Yesterday, I wrote about the lawless who riot among Californians and the government leaders who facilitate lawlessness. Today, I want to take a few minutes to talk about National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle’s contribution to lawlessness. Pringle, about whom I’ve written, once again compensated for her lack of common sense, wisdom, and eloquence with volume and shrillness, shrieking,
ENOUGH of the ICE raids. ENOUGH of the cruelty and hate! ENOUGH of the division and disrespect! We KNOW what this administration is doing. So, we are saying to Donald Trump and all of his allies, we will not, we will not scapegoat immigrants. … The people who built this country, we will not stand by and allow you to do that. I have no doubt that those of you gathered here today will embrace the words of Audre Lorde as we come off a huge pride celebration. Deliberate and unafraid, we will say, “Everyone is welcome here.” Deliberate and unafraid, we will fight for justice every day, all day for everyone! Deliberate and unafraid, we will stand united until this country lives into the poetry of the Constitution. We the people, we the people, WEEEEE the people!
There’s a lot packed into those two minutes of shrieking, and as I unpack it, remember, this woman is the president of the “largest professional employee organization and labor union” in the country. According to Wikipedia,
[The NEA] represents public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators, and college students preparing to become teachers. The NEA has 2.8 million members and … had a budget of $399 million in 2023 along with an endowment of $428 million.
Pringle and the pernicious organization over which she presides have enormous power over our publicly subsidized indoctrination centers.
In contrast to Pringle’s claim, what President Trump is trying to do is send lawbreakers back to their own countries. As Democrats have mouthed for years, we are a nation of laws and no one is above the law. Holding lawbreakers accountable for their crimes of violating our immigration laws does not constitute “scapegoating” them. But maybe Pringle doesn’t know what scapegoating means.
To make someone a scapegoat is to hold an innocent person to blame for the wrong actions of another. People who came into this country illegally, who snuck across the border, who paid smugglers to smuggle them in, who didn’t wait in line, who overstayed visas, who failed to report for scheduled hearings are criminals. They may be nice people. They may have suffered under corrupt or ineffectual governments. But those factors don’t grant them the right to break the immigration laws of the United States.
All sovereign countries have border laws. America has among the most generous immigration policies in the world and, unfortunately, has the second highest number of illegal immigrants. Is Pringle arguing the United States should have no immigration laws? Is she arguing lawbreakers should be above the law?
Pringle dishonestly demagogued when she shrieked that immigrants built this country. It is true that immigrants built America, and some were immigration lawbreakers. But that fact does not justify lawbreaking. The hypothetical contributions to the building of America by illegal immigrants neither mitigates the wrongness of their lawbreaking nor nullifies consequences for their lawbreaking. If a thief performs some good deeds, are laws against theft optional?
Some may wonder why, when shrieking about L.A. deportations, Pringle mentioned pride celebrations or Audre Lorde, a deceased black feminist lesbian. Pringle was paraphrasing a line from Lorde’s resistance poem “New Year’s Day” that concludes with “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.” Pringle thereby expressed her support for and encouragement of the mostly-violent protests.
Educator Pringle is wrong: We have not had enough ICE raids. Biden alone allowed twelve million migrants to illegally invade the United States, which already had millions of border scofflaws living here.
Educator Pringle is wrong: Deporting people who are living here illegally does not constitute cruelty, hatred, or disrespect. On the contrary, lawbreaking and facilitating lawbreaking constitute disrespect toward our laws and American citizens.
Educator Pringle is wrong: Not everyone is welcome to live in America. America, like every other sovereign nation, welcomes immigrants to live in America who enter legally.
Educator Pringle is wrong: Justice is not served by violating just immigration laws. Justice is not served by forcing Americans to subsidize the education and medical expenses of people who broke American laws to get here. Justice is not served by impeding the efforts of law enforcement agents to enforce laws.
Educator Pringle is wrong: Impeding and attacking law enforcement, blocking citizens from conducting their daily business, and defacing and destroying property do not unite this country but do violate the prose of the Constitution. The L.A. riots abuse both the letter and the spirit of First Amendment speech and assembly protections.
Audre Lorde is known too for her infamous essay, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” in which she wrote:
“It feels right to me,” … is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding. And understanding is a handmaiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.
For Lorde, the erotic is not solely sexual. It also refers to “joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual … a reminder of my capacity for feeling.” This may get to why Lorde appeals to Pringle and may help explain what impels the anarchical riots Democrats have birthed and fed.
For leftists, feelings nothing other than feelings matter. For leftists, interiority, subjectivism, desire, and feelings are the be all and end all. Taboos, boundaries, and even laws must give way to feelings. Pride celebrations and the L.A. riots share in common a revolutionary spirit hell-bent on eradicating boundaries.
To leftists, if a Mexican family living under the depressed conditions created by their corrupt, cartel-run government wants a better life in America, our immigration laws are evil and lawbreaking good.
Leftists want America to be a nation of laws unless and until those laws serve as an obstacle to the fulfillment of desires—or at least to the fulfillment of the desires of favored constituencies. Leftists want to socially reconstruct a nation in which everything must be subordinated to the feelings of leftists and those whom leftists hope will vote for leftists.
Pringle espouses the kinds of ideas public school propagandists have been teaching America’s children for decades, and that’s why we have anarchy in our streets.