A minor news story about stupid petty officialdom instantly turns into a winger freak-out of bizarre delusionality, anti-government ranting, and random free-floating racism. What a surprise.
A local-news story from North Carolina reports today that a high-school student was suspended for the rest of her senior year after officials conducting a mass search found that she had unknowingly picked up her father’s lunch box from home, instead of her own, and it contained a paring knife that he uses to peel fruit. Naturally she was busted under their “zero tolerance” no-knives policy, and kicked out of school for the rest of the year.The story notes that the principal has discretion under the policy to take intent into account – this was how he handled it (god knows what they do to students who actually do intend to carry a knife – stab them on the spot?).
Now, this is stupid, and harsh, and possibly truly damaging, especially for a graduating senior. But you wouldn’t think it had many major political implications. Unless you were a right winger, and thus both hyper-reactive and kind of crazy.
Multiple wingnut blogs have already somehow pegged this as the result of liberalism. Because apparently small-town school boards in Lee County (yes, that would be Robert E. Lee) North Carolina are hotbeds of leftwing activism. Nobody seems to notice either that “zero tolerance” policies are essentially a shibboleth of the right wing, invented by no less a wingnut cult figure than Ronald Reagan, or that collective guilt, no-warrant searches, and the surrender of student privacy are also right-wing articles of faith.
Instapundit somehow figures this is the result of the school being “unwilling to take responsibility for discipline”: surely it’s exactly the opposite – the school claiming the right to demand disciplinary standards of its own arbitrary devising, in response to panicky calls for stricter “standards”, without due process or recourse to appeal. His solution: . . . (wait for it) . . . “school vouchers”. But leave it to Right Wing News to really pull out the stops:
Maybe [this is] educational: to prepare her and her follow students for life in a country that has traded liberty for liberalism. More likely it’s yet another pernicious consequence of political correctness. If a white girl from a nice family gets let off after having been caught with a knife, how can they punish the next sociopathic punk with six inches of underpants showing when they catch him brandishing a switchblade? After all, we’re required to believe that everyone is exactly the same.
“White girl from a nice family”? As contrasted, of course, with “sociopathic punk with six inches of underpants showing . . . brandishing a switchblade”.
OK . . .
You know, I just can’t go on. . . .
What’s to say? Conservatism is like the moral and emotional equivalent of a logical contradiction: you can’t really debate it; all you can do is . . . point it out. Those who understand will see, and reject it; those who don’t will continue in ignorant futility. Yep – these guys are conservatives. Enough said.
Judd
Kevin
Kevin T. Keith
leanleft
tgirsch
It’s always confused me how zero-tolerance policies are somehow the fault of “liberals.”
“Multiple wingnut blogs have already somehow pegged this as the result of liberalism.” That seems to be the thesis here. Do you have any examples of these? Multiple outlets have picked this up but I found the word liberal in only one. It seems the real story is that almost no one has blamed this on liberals.
Just another fantasy of those no good wingnuts up to know good again. Well written otherwise.
“know good,” huh?
As for examples, um, in case you didn’t notice, he provided a few.
Well, I linked two in the original post.
And, here’s Pajamas Media declaring it “probably the product of a culture that makes lawsuits possible in every breath” – another winger meme.
“Black and Right” links the story; still waiting to hear their endorsement of the RWN analysis.
“Idiocy and Tyranny” complains that it is “Moronic and tragic — more consideration by our federal government is granted to suspected illegal aliens, convicted felons, sleazy politicians, and terrorists than the North Carolina school district is showing (and heavy-handedly punishing) this young girl . . .”
And that’s without even mining the comments threads. But one was too good to pass up:
From comments at “The Blaze“: “Schools are run by liberal loons. She was probably a christian.”
Ah . . . the sweet smell of winger madness . . .!
There are a lot of blogs that simply reprint the original story without comment – thus, they’re not technically offering any overt opinion on its causes. But virtually all of these are conservative blogs that devote themselves to trashing liberals, like “Moonbattery” and “Big Government”; apparently it’s just obvious to them that this incident reinforces conservative beliefs, and thus belongs on their blog. Since it’s actually a perfect storm of conservative attitudes, policies, and fears converged, I can’t understand that, but, as I said, attempting to understand conservatives is neither productive nor realistic.
A lot of blogs, mostly the more libertarian ones, are commenting on the problems with zero-tolerance policies – not one that I have seen makes any connection to the “War on [Some] Drugs”, or to the Reagan Administration, which started the former as part of the latter.
Notwithstanding the question of where “zero tolerance” policies come from, when did knives become something only used as weapons?
I brought a paring knife to school in my lunch in 1990, and didn’t get it trouble for it. Though I do remember the teacher making some noise and concluding that since it was me, I could have it. Apparently, they thought I was some kind of saint ne touche. But I’d attributed that to my school being run by nuns, who have by definition spent decades getting their priorities all fucking out of whack. Was it just coincidence that they were crazy, and any other school would also have gotten all worried about it back then, too?
I know that my family is unusual in that all of us kids got taught to keep and sharpen knives when we were 8yo, but surely other people still went to Boy and Girl Scouts and such like?
Both my father and father-in-law, two VERY different men, preach the virtues of always having a pocketknife with you. I always carry one, except when TSA bullshit prevents me from doing so.
The no tolerance crap has gotten ridiculous, but it has now morphed into a general unwillingness to engage in human judgment. In Indiana, where I live, a law was passed that requires everybody who buys alcohol for take-out to show identification. I’m 51 years old, I don’t look anything like I’m under 21, but sure enough I grab a 6-pack with my Cap’n Crunch and I get carded. We don’t ask anybody to make judgments anymore, as a culture we seem to want a rule for everything so there cannot be any decision-making. Part of it is probably a consequence of the fear of litigation, but a good chunk of it, I’m convinced, is that too many people just fear being wrong. I went with my wife into a wing joint and ordered a beer. The waitress, I’ve known for 8 years, who knows that I am a professor and that my wife is dean of the college, still carded us…rules of the chain (not state law if you drink where you buy). I didn’t blame her, but I ordered water and decided not to return–which I haven’t and it’s been several months. But the point is the same, no trust in employees (no training, they are, after all, disposable) and zero willingness to act sanely. I’ll avoid my fear-based society rant for now, but the perception of judgment not applying “equally” (which means outcomes as opposed to process) seems to terrify Americans. Sigh.
KTK, hope your holidays are good. Lets talk.
Dave