Riggs proved Heck’s point

I was flattered to see that my column about the NEA’s radical left turn prompted a concerned response from a former NEA staffer, Ms. Becky Riggs, who decided to correct my, “inaccuracy, inconsistency, and irony.” Reading her letter, it became quite apparent that on those topics, Ms. Riggs knows what of she speaks.

Having worked for the NEA, Ms. Riggs is well trained on the semantics and word games that need to be played to fend off attacks from folks like me, but this attempt wasn’t her finest hour. Her embarrassing conclusion that the NEA “can accept [my] religious and political beliefs” was hysterical given the fact that the NEA publishes manuals on how to silence those beliefs, pours millions of dollars into litigation to eliminate them, and finances political candidates diametrically opposed to them. But all of this verbal deception is typical of those who fight the NEA’s public relations battles, and so if she had left it at that, I wouldn’t have taken the time to respond.

But instead, she showed the very classless, aggressive, mean-spirited, and outrageous tactics so many of us have come to expect from the NEA’s spokesmen. Ms. Riggs, perhaps you’re used to teachers who will roll over and hide from these insults. But I am not one of them, so let’s have at it.

After oversimplifying my original arguments, setting up several straw men, and misleading people on the nature of union benefits, you outrageously write, “Perhaps Peter needs to consider teaching at a private religious school where he will not have to suffer the variety of students, parents, colleagues, and professional associations who do not see the world exactly as he does.” How utterly contemptible and unprofessional.

My complaint has nothing to do with having students or colleagues that hold different views than me, Ms. Riggs, and you know it. It has everything to do with joining an organization that is publicly denouncing everything that I believe in. I appreciate students who bring different perspectives into the classroom, and some of my colleagues who are my best friends disagree with me politically. You are despicably trying to insinuate that I would mistreat or dismiss anyone who disagrees with my views rather than work with them. While such an unfounded accusation speaks volumes about your own character, I hope you see your own irony.

By telling me to leave public education, you are committing the same offense you supposedly condemn in me! Your own words are like Toto pulling the curtain back, Ms. Riggs. My position has always been that in education we shouldn’t be discussing religious and political differences at all. That was the whole point of my original column that condemned the NEA for not focusing on improving the lives of children, but instead venturing into political areas they shouldn’t be involved in.

I contended that the NEA had become openly hostile to those of us with traditional morality and was no longer a suitable association for us due to their belligerent commitment to overtly anti-Christian social positions. If you truly wanted to defend the NEA, you could have written to tell folks like me how our views are valued, cherished, meaningful, and just as welcome in the NEA as yours. But instead you distorted my position, implied I was a freeloader, suggested those of us who don’t accept the NEA’s stance are close-minded, and proposed that since I object to the NEA’s politics I should just leave public education altogether. Talk about irony! You have proven to my fellow Christian teachers exactly how the NEA values their views in a way I could never have hoped to do myself, Ms. Riggs. Kudos.

Peter Heck

Kokomo