First, let’s start with what Christian Collins is for.
He’s for himself succeeding retiring Rep. Kevin Brady in Texas’ heavily-Republican 8th District in S.E. Texas (profile here, see map below), for whom he worked as a campaign manager.
He’s also for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), sanctioned for death threats against Democrats, and Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), facing organized efforts to bar him from running for re-election under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause.” And also the execrable Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), for whom he worked as a campaign aide.
He says he’s for “for election integrity, working to finish the wall and secure the border, and … pro-America education,” as his top three issues; and also “fiscal responsibility, free market, limited government, American Exceptionalism, and the Judeo-Christian principles this country was founded upon,” according to Ballotpedia (here), which doesn’t seem to leave much space for Native Americans, African-Americans, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, immigrants, or women (who couldn’t vote for America’s first 139 years of existence).
He’s also against the “critical race theory being taught in our schools.” (Critical race theory, or CRT, isn’t taught in our schools; so this probably is the vernacular misuse of the term popularized within the GOP that refers to disclosing to students that America’s previous and present generations of white people haven’t always been nice to non-whites.)
Now, as for what he’s against, Democrats obviously; but also, most college education, and most of America’s colleges, graduate schools, and professional schools.
Collins claims college education turns young people into “radical, leftist, hating-America atheists” who “don’t have any usable skills to get employed,” an interesting comment from someone whose only employment experience is as a political operative.
“We know how important the youth are to our future because you can raise them the right way,” he says. “You can work your butts off every day to put food on the table, send them off to college, and then what ends up happening?” (They come out as doctors, nurses, lawyers, scientists, engineers, accountants, business managers, journalists, and teachers.)
I get that young Mr. Christian Collins doesn’t like the fact America’s colleges aren’t propaganda factories for rightwing religion and politics (like his alma mater, Liberty University). I also get a pretty strong impression that he thinks college teaching should be controlled, although how and by whom isn’t clear.
He certainly seems to feel that college education should be jingoistic. And it appears he opposes students learning about cultures different from theirs. Perhaps his lists of jailing offenses for teachers, and books he’d like to burn, would offer further clues to his curriculum ideas.
Collins apparently believes college students are children who can be told what to think, therefore professors must be prevented from planting wrong ideas in their susceptible minds, which suggests that Collins is still a child himself.
We’re still a democracy (for now), so we can’t prevent voters in places like Texas from electing people like this to Congress. And if we truly believe in democracy, we shouldn’t want to. It’s better to let them wallow in their ignorance.
We can only hope there aren’t too many of them.
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