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Disgraced former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, fired in 2005 for intentionally airing false documents about George W. Bush’s Vietnam War–era service in the Texas National Guard, remains an irrelevant, desperate-for-attention hack, regularly taking shameless cheap shots at GOP political figures on Twitter.
One of Rather’s favorite targets is potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, which is precisely why the desperate Rather remains obsessed with the popular Republican.
As I reported in September, Rather earlier went after DeSantis after the governor shipped 50 illegal aliens to the Democrat enclave of Martha’s Vineyard. Within 24 hours, the illegals were unceremoniously shipped off the island. Yet, as deadly Hurricane Ian approached Florida’s shores, Rather took to Twitter to trumpet the virtue of Joe Biden’s federal government in contrast to the “stunt” pulled by DeSantis.
When the hurricane hits Florida, federal aid will flow into help — paid for by tax dollars from Americans across the country. Airplanes will be full of supplies, not stunts. There will be no “us” and “them.” Because this is how America should act, and most Americans know it.
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) September 28, 2022
And on Wednesday, Rather took a cheap shot at DeSantis over the governor’s new education proposal.
The DeSantis playbook on race and education is just an updated edition of what I saw in the South in the 1960s.
Race-bait, much?
The DeSantis playbook on race and education is just an updated edition of what I saw in the South in the 1960s.
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) February 1, 2023
Let’s compare DeSantis’s actual “race and education playbook” with Rather’s smear, and see who wins.
As reported by my colleague Streiff, DeSantis on Tuesday unveiled a Higher Education Reform proposal to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DEI) initiatives from Florida’s public universities.
In a press conference at the State College of Florida in Bradenton — one of 28 Florida college and university signatories to a letter in which they agreed to end all discriminatory DEI and CRT initiatives by the following day (Wednesday, February 1, 2023) — DeSantis blasted the state of public education today in America, including CRT and DEI indoctrination. The letter read, in part:
Historically, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives served to increase diversity of thought as well as the enrollment and the success of underrepresented populations and promote the open-access mission of our state college system.
The presidents of the Florida College System (FCS) also understand that some initiatives and instruction in higher education under the same title have come to mean and accomplish the very opposite and seek to push ideologies such as critical race theory and its related tenets.
In a statement posted to flgov.com, under the headline Governor DeSantis Elevates Civil Discourse and Intellectual Freedom in Higher Education, the governor was quoted thusly:
In Florida, we will build off of our higher education reforms by aligning core curriculum to the values of liberty and the Western tradition, eliminating politicized bureaucracies like DEI, increasing the amount of research dollars for programs that will feed key industries with talented Florida students, and empowering presidents and boards of trustees to recruit and hire new faculty, including by dedicating record resources for faculty salaries.
Anyway, here’s Critical Race Theory, in part:
- believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction and therefore has its advocates look for it everywhere
- relies upon “interest convergence” (white people only give black people opportunities and freedoms when it is also in their own interests) and therefore doesn’t trust any attempt to make racism better)
- is against free societies and wants to dismantle them and replace them with something its advocates control
- only treats race issues as “socially constructed groups,” so there are no individuals in Critical Race Theory
- believes science, reason, and evidence are a “white” way of knowing and that storytelling and lived experience are a “black” alternative, which hurts everyone, especially black people
- rejects all potential alternatives, like colorblindness, as forms of racism, making itself the only allowable game in town (which is totalitarian)
- acts like anyone who disagrees with it must do so for racist and white supremacist reasons; even if those people are black (which is also totalitarian)
- cannot be satisfied, so it becomes a kind of activist black hole that threatens to destroy everything it is introduced into
And what of DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusiveness “training”? In a February 14, 2022, op-ed, senior commentary writer and editor for the Washington Examiner Quin Hilyer wrote:
Read Related Also: 2 students dead, one employee injured in gang-related shooting in Des Moines
Anti-racism training has subsumed corporate America. Nearly all Fortune 500 companies employ some kind of program promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), which has bloated to a billion-dollar industry.
The only problem? Studies show these programs don’t work. DEI curricula can be incredibly divisive — from Coca-Cola training workers to be “less white” to schools separating students by race. In mainstream academia, the very idea of “whiteness” has been demonized as a problem that must be fixed.
And in a February 11, 2022, Wall Street Journal op-ed, the authors wrote:
DEI experts urge schools to classify people by identities such as race, convince them that they are being harmed by their environment, and turn them into fervent advocates for institutional change. DEI practitioners use segregated affinity groups and practices such as healing circles to inculcate feelings of trauma. The NAIS workshops go to such absurd lengths that if schools fail to “explore the intersection” between science-and-technology teaching and “social justice,” that failure is portrayed as an act of “curriculum violence.” Whatever that means.
Yet, none of that is as horrible as what the writers summarize here: “Perfectionism, punctuality, urgency, niceness, worship of the written word, progress, objectivity, rigor, individualism, capitalism, and [small ‘l’] liberalism are some of the characteristics of white-supremacy culture in need of elimination.”
Read that again. It is astonishing. In any sane world, almost every one of those attributes is a virtue. Yes, punctuality, niceness, and objectivity are prized character attributes. Yet, the NAIS ideologues are saying that it is unnatural and thus harmful for blacks or other minorities to be punctual, nice, objective, and adept with the written word.
So, I have a few questions for Rather and other like-minded race-baiters.
Do the facts above come anywhere near the “playbook of the 1960s South”?
Do you believe math, science, and technology education should be exact, or should it be laced with the cancer of so-called “social justice”?
Do you believe STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education should be taught from an “equity” position, or from the perspective of worldwide standards of expertise?
Do you believe any of the tripe you tweeted?
Mr. Rather, the Democrat Party, the no longer-hallowed halls of academia, and the left-wing media sock puppets can’t answer the above questions with honesty and integrity because to do so would rip to shreds their six decades of lying to black America about the evils of equality (vs. “equity), liberty, justice, and freedom, for all.
My colleague Robert Hahn’s response to Rather was representative of the beatdown his silly tweet received:
Who would trust anything you said? You’re the only person I ever heard of that had a former CEO of the Associated Press and a former Director of the FBI investigate you and certify that you are a liar.
Bingo, Dano-O. Delete your silly account and at least try to become a decent American in the years you have left.
Who would trust anything you said? You’re the only person I ever heard of that had a former CEO of the Associated Press and a former Director of the FBI investigate you and certify that you are a liar.
— Robert A. Hahn (@Robert_A_Hahn) February 2, 2023
The courage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to stand in breach against the left’s twin poisons of CRT and DEI indoctrination serve as ample truth to these people that DeSantis and others like him must be discredited, ignored, or destroyed.
