are all in on “fundamentally transforming America.” They reject our economic system — capitalism — and all it has done to lift people out of poverty.

My friends, never forget what this is all about — our children, our country and how our tax dollars are being spent!

The AFT Too

At the same time, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) just announced that it is committing at least $2.5 million to a legal defense fund specifically to fight parents who are resisting this left-wing indoctrination in our schools.

Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, declared, “Mark my words, our union will defend any member who gets in trouble for teaching honest history.”

The key word in that sentence and the NEA’s resolution is “honest,” because being honest is exactly what they are not doing. They are teaching anti-American history based on lies.

They are teaching that America began in 1619, not 1776. That’s a lie. They are teaching that the American Revolution’s purpose was to preserve slavery. That’s a lie. They are teaching that America is systemically racist and always has been. That’s a lie.

By the way, one of the tenets of the woke left is that truth is anything that undermines the racist, oppressive forces that control America. These are the same people who label the nuclear family “an instrument of oppression,” as the Marxist Black Lives Matter organization did.

They embrace moral relativism, so words like “honest” have no meaning to them.

These are the same people teaching our sons and daughters that a girl can be trapped inside a boy’s body or that a boy can be trapped inside a girl’s body.

I’ve been fighting the NEA and the AFT since 1982, when Ronald Reagan appointed me to oversee the budget at the Department of Education and later as Under Secretary of Education. I clashed with them then over what they were teaching our children, and I’m not backing down now!

Campaign for Working Families is committed to electing conservative candidates who will fight critical race theory and the indoctrination of our children!