Stanley Kurtz offers National Review Online readers a warning about Georgia’s most famous recent political failure.
Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is famous for calling voter ID laws the new Jim Crow. Her heedless charges of racism over virtually any attempt to prevent voter fraud chased the MLB All-Star game from Atlanta and earned her the sobriquet “fount of disinformation” here at National Review. So how about letting Stacey Abrams run your child’s civics class? Sounds absurd, but that’s what’s on tap if Abrams becomes Georgia’s next governor.
What’s worse, if Republicans don’t wake up, a civics law quietly passed at the close of Georgia’s last state legislative session could hand Abrams de facto control of civics education in much of the state — even if Governor Brian Kemp is reelected. Sadly, GOP officeholders remain largely clueless about the left’s co-opting of “civics,” and about Democratic plans to use the new leftist civics as a tool to achieve dominance. Let’s have a look, then, at politicized civics, Georgia-style — before it’s too late.
Abrams’s lobbying and voter turn-out group, Fair Fight Action, is credited with helping to juice Democratic turnout in Georgia and 19 other states in 2020, flipping many Republican-held offices to Democrats. One of Fair Fight Action’s projects is “Civics for the Culture,” a continuing series of five-minute videos designed to mobilize voters — especially minority voters — behind candidates and causes favored by Abrams. Civics for the Culture videos blend legislative lobbying with mini-civics and history lessons. So, for example, a lesson about police reform “or even abolishing that sh*t” (as the video puts it), is blended with a civics lesson about the difference between the local level of government and the state and federal levels. …
… Civics for the Culture is designed to appeal to young hip-hop fans. Don’t think Hamilton the musical, though. Think identity politics à la Stacey Abrams.
