The Other Voices column "Why fathers are essential to educating children" by Noah Wall (Sept. 3) is another example of right-wing propaganda from FreedomWorks. I thought it best to focus on FreedomWorks, an insidious libertarian advocacy group.
When reviewing any article, I always consider its source first. FreedomWorks originated from a political group founded by the Koch brothers, the second wealthiest family in America making most of their money in the fossil fuel industry. It is not surprising then that FreedomWorks is a significant climate change denier, advocating for the defeat of Democratic-sponsored climate change legislation.
In 2011, FreedomWorks ran a campaign to get Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers fired because the company was lobbying to receive green energy subsidies.
In 2014, FreedomWorks supported a bill to repeal a rule published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that established uniform national limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new electricity-generating facilities that use coal or natural gas and set new standards of performance for those power plants, including the requirement to install carbon capture and sequestration technology.
During the 2020 election, "FreedomWorks published false and misleading claims about mail-in-voting, targeting states with high concentrations of minority voters. In its ads which suggested that vote-by-mail was not safe for voters, FreedomWorks posted an image of NBA basketball player LeBron James, misquoting him to make it seem as if he was against vote-by-mail."
OK. What about education? On its website, FreedomWorks states: "Government funding of K-12 education should allow parents to choose where their children attend school. The federal government should have no role in determining educational standards.
"Critical Race Theory, The 1619 project, and Common Core standards have paved the way for biased, anti-American, subjective curricula. With a decline in students’ reading on grade level and increased high school dropout rates, it is more important than ever to get back to teaching the basics and spend less time socially indoctrinating children with vicious, destructive propaganda."
The impact of the first statement would lead to segregated schools, while the second limits the teaching of slavery in America.
Do we want to return to a period in our history when racism was the accepted norm, or educate our children to become more sensitive and inclusive of other cultures, races, and sexual orientation? I prefer we move forward.
Ronald Berg
Hernando