Teaching Intolerance | Libertarian Party of San Francisco

Teaching Intolerance

Three recent articles in the San Francisco Examiner point to a disturbing trend in The City.  While it’s understood that the Bay Area leans left and the Examiner has gone completely leftist, nevertheless we see some new lows.

First is a featured article entitled “Climate change denial won’t stymie regional approach to sea level rise” (November 20).  The article describes the goings on of the San Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission, which meets and discusses how to prepare nearby communities for the impending (our emphasis) rising sea level.  Further it states, “The recommendations, which were approved by the commission on October 6, strongly emphasize educating the public (our emphasis) and improving current systems.  And despite the recent election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. President, who has said he does not believe in climate change, the efforts to address sea level rise are still expected by the commission staff to move forward in the Bay Area.”  So what does the President-elect have to do with yet another useless regional commission?  Would he disband them when he takes office?  We think not.  He will have his hands full and will be unlikely to care about such nonsense.  Just another cheap attempt to make fun of the President-elect.  What makes the whole thing almost laughable is that the commission noted that the actual sea level rise in the last decade has been fairly small and “this is a slow-moving emergency.”  However note the “educating the public” part.  There’s more:  “Another important part of the recommendations is an education campaign, which will allow museums and schools to spread the word about rising sea level concerns.  The education campaign would focus not only on raising awareness within decision makers and the general public, but possibly to a greater extent focus on younger people…The education component will include things like developing a digital game which will show kids what could happen and show the kinds of things that could be done to address that.”  We have a few problems with this—namely indoctrination of the young and government “education” campaigns.  There’s enough information out there on the internet these days—both good and bad—and we think the taxpayers can sort through it all just fine without any bureaucrats’ help.


Second and even more disturbing was an article regarding a lesson plan being offered to San Francisco government teachers that describes the President-elect and his supporters as racist and sexist.  The United Educators of San Francisco, which represents more than 6,000 government teachers and paraprofessionals in the San Francisco Unified School District, distributed the lesson plan to its members in mid-November.  In an introduction to the lesson plan, a Mission High School teacher wrote, “Let us please not sidestep the fact that a racist and sexist man has become the president of our country by pandering to a huge racist and sexist base.”  The union noted to its members, “Educators have a role to play to help (students) make sense of the new reality, especially those who come from communities who have been attacked by Trump, and who now face a very uncertain future.”  The lesson plan includes a clip of Michael Moore speaking about Trump on “Democracy Now!” and readings like W.E.B. Dubois on race in the 1800’s.  The only positive thing we see here is that the lesson plan was shared as an optional resource to high school principals.  Needless to say, this way oversteps the line between real teaching and pushing one’s politics on your students.  Of course this is nothing new in government schools, but they’re not even bothering now to hide this blatant attempt to “teach” political correctness.

Most disturbing of all is a December 1 article by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez entitled “37,000 San Franciscans voted for Trump, mostly in The City’s southwest.”  He not only rails about San Francisco’s nightmare that Donald Trump is our President-elect but cannot fathom that 37,688 citizens voted for him.  He goes beyond shaming to actually detail where “our local Nazi supporters hail from.”  First he lists Merced Manor as the worst offender and anoints it as “forever hereafter be known as Trumpland-SF.”  The homeowner-heavy Sunset District also gets a scathing review since it had more Trump votes than the rest of The City, and he even names a 10-block radius in The City that clearly voted wrong and a two-block section in District 4 that garnered 100 Trump votes.  Clearly he would have named the actual street addresses of individual voters if he had known them.  Considering the violence that has flared up on both sides this year, this kind of tar-and-feathering attitude goes way beyond the bounds of responsible journalism.  From our experience canvassing for Ron Paul and John Dennis (who ran against Pelosi) over the years, we know just how tolerant San Franciscans can be.  We heard from citizens who supported Paul and Dennis but were afraid to put up signs in their windows lest their properties be vandalized.  One supporter showed us where paint had been thrown on their property after putting up a sign for a Republican candidate.  Needless to say, that sign came down quickly.

Clearly Trump did not get much support from Libertarians, but the last time we checked, this was still America, where folks should be able to freely support the candidate they choose and not worry about being shamed—or worse.  Sadly, tolerant San Franciscans are not so tolerant after all, forgetting that tolerance is a two-way street.