There should be something like the "7 stages of grief" but for being red-pilled. The tone of this article is one I often see Leftists take when they finally move past the denial stage and start waking up to the insanity around them: one of painfully forced glibness. Your comment about the homeschooled child being unable to compute 12 minus 9 is especially revealing about your continued arrogant condescension of conservatives, particularly when you consider how our public schools, dominated by Leftists, are producing high school graduates who can barely read, write, or do basic arithmetic.
Oh and conservatives aren't docile. That would be the Leftists who all have the same signs in their yards, shout the same slogans, and whose opinions on any given issue you know already just by reading the latest NYT headline. They think exactly what they are told to think, and consider themselves intellectually superior for doing so.
I’m very comfortable with differing, reasoned opinions. However,I am so tired of this author’s condescension and backhanded sense of superiority that I hope never to see anything he has produced again. Any chance of that, Bari?
News Flash, Ben! Just because you saw an adult slapping a child does NOT equate to knuckle-dragging conservatism! What about your vaunted Liberal, Progressive cities where children are used as drug mules? Also, where fatherless homes produce sociopathic children who think nothing of randomly shooting people who cross their gang-related associations? You, my friend, are BLIND to your own prejudice! And, in addition, in the South we ALWAYS address each other as "Sir", and "Ma'am". It is the culture! And whether Black or White, we give people the benefit of the doubt! Get a clue, and try moving further south and learn about REALITY, instead of spouting those "liberal" and "progressive" BULLSHIT ideas that you hold!
I used to have this cartoonish sort of view of conservatives, having grown up with liberal parents, selecting a career path dominated by left of center women, then living in a progressive town where everyone had yard signs. Now I am a moderate living in a conservative town sending my children to a charter school attended by overwhelmingly conservative families.
Living among them, I now have a much more realistic view of conservatives and I find my previous views embarrassing. My children are well behaved, and they refer to adults with an honorific (Mr./Miss/Mrs.). I did not do this as a child of liberal parents, but I am glad my kids do. Contrast that to my lefty brother who teaches his children to call all adults by their first name, including aunts and uncles, sans any honorific. There is a real difference there. But conservative parents struggle with setting limits on screen time, and there are many kids who act out at our school. There is a lot of complexity once you are looking at a group as a member rather than as an outsider (like the writer).
The real differences come down not to indiscriminate respect for authority and docility (LOL conservatives are not docile, and they like to say they “raise lions, not sheep”) but worldview and authoritative parenting style (which liberal parents can implement). Additionally, conservatives are aware of the institutional rot and try not to put their children into environments that clash with their beliefs (if possible, not always of course). Personally, I will not be paying for my kids to attend any of the elite schools. We will be highly selective about where we send them (if anywhere at all).
Ben spent a few days, or maybe a summer, in a “Red state” and draws some pretty sweeping conclusions. He’s like the Margaret Meade of politics living in the wild to write his thesis notes?
Ben, GK Chesterton succinctly explained the difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals see a fence and want to tear it down for “progress”. Conservatives see a fence and wonder why it was put up in the first place before they think of tearing it down.
What a smug, pompous asshat. I'm especially impressed by the way he fantasizes he can read the minds of millions of people he's never met and about whom he knows nothing except that he loathes them. I like the variety of thought that I can find on The Free Press but in Ben Kawaller, I see no evidence of any thought at all.
"The point is, all it took was one species-fluid middle schooler for this father to yank his entire family out of society."
I am not as sure as Kawaller that home schooled children live "outside of society". Having hired exceptional engineers and having talked with home schooled adults, my prior understanding about home schooling (similar to the feeling expressed in the article) changed. I guess there is a spectrum of academic competency and social interaction in home schooled children. However, it would not surprise me if the overall academic competency and social skills in the home schooled population is better than in the public education sector. But this is from a perspective of ignorance since my opinion is based on just a few data points.
"In a town outside of Little Rock I witnessed a grown man slap a two-year-old for playing with her food"
It turns my stomach when I observe adults hitting and screaming at children. In my experience such behavior is deviant, unnecessary, and unproductive. However, assigning these behaviors to "Republicans" is disingenuous and a provably false assertion. Both Republican and Democrat political adherents are equally susceptible to these behaviors. Parenting is hard and absent proper role models, children suffer (no matter parent political perspective).
Wow. This is shockingly biased. It puts people in boxes. I know that not all democrats are the same and not all republicans are the same. It is shocking that this person sees all republicans as God fearing rednecks that abuse their children to get them to conform. People are people. There are minorities in both political parties and religious people in both political parties. There are definitely fascists in both fringe groups - the left and the right. It is time for the middle majority of this country to begin to see that we are all the same and stop categorizing one another.
I'm a liberal who raised kids to young adulthood. They have excellent manners and are big-hearted people who may protest but don't get violent and wouldn't ever stop traffic on roads, bridges or tunnels. They know the world doesn't revolve around them.
Not all liberal parents raise jerks for kids. And my kids can think critically: they feel for the citizens of Gaza while understanding that Israel MUST destroy Hamas and that Hamas are the monsters here.
I can't top what William has said here. I assume the author is trying to merge satire with real opinion, but implying that Republican kids are "docile" because they are probably beaten as toddlers is "West Coast Liberal Superiority Complex" at its best. Authors like this are why Trump continues to poll ahead. They simply refuse to take conservatives seriously without trying to demean them to make themselves feel better.
Wow! Your arrogance and smugness is astounding! You took roughly half the population of the country, put us in a box, and declared us child abusing, uneducated, backwater rubes. Congratulations on being such an intelligent and elegant writer. Prior to this lowbrow article, I actually enjoyed some of your musings. You have managed to eliminate any respect I had for you, but at least you have your self serving ego to keep you company. It must be great to be so wonderful that you can discount anyone with a different viewpoint as inferior.
I recall a TV anniversary retrospective some time back about the shootings on the Kent State campus. They interviewed some random old alum guy who was there for reasons I don't remember but were unrelated to the anniversary. He was asked if he'd participated in the protests that day.
"I was an engineering student. I was in my room doing my homework. I didn't have time for that stuff." So the moral is that challenging curricula promotes better outcomes. Put another way, dilution of the rigor of college has facilitated distraction and rebellious behavior. Grade inflation likely goes hand in hand.
An old friend taught at DePaul. He lamented that he had to get the Dean's approval to actually fail a student. No approval or scrutiny involved to hand out an A. This was in the 1980s. I suspect little has changed. Meanwhile, kids can't write, can't compute, can't function in a group with shared responsibility.
There should be something like the "7 stages of grief" but for being red-pilled. The tone of this article is one I often see Leftists take when they finally move past the denial stage and start waking up to the insanity around them: one of painfully forced glibness. Your comment about the homeschooled child being unable to compute 12 minus 9 is especially revealing about your continued arrogant condescension of conservatives, particularly when you consider how our public schools, dominated by Leftists, are producing high school graduates who can barely read, write, or do basic arithmetic.
Oh and conservatives aren't docile. That would be the Leftists who all have the same signs in their yards, shout the same slogans, and whose opinions on any given issue you know already just by reading the latest NYT headline. They think exactly what they are told to think, and consider themselves intellectually superior for doing so.
I’m very comfortable with differing, reasoned opinions. However,I am so tired of this author’s condescension and backhanded sense of superiority that I hope never to see anything he has produced again. Any chance of that, Bari?
News Flash, Ben! Just because you saw an adult slapping a child does NOT equate to knuckle-dragging conservatism! What about your vaunted Liberal, Progressive cities where children are used as drug mules? Also, where fatherless homes produce sociopathic children who think nothing of randomly shooting people who cross their gang-related associations? You, my friend, are BLIND to your own prejudice! And, in addition, in the South we ALWAYS address each other as "Sir", and "Ma'am". It is the culture! And whether Black or White, we give people the benefit of the doubt! Get a clue, and try moving further south and learn about REALITY, instead of spouting those "liberal" and "progressive" BULLSHIT ideas that you hold!
I used to have this cartoonish sort of view of conservatives, having grown up with liberal parents, selecting a career path dominated by left of center women, then living in a progressive town where everyone had yard signs. Now I am a moderate living in a conservative town sending my children to a charter school attended by overwhelmingly conservative families.
Living among them, I now have a much more realistic view of conservatives and I find my previous views embarrassing. My children are well behaved, and they refer to adults with an honorific (Mr./Miss/Mrs.). I did not do this as a child of liberal parents, but I am glad my kids do. Contrast that to my lefty brother who teaches his children to call all adults by their first name, including aunts and uncles, sans any honorific. There is a real difference there. But conservative parents struggle with setting limits on screen time, and there are many kids who act out at our school. There is a lot of complexity once you are looking at a group as a member rather than as an outsider (like the writer).
The real differences come down not to indiscriminate respect for authority and docility (LOL conservatives are not docile, and they like to say they “raise lions, not sheep”) but worldview and authoritative parenting style (which liberal parents can implement). Additionally, conservatives are aware of the institutional rot and try not to put their children into environments that clash with their beliefs (if possible, not always of course). Personally, I will not be paying for my kids to attend any of the elite schools. We will be highly selective about where we send them (if anywhere at all).
Ben spent a few days, or maybe a summer, in a “Red state” and draws some pretty sweeping conclusions. He’s like the Margaret Meade of politics living in the wild to write his thesis notes?
Ben, GK Chesterton succinctly explained the difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals see a fence and want to tear it down for “progress”. Conservatives see a fence and wonder why it was put up in the first place before they think of tearing it down.
It’s as simple as that.
What a smug, pompous asshat. I'm especially impressed by the way he fantasizes he can read the minds of millions of people he's never met and about whom he knows nothing except that he loathes them. I like the variety of thought that I can find on The Free Press but in Ben Kawaller, I see no evidence of any thought at all.
I will henceforth consider ALL articles written by Mr. Kawaller as suspect! He seems to lack the self-awareness of his own bias.
"The point is, all it took was one species-fluid middle schooler for this father to yank his entire family out of society."
I am not as sure as Kawaller that home schooled children live "outside of society". Having hired exceptional engineers and having talked with home schooled adults, my prior understanding about home schooling (similar to the feeling expressed in the article) changed. I guess there is a spectrum of academic competency and social interaction in home schooled children. However, it would not surprise me if the overall academic competency and social skills in the home schooled population is better than in the public education sector. But this is from a perspective of ignorance since my opinion is based on just a few data points.
"In a town outside of Little Rock I witnessed a grown man slap a two-year-old for playing with her food"
It turns my stomach when I observe adults hitting and screaming at children. In my experience such behavior is deviant, unnecessary, and unproductive. However, assigning these behaviors to "Republicans" is disingenuous and a provably false assertion. Both Republican and Democrat political adherents are equally susceptible to these behaviors. Parenting is hard and absent proper role models, children suffer (no matter parent political perspective).
Wow. This is shockingly biased. It puts people in boxes. I know that not all democrats are the same and not all republicans are the same. It is shocking that this person sees all republicans as God fearing rednecks that abuse their children to get them to conform. People are people. There are minorities in both political parties and religious people in both political parties. There are definitely fascists in both fringe groups - the left and the right. It is time for the middle majority of this country to begin to see that we are all the same and stop categorizing one another.
I'm a liberal who raised kids to young adulthood. They have excellent manners and are big-hearted people who may protest but don't get violent and wouldn't ever stop traffic on roads, bridges or tunnels. They know the world doesn't revolve around them.
Not all liberal parents raise jerks for kids. And my kids can think critically: they feel for the citizens of Gaza while understanding that Israel MUST destroy Hamas and that Hamas are the monsters here.
Mr Kawaller's condescension toward conservative parents isn't helpful.
Pointless drivel. I expect better from TFP. At least a point. Whatever the author was aiming for, he missed.
I’m curious - why do we not see similar condescending, smug and offensive pieces directed toward the Left from the Right? It’s an actual question.
I can't top what William has said here. I assume the author is trying to merge satire with real opinion, but implying that Republican kids are "docile" because they are probably beaten as toddlers is "West Coast Liberal Superiority Complex" at its best. Authors like this are why Trump continues to poll ahead. They simply refuse to take conservatives seriously without trying to demean them to make themselves feel better.
Dear Mr. Kawaller,
Wow! Your arrogance and smugness is astounding! You took roughly half the population of the country, put us in a box, and declared us child abusing, uneducated, backwater rubes. Congratulations on being such an intelligent and elegant writer. Prior to this lowbrow article, I actually enjoyed some of your musings. You have managed to eliminate any respect I had for you, but at least you have your self serving ego to keep you company. It must be great to be so wonderful that you can discount anyone with a different viewpoint as inferior.
I recall a TV anniversary retrospective some time back about the shootings on the Kent State campus. They interviewed some random old alum guy who was there for reasons I don't remember but were unrelated to the anniversary. He was asked if he'd participated in the protests that day.
"I was an engineering student. I was in my room doing my homework. I didn't have time for that stuff." So the moral is that challenging curricula promotes better outcomes. Put another way, dilution of the rigor of college has facilitated distraction and rebellious behavior. Grade inflation likely goes hand in hand.
An old friend taught at DePaul. He lamented that he had to get the Dean's approval to actually fail a student. No approval or scrutiny involved to hand out an A. This was in the 1980s. I suspect little has changed. Meanwhile, kids can't write, can't compute, can't function in a group with shared responsibility.
It’s an essay, but it also could use some data. Sweeping conclusions with anecdotes make a nice story, but are not persuasive.