Garland Chills Parental Speech

Garland acted with reckless haste to implement the anti-parent agenda demanded by the National School Board Association (NSBA). Without any investigation to establish the validity of NSBA’s claims, he accepted them as valid and issued an immediate order. Garland did so on October 4 just five days after the NSBA insisted that Biden have DOJ and the FBI act against parents protesting Critical Race Theory and mask mandates.

The NSBA letter to Biden asks for parents to be treated like domestic terrorists and be investigated by DOJ and the FBI. In his October 4 memorandum, Garland responded by ordering the DOJ and FBI to coordinate with local law enforcement in all 14,000 public school districts. He ordered DOJ to employ “authority and resources” to identify parents who make “threats” against “school administrators, board members, teachers and staff” and prosecute them “when appropriate.” He thereby marched in near perfect lock step with the substantive demands of the NSBA.

While Garland’s memo recites, superficially, that parents have First Amendment rights to protest, Garland declares parents unprotected if they make “threats” and “intimidate individuals based on their views.” But one person’s “threat” or viewpoint “intimidation” is another person’s strident political protest, and Garland draws no distinctions to guide law enforcement; he purposefully does not limit legal action to criminal assault and battery. Rather, he leaves the “threat” and viewpoint “intimidation” undefined and thus open to investigator and prosecutor interpretation, which in matters of speech predictably leads to actions that chill and censor protected speech.

NSBA’s conclusory assertions of injury come with no proof, yet, in a manner reminiscent of initiation of the Russia probe against President Trump, DOJ proceeds undaunted, with zeal. Neither the NSBA nor Garland offer a single instance of criminal conduct as a basis for action. Neither the NSBA nor Garland recite any legal justification for federal government interference with local law enforcement’s handling of school related matters. Neither the NSBA nor Garland give reasons for Garland’s extraordinary resort to the FBI, the Criminal Division of the DOJ, and the US Attorneys in what is a blatant political dispute--a classic voter exercise of the First Amendment checking power against state-sponsored abuses of children.

Moreover, despite ordering the FBI, DOJ, and US Attorneys to devise a plan to counter the alleged, but unproven, parental “intimidation” and “threats,” Garland does nothing to warn authorities against actions that chill parental speech rights and peaceful protests. That failure is a dereliction of duty because it invites foreseeable abuses. In this way, Attorney General Garland is effectively countenancing a federal campaign against free speech and peaceful protest. The First Amendment significance of the obvious chilling effect stemming from his unrestrained order must have occurred to Garland who, after all, served for 24 years on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and handled many First Amendment cases involving government actions that chilled speech.

Having ordered federal authorities to move against parents, Garland presumes without explanation that arguments against CRT and masking by parents lack legitimacy. He apparently considers those arguments condemnable sub silentio, because he does not clarify in his memo any that he would protect. For its part, the NSBA disingenuously denies that CRT is present in schools, contrary to direct evidence from across the country.

Garland’s memo predictably casts a pall of censorship over protected parental speech. That appears to be the plain purpose of his federal initiative. He is abusing the authority of his office, employing it as an instrument of censorship—a patently unconstitutional enterprise.

Garland’s insistence on full DOJ authority against what is a phantom, the fiction of widespread parent assaults on educators and school administrators, is in stark contrast to his utter refusal to arrest and prosecute actual violence by BLM and Antifa activists across state lines against private property, government property, and innocent people. In the BLM/Antifa violence context Garland views the matter as a local policing issue, despite overwhelming proof of interstate coordination of violent criminal acts. Once again the indispensable foundation of just governance, equal justice under law, has given way to the woke politics of the Biden administration wherein harsh “justice” is reserved for the politically disfavored and lenient “justice” is dispensed to the politically preferred.

Sorry, it was Wilson, not Roosevelt.

From Wikipedia:

Presidency of Woodrow Wilson

Propaganda

On April, 2nd 1917 the US Congress declared war on Germany. President Wilson was determined to rouse the public.

Wilson established the first modern propaganda office, the Committee on Public Information (CPI), headed by George Creel.[2][3] Creel set out to systematically reach every person in the United States multiple times with patriotic information about how the individual could contribute to the war effort. It also worked with the post office to censor seditious counter-propaganda. Creel set up divisions in his new agency to produce and distribute innumerable copies of pamphlets, newspaper releases, magazine advertisements, films, school campaigns, and the speeches of the Four Minute Men. CPI created colorful posters that appeared in every store window, catching the attention of the passersby for a few seconds.[4] Movie theaters were widely attended, and the CPI trained thousands of volunteer speakers to make patriotic appeals during the four-minute breaks needed to change reels. They also spoke at churches, lodges, fraternal organizations, labor unions, and even logging camps.

Douglas Fairbanks delivering a speech in support of the 3rd Liberty Loan
CPI Director George Creel boasted that in 18 months his 75,000 volunteers delivered over 7.5 million four minute orations to over 300 million listeners, in a nation of 103 million people. The speakers attended training sessions through local universities, and were given pamphlets and speaking tips on a wide variety of topics, such as buying Liberty Bonds, registering for the draft, rationing food, recruiting unskilled workers for munitions jobs, and supporting Red Cross programs. Ethnic groups were reached in their own languages.[5] [6]

Purpose

With many millions of German Americans in the United States, as well as Irish Americans and Scandinavian Americans and poor rural Southerners, with strong isolationist feelings, there was a strong need for a propaganda campaign to stir support for the war. This effort had many unique challenges to meet to address the existing political climate. Wilson needed to speak directly to the fragmented and spread out audience in the United States. He had to address the country’s self-perception to generate support for the war. The Four-Minute Men provided an answer to these challenges.[7]

In addition, the Four Minute Men urged citizens to purchase Liberty Bonds and Thrift Stamps.[8][9][10]

Addressing challengs

The Four Minute Men idea became a useful tool in the propaganda campaign because it addressed a specific rhetorical situation. One of the challenges of the effort was the fragmented audience of the United States. Many different heritages were represented in the United States, and the president needed their support for the war. To address each groups specific needs, the director of the Four Minute Men, William McCormick Blair, delegated the duty of speaking to local men. Well known and respected community figures often volunteered for the Four Minute Men program. This gave the speeches a local voice. Also, the four minute men were given general topics and talking points to follow and rotated between theaters to help the speeches seem fresh, instead of generic propaganda speeches.

These speeches usually celebrated Woodrow Wilson as a larger than life character and the Germans as less-than-human huns. [11]

Organization

The four minute men was a division of the Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel. The Committee on Public Information appointed William McCormick Blair as director of the Four Minute Men. Blair appointed state chairmen of the Four Minute Men, who then would appoint a city or community chairman. Each of these appointments needed to be approved in Washington. The local chairman would then appoint a number of speakers to cover the theaters in the city or community for which he is responsible.

Notable Four Minute Men

Augustus Post, automotive pioneer, founder of American Automobile Association, champion balloonist and early aviator
Lambert Estes Gwinn, Four Minute Man from Covington, Tennessee
Benjamin Newhall Johnson, Four Minute Man from Lynn, Massachusetts
Albert Dutton MacDade, Pennsylvania State Senator and Judge Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas (Delaware County)
Otto J. Zahn, a Southern California Four Minute Man
Charles Chaplin, a famous comedian
Douglas Fairbanks[12]
Mary Pickford[12]
William S. Hart[12]
Ellwood J. Turner, Pennsylvania State Representative from Delaware County (1925-1948), 119th Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (1939-1941)
DeForest H. Perkins, School Superintendent and future Grand Dragon of the Maine Ku Klux Klan

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