The main instrument of fascism is fear. A case in point is the ruling passed by the Florida School Board just this past Wednesday, April 19, 2023:<\/p>\n
Schools \u201cShall not intentionally provide classroom instruction to students in grades 4 through 12 on spiritual beliefs or religious affiliation, unless such instruction is expressly required by state academic standards.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Presumably the purpose of this ruling was to avoid having a topic as hotly contested and as potentially divisive as religion enter the minds of impressionable teenagers.<\/p>\n
Yet think of the actual consequences. Any 18 year old high school senior with religious beliefs is now a potential danger, because even acknowledging that such a student exists<\/i> might get a teacher fired.<\/p>\n
Think about it. A young person’s very existence<\/i> — something they have no way to avoid, short of suicide — has been officially declared to be toxic.<\/p>\n
Hmm, what does that remind me of … wait, I almost have it. Oh right — laws about Jews in Germany in the 1930s.<\/p>\n
I may have gotten one or two details wrong in the wording of the ruling. But I am confident that I have precisely captured its exuberantly fascist essence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The main instrument of fascism is fear. A case in point is the ruling passed by the Florida School Board just this past Wednesday, April 19, 2023: Schools \u201cShall not intentionally provide classroom instruction to students in grades 4 through 12 on spiritual beliefs or religious affiliation, unless such instruction is expressly required by state … Continue reading “Exuberantly fascist”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25390"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25391,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25390\/revisions\/25391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}