Please reflect on the photo above. As my wife and I work through the Green Card process to get her here, I am drawn to this picture. Look at it. In Cuba. In Iran. In Venezuela. In Hong Kong. People marching and protesting for democracy, voting, freedom, and opportunity. Look at the symbol they used. Look at the one symbol worldwide that represents the things people in four places are protesting.

They are using us. Our example. Our freedoms. Our system. We, as Americans, represent the best of what the world has to offer. We stumble, we fall, and sometimes we fail miserably to live up to the expectation the world sees in us and we see in ourselves. We aren't perfect, though we do air our dirty laundry for the world to see.

"You cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy. You can only punish. And I warn you that a wicked law like Cholera destroys all it touches, it's upholders as well as its deniers.

Don't you see that if you take a law like CRT and make a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you make it a crime in the private schools. And then you can make it a crime to read about it. Then you may turn Catholic against Protestant. And Protestant against Protestant. And try to foist your own religion on the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do it all. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.

And soon, with banners flying and drums beating, we'll be marching backwards. . .BACKWARDS! To those glorious days of the 16th century when bigots burned the man who dared bring intelligence and enlightenment to the human mind!"

I figure you may fine the wording and syntax interesting and useful

So now it is illegal in Arizona to teach Critical Race Theory (another name for “The Truth, even if it Hurts”). I can see a classroom 50 years from now. Let's listen in to a conversation between a Teacher and a Student in the year 2071:

Student: Mr Jones, in the Constitution, Article 1, Section2, Paragraph 3 refers to “three fifths of all other persons”. Who were these “other persons”?

Teacher: That is a good question, but unfortunately Arizona law forbids me to answer it.

Student: The 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlaws slavery. It was ratified into law in 1865. Does that mean there was slavery in the United States before 1865? Who were the slaves?

Teacher: That is a good question, but unfortunately Arizona law forbids me to answer it.

Student: The 2nd clause of the 14th Amendment changed Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 by taking away the “three fifths of all other persons” clause. What happened to all those people?

Teacher: That is a good question, but unfortunately Arizona law forbids me to answer it.

Student: The first paragraph of the 15th Amendment says that people shall have the right to vote regardless of their race, color or previous condition of servitude. What did they mean by that?

Teacher: That is a good question, but unfortunately Arizona law forbids me to answer it.

Student: Why did the Southern States secede from the Union?

Teacher: That is a good question, but unfortunately Arizona law forbids me to answer it.

Student: Why was the Civil War fought?

Teacher: That is a good question. The North was fighting to preserve the Union, but unfortunately Arizona law forbids me to say why the South fought it.

Student: I read something about a massacre that took place right here in Arizona in 1871 outside a place called “Camp Grant”. Can you tell us about it?

Teacher: That is a good question, but unfortunately Arizona law forbids me to answer it.

And the list of topics the teacher is forbidden by law to teach about goes on and on and on and on.....

When Rydell Harrison started a new job as a school superintendent in southwestern Connecticut last August, he was excited to join a community that seemed committed to diversity and equity.

The Easton, Redding and Region 9 district, which covers two small, mostly white towns, had recently established a task force and allocated money to address the racial climate in schools. That decision was a response to the hundreds of students and recent alumni who wrote to school board members following George Floyd’s murder to describe racist incidents they’d experienced or witnessed at school. To Harrison, the task force was a sign that the community sat up and listened when young people advocated for change.

Things shifted, however, after the riot at the U.S. Capitol in January.