GOP Chairwoman Explains No Confidence Vote in Lawmakers Due to Common Core
Editor's note: The following open letter from Janet Reabe, chairwoman of the Green Lake County Republicans in Wisconsin, explains why their sixth district GOP caucus recently gave a vote of "no confidence" in the state's Republican lawmakers who chair the state Senate and Assembly education committees. The vote condemned the lawmakers' refusal to support legislation rejecting Common Core national testing and curriculum mandates.
Calling the 6th District resolution of no support for Luther Olsen (and Steve Kestell) a joke fit for the newspaper’s comic section is to employ that well used Alinskyite tactic of the Left—ridicule and sarcasm.
Standing on principle is not a joke. Standing for preserving and protecting our rights and freedoms, standing up for our US Constitution, is not comic relief. Holding an elected representative accountable to his/her constituents and responsibilities, and to the values of his/her party, is not funny.
Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Green Bay) has insistently and stubbornly defended his position on Common Core curriculum, and other policy issues such as the ethanol mandate, that are more in line with positions of our political opponents. Why? What does it mean to be an elected Republican representative on monumental issues like this?
Do our elected representatives pursue policies which honor and respect the authority and protections of the US Constitution? And what does it mean for US as leaders in the Republican Party if we do not have the courage of our convictions to confront our elected officials WHO REPRESENT US, when their official actions do NOT represent us?
Cancer vs. Common Cold
The Ripon paper thinks this is all about proportion, and whether or not it’s justified to criticize him on this one issue when Olsen has been on board with other Republican issues a fair percentage of the time. That’s reducing the education conflict to the level of importance of such things as funding for building a highway or creating another park, sort of like equating the seriousness of lung cancer to the same level of concern as the common cold.
Some arguments and disagreements transcend the ordinary, and CC does that. Olsen constantly contends that It’s all about high standards, and why would anyone be against raising standards in education? No one is, but those of us who oppose CC recognize it as a Trojan horse to accomplish FAR MORE to change our country’s educational system, and every element of that effort causes us great fear and concern. CC is a serious, transcendent issue which far surpasses most others in impact and importance.
There are 3 main efforts afoot in our country today to gain control of our people—to change our thinking and attitudes, change our decision making, change our values, change the principles on which we stand, and change our resultant behavior, how we vote, how we raise our families. Those efforts are--the environmental movement (based on totally fake and corrupt “science”), education, and health care. Look at where we are in our country right now! Have the above 3 movements brought about “fundamental change” yet?
All tyrants thruout history recognized that in order to control the people under them, if they could control what the children are taught, they would be able to control the direction of their country for years to come. Experts who have thoroly studied CC are exposing and telling us where it’s values come from, what they are, and what CC hopes to accomplish. As a mom, grandma, and former teacher, I DON’T WANT THAT FOR MY GRANDKIDS AND FOR THE KIDS OF OUR COUNTRY!
CC places GREAT EMPHASIS on teaching VALUES! It places GREAT EMPHASIS on children becoming WORLD CITIZENS. It places GREAT EMPHASIS on EQUATING our culture with ALL OTHER CULTURES of the world, regardless of their values and human rights track records! An HONEST historical assessment of all cultures makes very clear that it is the JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ethic which values the rights, freedom and self-determination of the individual, which honors the role and dignity of women, which protects children, which created the most fair system of laws in the history of the world (the US Constitution). But CC materials actively work to diminish our past, where we come from, why we’re here, the great contributions of our Founders. In other words, traditional American values that we hold dear are being replaced with something else!
All the documented arguments about our concerns are available from other sources in other places (such as Dr. Duke Pesta, Dr. Sandra Stotsky, among others, also Karen Schroeder and Advocates for Academic Freedom), which refute the distortions and lies that pro-CC people have put out there. My point is, there are VERY SERIOUS CONCERNS about FORCING this on our school districts. THIS IS A MONSTER—LIKE OBAMACARE FOR EDUCATION!!! It is an enormous violation of the US Constitution for the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO FORCE LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICTS in what they must teach, using grant money and test content as the bribe/hammer. Wisconsin holds sacred parental/local control of what children are taught in school, and protects that in law. CC destroys that.
Not the Fringe
Calling the 6th District resolution a joke also diminishes those people who did everything right to voice their disagreement—only to be slapped down by Olsen (and Kestell) and/or his office one way or another—some of them waiting for hours to speak at the last hearing while the educrats who were bussed in were given preferential treatment. The people relating their experiences at the caucus were not “fringe” people. They were people who have been active Republicans for years—I’ve seen most of them at meetings and conferences repeatedly over the years! They followed the rules! AND THEY WERE IGNORED!!!
Our Declaration of Independence states that governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED—THAT WHENEVER ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT BECOMES DESTRUCTIVE OF THESE ENDS, IT IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR ABOLISH IT!
There has been a long, slow 100 plus year effort, often operating below the surface, to destroy what our Founders established. It’s not a joke! IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES TODAY, IT’S REAL, IT’S DANGEROUS, AND IT CALLS FOR ACTION—FROM US! Our government, at every level, is allowed to exist because WE ALLOW IT!
Our elected representatives are elected TO REPRESENT US, NOT TO RULE! So we need to take action to get their attention, to hold them accountable, to drag them back to the Constitution and it’s PROTECTION OF OUR RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS! The Constitution does NOT empower gov’t—it LIMITS gov’t. The only way that will happen is if we, the people, DEMAND IT!
It’s time to step outside the box, stick our heads above the foxhole, take a risk. Don’t worry about the editorial pages—most are an arm of the Democrat Party. If we stand on the principles of freedom and do the right thing, we can hold our heads high! Thank God our Founders didn’t decide that making the king mad would prevent them from acting! Thank God they didn’t decide that fighting for freedom was too hard! Thank God they worried that this day would come when we would need to repel gov’t intrusion into every area of our lives, and they warned us about it! We owe it to them to do what needs to be done to reclaim and preserve the precious gift of freedom that they passed on to us!
Janet Reabe, chair, Green Lake Co. Republicans. (That’s who I am in this discussion. This does NOT reflect an official position of our county party in this matter. We have not had a board meeting since the district caucus.)
Image by WisPolitics.com.