This is utopia? Governance failures, graft in North Idaho give lessons on far-right | Opinion

It’s common for conservatives to accuse liberals of being suckered into utopian beliefs.

Liberals want to give aid to the poor, which sounds good on paper, the argument goes. But people are selfish, and so in the real world, you just wind up with people cheating the system.

Over the last few years in Idaho, with the ascendancy of the far-right and especially the growth of Christian nationalism within that faction, utopianism has found a new home.

“We have to decide as a society whether we will rely upon man’s wisdom or God’s wisdom as we pass laws and create more policy,” Idaho Family Policy Center President Blaine Conzatti told the Idaho Capital Sun in 2022. “Man’s wisdom leads to mob justice, whereas God’s wisdom leads to flourishing, it leads to social stability, it leads to individuals reaching their highest potential.”

From the statehouse to the schoolhouse, many in the far-right wing of the GOP have been working to implement policies aimed at restructuring society: an extremely harsh abortion ban, efforts to ban books in libraries and schools, efforts to limit how people can dance in public, a ban on students using bathrooms that match their gender identity, a ban on transgender people getting identifying documents that list their gender identity and so on.

Perhaps the most thoroughgoing efforts to implement this vision have been through efforts of the far-right to take over nonpartisan institutions like the West Bonner School District and North Idaho College. There we’re getting a good glimpse of what this utopian vision looks like in practice.

There isn’t “social stability” and “individuals reaching their highest potential.” Instead, everything is crumbling. And the only people walking out ahead are the politically connected.

In June, the West Bonner school board hired failed state superintendent candidate Branden Durst, who never held the basic qualifications legally required for a superintendent in Idaho, to run the district. Simultaneously there was a push to adopt a curriculum developed by Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian private university closely aligned with the homeschooling movement.

“If you’re a sincere Christ follower and you’re not regularly engaging in politics with a biblical worldview, you’re ignoring Scripture,” Durst posted on social media a week ago, spouting a phrase that could be taken right from Conzatti’s mouth.

You could see how, if you were a deeply religious person, this might have appeal: a public school run by fellow conservative Christians that doesn’t just teach academics but instills your personal values, as well.

But just a few months down the line, we can see what actually happened.

In West Bonner County School District, parents were outraged and recalled by wide margins two trustees who supported Durst. With the pro-Durst majority gone, the superintendent would soon be replaced, or so it seemed.

Until the third pro-Durst trustee stopped showing up to meetings, meaning there was never a quorum capable of hiring a replacement. As Idaho Education News reported last week, that trustee is now the subject of a criminal investigation for refusing to do the job he was elected to do.

As of today, you have a school board member under police investigation, Durst cashing paychecks because a paralyzed board can’t do anything and building public outrage.

It’s much like what the patrons of North Idaho College got following their far-right takeover: a school tilting perilously on the brink of losing accreditation whose primary occupation seems to be cutting fat paychecks to attorneys with far-right political connections.

Failed attorney general candidate Art Macobmber more than once billed NIC in excess of $20,000 for a month’s work, the Coeur d’Alene Press reported. Macomber was replaced in August by Colton Boyles, who has given legal advice to such luminaries as former Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin and Ammon Bundy — and who is on probation for a recent DUI, as the Spokesman-Review reported.

It seems clear that, just as in the case of Durst, the far-right board skipped over other more qualified applicants to select the one that was politically aligned.

And through all this, the students of North Idaho are losing out. Political operatives have their back-slapping sessions or pound their chests on social media — and most importantly, cash those sweet taxpayer-funded paychecks. Meanwhile, teachers struggle to find some way to keep their students learning math or reading, to keep the kids isolated from the game in which they have become disposable pawns.

The central lesson: The most distinguishing features of governance by the Christian nationalist far-right have been incompetence and a willingness to raid the public purse.

That’s what the promised utopia looks like in practice. It is not the Kingdom of God, just the rule of a few selfish men.

Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman.