Kristine Hostetter is a competent fourth-grade teacher. No one disputes that students both enjoy and benefit from their time in her San Clemente, Calif., classroom. She is also heavily involved in the American Phoenix Project, an anti-lockdown, anti-mask, pro-Trump group founded by her husband, Alan Hostetter.
The correct answer is no, as much as I disagree with just about every political opinion Kristine Hostetter is known to hold. That many think otherwise speaks to the tenor of our times, when people across the political spectrum are increasingly intolerant of the beliefs of those who differ with them.
As word circulated about Hostetter’s actions in Washington, former students who had previously highlighted racist incidents in the district circulated a petition calling for Hostetter to be suspended pending an investigation of her conduct. It received more than 6,000 signatures. A competing petition emerged, demanding the district retain her.
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The district suspended Hostetter, and the FBI raided the couple’s apartment in early February. After the district found no proof that Hostetter had entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, she was returned to her classroom. Across San Clemente, however, arguments rage on.
Orange County was once a bastion of support for the conservative, anti-communist and conspiracy-oriented John Birch Society. Yet even as the county around it has turned blue, San Clemente remains quite red. Donald Trump won a majority of votes in the city in 2016, and many residences sported Trump flags last summer when my family rented a home there. In 2020, San Clemente emerged as a place where businesses and residents resisted covid-19 lockdowns. Notably, Alan Hostetter helped organize protests against pandemic closures and mask mandates.
The movement against Kristine Hostetter mushroomed in reaction to all of this. Many petition-signers want Hostetter fired not because of anything she was proven to have done but because “canceling” her would assuage some of their hostility toward Trump, right-leaning extremism and fury over racist incidents in the school district.
“Fourth graders are at an extremely impressionable age,” one former student told the high school newspaper. “How can she resolve issues amongst classmates regarding fairness if she refuses to accept the results of a presidential election by engaging in a protest aimed to disrupt a constitutional transition of power?” Another school district graduate told the New York Times that she could not remember Hostetter treating her differently because she’s Black, but “maybe I didn’t notice it because I was so young.”
These complaints are not about Hostetter’s ability to do her job. They veer into policing thought. Whatever one’s opinion of Hostetter’s politics, she did not, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, share her views with her fourth-grade charges. There are no allegations that she treated students differently because of politics or race — and some parents have stepped forward to say just the opposite. “What Mrs. Hostetter believes in has nothing to do with what an amazing teacher she is,” notes the petition supporting her.
For all the supposed tolerance of the left, a trend appears to be intensifying — particularly among younger cohorts more active on social media — of discomfort with substantive disagreement and ever-quicker calls for social or employment deplatforming over offenses. Some focus their fury on individuals, who are often easier targets than institutions and other big structures.
Probably without realizing it, some on the left are imitating the right, which despite its newfound horror over cancel culture, has long embraced such actions. It was only a few years ago that the anti-Trump resistance was up in arms at a woman losing her job after flashing her middle finger at a Trump motorcade. Something people on the left and right could stand to remember: The woman, Juli Briskman, was later elected to a Virginia county board. Pushing people out of a job can have unexpected effects.
Many of those who would like to see Hostetter fired should keep in mind that our society prioritizes freedom of speech to protect not popular thoughts but the right to voice unpopular ones. Narrow the range of permissible sentiment in private life and, inevitably, more and more people will find themselves in the wrong. The tendency to punish private thoughts or actions threatens not just the Kristine Hostetters of the world, but also it puts everyone at risk.
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