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Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us #059 | Your Children Belong to You, Not the Government | Tiffany Justice
00:33:55
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- [00:01]
Katie Faust
Hey everyone, this is Katie Faust, your stand in hostess for the Them Before Us podcast. Today we're continuing our Pro Child Politics series with a conversation with Tiffany justice, the co founder of Moms for Liberty and a total like boss mom if I do say so myself and the author of our chapter on education in Pro Child Politics. I'm going to give you a little bit of background on Tiffany before we dive into this intense conversation and I dare you to listen to it at 1.1.5 speed. You can't, you won't because you are getting two super fast talkers so you're going to have to just slow down to 1.0. All of you podcast junkies, here's a little more about Tiffany. Tiffany is a wife and mom of four school age children. In 2016 she stepped up to serve for four years on the School District of Indian River County, Florida School Board. She believes that kids in public school deserves innovation and parents have the right to know the union interference and government bureaucracy that is keeping that innovation from happening in their children's district. So I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. I'm not Jen Friesen, I am Katie Faust, sometimes guest but today I'm a host and it's great to be with you for this full session session where I can actually drive the conversation. Especially because today we have a special guest, the author of the education chapter in Pro Child Politics and somebody that a lot of you guys know. If you hang out around X spaces very much, if you're online anywhere, you are going to see Moms for Liberty. And so we have Tiffany justice with us today, co founder of Moms for Liberty. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Thank you for authoring these 3,000 words on education and why right now we are putting us before them in education and why we need to put them before us.
- [01:59]
Tiffany Justice
Seems like kind of a no brainer, right that kids would come first when it comes to education. But as you and I have discussed before, oftentimes public education prioritizes the wants of adults over the needs of children. We certainly saw that during COVID And so Moms for Liberty was born in January 1, 2021 to unify, educate and empower parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government. So incredibly proud of the growth that we have had and our ability to really make parental rights, education and children a priority in America.
- [02:30]
Katie Faust
Yeah, I love it. You were on a little pre debate webinar that we had with The Chris billboard. Chris. Chris Elston, who wrote our transgender chapter. And it's interesting because when we look at the Pro child politics book, we've got people that have been, you know, working on things like national security or immigration or energy for life. And you and Chris were like, yeah, no, we totally just got into this because we were just pissed off one time. And so you're not necessarily an education on. I'm sorry, an expert on education. You have not necessarily been fighting for parental rights and free speech and dealing with crazy amounts of government directed lawfare. Why did you get into this? How long have you been doing this? Give us the backstory.
- [03:14]
Tiffany Justice
Sure. So I'm a mom of four, so I actually think I am kind of an expert in education. Honestly, I think every parent needs to be an expert in education. You are your child's first teacher. And I think sometimes education is overcomplicated. And, you know, what we've seen, especially with an explosion of homeschooling around the United States, is that parents are more than capable of teaching their children and giving them the skills, tools, and knowledge they need to be successful in life. But when my kids were in school, I was volunteering there. I was very lucky to be able to be home with them when they were little. And I saw that the school was in a state of disrepair. I was the mom who saw that the hallways were flooding. And I asked the principal, why are the hallways flooding? Why does the district not fix this school? And she said, oh, well, I've asked a lot of times about that, and I've tried to get them to do it, but they really don't like when you bug them too much. And Katie, you know me a little bit. I was like, well, I don't care if they don't like me. I don't care if they don't want me to bug them, I'll still bug them. And so I did, and I asked that question. And what I found was that the school had been put on a. It was. They were on a capital outlay plan, and they kept being pushed off the five year plan, really, because no one was advocating for the school in the way that they needed. And then I began to wonder, well, why is this principal want to stay off the radar? And when I started really digging in to the data to the student achievement at the school, I saw that there was a real disparity between the way that the kids were learning in the school. You had the majority of children in the school who are white, who were learning to read and were on grade level and only about 25% of the black students were on grade level in third grade. And I think that was an issue that she didn't know how to address. She and didn't really want to get so much attention on her because the school had received an A from the state because, you know, some of the kids scores were masking the other kids scores. And I just, you know, I looked at her and I said, you know, you should really give back the A. I don't know how you celebrate that when you have so many students that aren't learning to read at school. And I had some people around me, including the sitting school board member from my district who was a Democrat actually, who said, you should run for office, you should run for school board. And I had never been involved in politics. I had never considered getting involved really. I actually had no party affiliation at the time. And you know, I just had that moment of like, well, I guess if not me, why not me, right? And now after four years of serving on school board and experiencing Covid and seeing how incredibly ridiculous the government thought that they were to be able to direct the upbringing of our kids and direct our lives and control us and being shocked to see so many elected officials who were willing to abdicate their authority to bureaucrats who weren't willing to be real representatives of their constituents. And that's what you're elected to do. You're elected to be the voice for constituents. But they didn't want to make the hard decisions. And it was almost as if they had forgotten that, you know, our country, we have guiding foundational documents that outline what our rights and freedoms are. And as I stated about parental rights, they're fundamental. The government doesn't give you those rights. Those are God given rights. And so I just saw that, you know, parents needed to be effective advocates. And we should talk a little bit, Katie, about what happened to parents during COVID when we spoke out and after that. And so that's why Moms for Liberty was born, to really help parents to be effective advocates to defend their parental rights at every level of government.
- [06:50]
Katie Faust
Yeah, that's excellent. And obviously you guys are exploding, and rightly so, because this isn't a localized issue, unfortunately, it spans across the country in every, not every, but in many, many counties, in many school districts. A lot of parents are waking up and you're giving them the tools they need to engage. Well, you know, even if we were not talking about the sometimes systematic effort to separate parents from their children through a lot of the damaging ideology that's swimming around in the public schools, just the fact that children are not being well educated is an absolute crime. I remember listening to an interview by Condoleezza Rice, whose parents were raised in the segregated South. She spe her time as a young girl in segregated schools, and she said, but the reality is, I mean, there were a lot of things stacked against me. I didn't have a lot of the same opportunities that other kids did. But I had two things. I had great parents who were married and who loved me, and I had a great education. And these days, very few children get both of them. Many of them don't get the education they deserve. And many of them are seeing their families fragmented in a variety of different ways. And so the two institutions that really will allow children to get ahead, even if there are some disadvantages in their life, are really turning into vehicles that serve adults rather than kids. And so you spent 3,000 words outlining that in your chapter, which is so helpful. And I want to go through some of the. You know, just like all the other authors, you outlined the lies of your subject matter, how those lies harmed kids. Then you outline the truth about education and how those truths would protect kids. So the first lie that really is foundational to all of this, the lie that is driving so much of the demise of public education, is the lie that they are all our children. Tell me about that lie.
- [08:46]
Tiffany Justice
President Biden stood in the Rose Garden at the White House, and he told teachers who were gathered there that when the kids were in their classroom, they were like their children. And our message to President Biden is, no, sir, they are not the teacher's children. These are always our children. Our parental rights do not stop at the classroom door. But, you know, Katie, I love how you've said before that if we can't answer this question directly to who do the children belong, then how can we possibly understand how to chart education going forward? And so what we're seeing in American public schools is a wedge being driven between the parent and the child. When you look at the things that parents are concerned about, yes, we're concerned about concerned about the border. We're concerned about immigration and crime. We're concerned about the economy. We're concerned about our children and their education. And we know that only about a third of kids are reading on grade level in public schools. And so parents are right to be concerned and upset. And when parents push back and they start asking questions, you know, I stated before, they were called domestic terrorists, we were called domestic terrorists. We had the FBI sicced on us by Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice. It was shocking to get a phone call from a mom who told me that the FBI had just called her after she had spoken at a school board meeting. So, you know, we will not be silenced to protect a failing system. And again, our parental rights do not stop at the classroom door.
- [10:11]
Katie Faust
And you do a great job of, you know, maybe you're, like, shocked and odd to hear some of these things that the FBI was tracking, you know, parents as domestic terrorists at different school board meetings. Get pro child politics. Tiffany has receipts like, she's not making this up. This is stuff that was well documented and verified, unfortunately. And it really does show that when the progressive left answer the question, to whom do children belong? Their answer is us. Not you, us. Right? The kids belong to us. And because the kids belong to us, we can do whatever we want, teach them whatever they want, and we certainly will keep them away from you if you get in the way of us doing what we want with the kids. So your second lie is something you've already touched on, which is that schools effectively educate our kids. And you pretty clearly chart the grade inflation, the graduation inflation that takes place in the name of just keeping the school's reputation up at the expense of children genuinely being educated. So what's going on? What's going on and why is it that schools aren't educating our kids?
- [11:17]
Tiffany Justice
School districts do two things well, celebrate themselves and protect themselves. Oftentimes they celebrate themselves to protect themselves. We have graduation inflation going on in American public schools. You have only a third of children reading on grade level in fourth grade, sometimes less than that in eighth grade. So tell me, please, how 85 or 90% of the students in any given school district are graduating. There's a lawsuit right now currently out of Hartford, Connecticut. A young woman is suing the school district there because she was actually never taught how to read or write. She had an iep. The interventions for her to learn how to read were not given to her, and they stole years of her life and her ability to be successful. Her mother did not speak English and wasn't able to help her at home. And so parents deserve accurate information when they're making decisions for their children. They need to under know to know and understand if a school district is not meeting the needs of kids and teaching them how to read. And as I've said before, parents should never be forced to be complicit in the harm of their children. But we have compulsory schooling and education Oftentimes, there are not school choice options for any given child, then you're zoned to a particular school. And so, you know, if you're a mom and you're working two jobs and the only school that your child can go to is a school where none of the kids are reading on grade level or doing math on grade level, my goodness, that is atrocious. And we spend $840 billion on education a year in the United States with local and federal money. And I'll just stop everyone who wants to try to tell me that somehow money would solve the problem that some schools are underfunded. They are not. We do not have a funding problem in American education. We have a priorities problem in American education. And we need to cut out all the nonsense, indoctrination, all the ridiculous professional development in DEI baloney, and we need to get back to teaching kids how to read, write, and do math. If we did nothing else, Katie, in the grades of K through 3, nothing else, let's at least teach the children how to read. 95% of kids have the ability to learn to read fluently by third grade.
- [13:23]
Katie Faust
Yeah, if, if, if we really do what it takes to put those priorities where they need to be. You know, you would think that just seeing how children are harmed by not just indoctrination, but also just they are not being educated well, you'd think that that would be enough to encourage reform. But I think, as in the area of things like gender ideology, where it's very clear that children have been harmed, child harm is not enough to get people to stop and reconsider. It looks like lawsuits will be, at least in the realm of gender ideology and the transgender movement, it looks like making people pay, literally pay for harming kids is going to make some people reconsider. And so I'm very happy to hear about this young woman who is suing the school district or her school for not educating her. Because you're right, they. They not only stole from her, it's something she might not ever get back. We have certain windows. You know, children learn in certain windows. They're wired for learning in certain ways. And you miss those window windows. It's hard to get it back.
- [14:21]
Tiffany Justice
Absolutely. And, you know, if you ever watch an adult who doesn't know how to read or is learning how to read, you know, we talk about mental health concerns for our children. Imagine not being taught to read by third grade, fourth grade, and then being expected to know how to read, and every day feeling like a failure, every day feeling like you just can't make. You just can't meet what it is your teacher wants or needs from you in the classroom. That has to be incredibly, incredibly disturbing and damaging to a child's psyche. And so I'm happy to see that the gender ideology stuff is just crazy. Imagine if schools were teaching kids two plus two equals five. That would be a lie. And everyone would say, no, that's a lie. Two plus two equals four. Well, they're teaching children that maybe they were born in the wrong body. That's mandated in places like New Jersey and in Montgomery County, Maryland. Parents in Montgomery county have fought back and said, we don't want, we want to opt our kids out of this. We don't want our children to learn this. In California, your children. If you opt your children out of gender identity instruction, that means they won't learn reproductive biology. Gender identity and reproductive biology, truth and lie have been married in our school system through something called comprehensive sex education. In Montgomery county, it's actually become part of the English language arts curriculum. That case is headed to the Supreme Court. So it'll be very interesting to see what happens there. But parents have found themselves on the front lines of many different laws, lawsuits when it comes to gender ideology instruction in schools. But also, as far as the First.
- [15:49]
Katie Faust
Amendment is concerned, you know, your people are really at the forefront of pushing back legally, legally. So, yeah, you've got your educating parents and they're running for school board, but they're also getting involved in the fight to preserve our first freedom. So tell me about that.
- [16:06]
Tiffany Justice
Yeah, it's been absolutely amazing. I don't know if when we started Moms for Liberty, I realized what kind of an impact we would have in the legal world and really just on our rights and freedoms. I don't know if I really understood how important our judicial system was or how captured at some levels it is. The appellate court system in the United States is truly saving us right now. Some for some very bad lower court decisions that are infringing upon our rights. We have moms and dads who have agreed to be plaintiffs on lawsuits all over the country and some really amazing conservative public interest law firms like Southeastern Legal Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Justice Center, Goldwater Institute, Wisconsin Liberty and Law. I could go on and on. Institute for Free Speech. Just won a case in the eleventh Circuit free speech case that was absolutely amazing, where there were some really brave moms, plaintiffs out of Brevard county public Schools, who said that the speech code, the speech policy at the school board was totally Arbitrary. And that was being implied, applied unfairly. And they won. So we lost in that lower court one in the appellate court. It's a huge win. We also have the Title 9 case. You know, if you had told me in January 1, 2021 that we will be suing the Biden administration and the federal government, that would have been a heavy lift. I don't know what I would have thought about that. But with the help of Southeastern Legal foundation and out of Kansas, we were able to launch a lawsuit against the Biden administration. That's the 10th Circuit. And we wanted a preliminary injunction there. That was absolutely incredible. That said that anywhere there is a Moms for Liberty members child attending any school cannot enforce the new Title 9 regulations that were being put on by the Department of Education. And those Title 9 regulations said that they wanted to redefine sex to include gender identity and sexual orientation. That meant boys on your girls sports teams, boys in your girls bathrooms, secrets being kept from parents, but most importantly, as our mom said, compelled speech that they were going to have to send their kids to school and they were going to have to tell their children to lie, to lie and say that a boy was a girl or a girl was her boy, or if a girl was in the locker room and there was a man in the locker room with them. Because remember, please, it's not just fellow students. It's also coaches and other adults that come to your school that you can use your facilities. And in New Jersey, with a case of a tennis coach who undressed in front of young girls in a locker room wearing women's panties with himself fully intact in that locker room with those young girls, it's not good. But if the girls said something, Katie, under the new regulations, if the girls said, wait, I don't feel safe, I don't feel comfortable, that would have been considered discrimination and the girls would be the ones who would have the violation launched against them instead of the other way around. And so, you know, I'm just so thankful for the public interest law firms that have supported us and have taken up these cases and for being given the opportunity to be able to work with the moms and dads to find plaintiffs and to be plaintiffs in these cases because often these issues have to become so big that they actually get addressed right. They have to happen in so many places that it becomes this issue that needs to be addressed across the country. But when you really push comes to shove and you have that individual case that goes to the appellate court or the Supreme Court, it's always about the personal harm. It's always about the individual that had the harm that happened to them, like the baker in Colorado or in this instance with these girls, these parents. And the compelled speech issue, it's very granular. So it seems like it's happening everywhere. But the way that we will move forward is by individuals, brave people that stand up and say, no more.
- [19:40]
Katie Faust
Yeah. And thankfully, we have seen some wins in terms of religious liberty, religious freedom, parental rights. But the process, I mean, as adf, who you're working shoulder to shoulder, which. Which is incredible, as ADF says, oftentimes the process is the punishment.
- [19:57]
Tiffany Justice
That's right.
- [19:57]
Katie Faust
I mean, like when you target parents, when you target people for standing up for their parental rights, their individual rights, their religious liberty, they will put you through the grinder and it will take years. So it does take courage. You know, if you're. If you listen to the Them Before Us radio show, you might have heard me discuss Exodus 14, where it talked about how Pharaoh sent the Hebrews out and then they boldly went out, even though Pharaoh then started to pursue them. And the words that were used in that they boldly went out had to do with bold rebellion. And that is exactly what we take. What we need right now is there is an overarching, God like, dominant authority in our age. And it is the authority, it is the dominant power that is seeking to separate parents from their children, seeking to indoctrinate children into lies, into falsehoods. And it actually requires bold rebellion. Bold rebellion. We don't rebel against the good. But I'll tell you what, if there is a force coming at you that is seeking to harm your children with boldness, reject it. But it takes courage and it takes stamina. And I'm so grateful that Moms for Liberty is offering some of the support and scaffolding so parents know how to do this well.
- [21:08]
Tiffany Justice
And to say, you know, I joke around all the time, but it's really true. Who knew I was going to make so many new friends in my 40s? And the thing about Moms for Liberty is we're not all winning all the time. There are a lot of setbacks, you're right. And it's been very difficult. Our moms have been doxed and canceled. They get a lot of death threats. There's been a lot of, you know, we're disrupting the balance of power in American public education and in politics in general. And so there are some people that don't like that. But. But when one of us falters we pick each other up and we're supporting each other and we celebrate our wins big and small all across the country. And so it's just been a wonderful group to be a part of. I'm honored to help to lead it and to be a member myself.
- [21:47]
Katie Faust
Yeah, well, it is good to go out together. You know, it's hard to go out solo. It's a lot easier to go out together, to boldly rebel together. And you are creating togetherness in a lot of different places in this country and a lot of parents. And as a result, children are benefiting. So you outlined two other lies. I'm just going to mention them here because I want you to talk about the truth of education. So the third lie you list in pro child politics is trust the experts. Teachers are the experts, Teachers are trustworthy. And you did a great job of fleshing out, like, actually, no. Just because you have a degree and you've gone through all kinds of education or training, it doesn't necessarily mean that you knew what is best for kids and certainly not what is best for my kid. And your fourth lie is unions care about kids, Teachers unions. And you do a good job of making the distinctions between unions, specifically union bosses, and how they are really the nefarious player here, not necessarily individual public school teachers. So do you want to say anything about that? And then we're going to have you hammer the truth about education.
- [22:48]
Tiffany Justice
Absolutely. So union bosses lead to learning losses, and teachers unions care more about the wants of adults than the needs of children. We saw that very clearly during COVID Tina and I like to say that we saw behind the education curtain when we were on school board. And then Covid happened in all of America, saw behind the education curtain. And the truth is that unions have an undue influence on your children's education. Are your kids eating lunch at 9, 30 or 10 in the morning? You might want to check that bargaining contract. When I was on school board, what I saw was that the union bargained for themselves and for the people at the table, oftentimes the most senior people, so not the teachers in the classroom. The school district's very concerned about liability and covering themselves in that bargaining session and getting what it is they want or feel that they need for their budget needs and the school board, because unions have really been the only ones paying attention to school board elections over the past however many years, 40 years. The school boards oftentimes are just a shell for the unions and give them whatever they want. And so when I was there, I was not beholden to anyone. I didn't go to that public school system growing up. I didn't know everybody and everybody wasn't my friend. I had no connection to the union. And so my question was, who's bargaining for the kids? Who's bargaining for the families? And oftentimes no one. So if you're listening, this run for school board, they very much need you to be there directing bargaining. But yeah, unions, they, they just don't care about children. They are the foot soldiers of the progressive far left. Truly just a political machine in operation. And you know, I wrote about it a little bit in the book, but it's important for people to understand that the unions would like to radically transform the public education system. Not only indoctrinating students, but turning our schools into really the social welfare centers of our community, pulling in all of the nonprofits that you have in your community, all of the community resources that are currently available, and push them into the schools and parents. When you combine lowered ages of informed consent for children, sometimes as low as 12 and even in places like North Carolina, which I know is, you know, surprising for people, but is the truth, that means that your child is supposed to be able to consent to different medical interventions without you. That means they could get a vaccination, birth control and abortion, puberty blockers, all kinds of things in a school. And so unions want something called community schools. It is truly communism in America. As I said, they want all of the non profits functioning out of the schools through something called public private partnership. And it's a very concerning thing that we need to push back against. American public education, as we said in the beginning, isn't teaching kids how to read. They have absolutely no business taking on other functions. Or they, they, they, they have absolutely no business taking on any other functions, honestly, beyond educating the student. But it's just absolutely ridiculous that they would think to expand their scope and they're feeling in the way that they are right now.
- [25:40]
Katie Faust
Well, and if you answer the question, to whom do children belong? And the answer is us, then of course you're going to feed them and you're going to give them the kind of medical care you think that they deserve and clothe them and you're going to provide for all of their needs because they belong to you. The problem is, of course, that a teacher who didn't even know you existed the year before, they have no way of knowing you, caring for you, having the same level of long term investment in a child. There will be no substitute for parents, not in Terms of the caring for kids, not in terms of their education, not in terms of their upbringing. And that is where you land for the truth in education. Truth number one, you said, look, we don't co parent with the government. We're not partners with you. They don't belong to you in any way. And truth number two, you said, parents are the experts, not the enemy. So tell me about the importance of parents if we want to get education right?
- [26:33]
Tiffany Justice
Yeah. Parents are the number one driver of student success. There is nothing that we can possibly do in the public education system that would be more important than an active, involved, engaged parent in that children's, in that child's life. And I know that there are parents that struggle to be able to be as involved as they want to be or as involved as we might think that they should be, because I believe that parents should be involved in every major decision in their children's lives. That parents have a duty. Not only do we have the right to, to direct the upbringing of our children, but we have a duty to direct the upbringing of our children. It's, it's our responsibility. You know, if you're a religious person, God only commands children to obey their parents beyond him. That's the only time. And, and parents are directed to direct, to, to raise their children up as they, as they think that they should be. And so we have a duty to do that. And the government getting in the way of that is absolutely ridiculous. They have no place. So we remind parents that their rights are fundamental. They don't come from the government, that we need to protect them. And the fact that schools think that they know better for children is just absolutely ridiculous. We need to tell them that at every single turn. And the way that we do that is being involved, being engaged, working within our representative government, as you said, running for school board, serving in office to make sure that the policies that are being enacted protect parental rights rather than fly in the face of them. The teaching in the classroom should not be antithetical to the teaching in the home. And I think we all need to have a really vibrant conversation about what it is we want to have happening in our public school system, what values we can hold and share together. Like, do we value children learning how to read? That's a value. Can we agree on that value? What are the bare bones, basic values that we can agree on as a society and start to really try to rebuild our public education system to focus on the things that kids need to be successful in life?
- [28:26]
Katie Faust
Yep. Very good. And you know what it's possible. Reform is possible. Like, like all the other authors you wrapped up with a section on. This is who's doing it right. This is how we can model and follow the footsteps of people that are actually creating education policy that elevates the child, that actually does educate the child, that doesn't cut the parent out of the education process. So you're not speaking in the abstract. You're seeing it happen on the ground. There are success cases, there are things that we can say that works. We can try it where we are too. I want to just wrap up again, thanks so much for writing this chapter. It is very informative. It's also heavy in the sense of one of the most heavily footnoted chapters. So you will walk away with all the answers that you need if you want to join the movement to defend parental rights and to fight back against whatever corruption you're seeing in your district. But if people want to know more about Tiffany, if they want to follow Moms for Liberty, if they want to join Moms for Liberty, if they just want to learn a little more, like where's the best place? Where do they need to go? What should they do?
- [29:31]
Tiffany Justice
They should go tomoms forliberty.org and it's not just moms, so people know. It's it's dads too, it's grandparents, it's aunts and uncles. You don't have to have a child to care about children or to respect the fact that parents have that fundamental right to direct their upbringing. And we need every single person to stand in defense of our children. It's the fabric of our country was founded on family and on parents wanting to be able to direct the upbringing of their children as they see fit. So we need to stand in defense of that. It's really, as far as I'm concerned, the line that's been crossed and we need to push the government back. Go to momsforliberty.org As I said, there's a big map there. You can click on the map. There'll be a drop down menu of the counties where we have chapters or set up by chapters in counties. If we don't have a chapter in your area, please click to start one. It just takes you and 10 like minded individuals and never doubt what a small group of dedicated people can make happen, the change that can happen. Never doubt how important those single conversations that you're having are. And I just say to moms particularly, there's been a real push for us to not talk about politics for women. In general, to just not talk about politics. It's something, you know, you just don't talk about money. Don't talk about politics. I want you talking about this stuff everywhere. At the playground, at the dry cleaner, at your work, in the school pickup line. This needs to be a part of your life. We need to be talking to each other about things like, there's no such thing as a transgender child. No child is born in the wrong body. That our public education system should teach children how to read. And we should demand that as citizens of the United States, we just need to start talking about these important things and just know that, Katie, you're right. I didn't have a background in politics. I didn't have a background in education. But I'm a mom who loves my family, and I love my country. I love America. And we say at Moms for Liberty that we're joyful warriors. We're going to fight like hell with a smile on our faces because our children are watching us. And it is a privilege to fight for this country. And if everyone will come together and we'll all do our part in our own sphere of influence, whether that's at the school board level, at the county level, at the state level, if it's working for the next president of the United States of America, if we all just step up and use the gifts that God has given us, I really believe that together we can move this country forward for our children.
- [31:53]
Katie Faust
Yeah, 100% agree. I think we see it the most acutely in the education system because that is the thing that most of us have very, very direct experience with. And so they can't pull the wool over our eyes like they can with some other kind of fancy footwork on other things that maybe we don't know as much about debt or taxes or national security, but we know what's going on with our kids. We see how they are struggling or suffering. We have seen, you know, or heard about the check boxes of what pronoun do you want used at school? Which one do you want on your forms Going home? I mean, we have enough contact with the education issue to say, you can't pull the wolves over my eyes. Related to this.
- [32:30]
Tiffany Justice
And the footnotes in the chapter are important because we want people to have accurate, informed conversations. If we want to change people's minds, then we need to be honest with them about what's really happening. So if you read the chapter and you see the footnotes, you can go and research and see that these aren't just things that are happening to somebody or somebody else. These are things that are happening in our own communities now.
- [32:50]
Katie Faust
Right? Yeah. One of the reasons why we chose the authors that we chose is because 3000 words is not enough. So if you need more information, you can go to Moms for Liberty. You can follow Tiffany, and you are going to get additional information. So if you, if this podcast, if the chapter piques your interest, dive in, Dive in. You know, like we are at a turning point in this country. I think that we are sort of as a, at a crisis point where we can go one way or the other and we can go back to the place of having strong families, education, a strong nation, but nobody sits on the sideline in that scenario. Everybody gets in the game. And Moms for Liberty does a great job of telling you how you can do that, where you can do it, and exactly what it is that you can do in your own sphere of influence. Tiffany, thank you so much for writing the chapter and joining us today and for your strong voice on behalf of parents and children.
- [33:44]
Tiffany Justice
It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Katie, great.