The story of the day, or perhaps the year, comes from a mom in Loudoun County, which is one of two affluent Virginia counties currently embroiled in protests over race-based training being pushed on school kids. (The other is Fairfax County.) I don’t know if it’s too late for a confirmed left-leaning political hack like Attorney General Merrick Garland to have some sense knocked into him, but on the off-chance this woman’s story might make an impression, I sure hope he’s reading this.

The AG might not have known he was kicking a hornets’ nest when he issued a memo to various government agencies likening these justifiably angry parents to domestic terrorists and calling on law enforcement to deal with them accordingly, but he sure did, and thank God the parents and civil libertarians are stirring. We’ve heard more than enough criticism in recent days of parents daring to challenge the curriculum in their kids’ schools. This all comes down to the essential question of who will decide how children should be educated –- their own parents, or the government? Who has the final say?

Xi Van Fleet, who as a child endured the Maoist Revolution in China before immigrating to the United States, has spoken with FOX NEWS and other news outlets to explain how AG Garland’s Department of “Justice” and the National School Boards Association are using tactics similar to those she witnessed in Communist China to take control of children and prevent parents from having any say. If you think that sounds far-fetched, well...did YOU grow up in China during the Maoist Revolution?

https://www.foxnews.com/us/virginia-mom-survived-maoist-china-school-board-association-doj-communist-tactics

What she saw then was disturbingly similar to what we’re seeing in American “cancel culture.” The goal in those days was to cancel traditional Chinese culture and destroy their heritage. The spate of statue-toppling by leftist rioters that destroyed symbols of our national history would have been smiled upon by Chairman Mao.

“When I was in China,” she said, “I spent my entire school years in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, so I’m very, very familiar with the communist tactics of how to divide people, how they canceled the Chinese traditional culture and destroyed our heritage. All this is happening in America.”

There could be nothing more divisive than teaching children that, based on the color of their skin, they belong in one of two groups: the privileged oppressors and the victimized oppressed. But that’s exactly what “anti-racist” training does. To those who might still think “anti-racism” just means being against racism, I’m sorry, but that isn’t what it means at all. If only that were true.

And never mind the violent riots, arson and statue-toppling of last year that went virtually unpunished; Garland now wants to prosecute parents for threats and violence (of which he gave no specific examples) towards school personnel. He said that “threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values.”

I’ll tell you what runs counter to our nation’s core values: the government overriding parents to determine what their will children learn, even if the parents consider the force-fed curriculum to be child abuse.

Van Fleet, whose son graduated from Loudoun High School in 2015, gained attention in June when she spoke powerfully at a Loudoun County School Board meeting about what is wrong with race-based indoctrination such as Critical Race Theory. After Garland’s announcement of the tough stand he’d take against parents, she had more to say. “I do have a question,” she told FOX NEWS. “What’s [the] next step? Is the Tiananmen Square crackdown the next, or the parents who one day risked their lives just to speak out for the children. That’s why I’m here.”

Other parents are speaking up as well, though they are scared. Harry Jackson, president of the Thomas Jefferson High School PTA in Fairfax County, said parents are intimidated about speaking before the school board. “They have instilled fear within the parents,” he said. “They created fear amongst the community which you’re supposed to service and support.” Another parent, Suparna Dutta, who pulled her son out of that school, called Garland’s announcement “shocking.”

“I am scared,” Dutta said to FOX NEWS. “Yet, I believe I’m living in a time when if I don’t speak up for my child and if I don’t stand up for what’s right in America, I don’t know what the next generation will be left with.”

G. Q. Pan and Jan Jekielek of EPOCH TIMES also have an eye-opening story about Van Fleet and her experience during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/virginia-mother-who-survived-maos-cultural-revolution-sees-parallels-in-america_4044797.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

This is a premium story, but I’ll offer some highlights and commentary below. If you do subscribe to their premium service, you can see her interviewed on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/i-want-to-wake-people-up-xi-van-fleet-survivor-of-maos-cultural-revolution_4045860.html

Van Fleet was a first grader when the Cultural Revolution started in China, she said. Traditional classes ceased for the older kids and they were inducted into Mao Zedong’s Red Guards, who set about destroying vestiges of traditional China. The Red Guards brought violence and destruction to anyone and everything they considered “counter-revolutionary.” The criminal justice system was paralyzed, she said, so they faced no consequences for what they did.

Consider the real violence going on in our country last summer, and how the perpetrators faced essentially no consequences for their criminal acts.

Van Fleet said the Red Guards attacked the “Four Olds”: old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits. I can think of a few for the America of 2021:

Old ideas: Parents are in charge of their kids’ upbringing.

Old culture: We value monuments to our nation’s history.

Old customs: Biological men stay out of the ladies’ room.

Old habits: We reflexively rise for the national anthem.

She said the Chinese version of “cancel culture” grew to the point where they’d go to houses and destroy items reminiscent of pre-revolutionary China. “I remember this whole street was just a mess of things destroyed,” she said, “and the people, those homeowners, howling and crying.

If all this sounds extreme, Van Fleet says she can see the similarities here, with people afraid to speak out, lest they be called “racist.” The term “racist” no longer means anything but is used as a political weapon. “...In the last few years, it has changed its meaning,” she said. “Anyone who kind of disagrees with the ideology from the left becomes a racist.”

She also sees a big similarity between Critical Race Theory and policies implemented by Mao. Citizens were put into categories, the good “Five Red Categories” and the undesirable “Five Black Categories,” who were the descendants of rich farmers and other “class enemies.” Those people were humiliated and forced to go to “struggle sessions” where they were made to confess their privileged status. Does this sound a lot like CRT to you? It does to Van Fleet.

She describes CRT as Marxist class struggle rhetoric repackaged to focus on race so it works better in American society. And she would know. Once you see the similarities she’s pointing out, you can’t un-see them. So, parents --- everyone --- keep speaking out.