Alan Elrod is the president and CEO of the Arkansas-based Pulaski Institute. Writing for Liberal Currents, he explains the MAGA approach to young Americans–“creating adherents and eliminating undesirables.”
Education in a liberal democratic view is about creating empowered and economically independent individuals. We learn vital critical thinking skills, build foundational knowledge for the careers we want to pursue, and develop a rudimentary understanding of how our government and civil society work.
But in the MAGA view, education is about producing MAGA citizens—uncorrupted by the weakening effects of Social-Emotional Learning; unburdened by the complexities of America’s past and present struggles with racial inequality and other injustices; and unthinkingly accepting of MAGA’s politicization of truth and fact. This is what owning the youth is about.
The assault on Critical Race Theory, spearheaded nationally by figures like Chris Rufo of the Manhattan Institute and locally by groups like Moms for Liberty, has always been about ensuring that children learn a version of American history conducive to the MAGA political worldview.
A lot of words have been written in this debate, so I won’t rehash the basics here. What I want to do is center the efforts of MAGA to reshape American society in part by trying to rewire its youth.
A thoroughgoing understanding of American history does not require shame or self-loathing in students. But it does expose MAGA’s cries of white victimhood and its downplaying of America’s past abuses for the lies they are.
Of course, opposition to CRT has always been portrayed as itself an anti-propaganda effort. As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on signing the state’s Stope Woke Act, “We believe in education, not indoctrination. We believe an important component of freedom…is the freedom from having oppressive ideologies imposed upon you without your consent.”
The purpose was and is to manufacture citizens untouched by the “virus” that is woke ideology. After all, that same spring, DeSantis signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, effectively muzzling discussion of much LGBTQ content in schools, though a legal settlement clawed back some freedoms.
A subsection of the CRT debate has come to be focused on what’s known as Social Emotional Learning (SEL). As the non-profit The Committee for Children tidily explains
Social Emotional Learning is the process of learning social and emotional skills…with SEL, students learn to manage their own emotions and behaviors, have empathy and show care and concern for others, solve problems effectively, make responsible decisions, and maintain healthy relationships.
But MAGA disagrees. Chris Rufo has argued that
The intention of SEL is to soften children at an emotional level, reinterpret their normative behavior as an expression of ‘repression,’ ‘whiteness,’ or ‘internalized racism,’ and then rewire their behavior according to the dictates of left-wing ideology.
Empathy for others is not merely counterproductive. It weakens children, making them susceptible to weedy, liberal beliefs like pluralism, mutual toleration, and even social welfare. This is directly linked to bills like Don’t Say Gay. Allowing students to openly discuss and learn about experiences different from their own tends to cultivate respect and understanding. These are obstacles to MAGA’s desire to crush LGBTQ and other minority groups.
Consider Elon Musk’s declaration that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” In Musk’s view, too much regard for the other has led us to overspend on welfare, embrace self-flagellating histories, and dilute our culture by welcoming too many immigrants.
For MAGA, a rigorous understanding of history and well-developed sense of empathy do not make a good citizen.