The College Admissions Scandal: You Did It, Liberals
I didn’t know. I really didn’t know! According to Caitlin Flanagan at The Atlantic, when prep-school college counsellor Katie would tell rich liberal parents that their kid -- on whom they had spent a ton of private-school tuition -- probably wouldn’t get into one of those selective colleges, those same rich liberal parents would get mad as hell. Hey, “They Had It Coming.” Writes Katie,
Anyone can understand a parent’s disappointment if he had thought for 17 years that his child would go to Yale one day, only to learn that it’s not in the cards. But what accounted for the intensity of emotion these parents expressed, their sense of a profound loss, of rage at being robbed of what they believed was rightfully theirs? They were experiencing the same response to a changing America that ultimately brought Donald Trump to office: white displacement and a revised social contract. The collapse of manufacturing jobs has been to poor whites what the elite college-admissions crunch has been to wealthy ones[.]
Actually, I wouldn’t worry, Katie. Those rich liberals will find a way to sneak their kids into some silk-stocking job in the ruling class, somehow. Money talks. Just ask Hillary Clinton.
But notice how Katie describes the operation of the Law of Unintended Consequences biting the clients of the liberal administrative state in the butt as “a changing America… and revised social contract.” Funny how all the good things in America are triumphs of liberal activism whereas all the bad things... just happened.
I don’t know about you, Katie, honey baby chile -- hey, all the best people are using fake-black argot these days -- but back in the day I read a book. You probably haven’t read it, because in the years since it was published it has been placed on the Index of the Woke Office of the Lefty Inquisition -- because raciss -- and good little girls sensibly don’t read unsafe raciss books.
Every young lefty activist knows that The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life is white supremacist conspiracy theory and will probably soon be so flagged in Google Searches. Hey Sundar! How yer doin’, pal?
What liberals don’t like about The Bell Curve is that author Charles Murray -- tagged by the non-partisan and ethical Southern Poverty Law Center as “extremist” -- suggested that the then-current practice of selected kids for college on their IQ was part of a national policy of segregation by intelligence. And that would not be good for Katie’s “social contract.”
And now here we are, 25 years after The Bell Curve, and rich liberal parents are panicked that their kids can’t make it in the IQ derby. I get it. Who wants to drink from the low-IQ water fountain?
Maybe, liberals, you shouldn’t have politicized college entrance back in the day. I mean: just about any politically motivated policy about anything is bound to end up as a vile and divisive failure.
First, liberals found that the nice comfortable college education for rich kids was screwing over up-and-coming Jews. So Something Had to be Done about it. But then college entrance by IQ meant that not enough blacks were getting into college so Something Had to be Done about it. Hey liberals! How about those east Asian students? Cat got your tongue?
In short, practically everything going wrong in America today, liberals, is Your Fault. You Did It. Because you are the ruling class. And you are the conventional-wisdom idiots.
Then we have the poor bloody white working class. Liberals are to blame for them too, because back in the day liberals decided to buy working-class votes with labor laws, pro-union legislation, and swingeing taxes on labor to pay for entitlements. But when you dish out privilege, liberals, the day comes when privilege eats its own. Rather like college admissions eating the babies of rich liberal parents.
And you did it, Katie, and The Atlantic, and the rest of the worst ruling class in U.S. history.
Hey, Katie: repeat after me: “At Harvard, Amherst, and Haverford, education hardly ever happens.”
She did it! By George, she did it!
Hey, I know, Katie. Let’s just set up a bunch of colleges for rich kids, where, if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it!
And as for what we “should” be doing to educate the rest of us, and what we should do with the rest of the failing liberal welfare state -- and You Did It, Katie -- I’d say that there is only one thing I know about the brave new world that is a-borning.
Liberals need not apply.
Oh, liberals can apply for the colleges and the jobs. But liberals must give up their ancient and immemorial right to design and implement stupid ideas and ruin the lives of ordinary Americans.
You know why, Katie? Because You Had It Coming.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.