Laboratory

California has become a laboratory for the policies of the new, left-wing Democratic party. A party that insists it deserves to lead our nation.

Since taklng one party control of CA in 1997, the new Democrats have become # 1 in the nation in state taxes with a top rate of 13.3%. The state is experiencing rolling blackouts because CA has implemented a miniature version of the Green New Deal. Forest fires rage because the state has adopted an environmental policy that precludes the necessary clearing of wooded lands to stop the spread of fires. The CA legislature, acceding to the demands of unions, has passed AB 5, legislation that will cripple or destroy the growing 'gig' economy (bye, bye Uber).

Some Californians are voting with their feet and leaving the state. Population growth in CA is the lowest it's been in over 100 years. In response, the new CA Democrats are trying to ensure  that future generations adopt their socialist worldview without protest, so they've decided to focus on the indoctrination of K - 12 students. The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment:

Last year California’s Assembly passed its ethnic-studies bill known as AB 331 by a 63-8 vote. Then the state department of education put forward a model curriculum so extreme and ethnocentric that the state Senate’s Democratic supermajority balked. The curriculum said among other things that “within Ethnic Studies, scholars are often very critical of the system of capitalism as research has shown that Native people and people of color are disproportionately exploited within the system.”

The bill was put on ice, but protests and riots in recent months gave Sacramento’s mavens of racial division more leverage. The education department delivered a new draft model curriculum this month, and AB 331 has been revived. It passed a Senate committee Aug. 20 and is expected to go before the full body soon. If Gov. Gavin Newsom signs it, the legislation would require all school districts to offer a semester-long ethnic studies class starting in 2025.

The model curriculum now on the education department’s website says the course should “build new possibilities for post-imperial life that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance.” Yes, this is a course for K-12 students. It suggests teachers provide “examples of systems of power, which can include economic systems like capitalism and social systems like patriarchy.” Students can then be taught “the four ‘I’s of oppression”—ideological, institutional, interpersonal and internalized ...

It’s not a coincidence that many radical left movements are infused with anti-Semitism. They posit theories of control by shadowy capitalist groups that often echo anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. One course outline tips its hat at this. “Students will write a paper detailing certain events in American history,” it says, “that have led to Jewish and Irish Americans gaining racial privilege.”

This is ugly stuff, a force-feeding to teenagers of the anti-liberal theories that have been percolating in campus critical studies departments for decades. Enforced identity politics and “intersectionality” are on their way to replacing civic nationalism as America’s creed. 

CA's new Democratic Party provides the rest of the country with a preview of what the party of Bernie Sanders, the Squad, and local leaders like Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler have in store for the rest of us. The anti-capitalist, anti-white, anti-Semitic tinge is just an appetizer.

They do not deserve to lead.