Zero Tolerance? CYA!

Joe Woe’s latest rant (see “Dangerous Doodles” below) concerning “Zero Intelligence (Tolerance)” policies in the public schools has its heart in the right place, but the arrow of blame is slightly off the mark.

I was familiar with this most recent episode at Payne Junior High in Arizona via James Taranto’s “Zero Tolerance Watch” in the Wall Street Journal Online blog. Unfortunately, these incidents of vanishing common sense occur with such regularity as to warrant an ongoing feature in his column. The Payne Junior High sketch of a “laser pistol of some sort” is only the latest, but certainly not the most egregious.

As Taranto quipped “Somebody must have told the School Board that ‘drawing a gun’ was dangerous. School Boards have correctly identified a “danger”, but their remaining common sense assures them it’s not a danger to the students in their charge, but rather a danger to their budgets, their legal bills and the thing that they value highest: their careers.

This is the appalling legacy of Columbine – an educational system so frightened of litigation that it negatively affects every aspect of its core mission of teaching students.

With every new (and it must be pointed out – rare) horrendous incident of violence at a school, I have no doubt of the sincere heartbreak and agony felt by administrators and teachers for the victims, as they wring their hands and beseech “what could we have done to prevent this?” – followed immediately by a paralyzing fear of crucifixion in the courts of law and public opinion.

I have some first–hand experience in the administration and governance of schools – albeit, private schools. I can assure you that the burden of legal protection from real or perceived faults of the teachers and administrators weighs heavily on most decisions that must be taken. At our modest private elementary school, located in the sleepy burg of Topeka Kansas, we had parents who wanted eight–foot tall chain link fences and armed guards at the door and other parents who wanted no security whatsoever (That wasn’t the kind of school they wanted THEIR children to attend). The governing board had to attempt to square this intractable circle. Our little school had only a couple of administrators and less than twenty teachers – but we had a dedicated legal counsel.

No, the fault here is not lily–livered dolts running our schools, but rather the litigious “gotta blame and sue somebody” mentality that has taken hold of our modern culture. I accuse the ambulance–chasing trial lawyers (like John Edwards) with their TV ads encouraging every jamoke with a pain or a grievance to sue their perceived enemies into oblivion. I accuse popular movies like “Erin Brockovich” which glamorize these tort–bar–bastards as selfless heroes. And I particularly accuse the otherwise upstanding Americans who decide to assuage their pain and loss by suing the pants off somebody.

In the mean time every school board is advised by their legal counsel to institute “zero tolerance” and other nonsensical schemes, not to protect the children, but to protect their own wary behinds.

Dangerous Doodles

A 13 year old boy attending Payne Junior High School in Arizona doodled some sort of gun on a homework paper he turned in. The school district, with a "zero tolerance" policy suspended him for three days. Are these people insane? The joke is too obvious so I'll get it out of the way up front — Zero Tolerance? More like Zero Intelligence! Children learn lots of things in school. Some of it is scholastic — some of it is behavioral. Adult authority-figure behavior is on display here and what we see is a total lack of common sense. Gone. Gone. Gone. No common sense in adults, but now in children, a fear of breaking bizarre, arbitrary, unknown, and unknowable rules. Shouldn't the rules make sense? I assert that no kid could predict that such doodles would be considered "threatening," (because A) they aren't, and B) they haven't yet had common sense beat out of them by the "educational" system.)

How is a this doodle a threat? This is stupid beyond belief. Almost certainly I handed in some paper as a child with a gun drawn on it (as well as cars and airplanes). The teacher probably utterly ignored it as what it was — meaningless scribbling.

I saw some talking head lawyer on Fox News sticking up for the "zero tolerance" policy, stating, "If someone handed me a legal brief with a gun drawn on it, I'd feel threatened." Where to begin... Where to begin... Well, I suspect she's just a blithering idiot, but I will try to address this rationally. If a GROWN UP drew a gun on a LEGAL document it MIGHT mean something significant, whereas if a CHILD scribbled a gun on HIS OWN HOMEWORK it might mean HE'S A CHILD!

I'm going insane because this is all so blatantly, flagrantly, painfully OBVIOUS and it is maddening to explain the blatantly, flagrantly, painfully OBVIOUS to what are supposed to be rational, mature, intelligent, responsible adults! (False assumption in there somewhere. Can you spot it?) But they've got their "zero tolerance" policies — which I suspect are just a way to avoid the chore of actually thinking and responsibility. More importantly, it's a means of avoiding the "J-word" — judgmental.

There's more to this madness than zero tolerance of weapons. My daughter is still in high school. They do not have a medical care for students because they are evidently afraid of lawsuits. They have some guy in the "clinic" — a room with a cot. I don't think he's a nurse even. There is, of course, a "zero tolerance" policy on all drugs (all medications). The "clinic" guy cannot give out any medicines such as Advil, Tylenol, etc. He does not even have ice on hand for first aid for sprains, etc. Apparently he's only there to call parents and watch kids lying down on the cot until they are picked up. Why aren't my children being medically cared for in school? I am baffled by the school district's irresponsibility. I have placed my child in their care but they are not caring for her.

Crap! it just hit me! School just started again. I need to register her medications so she can take her asthma inhaler to school without being expelled. Yes, if we have not registered it, she can be expelled from school for possessing her potentially life-saving medication. It's a topsy-turvy world.

I try to make reasoned arguments on this blog, but it feels like all I can do here is scream at the incredible lack of common sense displayed by school administrators and their moral cowardice in the face of imagined potential lawsuits. Won't someone "Think of the children!"?

Even One Life

How do solve a problem like Geraldo? How do you hold a moonbat in your hand?

I have long believed that Fox News has a real problem concerning their association with Mr. Geraldo Rivera. I understand ratings and buzz and diversity and all that crap – but giving a clearly intellectually and morally biased person like Jerry Rivers an international prime–time platform is selling out to the least common denominator. I expect better of FNS.

Recently Geraldo has carved out quite a niche for himself as the designated “indignant voice for the downtrodden brown–skinned people” as it relates to any and all matters concerning immigration. He drops the “R–word” with the ease of a disciple on a morally superior crusade.

I was therefore very interested to hear Mr. Rivers explain himself under the typically persistent and withering questioning of the reigning Queen of Talk Radio, Ms. Laura Ingraham.

http://hotair.cachefly.net/audio/2007-08/li-gr.mp3

I heard it live yesterday, and it was one of the most pathetic interviews/performances that I have ever heard in my life. Laura asks one “tough” question (and it wasn’t even that tough!) and Jerry immediately pulls out the whiny “why don’t you like me?” complaint. The guy has nothing – no moral, ethical or intellectual defense of his indefensible position other than feeling sorry for brown–skinned people.

Here is an interesting take on the “criminal illegal immigrants” story. Disingenuous mush–heads immediately argue that illegals are generally more law–abiding than regular Americans (where do they get this bogus statistic if it is generally impermissible to ask a criminal defendant his citizenship status? A wild bullshit guess?). They then assert that even stating the immigration status of the criminal is “racist”, because, after all, we are talking about Mexicans here. The conservative/immigrationist (to use Geraldo’s pejorative epithet) replies “But this man committed a heinous crime and he shouldn’t have ever been here”. The mush–head counters with “crimes are committed everyday by ordinary Americans” as if that means anything.

So, let’s turn it around. How many times have we heard that specific laws that abridge personal freedoms are justified “even if they save ONE life”?

Seatbelts, Speed Limits, Bike Helmets, Drunk Driving Laws, Anti–Smoking laws, Trans-Fat Bans, Restrictive Gun Laws, etc, etc.

Aren’t the libs being very hypocritical about a core philosophical issue? If keeping illegal immigrants out of the country saves EVEN ONE LIFE, isn’t it worth it?

Primal Instinct

I have observed that dramatizing our primal survival mechanisms is a source of great pleasure. Not just in humans — animals too. You'll never see our dog happier than when given the opportunity to chase, catch, chomp on the throat, and shake till the neck is broken of a stuffed squirrel, duck, fish, etc. This is good times for our dog. She knows it isn't a real duck but she sure gets a bang out of pretending she's just tracked down and killed her dinner. That's a predator's instinct. What about prey, or "flight animals"? Well, of course they like to run! Like horses. Run horsey, run! See if you can beat the other horses to the finish line! Or our bunny rabbit. He loves to be chased around and around and then make it back into the safety of his hole (or cage, in this case). You can see that he's having a grand time at evading the make-believe coyote.

And so it is with the human animal. Males in particular are programmed for hunting and killing — hence the popularity of violent video games where kids and grown ups alike are offered the safe, legal, and clean opportunity to dramatize acts of violence. Long before the advent of agriculture the urge was developed for use against animals so that man could eat. But genetic programming dies hard. To be happy we need ways to activate this primal instinct. Sports are of course one way. Boys wrasslin' and fightin' like we did when I was a kid is another. Playing Soldier, Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians. Of course we love this stuff because it activates within us the mechanism that has kept us alive.

But the do-gooder lefties can't stand this horrible retrograde behavior. Once I was at a toy store and witnessed a preschool boy asking his mommy for a toy gun. His well meaning (oh, aren't they all...), but utterly misguided, mother chastised him, "Billy, you know you aren't allowed to play with guns." I wanted to kick her ass (but somehow I restrained myself — perhaps because I could take advantage of other violent outlets). I really feel sorry for this kid. He's growing up being denied a central part of his being. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the kind of kid that winds up actually committing horrific crimes later in life. Was Seung-Hui Cho denied toy guns when he was a kid? I wonder.

Compared to conservatives, liberals produce less offspring and therefore have far less aggregate experience in raising children (the pre-parenthood of liberal youth, the exercise of "a woman's choice", the childless freedom of blue state sophisticate urbanites, the biological childlessness of homosexuals and trannies, etc.). Yet somehow liberals are qualified to tell me how to raise my kids (let's face it — they think that only they are qualified and the actual parents are not!). These fonts of behavioral wisdom are always making a fuss over the violence of video games ("the average 12 year old has witnessed over 500,000 violent deaths in movies and video games..." or some such horse hockey statistic.) Meanwhile they coddle truly dangerous violent inner-city criminals. For a gang banger, killing someone is a ticket to respect and gangland promotion, unlike what it used to be — a ticket to the electric chair. But, of course, "It's society's fault. These youths are disadvantaged and disenfranchised and they are exposed to too much violence in video games." Funny, my son hasn't killed anyone, despite having been a Grand Theft Auto San Andreas fiend in his formative years. The solution to true (not pretend) violent behavior are prison cells and electric chairs — and not virtual ones.

Certainly, the urge for violence is primarily a male drive in humans. When men were out hunting woolly mammoths with spears, the women were gathering fruits, berries, and other edibles. Skills required: seeking and finding objects of value, discriminating amongst them (ripe? unripe? rotten? poisonous?), and bringing them back to camp. Sounds like shopping to me, and I don't know anything that makes my wife and daughter happier. Personally, I detest shopping — as is common for men. Disappointingly, my son, enjoys it. He's not alone. It seems this is now common among young adult males these days. Admittedly he's a bit of a metro... It's the feminization of America. I keep meaning to take him out to the gun range and teach him a man's activity... Maybe that'd get his attention off of shopping for jeans and shoes.

The left will probably want to genetically engineer a new, superior, peaceful, non-violent man — free from his genetic baggage of violent behavior. I imagine it could be done. I also reckon this new race would be exterminated pretty quickly by the old, violent humans. So much for "progress" (and progressives).