A federal judge this week quoted George Orwell’s classic Nineteen Eighty Four while striking down parts of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE Act” that pertained to higher education. DeSantis has declared war on what he calls “Woke” but that doesn’t mean that he’s on the correct side of the law – or history, for that matter. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what happened.
Link – https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/3740100-judge-strikes-down-higher-education-portions-of-desantiss-stop-woke-act/
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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
This week a federal judge, US District Judge Mark Walker, struck down part of Florida Governor Rhon DeSantis, stop Woke Act. Specifically the part that pertains to college professors and what they are allowed and not allowed to say in their own classrooms. DeSantis Stop Woke Act has of course, been attacked by Democrats all over the country because it makes no sense. He wrote this legislation to basically get rid of a problem that doesn’t actually exist. Yo, he claimed we’re gonna get rid of the wokeness and the indoctrination in our schools, our public schools, our universities, elementary schools, all of that. We’re gonna get rid of critical race theory. We’re gonna make college professors have to report their political ideology to the state.
So in his ruling, in striking part of this down for higher education, judge Walker quoted George Orwell’s classic 1984, and he opened it with the opening line of the book, which he changed a little bit. Here is what he wrote. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13. And the powers in charge of Florida’s public university system have declared the state has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of freedom. Later on in the ruling, he continued, our professors are critical to a healthy democracy. And the state of Florida’s decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows, has implications for us all. If our priests of democracy are not allowed to shed light on challenging ideas, then democracy will die in darkness. But the First Amendment does not permit the state of Florida to muzzle its university Professors impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints and cast us all into the dark, which is exactly what Ron DeSantis and the Republicans down here would like to do.
If your child grew up conservative and they go off to college and then they become a liberal, it’s not because some college professor told them they need to be more liberal. Usually what happens is that some small town conservative, born and raised individual goes off to college in the big city. They finally meet new people, new people that don’t look just like them. They get new experiences, they have new friends, they learn new things. They have their minds expanded. And when that happens, I mean traditionally according to the research, people become more liberal. They become more accepting, they become more open. And then the parents say, oh my God, it must be them. Liberal professors up there telling kids they gotta
Do, it’s not what happens. It’s not what happens. They experience new things. They have new life experiences. They meet people that they’d only read about, you know, ethnicities they had never seen in their little hometown before. People from the LGBTQ community that might change their opinion of everything they’ve thought growing up in their hardcore constr conservative household. Excuse me. That’s what happens. Life experiences change these people’s worldviews for the better. But conservatives wanna blame these mythical liberal professors that are out there indoctrinating children. And luckily Judge Walker had enough good sense to know that that’s not what’s happening. And even if it were, you legally can’t tell the teachers and professors that they can’t do it.
