Ryan Walters once taught U.S. government and history to impressionable high school students. He was a finalist for state Teacher of the Year. He’s spent the last half-decade in the upper echelons of state government.
Yet, Walters clearly hasn’t grasped two fundamental American rights: freedom of speech and freedom from religion. Or he simply doesn’t care to honor either of our nation’s founding principles.
Walters’ avowed witch-hunts against at least 70 teachers who dared publicly utter negative thoughts about murdered rightwing ideologue Charlie Kirk continue apace, with nary a hint of dissent from the Legislature’s Constitution-clutching Republican supermajority or Gov. Kevin Stitt.
As a taxpayer-funded news release from Walters’ office put it, “Any teacher posting defamatory and egregious comments will NOT be teaching in Oklahoma classrooms and any school that refused to participate in a moment of silence and/or lower their flags for Charlie Kirk is currently under investigation.
“In Oklahoma, we will continue to put students before political indoctrination agendas.”
To which I say: Physician, heal thyself.
Kirk’s murder is certainly a sad reminder that democracy can be messy. Scary. Nasty. Hateful. Even murderous.
But the alternative – a world in which Walters-types are arbiters of what can and cannot be said – is far worse to contemplate.
Or professors on campuses across Oklahoma who say they’ve altered language in their lectures and writings for fear they could be taken out of context and vilified on social media. They mostly admit to this in private, to keep from being targeted by groups like Kirk’s Turning Point USA.
Of course there are limits to free speech. You cannot yell “fire” in a crowded theater. But even the American Civil Liberties Union recognized the Nazis’ right to demonstrate and speak in Skokie, IL.
That doesn’t mean it’s prudent or wise to publicly utter whatever pops into your mind. This is a lesson some never seem to learn. But it’s a lesson with dire implications in the social media age.
Walters, for example, called out an Inola teacher who described Kirk in an online video as a “racist, misogynist piece of s—” and a Sand Springs teacher who wrote on Facebook, “Charlie Kirk died the same way he lived: bringing out the worst in people.”
Both would be problematic if uttered in the classroom. Perhaps even lead to dismissal. But it isn’t illegal to express one’s thoughts – or at least it didn’t use to be. Especially if an alleged offender declared and disseminated their feelings during non-working hours.
Actually, it was Walters’ social media response that exposed his duplicity. “This disgrace rhetoric has no place in schools,” he vented. “This will not be tolerated in Oklahoma classrooms.”
Hmmm … no place “in” schools … won’t be tolerated “in” classrooms. Interesting choice of words since neither teachers’ posts were to students in their classrooms.
Walters knew this. Why misrepresent? It’s because Walters is the indoctrinator, not some imaginary leftwing teaching cabal. The fact is, Walters’ rhetoric deserves far more scrutiny than individual teachers’ after-hours commentary, little of which ever would have come to public attention had not been for Walters himself.
Bottom line: Walters is capitalizing on Kirk’s murder as a means to attack free speech, free thought, and free expression and to advance a Christian nationalism that is antithetical to the nation’s founding principles.
