Thursday, October 04, 2007

"What? Was it something I said?"


Self-proclaimed political intellectual Gerry Nicholls goes a wee bit over the top in drawing a historical analogy:

My son is graduating from high school on Friday.

And in order graduate, he not only had to pass his academic courses, he also had to complete a minimum of "40 hours of mandatory Community Involvement."

This is supposed to develop "a sense of civic responsibility and strong community values."

So civic responsibility, in other words, means forcing kids to work for no pay.

To me that sounds like slavery.

Later, responding to polite suggestions that it was perhaps inappropriate to compare his son's community service with the forced resettlement, indentured servitude and centuries of brutal treatment of countless Africans, Nicholls replied, "Geez, you make a simple comparison around here and you get absolutely lynched. What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

5 comments:

malkie said...

So now he needs someone to explain to him the difference between "polite suggestions" and lynching.

How many iterations do you think this might take before you can reach a shared vocabulary?

That guy said...

His commenter Ken explains everything you actually need to know about modern pseudo-conservatism in a single sentence:

There is no such thing as a civic “responsibility”.

There ya go,

Unknown said...

It's very racist of you to presume that only Africans were ever slaves. Better be careful or they'll take your "progressive" card away.

Ti-Guy said...

There is no such thing as a civic “responsibility”.

I find the mixture of social conservatism and this type of Randian weirdness among Conservatives to be bafflingly incoherent. But then, Conservatives really are stupid. And Gerry Nicholls is the stupidest of them all.

James Bow said...

Wasn't this community service requirement brought in by Mike Harris, though? Is this a case of conservatism for thee but not for me?