ArcaMax

It is hereby the official position of Florida's State Board of Education that Joseph McCarthy was actually a pretty chill dude.

Per our newly adopted teaching standards, students will learn that the much-maligned senator and boss dunker of lefties was a down guy, an alpha dog ahead of his time.

Furthermore, students will understand that if you go near a communist or a socialist, you will get infected with their bugs and die. These upgrades to our state teaching guidelines dovetail nicely with earlier edits that suggest slavery was an incubator for career skills.

Some scholars and families affected by Cold War-era blacklists are crying foul, saying we've taken another Tide pen to history. To that, we leaders of Florida education say pack your Che berets and sashay to your gay kale farm in Quebec. You guys are acting totally paranoid, unlike McCarthy, who was famously not paranoid at all.

McCarthy and other brave leaders of his time just wanted to root out suspected commies from polite society and systematically ruin their lives. What is so bad about that? What is so objectionable about costing people their jobs, privacy and families? What's your beef with terrorizing a populace based on murmurs and vibes?

For decades, the intellectual community has used "McCarthyism" as shorthand for an opportunistic blight on civil liberties. For too many years, Florida's students have heard that conspiratorial witch hunts are undemocratic and that this nation does not imprison people for their thoughts.

Oops! Sorry to disappoint the nose rings. Our new "History of Communism" standards are thicker than our standards for all American history, civics and government combined, which does not feel weird or over the top at all.

We're also proud that Florida became the first state in the nation to endorse the Heritage Foundation's Phoenix Declaration, which advocates for "the good, the true and the beautiful" in education. The position paper stands for objective truth, which is different from subjective truth or defective truth or private detective truth or any of the other truths!

We know, it's hard to follow. Simply put, we want to low-key bring back government-sanctioned public shame. We want your kids to be comfortable with the idea that they could be socially and financially devastated for disagreeing with whatever politician has shoved lifts in the back of his shoes that week.

Teaching starts in the home. We encourage you to exploit your children's fears early and often. Don't wait for us to tell them that dissent is dangerous, though we surely will. Let them know that if they mess around with left-wing ideas, which are crawling with herpes simplex 2, the streets will talk. Their little jobs at the Chipotle guac station will be on the line should they post TikToks in support of social services and/or that one guy from New York who wants to make the bus free.

But don't be silly. We will never make our schoolchildren take a loyalty oath, not in the free state of Florida. Unless they happen to, like, stumble onto a Bible with their hand over their heart, uttering words in support of objective truth or whatever. Then that's on them! Because around here, we don't tell anyone what to think.

========

Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on X or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

----

Copyright 2025 Creators Syndicate Inc.