It’s reported that only one Republican senator, Mr. Romney, remained to applaud the confirmation of justice-elect Jackson, while the rest of the Republicans in attendance stampeded out of the room. The great division in our country has many causes, but downright surly childishness is one of them for sure. These Republicans, whose passage into puberty is indicated only by their prurience, are like a gang of boys whose political philosophy is no more sophisticated than “Us good, them bad.” If the future of our country is in the hands of legislators like this, our prospects are pitiable.

My pessimism is reinforced by Republican-controlled state legislatures that are passing one regressive law after another. The Democratic governor of Kentucky, Mr. Andy Beshear, has had to veto a bill passed by the Republican legislature that would ban from Kentucky’s schools honest study and discussion of the role of race in American history. Several Republican legislatures are passing laws like this that sometimes even use the buzzword “critical race theory,” though they obviously have no idea of what “critical race theory” really is. But whether they name “critical race theory” or only imply it, it is clear that what they intend to keep out of the schools is the truth of America’s atrocity-filled history in race relations, our legalized slaughter, deportation, and confinement of native Indians and virtually unending enslavement of kidnapped Africans. But these legislators are like adults determined to keep the children ignorant of horrific features of family history, though for all their efforts, the truth will come out or, if suppressed, will have its horrible effects.