Glenn Youngkin’s Brass-Knuckled Conservatism
7th February 2022
Last month, seven school boards announced they were suing Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin over his executive order banning mask mandates in schools. The ACLU is also suing Youngkin over the order, despite the fact that it used to sue to protect liberties, not infringe on them. Youngkin, meanwhile, is suing the Loudoun County School Board, which is also being sued by parents incensed over its mask policies as well as all of its other policies.
Cut to me sitting in my Alexandria apartment terrified that a lawyer is about to knock at the door. Certainly a blizzard of lawsuits is nothing extraordinary in modern-day America — or many other powerful nations for that matter. All the way back in the 5th century BC, the playwright Aristophanes was mocking Athens for its culture of litigation. It may be that comfortable peoples with open court systems just really like to sue each other.