“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” – Westley, “The Princess Bride”
Last week President Obama issued the equivalent of a stick (as opposed to a carrot) to bypass the debate on gender identity and privacy and coerce schools to allow children to use bathroom, locker room, and shower facilities based on their self-identification, supposedly with the goal of ensuring safety and respect for all students.
It makes me wonder if Mr. Obama has ever been to school. Schools have been failing at ensuring both safety and respect among children since…the invention of schools. We’ve been hearing about numerous anti-bullying campaigns and training for years now. And just how successful have they been? If anything it sounds like bullying is a worse problem than when I was a kid, only now the bullied are not even allowed to resolve the problem themselves. When has “I’ll tell the teacher!” ever worked?
As for respect? That’s laughable. Kids have never been particularly good at showing respect to one another. They’re still learning what that means! And unfortunately the lessons they are (maybe) taught by parents and (sometimes) from media are vastly outweighed by a society that no longer respects anyone or anything.
But the President believes we can fix all that by simply letting the transgendered into the bath- and shower-rooms of their choice. And, for some inexplicable reason he believes that our K-12 schools is the best place to start. Not the White House, not government agencies, not even public spaces, but schools–where staff are already extremely restricted in what they are allowed to do to assist students and where it’s usually best to avoid being in any of those spaces with kids for fear of legal issues.
The idea is ludicrous: “Hey, I know. Let’s foster safety and respect by taking biological boys and girls and placing them together in a space where teachers fear to go. Viola! Instant Nirvana!” That’ll work about as well as all that racial healing we were promised.
But not to worry, we’ve provided an incentive! Any schools who fail to do this may lose Federal funds. Here in Utah we stand to lose over 10% of our state education budget if we fail to comply, plus the cost of any lawsuits the Federal government may file. It might be one thing if this directive had been the result of any open and transparent process in which Obama called in experts and representatives of all sides of the issue and worked out a best path scenario, but we’ve seen no indication that this is so. At best this seems to be yet another “I’m smarter than you, so sit down and shut up” measure by an arrogant man whose own daughters will more than likely be completely unaffected by this move. At worst, this seems like a hissy-fit by a brat of a President who didn’t like it when North Carolina recently told his administration to take a hike.
“For The Children!” has long been a mantra by anyone who wants change, but clearly this is more a matter of “For a small percentage of the children–damn the rest of them!” But more importantly, this is a naïve and intentionally oblivious ignoring of the facts: you can’t ensure safety or respect. Period. Not even among adults, let alone children who are still figuring out the world and are far from emotionally or mentally mature (to say nothing of teenagers who are going through physical and hormonal changes that make them entirely irrational at times). This is also a deliberate ignoring of actual science–something liberals claim to adore–which indicates that transgenderism is a psychological issue akin to anorexia and other “body issue” disorders. There certainly has not been any significant research into whether forcing children into bathrooms or showers together will actually help in matters of “safety and respect.”
So now we have President Obama telling us he can deliver a pain-free childhood for our children when decades of liberal management of our schools have continually failed, if not increased the problem. I suspect our dear Westley was right: he’s selling something. The question is what, and to whom–and what the ultimate price will be. In this case it’s not just our firstborns, but all our children. To extend the Princess Bride metaphor, we’re being led by President Vizzini, who is brilliant in all the wrong ways. To him, the idea that this could possibly go wrong is “completely and in all other ways inconceivable.” And we know how that turned out.
But at least Obama will be able to feel good about himself, and that’s all that matters. Because that’s why we elect presidents–to help them with their self-esteem.
“To him, the idea that this could possibly go wrong is “completely and in all other ways inconceivable.”” I wonder. Because when something goes wrong, then how do you fix it? Surprise, a more intrusive govt!