meepa

I just wanted to take issue with this part of your post. While affirmative action and PCness are surely leftist policy, BOTH sides interperet history just as much as the other. "Rewriting history" is one of those slippery terms that people like to throw around. Yes it has some validity when anybody with an agenda specifically warps events to push it, but on the other hand, there is no such thing as 100% objective history; it is always an interperetation of the facts available against the current climate of opinion.

Also, I don't think the "zero-tolerance" rage is purely a left-thinking phenomena either. At least at the schools I have been involved with, feelings about this definitally go both ways for people on both sides of the political spectrum.

If you want some antecdotal evidence from just my experience alone, I have found that it's usually more conservative parents that are more concerned with this type of thing in our schools; commenting on whether kids who were "spikes" and kids who think they are gangsters are the ones who are out to kill their children. They are also the ones who get huffy when schools have a "winter celebration" instead of a Christmas one. Although it was a leftist-impetus that attempted to de-religionize schools in the first place, I see conservatives making more complaints about the lack of an x-mas tree than I see liberals complaining when there is one.

One last example I'd like to give was for last Halloween. One school district here cancelled there Halloween celebration, stating three reasons. 1) It wastes time, 2) It's unfair to poor kids because they can't afford nice costumes and may feel embarrased, and 3) Don't want to offend anybody of the Wiccan religion by dressing up as witches.

What was interesting about this last one is that lots of people were up-in-arms about run-away political correctness with the Wiccans. This was coming from BOTH sides. What was really fascinating is that the district didn't actually contact or get contacted by any of the Wiccan families in question, they came up with the policy on their own (perhaps to preempt some leftist lawsuit, perhaps out of good intentions, who knows). But that wasn't reported in the news. All that was focused on were the Wiccans and how those damn liberals are ruining yet another holiday for everyone.

SO in conclusion, I just wanted to pick at 2 of your generalizations which I have attempted to shed some light on.

*Also about the zero-tolerance thing: I think you will find any rational-thinking parents (regardless of political orientation) thinks that a child being expelled for having a squirt gun or a butter knife is retarded. But you have to understand that schools are in a tough situation because they are legally responsible for the children's safety. Zero-tolerance is unfortunately an extreme that school districts are forced to resort to in order to cover their asses and keep kids safe at the same time. If somebody wants to bring this topic up in another thread, I'll be glad to discuss it more, but I fear I am digressing from the main topic too much already.