The group Moms for Liberty has been in the news quite a lot recently. I have said many times that when a group has words like ‘Moms’, ‘Parents’, ‘Liberty’, ‘Family’, ‘Faith’, ‘Values’, and ‘Freedom’ in its name, there is a very good chance that it is pushing a right-wing extremist agenda.

Adam Laats writes that groups like this that purport to stand for parental rights have always been around and follow a similar trajectory. They quickly rise to prominence and gain a lot of attention by seizing upon some current culture war hot button issue but that also carries the seeds of their eventual downfall. One factor is that they cannot control the message and many of the people who join the group say even more extreme things, going well beyond what the leadership thinks is politically palatable and they have to keep disavowing them. They also attract militant violent groups and other undesirables who see them as advancing their own goals and that association sinks them.

Laats tells the story of Alice Moore.

Everyone loves moms. Everyone. And that’s a problem for groups like Moms for Liberty.

The group revels in its inflated reputation as a “national powerhouse,” but its century-old playbook has always had a fatal flaw.

As the 1970s story of Alice Moore shows, white conservative mothers have always had great initial political success, but that appeal tends to spiral quickly out of their control.

Moore’s story might sound familiar. She rocketed into national prominence in 1974 by taking over her local school board, blocking books and fighting for “parents’ rights.” She ran as a nonpartisan “mother,” but in truth, she was an experienced activist for conservative causes. Long before she ran for school board, she had fought against abortion rights and against sex education in schools. She railed against public schools’ alleged progressive agenda, accusing them of “destroying our children’s patriotism, trust in God, respect for authority and confidence in their parents.”

Once on the school board of Kanawha County, West Virginia, Moore ignited a dramatic boycott of a new series of textbooks. She inflamed conservative opinion nationwide by claiming that the books trampled on parents’ rights. Moore warned that the new books would force white kids into feeling guilt and anguish about America’s racism.

Moore’s campaign went national and attracted huge support from right wing organizations and even the White House. But it also attracted groups like the KKK that echoed her rhetoric, and this led to a series of violent acts against school buildings and personnel and calls for a boycott of public schools.

Alice Moore denounced it all, but the damage was done. The boycott—now indelibly associated with the Klan—fizzled. A student march in favor of the controversial books attracted thousands of supporters. The books remained in schools, though parents had to sign a permission slip for a few of the titles.

The lesson for Moms for Liberty is clear. It is easy to get quick support by standing up for children and parents’ rights. It is simple to spread alarm about teachers as “groomers” and the possibility that white children might feel guilty about racism. But that support can be dangerous.

Laats also discusses the case of Norma Gabler in the 1960s whose trajectory was similar.

In the case of Moms for Liberty, they have been in the forefront of efforts to fight accommodations for transgender students and to ban books from school and public libraries and that they feel are not suitable for children and they have tried to elect people to local school boards so that they can advance their agenda more effectively. But the Proud Boys also rallied to their side and started threatening people and that turned off many people and most of their candidates were roundly defeated at the last elections. They also have to now deal with a scandal involving one of the cofounders of the group and her husband, the latter being the Florida Republican chair and a Ron DeSantis supporter.

Jennifer C. Berkshire and Jack Schneider write that the electoral defeats of groups like Moms for Liberty, while welcome, should not lull us into thinking that they no longer pose a threat. While it is true that banning books and targeting transgender students are not that popular at galvanizing people to vote for them, these groups are just pawns in the efforts of larger right wing groups whose goal is to get rid of public education altogether by discrediting them, and that is why they will still be around.

But there’s another key reason Moms for Liberty and their allies are likely to remain a fixture in our politics. While the stated goal of these groups is to win seats on local school boards and push education policy in a more conservative direction, their institutional backers have always had a more expansive vision: dismantling public education. The Heritage Foundation, a key supporter of Moms for Liberty since its inception, sees relentless culture warring as key to its work peddling school vouchers. The more bitterness and resentment in and around the public schools that groups like Moms for Liberty can generate, the easier it will be to privatize education. The Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo summed up this strategy quite frankly in a speech at Hillsdale College in 2021: “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

Why does the far right want to pull apart public education? There are several motivating factors. First is the cost. We spend the better part of a trillion dollars each year educating the 50 million students enrolled in the nation’s public schools. For conservatives set on eliminating taxation, privatizing education has long been a holy grail. Second is the fact that public education is the nation’s most heavily unionized sector: The American Federation of Teachers maintains roughly 1.7 million members, while the National Education Association has roughly 2 million on its rolls. Many on the right are offended by the very idea of organized labor, but the GOP also has a pragmatic interest in undermining unions, which traditionally turn out for the Democratic Party. Finally, there’s the fact that public education is designed to advance the common good rather than individual values and interests. For religious fundamentalists and committed libertarians, this borders on Soviet-style collectivism.

Most Americans happen to actually like public education. Despite decades of attacks on the schools—from systematic underfunding to overheated claims about declining test scores—most parents have been consistently positive about their own children’s schools. And the public continues to express confidence in professional educators and democratic governance of the schools.

But if your goal is to undermine faith in public education, and to advance a narrative that Americans are so hopelessly divided that public schools are no longer possible, then it makes sense to keep fanning the flames, even if the cause is a loser at the polls. Many culture war candidates may think that the purpose of their crusade is to take charge of the public education system. But the money behind those candidates has a bigger purpose in mind. The purpose of the flames is to burn the system to the ground.

Moms for Liberty may fade away soon, to be replaced by the next generation of activists who realize that fighting a culture war in the name of parental rights and protecting children can garner them some attention. But what we should always bear in mind is the larger battle and the need to protect public schools from those who would seek to destroy them.