“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” (Kevin D. Roberts "A Promise to America" Forward to Mandate for Leadership 2025)
So states The Heritage Foundation's leader, Kevin D. Roberts, in the forward to what has become widely known as "Project 2025." This 900 page playbook for remaking the United States Government into a top to bottom (from political president to lackey "civil" servant) machine of repression is a plan that targets everyone who does not fit their definition of a "conservative" American (read white, male, cisgender, and extreme Christian). Project 2025 is not a conservative plan, as Roberts would have you believe. True conservatives, the likes of which are quickly fading from the public arena (such as Mitt Romney, the late John McCain, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger), would most likely have serious issues with a project such as this. There are many issues that the aforementioned conservatives and vast majorities of Americans would and do have with Project 2025, ranging from the above policy designed to erase entire minority and under served populations from the national conversation to the plan to replace non-political civil servants who maintain the operation of the government at its most important functional levels with party loyalists. Most civil servants who work in the USPS, NASA, the EPA, and the USAID, are non-party affiliated appointees and employees. Their goal is not to forward a party agenda, but to maintain services to the people of The United States regardless of their party affiliation or lack thereof. Replacing them with party loyalists would be a disaster for not only the departments themselves, but The United States in general. While this is a dangerous proposition, the policy of the erasure of language that delineates minority or protected status from "every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists" is tantamount to the intellectual, factual, and rational deletion of entire swaths of American citizens who have the same rights and protections under The Constitution as any majority population of American citizens. This is a dangerous and indeed immoral, unethical, and plainly stated, evil goal.
First, we must address the assertion that the inclusion of the terms "sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights" in any government or legislative language or laws deprives any citizens of their "first amendment rights." This assertion is frankly asinine. The First Amendment establishes the freedom of religion (by forbidding the state establishment of religion or prohibiting the free expression thereof), speech, press, assembly, and petition. Acknowledging that minority groups, such as those referred to with the terms listed above, have rights and protections is simply a reinforcement of the First Amendment by allowing such groups the freedom of expression through a recognition of their very existence as citizens of The United States. Quite simply, the removal of the terms that are so threatening to The Heritage Foundation is tantamount to the removal of such populations from the protection, nay the very existence, of, and in the eyes of, the federal government. One only has to consider that in the original language of The Constitution, African-American slaves are not defined or listed, but instead referred to as "other persons." These "other persons" are not identified as a group therefore glossing over their very existence by vaguely referring to them, leaving them unidentified and therefore dismissible. By regressively erasing the acknowledgement of under served minority and oppressed groups The Heritage Foundation would have the entire history of achievements won from the struggle for equality (which is a defining characteristic of the American Experience) from not only the laws and by laws of the nation, but from its very history. Perhaps most famously and recognizably, for Christians, this act should be seen as hypocritical and antithetical since the most vile evils of their history, such as Pharaoh in The Old Testament, resorted to such tactics (the striking of the name Moses from all official governmental buildings and records of Ancient Egypt). Pharaoh essentially attempted to wipe Moses from the political, historical, and administrative life of the state by removing language, his very name, that defined him. Removing all references to gender, sexual orientation, and reproductive health and rights, all of these topics are rendered extinct, and outside the definition of the law, thusly rendering the populations they describe extinct (in the eyes of the state) as well. This attempt to remove language that identifies minority and (with consideration to reproductive rights) female Americans who exercise reproductive rights (such as birth control) is tantamount to a cleansing of the citizenry of those deemed unworthy by those behind The Heritage Foundation and their supporters. Also, by erasing a population from recognized status, especially a minority or "undesired" population by those in power, the physical elimination of said populations becomes more palatable.
By erasing entire populations from existence through a lack of defining language, entire swaths of the historical context of the country are erased as well. This pertains directly to the teaching of said history and the efforts of members aligned with The Heritage Foundation to erase American history and its previous sins from the curriculum of American schools. Sins that have been, and are still in the process, of being repented for. The United States has come a long way in its racial, social, and moral outlook. We have learned to tolerate, and indeed celebrate, differences of religion, political ideology, race, and now gender identity and sexual orientation for the most part. Erasing where we have been as a country ensures that the lesser devils of our frailties will once again whisper destruction in our ears and give rise to the baser instincts and prejudices that we have fought so hard to overcome. The guardians of our future, our public school teachers, are and will continue to be under assault for teaching the harsh truths of American history along with the noble progressive achievements of American history. This is happening in classrooms, school buildings, and districts across the country. Outlawing language that defines minority and under served communities weaponizes a radical right government to prosecute, incarcerate, and effectively erase American educational standards and those who deliver them to the students: America's teachers.
The famous quote, "When the last person dies who remembers the last great war the next great war becomes inevitable" is often banded about and has become cliched in some circles. It is the absolute truth though. If minority and under served populations are erased from the consciousness of the government, "stricken from every book and tablet, from all pylons and obelisks...erased from the memory of men for all time," then the dehumanization and extermination of the next "undesirable" population becomes inevitable. This is just one danger of Project 2025.
No comments:
Post a Comment