The recent scrubbing of the works of Raold Dahl to remove words and phrases that might sound racist or misogynist or ablist, reminded me of Governor DeSantis of Florida, and his initiative to purge public schools of references to various genders and to our nation’s ugly history of racism, slavery and genocide. The former comes from the Left, and the latter from the Right, but the common argument seems to be that the scrubbers are protecting children.
But this all makes me think of those parents who never let their kids play in the dirt, lest they be exposed to pathogens. Those kids can grow up with compromised immune systems, since their developing bodies never had a chance to develop ways of dealing with potentially dangerous microbes.
What if the same is true of developing minds? Kids who are protected from social pathogens might never develop ways of dealing with them. It seems as though Left and Right are joined in a common effort to raise a generation of helpless snowflakes.
More tomorrow.