While perusing Border’s Bookstore, I found a copy of “We are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.” by John Derbyshire. Intrigued, I picked it up and skimmed a few random pages of the book. In the passages I read Derbyshire is talking about problems in the current public school system. He bemoans the loss of the male school teacher, and male role models in general, saying how our society so so hypersensitive that we assume any adult male who wants to teach elementary school is suspected of being a pedophile. I nodded in agreement. I think there’s definitely a loss of male role models and men in general are portrayed as complete bafoons by the media. Watch any sitcom nowadays and generally the average dad is a portrayed as a lying, conniving, near adulterous, lazy, idiot. So I totally empathized with our conservative friend. A few sentences later, Derbyshire cries foul about how his son’s school mate was sent home by an outraged teacher, because he drew a picture of a solder firing a gun. Again, I was right there with him. That level of political correctness is indeed ludicrous.
Then I read the next paragraph which I will quote you from the picture I took on my IPhone:
“Once kids get u into the middle and high schools, the larger pathologies of the education system kick in. Boys are somewhat less expected to act like girls, though if they are too boyish they might be put back on Ritalin. Girls are now encouraged to act like boys, though, by taking up advanced science, math, and strenuous sports, which few of them have any liking or aptitude for…” (Emphasis mine.)
Really? Are you kidding? Really??? This is what the modern day conservatives have to offer, a return to 1950’s style misogyny? Girls do not have any interest or aptitude in math or science? They can’t handle strenuous sports? I closed the book right there and walked away disgusted. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe I’m not giving Derbyshire a chance. Maybe this is just one small ugly spot in an otherwise elegant and morally relevant defensive of conservatism. But I doubt it. I suspect it is more of the same, ass backwards, anti-progress, racist, sexists, nonsense that our society should already be done with. Abuses by the left does not legitimize sexism by the right.
For the record, i grew up having no interest or aptitude in sports passed middle school, being both toothpick skinny and completely uncoordinated in my sort of developing body. I could do math, but was far more into liberal arts. My wife on the other hand took calculus and enjoyed it up until college. My 15 year old daughter has been interested in advanced math and science for some time now. And one of my wife’s best friends can out bench, out press, out stretch and out run me too. I have not gotten the impression from any of them that they were pushed into these roles by society to make them more “boyish”, even if advanced academia could be considered an exclusively male attribute.
I get it. I’m pretty open minded. There are a lot of problems with our society’s overly political correct nature right now. I have no illusions that liberalism is some perfect ideology that will solve all our problems and bring us into socialist utopia. But the conservatives answer is to ignore 50 years of valuable progress and return to some supposedly golden age where women were either not allowed in the work force or if they were, expected to be put up with less pay, less responsibility and the occasional “playful” slap on the rear by their male counterparts. That and certain types of people had to use specially designated water fountains.
This is why conservatism turns me off. If republicans or conservatives have any hope of selling moderates like me on their platform, they better dump the archaic anti-values and come up with something that can speak to our generation, instead of trying to build a bridge back to the past.
Hello? 1950’s called. They want their misogyny back.
Craig is an agnostic, skeptic and political moderate. He is a practitioner of zen meditation and has respect and interest in many religions, but not a subscriber to any of them. 