Had
there been Leatherman®
Tools when Baby
Boomers like me were
in elementary
school, we would
have begged our dads
to let us borrow
them so we could
bring them to class
for show-and-tell.
With no more than a
warning to
"be careful with
the sharp
attachments"
our teachers would
have passed the
Swiss Army
Knives-on-steroids
around the room,
allowing each
student to get some
hands-on time with
the marvel of the
day.
Back then, those
who brought their
fathers' potential
weapons to school
for educational
purposes received attaboys
from their teachers
along with, perhaps,
the awarding of a
few class
participation
brownie points, as
well.
Today, if a student
is even suspected of
possessing a Leatherman® on
campus, his school
will be locked-down
and a SWAT team will
roll up to sort
things out. Under
PC's Zero Tolerance
Rules, possession of
a Leatherman®
could
be punishable by
expulsion
-- even for
a first offense by
an otherwise
exemplary student.
Then:
"Hello, Mrs. Donath
this is the school
nurse. Edward
is complaining of a
headache
(nurse
turns away and
whispers: "He
probably just wants
to get out of taking
his math quiz...)
but he has no fever
and I'm going to
send him back to
class. Just the
same, do I have your
permission to give
him an aspirin?"
Now:
It's OK to send your
kid to school
doped-up on Ritalin
but if you pack a
Tylenol into
Junior's lunchbox,
for any reason, the
PC Police will deal
with him as though
he is in possession
of heroine or a
deadly weapon like a
Leatherman®
Tool. In
order for PC to work
its egalitarian
magic it must resort
to an antithetical
methodology known as
Zero Tolerance.
Boomer kids
felt free to ask
their teachers a lot
of tough
questions...
"Mrs. Shapiro, if
you can smoke
cigarettes in the
teachers' lounge why
can't you
smoke in our
classroom? Mrs.
Shapiro, what does
retarded mean? Mrs.
Shapiro, how come it
says 'In God We
Trust' on money?
Mrs. Shapiro, how
come kids get
left back?
Mrs. Shapiro, should
we hate Russia for
making us go down to
the boiler room for
air raid drills?
Mrs. Shapiro, why do
we memorize the
Pledge of
Allegiance?
Sadly, our children
and grandchildren
ask very few
questions today.
Why? Because their
biggest in-school
fear is of being
ostracized for
offending someone
who may not even be
present in the
classroom.
Even at the height
of Viet Nam era protests, when
young adults were
calling for their
peers to distrust
politicians and
anyone over 30, protestors never
demanded the
decimation of
traditional,
Constitutional
America
(with the notable
exception of a mere
handful of radicals
like the terrorists
who hosted Barack
Obama's political
coming out party in
Chicago).
Then:
PC
was synonymous with
civil rights --
tolerance.
Now:
In order to enforce
PC, its antithesis
--
zero tolerance
-- is the order of
the day.
In particular, the
current
administration hopes
to
advance an agenda
that will ultimately
abridge rights by
redistributing
wealth, socializing
the private sector,
manipulating the
system of checks and
balances and
re-interpreting the
Constitution...all while
spinning the media
and taking the
propaganda pains to
make it all look civil.
The words
"civil"
and
"rights"
are present in that
mix but the actual
practice of being
politically correct
has become a gross
distortion of what
was originally
intended by
post-WWII Europeans.
Is it any wonder
that under-40's are so
ready to
let a typical PC
professor dictate
what they ought to
believe about the
responsibilities of
the United States
government? Why
would that be
surprising in light
of the cramming down
their throats, from
their first day in
elementary school,
of a liberal ideology
that has always
sounded pretty much
the same as what
is now being
pontificated by the highest
office holder in the
land?
Throughout the years
since students have
been hammered by PC
dogma and its
resultant
revisionism,
truthful talk in
academia about such
things as Cold War
bomb shelters, Viet
Nam, the Holocaust,
communist tyranny in
Europe, assassinated
politicians and the
actual politics of
genuine Civil Rights
leaders has been
avoided for fear of
offending someone's
ethnic-ly sensitive
ears.
As a result of the
ironically
iron-handed rule of
political
correctness, today's
elementary school
teacher is hardly
ever asked a tough
question. What
would a teacher say
on one of those rare
occasions when some
less-indoctrinated kid
might ask:
"My grandpa says
we have
an air raid shelter
in the cellar of the
school building.
Would I get expelled
if I brought a
Leatherman®
Tool and
bottle of Tylenol
into it in during a
survival emergency?"
A kid like that would be
better off asking a
simple question
like:
"Mrs. Shapiro, what
is the answer to the
Riddle of the
Sphinx?"