For The Children, You Say

Naturally.
Again, it’s the casual, habitual arrogance.

Somewhat related:

They demand that we say and believe things which we cannot [honestly] say or believe.

Douglas Murray on the deranging effects of wokeness.

Girls told their parents mortifying stories of having a boy kick open their stall door. Boys described being afraid to use the urinals.
This is head\desk stuff. I’ve written and deleted a paragraph that even I feel went too far, and I consider myself fairly reactionary about this kind of thing.
Stick a fork in folks, we’re done I think.
It was a quiet plea to be left alone.
The proper response can be found in the words of that great philosopher Mike Tyson, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Indeed Mike, indeed. Fewer quiet pleas and more punched faces and this stuff will dry up and blow away.

Prosperity did not depend on slavery. The United States and the United Kingdom and the rest would have become just as rich without the 250 years of unrequited toil. They have remained rich, observe, even after the peculiar institution was abolished, because their riches did not depend on its sinfulness… To cast enslavement of some as requisite for the wealth of others is bad economics and bad history. But it is also a toxic ideology.

Deirdre McCloskey on slavery and wealth.

without telling parents,
We’ve been here before, of course:

Parents only discovered the campaign – which asserts that white pupils are complicit in an “invisible system of privilege” – when their children began complaining about it.

In a saner world, these creatures would be chased out of town.

But now it seems that public school officials are taking full advantage of the power they have, or are perceived by parents to have, over the life outcomes of upper middle class children. A bad report, an assignment to a more vibrant high school, and a fall to the level of the proles.
Packer would have been an enthusiastic supporter of this power.

My wife and I are products of public schools. Whatever torments they inflicted on our younger selves, we believed in them.
Packer is a 1978 graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto, a veritable blackboard jungle where the children of Stanford professors torment the children of electronic engineers with calculus questions.
The school is currently 45% Asian, 38% white, and 1% black. It was probably blonder, more like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, more characterized by James Spader or Sean Penn types, when Packer was there. And the percentage of blacks was probably a number less than 1.
From the bubble of Palo Alto to the bubble of Manhattan, Packer is surely qualified to teach the rest of us about his principled belief in public schools in all their diversity and vibrancy.

a veritable blackboard jungle where the children of Stanford professors torment the children of electronic engineers with calculus questions.
Heh.

I cannot think of something further away from democracy than social justice, especially as it is practiced in the article.
And distant from justice.

Meanwhile, in the Guardian.

“Well, I cannot think of something further away from democracy than social justice, especially as it is practiced in the article.”
My own take bears repeating, I think: Justice, unqualified, holds you responsible for your actions. “Social justice” holds you responsible for the actions of others, whom you may never have met and could be long dead, regardless of your own. It’s the opposite of justice.
Democracy? Maybe. Depends what you mean by it. I’m similarly suspicious of that, or at least of those who fetishize electoral (or any kind of) majoritarianism and call it “democracy”. If democracy is rule by the people, why are its worshippers never happy to leave the people alone to rule themselves? Even Keynes, hardly a free-market fundamentalist, said that the most powerful vote you can give anyone is a Pound in his pocket.

Female emancipation was a mistake.
Leftist emancipation was a mistake.

Female emancipation was a mistake.
Think about it. Even the most extreme opponents of female emancipation, barely 100 years ago, would not have had the nerve to predict what is going on today as one of the consequences. And I’m sure those opponents were mocked and ridiculed enough for the milder things they did say. Hmmm…let’s see what I can find from the opposition back then…

I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.
Jane Addams

Well, this is going to take more time than I thought but here’s a current timeslice from Wiki on the subject. I bolded some parts I found interesting. Not that I agree 100% with all of the bolded parts, some even the opposite, but…well, like I said…interesting.

Anti-suffragists, such as Josephine Dodge, argued that giving women the right to vote would overburden them and undermine their privileged status.[52] They saw participation in the private sphere as essential to a woman’s role and thought that giving them public duties would prevent them from fulfilling their primary responsibilities in the home. Anti-suffragists claimed that they represented the “silent majority” of America who did not want to enter the public sphere by gaining the right to vote.[71] Being against women’s suffrage didn’t mean, however, that all Antis were against civic pursuits.[72] Jeanette L. Gilder, a journalist, wrote “Give women everything she wants, but not the ballot. Open every field of learning, every avenue of industry to her, but keep her out of politics.”[73] Dodge encouraged women to become involved in “charitable, philanthropic and educational activities.”[72] It was also cited that women had made reforms such as raising the age of consent without the vote and that gaining this right was therefore unnecessary and could even be harmful to further reform movements.[74] The thought was that women were able to influence the government because they were seen as politically neutral and non-partisan and giving them the right to vote would strip them of this unique position.[75] In addition, because voting is “only a small part of government,” they believed there was no need to vote in order to participate in politics.[70] This particular line of reasoning, that women should stay out of politics, kept the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) from officially endorsing suffrage until 1914.[76]
Anti-suffragism was not limited to conservative elements. The anarchist Emma Goldman opposed suffragism on the grounds that women were more inclined toward legal enforcement of morality (as in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union), that it was a diversion from more important struggles, and that suffrage would ultimately not make a difference. She also said that activists ought to advocate revolution rather than seek greater privileges within an inherently unjust system.[77] Anti-suffragists saw women’s efforts to gain the vote to be all surface dressing with a lack of serious intent to change the world for the better.[78] Other Antis believed that social reform was better accomplished through trade unions and non-partisan groups.[78] Progressives criticized suffrage in the Utah Territory as a cynical Mormon ploy, resulting in the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act.[citation needed]
The anti-suffrage movement began to change in its position against suffrage in 1917, expanding their scope to include anti-radical rhetoric.[2] The anti-suffrage movement focused less on the issue of suffrage and began to spread fear of radical ideas and to use “conspiratorial paranoia.”[79] Suffragists were accused of subversion of the government and treason.[80] They were also accused of being socialists, “Bolsheviks” or “unpatriotic German sympathizers.”[80] The Texas branch of the NAOWS accused women’s suffrage groups of being linked to “socialism, anarchy and Mormonism.”[81] Accusations of being associated with unpopular radical movements was named after the second president of NAOWS, Alice Wadsworth, and called “Wadsworthy” attacks.[82] In addition to associating suffrage with radicalism, the antis also felt that they were oppressed and had lost much perceived political power by 1917.

I’m not sure why George Packer is so worked up about his kids’ schooling. Those kids have parents who are active and involved in their lives, and invested in their success, so they’re all but guaranteed to be successful regardless of their school. Throw in Packer’s reputation and status among his peers, and the kids are pretty much guaranteed to have an open door into whatever career they choose.
Honestly, if he was really worried about his kids, he’d simply move away from the Rotten Apple and raise his kids someplace with trees and Little League and decent schools. But then he’d miss out on the cocktail parties and gallery openings, so I suppose that’s a non-starter.

Female emancipation was a mistake.
I know and have known an awful lot of male idiot leftists.

pst314, I might have used a pinch too much hyperbole with my female emancipation remark.

Only a pinch, Monty. It does seem as if women are a bit more inclined towards totalitarian socialist systems.

^^^oops…wrong thread.