School Walkouts: An Irresponsible Tool of Mob Rule (Ochlocracy)

Photo: 1969 Harvard Walkout

There are many ways to demonstrate for policy change. We would expect places of learning for intelligent students led by mature and erudite teachers, to choose methods like debates, briefings, seminars, and councils. The school walkout is not new, nor is it clever, nor does it present its teachers and students in a respectable manner. It is nothing more than the schoolhouse version of the syndicalists’ general strike. Consequently, it should not shock anyone that the 2018 school walkouts are “astroturfed” by unions through their Women’s March influence operation.

Observant citizens will recall the marketing style, branding, sponsors, and partners of the One Nation Rally from the Obama years. The “Women’s March” is just a new face on the same organizations and ideological interests. The confluence of interests includes radical environmentalists, feminists, communists, democratic socialists, SEIU, AFL-CIO, syndicalists, social justice redistributionists, abortion advocates, racial activists, LGBT activists, felon activists, and public-school unions. Their goal? To elect democrats, and shepherd the democratic party towards their interests. To use a phrase from one of their most popular communist bands:

“Ain’t the new sound just like the old sound just like the noose wound over the burning ground”

A school walkout is the childhood emulation of a general strike. The syndicalist general strike punishes consumers, business owners, the government, and the workers themselves. It’s an act of passive aggression writ large. The workers most likely were perpetrating level-one-and-two passive aggression in their workplace (temporary compliance, intentional inefficiency). In the general strike, they escalate to levels three, four, and five (problem instigation, hidden revenge, self-harm).

Acknowledging the behavioral and social manipulation of the general strike, it’s easy to understand the irresponsible school walkout. The activist teachers and their student pawns seek to punish school administrators, school boards, parents, the students, and teachers themselves. Inspiring a minor to forego precious instruction time in order to parrot the democratic party activism of their teachers and parents is the height of irresponsibility.

Instigating school walkouts seeks to use the natural restlessness of youth, which would prefer to be whimsical and unproductive, and direct it towards rebellious mob activism. Would most students prefer to quietly and tediously solve math equations, or would they prefer to chit chat and fool around with friends in a circus atmosphere? What kind of political party would abuse the education of children for their own policy agendas? The democratic party should sanction the partners of the Women’s March and disavow this terrible influence operation.

Even worse, the school walkout can potentially turn students against their parents, their communities, and indoctrinates them with collectivism. They have not earned the moral justification for activism by first reviewing all of the evidence and opposing arguments. Like many foolish adults, they are consequently just parrots of whichever influencer they trust. The school teacher has a near-monopoly of trust by the community and parents, and teachers who instigates school walkouts betray that trust.

So how do we confront the teachers and parents who enlist child-pawns to do their political bidding? Our constitution affirms our natural rights to free association and assembly. That should apply to people within schools, businesses, and unions equally. In the workplace scenario, so long as right-to-work laws are advanced, the coercive aspects of union membership will be balanced by those of non-members.

Likewise, students should have the right-to-learn:

1. A student should be free to walk out – and they should be subject to the same consequences for walking out as any other reason.

2. A teacher should be free to incite her students towards her own ideological crusade and choose an unexcused absence from her job – and she should be subject to the same consequences for incitement and absenteeism as any other reason.

3. The school administrators should be free to use their school as a tool of democratic party activism, by either permitting the walkouts without consequence, or by advocating them directly – and the school board and voters should then replace the administrators with ones who actually respect education.

A school under my management would never use education time for biased activism, even if we would encourage civic engagement in other ways. Nor would we harbor, protect, and apologize for young misfits who might someday come upon the tools of arson, shootings, or vehicular homicide.

Considering that this school walkout is a leftwing influence operation to scapegoat guns for failures of law enforcement, schools, and mental health professionals, it is egotistically self-serving. They seek to whitewash teachers’ and school administrators’ responsibility to detect, isolate, correct, and neutralize predatory students – who could choose any weapon of mass killing. That is why the confluence of democratic party interests are astroturfing the event. Their sacred belief in the public education model is currently at risk, so they must deflect at all costs – in this case, towards their profane item of self-defense: guns.

While the actual policy goals are laughable and cannot stand against rigorous debate, the school walkout is a more insidious beast, using tax-funded education to inculcate a mob mentality in our youths. A healthy nation prefers academics to enlighten with reason, civility, and evidence, rather than to incite with propaganda, disobedience, and emotion. Perhaps the Women’s March and its affiliates use these methods because they know that their gun control agenda would never survive an honest, civil, and intellectual contest.

The front-women of the Women’s March (Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, Linda Sarsour)

The partners of the Women’s March:

The misguided influence operation of the Women’s March:

Syndicalism: