Landry orders advance key preferences -- slightly

Overplay of two stories that otherwise should barely register reflected some panic in Louisiana’s leftist media this week, both a consequence of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry executive orders.

JML 24-136 found headlines first. It requires all state government agencies that provide voter registration forms to include a written disclaimer that noncitizens are prohibited from registering to vote or voting. While helpful, particularly as a reminder for illegal aliens whose grasp of English in other forums may not allowed the point to be made as clearly, state agencies already have orders to crosscheck information and send that to the Secretary of State for voter roll scrubbing. The only thing it really added otherwise is reinforcement that the Office of Motor Vehicles should send noncitizen license or identification holder information to State.

This tiny advancement was too much for some leftists, who fulminated that voting by noncitizens wasn’t an appreciable problem. Of course, this deflects from the two central points confirming why extreme vigilance is necessary to prevent noncitizens registration and voting. First, verified fraud from this source likely is just the tip of the iceberg but is difficult to ascertain precisely because successful operations successfully hide the extent of their fraud. Secondly, voting integrity is so fundamental to American democracy and its ability to create superior public policy that even one illegal vote soils its operation and must be prevented even at great cost.

Yet this Landry mandate, reported first, came two weeks after a more extensive one that seemed to catch all media unaware. In fact, Landry had to issue a press release the day after authoring JML 24-136 about JML 24-132 to get any of them to notice. The latter instructs Superintendent Cade Brumley to continue scouring for “rules, bulletins, regulations, contracts, and policies” that convey endorsement that:

1. An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously
2. An individual's moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex
3. An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex
4. Meritocracy or traits such as a strong work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race or sex to oppress another race or sex
5. Encourage students to discriminate against someone based on the individual's color, creed, race, ethnicity, sex, age, marital status, familial status, disability, religion, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law

Collectively, these ideas comprise or implement tenets of what is called “Critical Race Theory,” an offshoot of a larger tumor within the academy called Critical Theory. This half-baked, intellectually impaired, and evidence-free theory picks a bogeyman and then alleges all economic, social, and political (in its most theoretical form, communism, these all intertwined) relations are explained by the presence of these oppressors and oppressed. CRT, as the name implies, does so by race, assigning oppressiveness to whites and victimhood to other racial minorities in Western countries, whether acknowledged or understood by those involved.

Over this issue when met with corrective measures, leftists have another deflection strategy: the fatuous diversion that CRT isn’t being taught in elementary and secondary classrooms. Of course it isn’t as a theoretical concept, where its subject matter typically is explored (often neglecting to include any critical analysis of it) in college classrooms. But it is being taught foundationally, as in math would be akin to the use of a base ten numbering system and geometric proofs, as a lens by which to present the arts and social sciences (perhaps the most famous recent example, which also serves as an excellent example of its CRT’s flawed paradigm, is in American history with the “1619 Project” where schools across the country were encouraged to, and some did, take it up).

Then there’s the left’s straw man argument, that instituting these standards will prevent teaching things like slavery’s place in history, a line of attack can’t be made without an accompanying laugh track and only proves whoever says that did not or did not want to read JM 24-132. Nor Act 326 of 2024, which put into place an abbreviated version these standards in the state’s Parents’ Bill of Rights for Public Schools.

That placement brings much more value added. Brumley will have a lot of reading ahead of him but likely won’t find much (although he did help to cut off at the pass a related attempt a few years ago) about which to object as he and BESE have been pretty alert to CRT sneaking into policy. However, he and anybody at the state level will have a hard time detecting what goes on in individual classrooms where CRT may be taught foundationally, despite the order’s ambit forcing local education agencies to cooperate with him.

This is where the new addition to the Bill of Rights comes in handy (which, like JM 24-132, the left hardly noticed). There may be some teacher out there either who has inadequate brainpower to see the fallacies of CRT-fueled instructional material or who wishes to indoctrinate rather than educate by foisting instruction through the CRT lens which in all likelihood will fly under the radar of education authorities. But parents can encourage their children to notify them if a teacher veers off in material in a manner contrary to the law – besides, of course, through that lens intellectually shortchanging children – and force corrective action. This supplementation of the Bill of Rights represented much more progress than what the contents of the order can offer.

Despite that these orders don’t provide much more in the way of tools to combat a pair of serious concerns, if nothing else they aggravate the left and give the wider public another chance to witness leftism’s impoverished discourse.