REFLECTIONS/Jonathan Gramling
Conservatives Gone Wild
This past year has been breathtaking with the quickness that the conservative agenda is being openly implemented across America. It’s almost like everything was waiting until the right — in all its connotations — U.S. Supreme Court was in place before the conservative wave was unleashed.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been a leader in the conservative retrenchment. He got it going last year when the Disney Company had the audacity to criticize DeSantis’ ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill that limited what could be discussed in Florida public schools. I would imagine that Disney — reluctant at first — was sticking up for its gay employees. DeSantis was offended that a company was exercising its freedom of speech to state its opinion on this legislation.
Apparently DeSantis only believes in the First Amendment rights of conservatives and those who agree with his policies. All others should shut up.
And to emphasize his point, DeSantis recently signed a bill that dissolves Disney’s special governmental and tax district that allowed Disney World to flourish and become one of the major employers in the state. Ron DeSantis, that freedom fighter, is now running the show.
In another show of freedom and self-determination DeSantis style, when A Hillsborough County district attorney stated that the prosecution of abortion cases would be a low priority, DeSantis removed him and placed a district attorney who conforms to his ideology to run the show.
Isn’t this creeping fascism? In the name of freedom, DeSantis is concentrating more and more authority under his direct control and meting out punishment to anyone who disagrees. Freedom of speech exists in Florida as long as it conforms to what DeSantis believes.
And what DeSantis is doing to higher education in Florida is unbelievable. They are stripping away diversity and inclusion programming away from public universities like the University of Florida. They would take away tenure from faculty. And obviously “critical race theory” and all other factually-based education that hints to the centuries of abuse and deprivation of African Americans would be eliminated because it might make some Euro-American children feel bad. These measures will not just impact “certain” professors. This elimination of free speech safeguards will drive out academicians of all stripes including those in IT, medicine and other fields. Academia is composed of a diverse mixture of talent. DeSantis’ blunt sword will impact everyone.
But we must turn our attention to Arkansas, which recently rolled back some of its child labor laws. When I had just become a teenager back in the 1960s, I had to get a work permit that clearly showed that I had my parents’ permission to get a job. I always felt that it was the state reinforcing the authority of my parents to decide when and if I should get a job.
Well in some Kafkaesque reasoning. Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former communications person felt that the state was imposing on parents by requiring work permits. This is what Sanders’ spokesperson Alexa Henning said in a statement.
“The Governor believes protecting kids is most important, but this permit was an arbitrary burden on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job,”
Now any huckster and child labor exploiter needs to get no one’s permission to hire underage children. They need no documentation. If this isn’t a step back to the 1930s and before, I don’t know what is? Parents should still be burdened to know what their children are doing and where they are working and under what conditions. They call that parenting.
It is unscrupulous employers who have had the burden lifted so that they can hire children unbeknownst to the parents. Arkansas was considered a backwards state and now it keeps moving backwards. Let the exploitation of children begin.