Earlier this week, activists marched to the doors of a public hearing in Mt. Vernon, Va., beating on drums and yelling shrilly into the air in political theater over Virginia’s revised history and social science “standards of learning.”
Inside, local mother Suparna Dutta, whom the activists had recently smeared to defeat her nomination to the Virginia Board of Education, stood strong as a private citizen. She moved from the stage to the audience, firm as Democrat school board members, delegates, and activists lied at the podium. They falsely claimed the Board of Education’s revised standards that Dutta helped draft would “whitewash” education.
During the drafting process, Dutta courageously went toe-to-toe with Anne Holton, the wife of U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, who sat like royalty at the dais at the Mt. Vernon meeting. Dutta, a Hindu immigrant from India, refuted Holton’s arguments that our nation’s founding documents are not remarkable and that socialism is compatible with our democracy.
During the Virginia Board of Education meeting on Feb. 1, Dutta had replied to Holton, “The Declaration and the Constitution … are remarkable documents.” Dutta, who lived under socialism in India, continued, “Socialism is the nanny state … which co-opts the important decisions belonging to families and individuals. It produces dependency and depression.”
In response, Holton’s supporters immediately organized a movement to reject Dutta’s appointment. Objecting to her perspective and audacity to stand up to the former first lady of Virginia, they claimed that the engineer and parent was not qualified to
