For anyone wondering how far over the cliff some people will go in the name of “fairness,” a youth baseball league in New Haven Connecticut provides an answer. 9-year-old Jericho Scott has been banned from pitching by league officials–because he’s too good.
“The spirit of the league was community, family, well being, nurturing. It’s an extended family and it’s been disrupted,” said Peter Noble, attorney for Liga Juvenil De Baseball De New Haven, Spanish for Youth Baseball League of New Haven. League officials add that Jericho’s pitching is “so hard, fast and accurate, that it might frighten or discourage other players.”
Question: other than Jericho’s approving parents and his coach Wilfred Vidro, who refused to implement the league’s directive, are there any genuine adults involved in this travesty?
One would hope so, but maybe genuine adults are an endangered species. They are the people who teach their kids that “life is not fair” or that genuine talent should be nurtured and honored, not scorned and feared. They’re the people who still understand that equality of opportunity is the essence of the American success story.
They are countered by the “progressive” adults. There’s is a zero-sum world where competition is demeaning, failure is an unspeakable tragedy and disparate levels of talent, and ambition that yield “uneven” results are de facto evidence of “social injustice.”
In other words, my kid might strike out, so Jericho can’t be allowed to pitch.
How did we come to this? How did we reach a point where self-esteem–conferred, not earned–has become the Holy Grail of “enlightened” child-rearing? Certainly “radical egalitarianism,” a willfully self-imposed denial of the innate differences between individuals plays a large part. Every parent wants to believe their children are perfect little demi-gods of limitless ability and talent.
Reality on the other hand, is less charitable. The world is full of winners and losers and no amount of social engineering will change it. What such machinations will do is produce legions of self-entitled, spoiled brats whose eventual undoing will be the gruesome discovery that the world “owes” them absolutely nothing.
It is no accident that many progressive enclaves across the country have attacked competitive sports. Why? Because they are largely immune to progressive attempts to substitute “subjectivity” for “objectivity:” you either get a hit or you make an out, and no amount of obfuscation can alter that reality.
Thus, for those who in believe equality of outcome, reality itself must be manipulated. The reality of Jericho Scott’s talent is a threat which must be eliminated for the “greater good” of less-gifted children. Children who will be “nurtured” on the idea that anything can–and should–be rigged to produce the desired outcome as long as the cause is “just” enough.
The Scott’s lawyer John Williams: “Now you have to be punished because you excel at something?”
It doesn’t get much more “progressive” than that.
atahlert@comcast.net
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