Patriot Parents

I'd like to take this time to thank the Board, and the Forsyth County Schools for giving our children the freedom to choose whether or not to wear masks, and giving our families the freedom to make their own medical decisions. While other education systems around the country, and even some in other counties in Georgia, have continued to force children to wear masks for years now, Forsyth County Schools have been deliberate, but firm, in their defense of freedom, and have done their level best to avoid needless panic and authoritarian imposition as we have navigated the impact of the China Virus. It truly confused me for such a long time that we didn't hold China accountable for lying about COVID, and killing nearly a million Americans - until it came out that the Wuhan lab was actually being funded by our very own Dr. Fauci, for gain of function research. Once that became clear, it was obvious that any punishments against China would have to be applied against the United States as well, since our government was complicit in the research that created COVID. And for much of the United States, for the past two years, our government has punished the people. While Georgia was brave enough to keep it's lockdown in place only from March 16 to April 24, 2020, for a total of just 39 days, my adult son still lives under lockdown conditions in Los Angeles County, California - now 702 days and counting. Certainly we can all be very forgiving for reacting quickly and harshly at the beginning of the pandemic, but as time has gone on, we have greatly improved our therapeutics, with things like monoclonal antibodies, and the Trump vaccines. At the same time, much less deadly variants have evolved, turning an omicron diagnosis into something less dangerous than the common cold. The sensible response of the Forsyth County Schools, as we have improved the science over time, is something that I am very grateful for. But not everybody has appreciated just how good we've done. Last month, several children pointed out some very scary statistics, about how COVID was now a "leading cause of death" for children. Left out of their analysis was that children in this country are so safe, and death is so rare for them, that even "leading causes of death" are incredibly uncommon. Out of a population of about 25 million children age 5-11, the leading cause of death from October 2020 to October 2021 was accidents. The total number of deadly accidents - less than one thousand. For COVID from the same time, it's not 500, it's not 250, it's not even 100 - it's a total of 66 children, all with significant co-morbidities, that died. More children died of asthma and the flu during the same time - but nobody has ever locked down schools to protect children from asthma, or the flu. I don't mean to sound unsympathetic to those who still live in fear - we have been bombarded with scare stories in the media, and it's very difficult to overcome the anxiety that has been imposed upon us for years. Certainly, every one of the 66 children who died with COVID were irreplaceable, loved, and should be deeply mourned. But we cannot be slaves to our fears, and we cannot enslave others due to our fears. We can all be thankful that today, countries around the world are dropping their mandates and restrictions, some quietly, and others in the face of large trucker protests for freedom. Once again, I thank the board and the Forsyth County Schools for being brave much earlier than many others! Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. Well, I only have three kids, and only one of them is still "little", but that sentiment resonates across the ages to me. Yesterday, we celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a civil rights hero of our nation. Sadly, by today's standards, he would be declared a "colorblind racist", because he wanted people to be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It felt like within my lifetime we were living the dream of MLK, but in the past 10 years we've seen a doubling down on race-based thinking. With that in mind, I'd like to thank the Board and the Forsyth County School System for removing the most racist and offensive diversity, inclusion and equity links from their web pages. There are still some links to racist content, hosted by organizations such as "Children's Healthcare of Atlanta" and their well intentioned, but terribly racist, Strong4Life program, but we're definitely moving in the right direction, and with strong oversight, we can remove resources that normalize and encourage a victimhood mentality in our schools, students, and teachers. It is my hope that our diversity, inclusion and equity team will review such racist organizations as the "Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development", or ASCD, and disassociate from them if they are not willing to change their racist viewpoints. We need to commit to a systemic and continuous review of the racist and biased content that has infused so many of our professional education organizations. Of course, I'm sure there are people willing to defend the racism of CHOA and ASCD - they'll insist that being colorblind is being racist, and that asking to treat everyone equally is simply perpetuating white supremacy. Which, by their logic, would mean that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a white supremacist. There's no doubt, racism exists. There's even blatant and obvious systemic racism against Asians trying to get into Ivy League schools. But there's a danger in centering every conversation, about every problem, in every context, around race. It takes something real, but by extreme exaggeration, gives it more power than it would otherwise have. Even worse, it blinds us to the things that we should be addressing, such as single parent households, self-sabotage with a victimhood mentality, and poisons of social media that promote fear and hatred to make money in our modern #AttentionEconomy. If we are to properly focus our DEI programs, the demographics we track shouldn't be about skin color, or sexual preference, but about our students in fatherless homes. Or our students living in poverty. Or students with parents who never made it to college. Typically poverty has been tracked by looking at students who qualify for free lunches, but do we have any demographic information on how many students live in fatherless homes? Or how many students have parents who never graduated from high school? I respectfully ask the Board to consider re-centering demographic tracking away from race, and towards more important social factors, such as fatherlessness and poverty. Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

One of the key pillars of many Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity programs is the idea of "privilege". Most often cast in terms of skin color, or even more oddly sexual preference, "privilege" is used as a justification for treating people differently. If you have lots of privilege, the expectations on you are high. If you have very little privilege, the expectations on you are low. Now, say for a moment that we accept this premise - just for a moment, imagine that simply being light white and straight is always a great privilege, and being dark black and gay is always very little privilege. Ignore, for a moment, that light white people can be poor, or that dark black people can be rich. Ignore, for a moment, that straight people can have learning disabilities, or that gay people can be geniuses. There are two primary ways you can decide to address the alleged differences in privilege. One way to do it, is to run a fine tooth comb through the system, and remove any explicit favoritism. If there is a rule that says, "only white straight people get to sit in the front of the bus", you remove that rule. You equalize the playing field, by removing the explicit privileges given because of a certain skin color, or a specific sexual preference. The other way to do it is to come up with new rules that explicitly add favoritism for the people that you believe have very little privilege. If gay people have a harder time in math, you make a new rule that says, "if you're gay, you get extra math tutoring". Or if there aren't enough dark black people in the country line dancing team, you make a new rule that says, "15% of the country line dancing team must be dark black". It used to be that the idea of being color blind, and treating people based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, was the socially accepted ideal. We spent decades removing discriminatory rules from our systems, working towards equity in treatment - and this worked. It helped us remediate grave injustices of the past, and was leading us towards a truly equitable future. Sadly, this point of view has fallen out of favor with people who run most of our systems - Hollywood, the mainstream media, much of academia, and even a large number of politicians, have now embraced the idea of equity of outcome instead of equity in treatment. It is no exaggeration, to say that today, we live in a system that is characterized not by the white privilege of the 1950s, but by the woke privilege of the 21st century. If you have the right politics in 2021, you can riot, loot, and burn with no punishment. But if you have the wrong politics in 2021, you can lose your job, be thrown into solitary confinement over simple trespassing charges, or be banned from major social media platforms. And so what can we do? Now that we've spent years giving explicit systemic privilege to the woke, and taking away privilege from conservatives and libertarians, can we use the same argument to ensure that DEI provides new rules for helping the conservatives and libertarians who are now systemically discriminated against? Or, should we instead recalibrate our thinking, and treat all people as individuals, deserving of equal respect and treatment, rather than judging them by their group characteristics? It is my hope that any future DEI programs adopted by the board are scrutinized for any implicit or explicit woke bias. Thank you very much for listening, and as always, if there's anyone who disagrees with me, I'd love to take them out to lunch and hear their point of view!

This month we finally got justice for Jussie Smollet, who was convicted for his hate crime hoax. Jussie incited hatred against white conservatives, framing them for a fake hate crime he orchestrated. Although the #MediaIndustrialComplex still treats white people as objects of derision and shame, hopefully Jussie's case will make them think twice about their racist narratives. On the surface, this case may seem far removed from the concerns of Forsyth County Schools, but unfortunately, there is a connection. We too have been victims of a hoax - the hoax that our community is not diverse, inclusive, or equitable, and that we require special programs to address unconscious white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Now, you might think to yourself that a specialized program to address white supremacy, sexism, and various phobias isn't that big of a deal. We all want to support our students and families, and diversity, inclusion, and equity sound like perfectly nice things. The problem here, is that we are assuming our teachers are white supremacists. We are assuming that our students are sexist, and homophobic. We are beginning with the premise, that without these programs, left to their own free will, the members of this community would behave in terrible, awful ways. Nothing could be further from the truth. Imagine for a moment if Cognia told us we needed to have special programs to make sure none of our teachers or administrators were unconscious pedophiles. That each administrator was responsible for actively addressing any unconscious pedophilia they might harbor, by taking anti-pedophila classes. We all agree that pedophilia is horrible, that it should be punished, and we should never tolerate it - but how would it make you feel, if your employer demanded that you take professional development classes, to make sure you don't have any unconscious pedophilia tendencies? How would it feel like to have someone assume that you were so morally broken that you needed special classes to make sure you weren't sexually attracted to children? Now obviously, we need to have discipline programs that address bullying, whether it is due to anti-white hatred, or anti-gay hatred, or any other reason. But discipline programs are meant to address the outliers, not the vast majority of kind, compassionate, and well behaved children, teachers and staff. Forsyth County, and Forsyth County schools are not racist. They are not homophobic. They are not sexist. They are not transphobic. They were diverse, equitable, and inclusive well before anyone ever heard of the acronym "DEI". I would respectfully ask the Board, to ask Cognia to affirm the following DEI principles, if we are to continue using them for accreditation: all people should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin; equity of treatment is the goal, not equity of outcome; the most important ingredient for student success is student effort, not what privileges or disadvantages they may start with; individual identity is more important than any group identity; The United States is the most diverse, equitable, and inclusive nation that has ever existed. You do not need to be told not to be a pedophile. And you do not need to be told not to be racist, or sexist, or phobic of anything. And neither do any of us. Thank you very much for your time, and again, I'd love to have lunch with anyone who disagrees with me.

We have often been reminded, by the children speaking here in support of the DEI program, of what happened in Forsyth County in 1912. I've reviewed the history, and it is shocking. Disgusting. And I raise it here again to explore an unconscious bias I don't think anyone realizes exists. In 1912, two republican black men were falsely accused of attacks on democrat white women. Democrats organized a band of terrorists, called the "Night Riders", and drove out 98% of the black republican families from Forsyth County. The abject murder, violence, and persecution of the black republicans by white democrats of that era is a trauma that lives on to this day. I'm not trying to shame, or blame Democrats today for the sins of Democrats in the past. I'm sure that for Democrats, either on the School Board or in the audience, the framing of the darkest days of Forsyth County history, in terms of political parties, feels unfair. Far from inspiring anyone to disavow their Democrat privilege, or to have sympathy with the struggles and historical trauma of Republicans, my bet is that I triggered their defenses, and they're now *less* likely to be persuaded by anything I have to say. Which, ironically, is my larger point. If you felt that my historical framing was unfair, I urge you to consider that this is how people feel when every historical conflict is framed in terms of race. Rather than being persuasive, it triggers defensiveness. It is alienating those we hope to reach, and even worse, it is on the basis of someone's immutable characteristics, rather than on a choice they can change. A Democrat, embarrassed by the racist history of their party, can join another party, and absolve their guilt. A white person, embarrassed by the racist history of people they're not even related to, but who looked the same as they did, can't undergo trans-racial surgery to eliminate their whiteness. You may remember the phrase, "with great power comes great responsibility", from Spiderman. If we tell Republicans of Forsyth County that the systemic bias against them since 1912 is the primary reason for any of their outcomes, we take away any sense of power they have. And with no power, comes no responsibility. This is the critical problem we face - if we approach diversity, inclusion, and equity in a way that absolves individuals of responsibility, by casting them as victims with no power, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy that will leave them powerless in the future. There is a meme of three people trying to look over a fence, showing how things can be made equitable by giving an extra box, or a few extra boxes, for the shorter people to stand on. This seems to neatly capture the idea of how people start from different points, and offers a definition of equity that is quickly understandable. But this is too simplistic - it's not just where you start off, it's the effort you put in once you start. Someone who starts off with great privilege, and squanders it, will be much worse off than someone who starts off with no privilege, but continues to strive upwards towards success. Your economic class, or skin color, or sexual preference, or mental illness, may give you a worse starting point than someone else, but where you end up in life depends more on the direction you point, and the efforts you put in. The accidents of birth are not destiny, and if we don't teach our children the overwhelming importance of individual effort, we put them at a disadvantage in the real world. Thank you very much, and again, my offer for a talk over lunch to anyone who disagrees with me is still open.

Last month, I extended an invitation to all those who disagreed with me about DEI to have lunch with me, and talk about it. I'm grateful to report that someone actually took me up on my offer. The young man, Declan, was actually the son of one of the speakers last month - a math teacher, who praised the children who have spoken here in support of the DEI program, and who eloquently expressed his desire, to be a support for all the children he encounters in school, even though he's a straight white male. Now, I don't think our lunch changed anyone's mind, but I did learn a great deal about Declan's point of view. Declan was very concerned about bigotry, and was thoroughly convinced that conservative bigots that he had met throughout his life, were largely representative of all conservative thought. He was also an outspoken and dedicated marxist and communist, but thankfully was unwilling to condone the use of violence to impose his vision of utopia on the world. It struck me that Declan was incredibly sensitive to the many corruptions one can find in our systems, and truly believed that a properly constructed system of marxism and communism would eliminate the possibility of corruption. When the subject turned to capitalism, in what was probably the most ironic part of our conversation, Declan was surprisingly, incredibly supportive of Big Pharma, the epitome of capitalist corruption. He truly believed that it was impossible that any corners had been cut in bringing Trump's Operation "Warp Speed" for vaccines to reality. Where he was otherwise willing to be incredibly skeptical about capitalist systems and the corruption that can happen in them, he was absolutely positive that the systems of big pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, the CDC, and peer reviewed literature, could not possibly be corrupted. For any of you who have been touched by the opioid epidemic, and know anything about the big pharma corruption that created oxycontin, it can be difficult to imagine someone trusting Big Pharma so blindly. But more importantly than our discussions about politics or economics, I learned that Declan loved and admired his father, and refused to put him in the "straight white male" box when it came to diversity. Though he cited studies that suggested that people of color cannot perform as well as white people if they don't have teachers that look like them, he was adamant that people of color, taught by his father, would not suffer any disadvantage. When my father used to buy me and my brother a candy bar, he'd make one of us split it, and have the other one choose which half to take. It was a system of checks and balances that kept things fair. I'd like to suggest the same sort of check and balance system for our Diversity, Inclusion and Equity program - if we are going to promote something that is mostly a left-wing political point of view, let's put right-wing people in charge of its implementation. Make sure that the staff who are running the DEI program have impeccable conservative credentials, rather than social justice bona fides. Make sure that the DEI programs chosen are approved by conservative stakeholders, as well as liberal ones. There are anti-racist trainings out there that don't demonize white people, or insist our country, or schools, or white people are inherently racist. I look forward to working with the Board and the school district to bring true diversity, equity and inclusion into our institutions, focusing on individuals rather than groups. Thank you very much, and my offer for a talk over lunch to anyone who disagrees with me is still open.