John Klar: Progressives reveal their CRT dishonesty

An amusing rant by John Hagen on VTDigger seeks to attack “right-wing criticism” of critical race theory. The piece is so rife with untruths that it is a choice piece of writing for sensible Vermonters to examine carefully. The panic of the extremist race-baiters is evident — they are terrified you might learn about CRT for yourselves.

The entire article by Mr. Hagen is a sad effort to discredit those telling the truth. It is the real-life counterpart to the “don’t pay attention to that man behind the curtain” counsel of that Great Wizard who, like CRT, promised everyone a Utopia but couldn’t deliver a dime. Mr. Hagen’s statements reveal the poison of CRT snake oil, and he and others are terrified Vermonters will pause to read the label.

In his efforts to obfuscate, Mr. Hagen extolls the great virtues of critical race theory: “Critical race theory actually exists as a legitimate field of inquiry. It is a graduate-level examination of the role that institutions play in perpetuating systemic racism.” This effort to paint lipstick on swine is hilarious. Comparably, one might portray a convicted sex offender offering lollipops to toddlers as “that legitimate, kindly gentleman examining the role children play in society.” Is Hagen lying, or just grotesquely ignorant of CRT?

John Klar

The last thing this ideologue wants is for Vermonters to engage in a graduate-level discussion of CRT. This is why he tries to portray any factual discussion as “the right’s corruption of the label of critical race theory.” The entire premise of Hagen’s article is to debase anyone questioning CRT as a child who is telling scary stories at a campfire. He assiduously avoids ever talking about actual doctrine or facts, trying to create vagueness and doubt to distract from actual critical analysis.

But the poetry of Rajnii Eddins, an uneducated CRT agitator sensationalizing the murder of white people for the sin of whiteness, is already in the Essex School District. Students are being segregated by race in Vermont classrooms, in violation of federal law, while Hagen tells stories about fireside fiction to distract parents from those disturbing truths. We can see why CRT advocates wouldn’t want anyone to look behind that curtain they so feverishly seek to protect. If CRT is so “legitimate” and academic, why can’t it take the heat of open discussion? Why does it need liars to defend it, and to hide what it is already doing in Vermont? Let’s talk about the merits of CRT, shall we?

Vermonters, the big lie is that questions about CRT are “right-wing vagueness.” Nope. CRT turns Martin Luther King, Jr. upside-down, and that might be news to Democrats. We all see what is in store for us behind that Fraud-Wizard’s curtain. I suggest Vermonters read Thomas Sowell’s book “Discrimination and Disparities.” This very erudite and well-researched tome, unlike the fear mongering drivel of intellectually vapid CRT lackeys, shreds CRT and its proponents utterly. CRT is a lie from beginning to end, built on hate and endless recrimination — tell that story to your children at bedtime. It is fact.

CRT seeks to eliminate the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. It holds in its “graduate-level examination” that the First Amendment must be abolished, and that the 14th Amendment must be eliminated as a bar to payback against white people for the sins of the past. Don’t listen to me, and don’t listen to Hagen’s shallow ruse to get you to close your ears. Just examine for yourselves what CRT is and what it teaches children. You will see why Hagen tries to deceive using Jabberwocky fables.

Then watch liberal UVM Professor Aaron Kindsvatter’s passionate explication (as a devoted mental health counselor) as to how deeply harmful and abusive it is to instruct children using this pernicious and racist doctrine. Judge for yourselves, Vermonters — find out what Mr. Hagen and the rest of those who have imposed this experiment on our children are hiding. Just look behind that curtain and ask the simple questions. And ask John Hagen if he will compensate our children when the political weaponization of CRT causes them lifelong trauma. Is he willing to put his money where his CRT mouth is and offer responsibility for imposing a “legitimate field of inquiry” on Vermont’s child guinea pigs? We already know how this ends — just look at the eugenics movement or Mao’s revolution. CRT is derived from those same doctrines, as explained by Harvard’s genius Thomas Sowell. Try studying a legitimate graduate-level authority like Sowell instead of learning about CRT from a storytelling dissembler with a political axe to grind. Vermonters have been told too many tall tales.

CRT is a toxic ideological extremism that is as alien to American Democrats as Republicans. Vermont parents will be disturbed by what they learn about CRT, and will be further disturbed at these blatant attempts to dissemble and lie — it is falling apart on the naked emperors.

Please look at what they are hiding. Just ask your school for a copy of its race curriculum, and compare it to the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. We see King’s teachings are reversed by CRT, which judges people not by the content of their character but by the color of their skin. It is a “graduate-level” “field of inquiry” that is deeply offensive to liberal values and damaging to the human psyche. It surely has no place in elementary schools. (That’s why Hagen and the Progressives don’t want Vermont parents to get educated for themselves.)

Hagen’s rant against “right-wingers” reveals how far the extreme left has gone off the reservation of critical thought. CRT can’t endure critical analysis. It doesn’t amount to anything more than an idiotic hypothesis already dead on the doorstep of the proven truths of Constitutional law. It is a fairytale, promising a perfect world but delivering a perfect anti-constitutional, anti-American hell — injustice for all.

Vermonters, please rip down that curtain and see for yourselves what is planned for Vermont’s schoolchildren. CRT wants to take their hearts, brains and courage away from them. Let’s all have a grown-up conversation. No more lies and fairytales.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield, and the former pastor of the First Congregational Church of Westfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2021. All rights reserved.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/sailko

33 thoughts on “John Klar: Progressives reveal their CRT dishonesty

  1. Too funny and SO true…from an article I saw

    “Today, we see an increasing number of white-looking individuals, especially leftist female professors of grievance studies, striving for the privileges of being officially nonwhite..”

  2. On one day the leftist/statist/collectivist contingent is commiserating about how traumatized the delicate, snowflake children are by the COVID pandemic, the Trump Administration, and climate change. Now they want to make all the “white” kids hate themselves. If a “white” kid takes his/her own life after a degrading session of CRT brainwashing, that blood will be on someones hands. There is certainly a bright future for the counseling and psychology professions and in the pharmaceutical industry producing all the necessary remedies for OCD and traumatic stress disorders brought on by leftist self-hate and victimhood-promotion. If this national and regional unhealthy obsession with race does not get cured in the next election, we are in for the full Venezuela treatment by the Biden “administration”. Elections have consequences.

  3. Very good Op-Ed in todays Wall St. Journal….CRT is just a liberal hoax & a hustle. Always has… follow the money and you will find it in professors & teachers unions:

    “..critical race theory amounts to little more than a fancy argument for affirmative action, and always has. The theory comes out of the legal academy, and early proponents argued that race, ethnicity and gender should be used as academic credentials in hiring and promoting professors. It’s less a serious academic discipline than a hustle. It posits that racial inequality today is the sole fault of whites and the sole responsibility of whites to solve—through racial preferences for blacks. It’s employed by elites primarily for the benefit of elites, though in the name of helping the underprivileged. Ultimately, it’s about blaming your problems on other people—based on their race—which might be the last thing we should be teaching our children.”

  4. Mr. Klar,

    There is no question that the issue of race has been important in the history of our nation and is still an issue today. The opposition to the expansion of slavery into the territories was the basis of the founding of the Republican Party as well.

    How we teach about race is extremely important and there are plenty of examples of miss steps on all sides. Statues of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest, who went on to found the KKK and the Vermont Legislature honoring John Brown, a terrorist and murder ( something I wrote editorials opposing) are but two instances.

    Do you have any examples of what you feel is appropriate curriculum that teaches about race, how it has been a part of our history, its legacy today, and how we can continue to move towards the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence? This would be helpful to counter trends towards extremism.

    • Everyone is falling for the trap.

      Racists or Anti-racist. That’s the frame work they want people to argue about, so we never come together. If we don’t come together, those in power stay in power, which is the true goal.

      Do you love your neighbor? Do you hate your neighbor? Do you love your enemies?

      This changes the entire conversation and gets toward healing and love. Of course nobody wants this….and around and around we go. Strife, jealousy and pride fueling our country in the wrong direction. Tis the banner of the day.

      • Not that nobody wants this but possibly don’t wish to be continually herded into a self-righteous religionist churchianitied cul-de-sac version of JC which does him no honor but only serves to church ones own opinions. Christ is not a brand to be brought to our base level to justify our personal ideology.

  5. Some great comments.

    CRT is but one tool used in subversion. There are many more being used across our state and country.

    There is an entire tool box and plan, implemented with great precision, planning and funding. The efforts are so massive it’s tough to comprehend HOW massive the challenge is before us. That being said…..truth does cut to the bone rather quickly.

    https://greenmountainparty.com/russian-influence/

    The patterns in society all fit perfectly, it’s no coincidence.

    • The reason why 1984 fits so well, because they knew exactly how the system works/doesn’t work, they’d seen it happen many times before in many other countries.

      This is the reason writers could write fiction and have it perfectly mirror the future, aka our current state of affairs, decades and decades before it happened.

      If we had a complete educational system, they couldn’t get away with this on an enlightened population…..that is not our play ground in the green mountains….

  6. Pussy-footing around Vermont’s long and covered-up/excused/funded eugenics program involvement, front and center, until as recently as 1978, fails to point to the ‘why’ this agenda is so easy to float here – we are, afterall, the leading state of eugenics, current policies included – historically aimed at the poor, indigent, women and children/Abenaki’s – is disingenuous.
    I’d love for you to take THAT elephant in the room on, John – because everything flows from there: Our funding, DC’s interest in ‘modeling’ the NWO dictates of medical tyranny (which sterilizes as it goes:FACT going back to the origins of vaccines), and the funding of Planned Parenthood (prototyped here in VT in the 60s/70s).
    The ideology that both allows for and covers up this direct line to why some people are favored and some people are not is seriously ignoring the reason this wheel hits the road and can turn at all: Its in our Vermont genes.
    We prefer elite, rich, male, non-brown/rust/black skinned leaders – and this is evident from the top down in our State.
    Women leaders are groomed by and for the system as totems, as are brown/rust/black skinned women leaders – even imported from other states to make us look less white.
    Besides this systemic foundation for our fiduciary state (FUNDING from DC), we live in an inhospitalable climatalogical environment that used ‘hardscrabble living’ to describe what it was like to live in Vermont before the technofascists took over – and has disconnected us from the real reason anyone seeks out and stays in Vermont – its beauty (first and foremost), and its ‘live and let live’ ethos – or what it USED to be like to live here.

    The threatening nature of these discussions to the establishment cannot be underestimated, now – as Vermont further cannabilizes itself against itself and its citizens, with the FBI’s encouragement to report on your family and friends – those people you depend on in an emergency – and Vermonters…good little technofascist sycophants that they have become (I never did) – will comply. Because…we have been so good with rare exceptions, until now.

    Having done medical transcription before it was outsourced, for a decade, I know what the label ‘non-compliance’ added to medical records does to future ‘transactions’ in the health industry.

    ALL of this is tied to the idea that Daddy knows best – that we are just stoopid hicks from the hills, and only the suits now best, using their ones and zeroes to model what Vermonters need and how we should live.

    Calling out our Vermont eugenics history would be a truly honest discussion – then, maybe, with truth and reconciliation, we can begin to be honest and humane to one another again.
    Race isn’t the issue – the ideology that provides and covers up our eugenics history IS.

    • In fairness, that Mr. Klar doesn’t mention the history of Eugenics, Women’s suffrage, Climate Change, or the myriad other issues we can all disagree on, doesn’t mean he, or the rest of us, don’t consider them. And no one is purporting to be perfect. But the point you seem to be missing, if I may be presumptuous too, is that all of these issues, and more, are, over time, being reasonably addressed in these United States to an extent unparalleled in the rest of the world.

      The United States is the most diverse country on the planet. Its founding spelled the beginning to the end of slavery. Civil rights and due process are protected by law. Eugenics was exposed for the evil that it was. And don’t forget Planned Parenthood’s complicity in the notion. Climate Change, man-made or not, is being addressed on a scale also unparalleled anywhere else. Just compare China’s CO2 emission rates with ours.

      The underlying issue here isn’t whether or not CRT is reasonable. Or that any of the unspoken issues you mention aren’t being addressed. The issue is that we, as citizens of the United States, don’t have the option to choose the education we believe best meet the needs of our children. Try not to lose sight of the forest for the trees.

      • Jay – I’m missing nothing. I AM focusing on eugenics because everything that is happening now is happening in the context of a not so subtle global culling. Education to make people accept that has been in play since I graduated from h.s. in 1969.
        I am focusing on eugenics because its what is happening on the planet: Humanity is being killed of.
        And…I’m asking the question: cui bono?
        Many people more erudite and with more time and money to expose this agenda have talked on this for a very long time, the late great Rose Koire being one of the first whistleblowers to out the eugenics agenda behind Agenda 2021/2030, the worlds answer to ‘climate change’ – directly tied to the IPCC report that stated, “The biggest threat to the planet is humanity.”
        The models based on that theory all center on reduced populations, being carried out now by poisoned food (CIRCLE OF POISON, 2014 with Sen Leahy in it), weather manipulation and geoengineering (there are two great maps available online to see what geoengineering projects are underway around the globe you check in real time), in our water (fluoride a hazard waste of manufacturing plants), from our electrical world (exposure to EMF’s is a known carcinogen over time; causes diabetes directly, and holding a cell phone to your ear will give you a glioblastoma), and our lithium batteries in all our digital devices.
        As someone who is 100% organic, there is no way to avoid any of this, just like there is no way to avoid the education system – and now, comply or the jack boots will be at your door.
        The Eugenics issue is behind EVERYTHING.
        You have to do the research, connect the dots, and maybe listen to Rose Koire to get how deeply this goes and how insidious it is here in Vermont.
        Planned Parenthood is but the visible end of the iceberg.
        Again, prototyped here in Vermont.
        Eugenics is still eugenics however you couch it.
        And no matter who is visited upon.
        Our system is rigged to create mental slaves.
        And it is.
        Cull that herd of thinkers, and those who question authority, and want to live a different way…say…organically.
        I’ve been keeping up on the obituaries posted by funeral homes lately to try to asses the genocide going on right now in our state.
        Its a sobering read and only visible of you do multiple statewide funeral homes.
        Eugenics in action…in situ… as we speak.

        • sorry for the typos… passionate typing here…and I DO appreciate the considered discourse. Its all helpful to sus out what is happening

        • Eugenics specifically refers to fitness in terms of breeding and reproduction:
          Eugenics is the practice or advocacy of improving the human species by selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits. It aims to reduce human suffering by “breeding out” disease, disabilities and so-called undesirable characteristics from the human population. Early supporters of eugenics believed people inherited mental illness, criminal tendencies and even poverty, and that these conditions could be bred out of the gene pool.

          Historically, eugenics encouraged people of so-called healthy, superior stock to reproduce and discouraged reproduction of the mentally challenged or anyone who fell outside the social norm.
          https://www.history.com/topics/germany/eugenics

    • “We prefer elite, rich, male, non-brown/rust/black skinned leaders – and this is evident from the top down in our State. Women leaders are groomed by and for the system as totems, as are brown/rust/black skinned women leaders – even imported from other states to make us look less white.”

      VT has always had very low percentages of non-white residents – the living is extremely difficult and costly here so looks like the non-whites are smarter than us.

      We are not AZ which is close to Mexico or MI where black migration from south to auto plants and factories of midwest gave these southerners a middle class life and greatly higher standard of l iving. They wisely avoided VT due to aforementioned and bc there was no need for a high volume of workers from other parts of the nation to come here.

      Confusing couched terms serve to obfuscate – and red flag, and no I am not ashamed of being white bc I had no choice in the matter nor should anyone be shamed bc of the others who live here who have similar backgrounds. It was in actuality French Canadian Catholics who were considered unworthy to live in VT as well as indigenous American Indians.

  7. Critical Race Theory, Black Lives Matter and the Left writ-large are a kind of theological movement. With their rejection of a transcendent God or of any religion they look for an explanation for the pain, suffering and evil in the world. Minimizing the world into identities of race, sex, sexual orientation, etc. and social or cultural constructionism, they summarize the world into white civilization versus non-white civilization and then go on to believing that all reality up to now has been socially constructed (post-modernism) by and for the benefit of whites and at the detriment or expense of non-whites. Wrong-doing or evil has been identified in this worldview as attributed to whites and the overthrow of white civilization (modernity or the European Enlightenment) will bring about salvation and justice. This worldview goes back to the Garden of Eden and the serpent. Original Sin. Man searching for his temporal justice instead of God’s eternal mercy.

  8. Oh Pleeeeeeze. What a crock.

    So CRT is “a legitimate field of inquiry. It is a graduate-level examination of the role that institutions play in perpetuating systemic racism.”

    If it is such, then why are the progressives trying to jamb these THEORIES down the throats of children without parental consent. Mr Hagen trashes right-wingers without providing ANY support of CRT, no definitions, no explanation as to why it needs to be in our primary classrooms. He appears to be treating it as an accepted fact. which of course it is not (hence the characterization if it as a “therory”). DUH !

    Ms Wiengarten’s (AFT) even went further by attacking parents. She seems to think that the union decides on curriculum. Uhh…. no. The ELECTED school board and parents are responsible for the curriculum, not the teachers union nor the so-called media.

    These folks are pathetic. All they are reduced to is attacking and blaming parents. they should be ashamed.

  9. CRT says is you are born white, you are born racist. Anyone who thinks that, is racist and not worth listening to about racism.

  10. When someone wants to turn the world upside down…….What do you do??

    Start with the Children, the Youth. Turn their instincts inside out.

    Instead of a glowing happy childhood and upbringing, load them up with a lifetime of guilt and dispair
    Original Sin times 100, Not a single method of escape

    Worked with Hitler Youth who kept fighting for the Aryan Race against the Jews,
    , even after the Germans surrendered to the Allied forces.

  11. While I whole-heartedly agree with Mr. Klar, again consider this word of caution.

    To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘When fighting Mr. Hagen’s elusive Wampahoofus be careful to not become a Wampahoofus, for when we stare into its abyss, its abyss stares back into us.’

    Mr. Hagen has seen the Wampahoofus but has failed to realize it is he. We must be careful to not make the same error.

    P.S. Just turning 90 years of age on June 30th, Thomas Sowell remains one of America’s greatest thinkers. I shudder to think of our time without his counsel.

      • Thomas Sowell just celebrated 91 years on this planet, June 30th.
        Walter E Williams passed last year.
        Both gentlemen’s words and writing are an invaluable resource for this current CRT malarkey. Thomas Sowell forgot more about race relations than the sum of every activist in Vermont will ever know.

        • Well said. I repeatedly explain to progressives who support CRT — read Thomas Sowell, and tell me where he’s wrong.” But they don’t read Thomas Sowell, don’t balance their cult with any other possible view — or even facts. I understand what Jay is saying, but neither do I need to pussy-foot around with hateful, self-blinded people who LOVE their Kool-aid. I wish to alert the people in the middle, who are learning about this for the first time, so that they get informed. I do not need to be ashamed of saying I still embrace the MLK message. Those who wish to tarnish him must explain to all of us why — they would prefere to do all of this surreptitiously, as we see.

          • Mr. Klar, I suggest you read my response to Dano (whoever that is). And a word of caution to you. Underestimate me as ‘self-blinded pussy-footer’ at your own peril. All swords have two edges, and my libertarian sensibilities abhor tyranny no matter from what side of the aisle it comes.

        • Sorry I looked up and saw Thomas Sowell’s obituary and didn’t read it. It was for a broadcaster with the same name.
          I remembered one passing and mistakenly thought it was Thomas Sowell.
          Thank you for the correction

    • I whole heartedly disagree. Even forest fire fighters start other fires to stop the spread of the opposing fire. Vermonters have sat back and allowed progressives to come here and ruin our government and infect our institutions. They have received very little pushback and now we are in an emergency to save our children, our state and our country from their indoctrination and continued ruination of our constitutional system.

      These people have to be called out for what they have done and continue to do. This is an ideological war on our state and country. The best defense in any war is a good offense. The war of ideas like any war requires the force to stop the opposing force. Where would we be right now without the fortitude, intelligence and excellent expose’s of Mr. Klar.

      This isn’t the first time you’ve used this ” Don’t become the monster to defeat the monster” line of thought. What if, in WWII America decided that Hitler wasn’t so bad and maybe we should not call him and his monsters out and just play nice. While this is not a shooting war, it is a war for our customs, our constitution, our state, our government, our freedoms and our children. My children are now adults but I look at every child in Vermont as an individual, an adult in training, a person who needs to be taught how to think not what to think. You can sit back and play the reasoned one and let the parents fight the good fight. The only monsters that will be created will be those young brains indoctrinated in our schools all across the country if good people do nothing.

      • I understand the emotion. But now you’re equating mis-guided school administrators, teachers, politicians and some of your neighbors with Hitler, just as they equate you and, more often, Trump and the rest of us ‘deplorables,’ with that tyrant.

        My children went through this very same Vermont school system too and suffered retribution from certain teachers who disagreed with me as a school board director. I used the circumstance as a ‘teaching moment’ – how not to be. My kids are now raising families on their own and they learned their lessons well.

        Rather than respond to these ignorant people in kind (‘God forgive them for they know not what they do’), lobby everyone you know for School Choice. It works. We have School Choice in our district and that made all the difference with my children. Demonstrate that you know how to handle that choice. Don’t raise the prospect that your choice will replicate the same tyranny of the progressive left, just from the other side of the political spectrum. They have every right to teach their children whatever they believe is best for them too. But they don’t have the right to stop you and me from teaching our children what we believe is best.

        School Choice is a universal tenant. It’s logic is unassailable. Please don’t jeopardize our prospects in achieving it by mirroring the actions of the Wampahoofus.

        P.S. Mr. Klar hasn’t been the only one raising this issue. Anyone paying attention knows that I’ve been arguing vociferously for School Choice and against the public school monopoly, on this forum and many others, for decades.

        P.P.S. On the other hand, all bets are off if/when the progressive left puts us (or our children) in concentration camps. And yes, unbelievable as it may be in these great United States, the public school monopoly is but a jackboot away from playing the part. It’s a prospect that can’t end well for any of us. But we’re not there yet. Not yet.

        • I’m not going to let that statement pass. I did not equate school teachers or administrators with Hitler. I used an analogy as an example. I only comment when I feel it’s necessary, unlike you who likes to place yourself on some pedestal because you were a school board director. Who I am is none of your business because I’m only here to present another opinion, one that’s opposed to yours.

          Reading comprehension apparently escapes you. These people are not just misguided, they know exactly what they are doing. While I am for school choice, I’m being taxed to support public education, teacher benefits and retirement plans, of which most Vermonters do not have themselves. The same education system that is controlled by one of the biggest unions backed by millions of dollars and the national union also.

          They do have a right to teach their children whatever they wish, but not with taxpayer supported schools with BLM flags displayed where only the American and Vermont flags should wave. So you fought them as a school board director, but apparently they won and now instead of taking control of what belongs to the taxpayer, you want to create new schools in your vision. I say we take back the schools that already belong to the people!

          • Re: ” I did not equate school teachers or administrators with Hitler. I used an analogy as an example.”

            A difference with no distinction.

            Re: “Reading comprehension apparently escapes you.”

            Really?

            Re: “They do have a right to teach their children whatever they wish, but not with taxpayer supported schools with BLM flags displayed where only the American and Vermont flags should wave.”

            This is precisely the same argument ‘they’ use to stop School Choice.

            As long as we agree, as a society, to subsidize the education of all of our children, and allow parents to choose the school they believe best meets their needs, we must allow everyone that choice, whatever it is.

            This is an excellent point you make. The elegance of our founding documents (The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution) is that they construct a playing field on which people with myriad sensibilities can interact. It’s not only a free market in economic terms but a free market of ideas.

            Again, beware that when fighting monsters, you don’t become a monster. Live and let live. Progressive Leftists have no right to impose their CRT logic on you or your children. But in a free society, you have no right to impose your beliefs, whatever they are, on anyone else either. And only in America, so far at least, do we have a government construct (our Constitutional Republic), that allows each of us to take the road less traveled if we choose to do so.

          • American Thinker is my go to internet publication too. And remember, a dog smells his own dirt first.

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