McAuliffe and the press pretended that because CRT isn’t taught in its most formal academic version, it’s not in the schools. So pronounced is this reluctance to debate honestly that Mr. How much easier it is to treat those who express doubts as bigots and racists than engage on the merits.
Which is why nearly 50 years later the issue is yet again before the Supreme Court.
Those justices never did what they purported to do-that is, settle the issue-when they substituted their own judgment and values for those of the American people. The Supreme Court in 1973 upended the laws of all 50 states to impose a one-size-fits-all standard on the flimsiest of constitutional authority. One casualty of this approach is the underlying process. Because rather than work through the democratic process, the left tends to wage its culture wars via the least representative and accountable institutions of society, from the Supreme Court, human-resources departments, and school boards to the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies sprouting up all over. But there’s another ingredient that makes them particularly incendiary. Not that the clash over values isn’t real. Biden’s ‘Yes’ to Racial Preferences December 13, 2021.An Ordinary Joe’s Christmas December 20, 2021.Biden’s Shrinking Presidency December 27, 2021 Biden’s Air-Traffic Controllers January 3, 2022.An Ugly Game of Race Preferences January 10, 2022.Youngkin, or an MSNBC commentator explaining that the election of Winsome Sears, an African-American woman, as lieutenant governor is somehow a victory for white supremacy. Youngkin’s “racist dog whistles,” the Lincoln Project’s sending phony white supremacists to smear Mr. So instead of honest political debate, we get what we saw in Virginia-Mr. Implicit in accusations of Republican culture wars is that some uncouth person, probably motivated by hate, is raising an issue that American liberals have deemed beyond discussion in polite society, whether it’s abortion, public-school curriculums, guns, crime or something else. McAuliffe made an issue when he affirmed it in a debate.
Reid’s seeing education as a proxy for white nationalism-another culture-war accusation-the great underlying issue isn’t just how race is taught in the state’s public schools but the contention that parents should have no say, which Mr. Youngkin focused on bread-and-butter issues such as eliminating a grocery tax. McAuliffe tried to launch a classic culture war about abortion, while Mr. The Virginia election followed the same pattern.