President Obama has put the squeeze on school districts across the county: fall in line, or else!

CNN has a report:  

This latest guidance for schools goes beyond the bathroom issue, touching upon privacy rights, education records and sex-segregated athletics, all but guaranteeing transgender students the right to identify in school as they choose. It echoes what members of the administration have previously said on the topic.

"There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said. "This guidance gives administrators, teachers and parents the tools they need to protect transgender students from peer harassment and to identify and address unjust school policies."

The letter does not carry the force of law but the message was clear: Fall in line or face loss of federal funding.

This is a big-government shakedown, which violates the intent of the Constitution.

Let's look at it in the big picture.  The history of the West can be written on the theme of the Few vs. the Many.  The Few are the monarchs and the aristocrats and their retainers, and the Many are everyone else.  Power and money flowed from the Many and toward the Few.  It was a centralized government.  That's why Highclere Castle, where many of the Downton Abbey scenes are shot, is so huge and luxurious.  Though I like the series, I have to admit that the real castle was built on the backs of the Many.

When our Founders saw Old Europe, they realized they had to go in a different direction.  Power and wealth had to flow throughout the Many, and the Few couldn't take it through the piling on of laws and taxes.  It was a decentralized government.  They also knew, of course, that the federal government existed to settle disputes among the States.  But whatever was not delineated in the Constitution that was reserved to the Feds went to the States. 

This is the cornerstone of conservatism and sets us apart from Obama and the Dems, who, ironically, practice the act of power and wealth going to the Few, even though they believe they champion the cause of the Many.  Misguided, and violates the Constitution.

With the bathroom decrees, we have another example of the Feds telling the States who's who and what's what. 

Conservatives should be willing to compromise.  In the school districts' own power and through the vote, the districts can come up with a separate facility for the transgendered, if that's a local problem.  At a college where I teach, they do have three restrooms side by side in one building: men's, women's, and a double sign on the door.  Fine.

But what I don't like is when the Feds dictate what will apply across the states, reaching even to the small school districts.  Let the states decide.  Power does not flow toward Washington, but remains with the States.

James Arlandson's website is Live as Free People where he has posted the Postmodern roots of leftist policy, The battle between gender ideology and fact, The 'Establishment' will have to save Trump and country, and a new series on the historical reliability of the Four Gospels.