Well, that didn’t take long.
During the 2022 midterms, the Democrats tried to downplay the issue of parental choice in education, which was successful for the Republicans during the 2021 elections in states like Virginia and New Jersey. Wokeness and indoctrination weren’t really issues, they said, and the GOP’s talk about “parental rights” was really an excuse to burn books and censor information.
Then, just one day after most people stopped voting in the midterms (save Georgia, of course), Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, put all of that to rest, calling parental rights “so stupid.”
Swalwell was responding to a quote from South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, a big winner on Tuesday. “We are putting parents back in charge of their kids’ education,” Scott said — a quote that was tweeted by Fox News.
The California Democrat was Not Happy™:
Please tell me what I’m missing here. What are we doing next? Putting patients in charge of their own surgeries? Clients in charge of their own trials? When did we stop trusting experts. This is so stupid. pic.twitter.com/VZRMZpp234
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) November 10, 2022
“Please tell me what I’m missing here,” Swalwell said.
“What are we doing next? Putting patients in charge of their own surgeries? Clients in charge of their own trials? When did we stop trusting experts. This is so stupid.”
Trust the experts! I thought we’d moved that tired bromide to the back of the room along with Dr. Anthony Fauci once the experts turned out to be very, very wrong on so many pandemic-era lockdown policies. I guess the message hasn’t reached the People’s Republic of California yet.
There are several assumptions in Swalwell’s tweet that are, to use his words, “so stupid” — or worse.
Why are we assuming teachers are the “experts,” at least on the educational issues that have become contentious?
Nobody is questioning whether teachers should be able to instruct children in math, science and English, or anything of that sort. Instead, the controversy arises when it comes to teachers who push elements of the leftist agenda on their charges. If the “experts” say your 7-year-old boy is actually a girl, I think parents are acting prudently in refusing to extend their trust.
Furthermore, it’s interesting to note the metaphors Swalwell uses here. Parents are sick patients who need to be cured by educational doctors on the surgical table, or clients in a courtroom who need to be adjudged by educators. If Swalwell wanted to show parents just how much contempt Democrats and leftist educators have for them, he could have hardly done better than comparing them to the seriously ill or to criminal defendants.
Twitter users responded accordingly:
delete your account.
— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) November 10, 2022
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) November 10, 2022
This is what they think of you. https://t.co/vGtne5JXlK
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) November 10, 2022
Brilliant. You actually made our point.
We don’t want to go to a government picked doctor if she or he isn’t the best for our surgery. It’s why Canadians often come to the US for surgeries.
You made an argument for parental school choice and against socialized medicine. https://t.co/1fMh2sqihS
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) November 10, 2022
And, as the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro pointed out, Swalwell’s analogy missed an important point: Both patients and litigants have the freedom to choose whether they go under the knife or who represents them in court.
Patients must consent to their own surgeries. Clients must consent to their legal representation. https://t.co/cn5iLAJDFf
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 10, 2022
And, as former ambassador Richard Grenell noted, if one were to view this through the lens of wokeness, there was an unseemly racial element to it:
Straight white guy from the Bay Area calls Black Senator “so stupid”. https://t.co/2GbB1GsG3R
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) November 10, 2022
And then there were those who noted that Swalwell still sits on the House Intelligence Committee, giving him access to sensitive information despite the fact he allegedly, um, has given America reasons to think he isn’t exactly the most fit person when it comes to keeping secrets safe:
WARNING: The following tweet contains vulgar language that some readers will find offensive.
I agree Eric. If you give someone without credentials power, they might screw a Chinese spy.
— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) November 10, 2022
I’m sure that, back home in China, Christine Fang is having another good smirk at her purported paramour’s latest misadventure.
Regardless of what he may or may not have done with a Chinese spy, I do hope Eric Swalwell doesn’t get chased from office any time in the near future. Few liberal politicians, after all, have his tendency to say the quiet part out loud. At least he kept it in his mouth during the campaign, but now that he’s freed of the responsibility to pretend he’s a moderate, he’s letting everyone in on exactly what the Democrats think about your rights as a parent.
To them, your child is community property — provided, of course, that community is run by good leftist educators, the kind that might show up on Libs of TikTok after making an ill-advised social media post.
As the wokerati might say: We see you, Eric. We see you, Democrats. We know this is who you are, and we will hold you accountable.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.