by David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
The latest was amusing—it was reported that “Moms For Liberty-backed school board member Keri Blair resigns 13 months after being elected, following $728 worth of shoplifting charges from Target (after 7 total offenses).”
Perhaps the remarkable thing is that Blair was accused of shoplifting seven times between November 25 and December 20.
According to Collierville, Tenn., police, “Blair stole merchandise by ‘skip scanning’ items at the self-checkout.”
She resigned after barely serving a year, and announced she was leaving for “personal, family reasons.”
Amusing because this marks yet another black mark on the controversial group that had a meteoric rise and now seems on the verge of an unceremonious fall.
This is only the latest scandal involving “a conservative culture warrior.”
Then there’s the case out of Pennsylvania. Mother Jones reports, “A Pennsylvania mom connected to the conservative so-called ‘parental rights’ movement is facing criminal charges of assault, harassment, and furnishing minors with alcohol, according to a case filed in October and reported on by the USA Today Network’s PhillyBurbs.”
The accused is Clarice Schillinger, who ran for Lt. Governor in 2022 as a Republican.
She was “charged with punching a teenager during a late September birthday party for her daughter at her home in Doylestown.”
According to the declaration of probable cause, “Schillinger was hosting her daughter’s 17th birthday party on September 29 with 20 teenage guests. The celebration took place in a basement with a well-stocked bar. Witnesses told authorities that Schillinger allegedly poured liquor for the minors, asked them to take a shot with her, and played beer pong with them.”
Then there is co-founder Bridget Ziegler. She and her husband Christian Ziegler are accused of some sordid business—spouse trading, multi-partner sex, and sexual assault—some of which has been videoed for posterity.
What is of course less than amusing has been the impact that all this had on our community and communities like it.
The battle cry has been “parental rights” and “protect our kids” but who is going to protect our kids from these self-appointed guardians?
Recently someone sent me the interview with “psychiatrist” Dr. Mark McDonald, who some are saying is “essential watching as he is very articulate and perceptive in regards to the coercive LGBT indoctrination and resulting psychological damage of children and teenagers that is going on at present time in our schools and colleges.”
McDonald “advocates the homeschooling of children and having young adults enroll in tech schools instead of ideologically warping/damaging colleges which will render students completely useless by the time they graduate—all by design.”
McDonald got attention in 2023, when he wrote that deaths at a Nashville Christian School at the hands of a former transgender student are a “logical end point of transgenderism,” since “the response to it reveals an embrace of the denial of reality and inversion of morality that can produce only more of the same atrocities.
“Transgenderism is a mental illness,” he observed in his Dissident MD Substack column.
“It stems from a social contagion rampant in American urban centers, spread by social media and the support of corrupt schoolteachers and administrators who have chosen to pursue child sacrifice rather than the education and protection of young people,” he explained. “It feeds on narcissism and victim culture, two toxic wells we have been digging for a number of years.”
McDonald asked: “Is this not a denial of reality and an inversion of morality? A young woman murders children in a school, and we are ordered to feel sorry for her while self-flagellating. This reveals a sickness in our society that runs as deep as the mental illness in the shooter.”
Left unsaid is how this movement is an arbiter of morality in any sense of the word?
One commenter noted, “I think that the public government schools in our area are irredeemable. I recommend that parents remove their kids, and many do.”
To which local Moms for Liberty leader, Beth Bourne responded, “What worked for my son was watching 26 seasons of South Park. Basically, I was able to deprogram him from all far left, far right, cult-like religious extremism, Big Pharma and corporate marketing, “DEI,” and most importantly, work gender ideology.”
While it appears that Moms for Liberty is in the process of self-immolating, the damage has already been done.
David, where’s your article about how the trans-activist cause may be imploding when the Biden Department of Nuclear Energy deputy assistant secretary Sam Brinton was caught stealing suitcases from an airport?
I must of also missed your article about how Black Lives Matters is imploding after executives were accused of siphoning million$ from the organization.
I should’ve added that Sam Brinton is a well known LGBTQ activist.
Hilarious what is occurring within the disintegrating Moms for Liberty. Do what I say, but not as I do.
Of course these self-appointed Puritanical scolds aren’t the arbiters of morality on any level.
And their hypocrisy doesn’t matter to them. It’s not even mere “hypocrisy,” which is a human failing that we are all subject to.
In this case, it’s authoritarianism and power. They don’t care that their behavior doesn’t align with their so-called morality. They are only interested in policing others.
They are an authoritarian, christofascist movement that seeks to make the rest of us bow to their religion and their petty (false) “morality.”
And why you would quote that ridiculous woman and lend her any kind of legitimacy is beyond me. She sounds like a raving right wing extremist lunatic from the Breitbart comment section.
Yeah, there’s people who need to be “deprogrammed.” They’re just not who this woman thinks.
FYI
Moms for Liberty has over 100,000 members. Like any organization you’re going to find examples where people broke the law or weren’t great examples of good character. That by any means doesn’t tar the whole organization even though that’s what David is trying to do here. I listed a few cases above of where other organizations or groups that have the same types of scandals. Why hasn’t the Vanguard smeared those organizations?
Members would be one thing, leaders and co-founders is another.
You mean like I listed with the BLM organization?
Keith has decided to double down on forcing David to publish stories that align with his biased worldview. Do Fox News and NewsMax give equal time to liberal points of view? Do Beth Bourne and Keith Olsen give equal time to liberal opinions? Of course not.
Moms for Liberty is a legitimate target for hypocrisy. They are the ones that are trying to oppress peaceful people that aren’t hurting anyone else. LOBTQ+ people just want to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit just like Beth Bourne and Keith Olsen do. Some Moms for Liberty members/supporters want to see children killed just because they don’t agree with how these children want to live. Those M4L oppressors are not those children’s parents. Those parents should be in touch with their children. If they are not, that’s the parent’s fault. Talk about outright parental rights hypocrisy.
What, was it a slow day at the Vanguard?
So David had to whip up another M4L and Beth Bourne story?
That’s all you got, Keith?
No, that’s all you’ve got, David.
Well it’s just you have posted a bunch of non-responses today. It doesn’t seem like you can defend M4L so much as personally attack me.
No one is forcing you to read this blog.
And M4L is fair game. So is the local M4L chair if she persists.
Don’t like it? Go elsewhere.
Likewise, no one is forcing you to read my comments.
No one is forcing David to read Beth’s Facebook page.
Is Keith having an unusually slow day? Keith should realize by now that a commentary by either David or a guest writer will be posted on this site nearly every single day. The topics don’t always deal with development and housing. Guest writers are purely at the discretion of this site. I and others know that you regularly disparage both the Vanguard and David personally, yet you never do anything about it other than blabber away.
Keith doesn’t appreciate a right wing cause he holds so dearly being outed for who they really are. I firmly believe that Davis and Yolo County have the right to know who the Moms for Liberty really are. It is definitely not who they describe themselves to be.
Let him whine.
The M4L issue is 100% relevant locally. I appreciate David letting us know about local neofascist groups so more people can be informed about them and can coordinate with other stakeholders in the area for how we can send them packing.
They’re losing throughout the country. Very few people are down with the christofascism and authoritarianism they stand for and are trying to promote.
Cue the accusations and howls of “namecalling” b/c I used “neofascist,” which is an accurate description. Keith whined on the other site that that word should be banned here, which is just ridiculous on its face.
Labeling M4L (properly) as “neofascist” is no more namecalling then labeling my dog’s behavior as “canine.”
By chance, do you own a calendar Keith?
This seems like an appropriate time to remind folks of the time M4L tried to get this book banned from schools in Tennessee:
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington (Penguin Young Readers, Level 3)
Paperback – Picture Book, December 4, 2000, by Frances E. Ruffin (Author), Stephen Marchesi (Illustrator)
Here’s the complaint they filed:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16W9grkwSFsIPRQOSpQfnAHNJzvDH5Bkk/view