INDIANA SB 167 AND HB 1134

JANUARY 30, 2022

Eighteenth century Scottish writer and politician Andrew Fletcher wrote “...if a man were permitted to make all the ballads he need not care who should make the laws of a nation…” Mayer Amschel Rothschild is alleged to have similarly said “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.”
We may reprise this refrain with “let the white supremacists capture the schoolhouses of a people, and it makes no difference who writes their laws.” After an Indiana State Senator said that he wanted teachers to present Naziism in a neutral manner to students, Senate Bill 167 (the “Education Matters” bill) was voted down. Soon afterwards, Indiana House Bill 1134 was created. Both bills contain language banning teachers from introducing content into their lesson plans that would cause "discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual's sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin or political affiliation."
This language echoes Florida Senate Bill 148, introduced on January 11 of this year. It was later struck down in the Florida Senate, going back to the Florida House, but similar attempts are succeeding in other parts of the country. On or around Holocaust Remembrance Day, news breaks that on January 10th, the School Board of McMinn County, Tennessee voted to ban the Holocaust graphic novel “Maus” from its curriculum, citing violence, profanity, and brief nudity. 
In The Federalist Number 10, under the shared pseudonym “Publius,” James Madison wrote “Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests of the people.” If extremists are capturing the school boards so as to shape the minds of the next generation to remotely construe any form of social progress as their interpretation of “CRT,” and capturing federal court seats while attempting to hold or capture state and local legislatures, if not engage in state capture of the Treasury and Federal Reserve as Rothschild suggests above, how long until we see legislation reminiscent of the South African Internal Security Act of 1982? “Let men of factious tempers capture the courts of a people, and it makes no difference who writes their laws.”

THE GLOSS

  • Right-wing extremists are trying to rewrite history. SB 167 and HB 1134 in Indiana are recent attempts.

  • Similar moves are happening around the country. The Florida SB 148 failed, but the McMinn County School Board vote succeeded. There's a CRT tip line in Virginia. Fear-mongering around Critical Race Theory is a way to get people to vote for a far right-wing agenda.

  • Right-wingers are getting seats in local and state legislatures.  They are controlling state and federal courts. They are engaging in voter suppression, political corruption, and state capture. All are ways to keep power without serving the people.