{"id":1310245,"date":"2019-05-13T21:08:01","date_gmt":"2019-05-14T03:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/capitol-review-column-teaching-intersectionality-poisons-americas-future\/"},"modified":"2019-05-13T21:08:01","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T03:08:01","slug":"capitol-review-column-teaching-intersectionality-poisons-americas-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/capitol-review-column-teaching-intersectionality-poisons-americas-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol Review column: Teaching \u2018intersectionality\u2019 poisons America\u2019s future"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mark Hillman<\/strong>
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For the first time in history, legislators are writing the progressive doctrine of \u201cintersectionality\u201d into Colorado law. They want our schools to teach that the groups we belong to \u2014 our race, sexuality and religion \u2014 are more important than our shared achievements, our character and the way we treat each other.<\/p>\n

House Bill 1192 mandates that history lessons in Colorado public schools include the \u201csocial contributions\u201d of a people who are identified with certain ethnic and sexual minorities. Then it specifically requires teaching \u201cthe intersectionality of social and cultural features within these communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re asking, \u201cWhat the heck does that mean?\u201d, then you\u2019re probably busy raising a family, running a business and enjoying life. That is, you\u2019re not a \u201cprogressive\u201d with a chip on your shoulder.<\/p>\n

For progressives, intersectionality is foundational to their doctrine of victimhood \u2014 the belief that society is divided between oppressors and the oppressed and that the deck is hopelessly stacked against all but a lucky few.<\/p>\n

To progressives, the American dream is a fool\u2019s errand.<\/p>\n

Intersectionality teaches people to maximize their grievances against the oppressor class, which consists predominantly of people who look like America\u2019s Founding Fathers.<\/p>\n

The more grievances a person can claim (gender, race, class, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity), the more preferential treatment they theoretically deserve, usually at the expense of the \u201coppressors.\u201d<\/p>\n

To progressives, \u201cequality under the law\u201d is unfair because \u201cneutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Intersectionality stands in direct opposition to America\u2019s motto, E pluribus unum, translated \u201cOut of many, one.\u201d Though our ancestors\u2019 heritages were diverse, as Americans we have unity. Become an American and you have the same rights under law as the most powerful or wealthy. In other countries, an immigrant always remains an outsider.<\/p>\n

Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., an advisor to President Kennedy, wrote, \u201cThe unstated national motto was: Never look back.\u201d<\/p>\n

By contrast, intersectionality is a pernicious doctrine of score-settling that borrows heavily from Marxism, pitting \u201cus\u201d against \u201cthem\u201d as if one person\u2019s success comes only at the expense of someone else. That is fundamentally un-American.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor most of the history of the United States, social justice was focused on ensuring that minorities were able to achieve the American dream,\u201d writes Noah Rothman in \u201cUnjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.\u201d Then a \u201ctoxic idea sank in\u201d and activists \u201cwent from fighting for the American dream to determining that it was unattainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time that politicians have tried to use identity politics for their advantage. However, not that long ago traditional liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans agreed that doing so was injecting a cancer into the American bloodstream.<\/p>\n

Former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm warned that a key to destroying America is to \u201cstart a grievance industry\u201d and to \u201cget all minorities to think their lack of success was all the fault of the majority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now progressives want to divide us by enlisting the public schools that once unified us.<\/p>\n

In his farewell address, Ronald Reagan described being taught \u201cwhat it means to be an American. We absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country.\u201d He added, \u201cYou could get a sense of patriotism from school.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur public schools have been the great instrument of assimilation and the great means of forming an American identity,\u201d wrote Schlesinger. \u201cWhat students are taught in schools affects the way they will thereafter see and treat other Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Frederick Douglass, who grew up a slave, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledged a debt of gratitude to our Founding Fathers \u2014 not for creating a perfect country but for creating one in which all citizens have the inalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.<\/p>\n

Our schools should cultivate unity, cooperation and patriotism. Using them to stoke envy, division and recrimination is poisoning our children\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Mark Hillman served as Senate Majority Leader and State Treasurer. He serves on his local board of education. To read more or comment, go to http:\/\/www.MarkHillman.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Hillman For the first time in history, legislators are writing the progressive doctrine of \u201cintersectionality\u201d into Colorado law. They want our schools to teach that the groups we belong to \u2014 our race, sexuality and religion \u2014 are more important than our shared achievements, our character and the way we treat each other. House […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1310245","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 08:35:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}