Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Tolerance of the Left

When you have the children, you have the future. Some famous dude said that (yes, I know who).

Somebody sure has these children.

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching "inclusion," and she decided to see how included she could be.

So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

"McCain Girl."

"I was just really curious how they'd react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters," Catherine told us. "I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be."

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.

Then it got worse.
You might be interested in reading the whole thing.

6 comments:

Ellen K said...

Once again this has been more of a MySpace/Facebook campaign than anything else. I heard the whispering campaigns in my classroom-it was like any dialogue that came straight from The Hills or One Tree Hill or any other of those vapid teen dramas. He said, she said, they said with nobody really having any authority. This kind of thing filtered through the internet like a bad dream. And evidently, in reading the New York Times today, a hoaxer under the name of Eisenstadt manufactured a good amount of anti-Palin rhetoric as a joke. So much for the media. They didn't check out anything, but any negative email they found was posted as truth.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand how the lefties think they are so open minded. I didn't hear about ANY Obama/Biden signs or No on 8 signs being stolen or vandalized like the McCain/Palin or Yes on 8. And the outrage that Prop 8 passed! Why can't the voice of the voters be enough!? They voted for Obama and For defining marriage as Male-Female. This girl was very brave, and I hope the kids in her class are better for it.

Anonymous said...

Well, I can confirm that Obama/Biden signs were stolen. It happened to the neighbor that lives directly across the street from me.

In my experience, stories of Obama/Biden signs were made a big deal of. (As malicious acts of small minded Republican, of course.) Stories of McCain/Palin signs been stolen were mostly ignored.

mmazenko said...

Extremism and narrow-minded ignorance is the culprit here, not a left-leaning "tolerance" or a right-leaning "defense of traditional values." Each side has cases of completely inappropriate, immature, and even dangerous behavior. Arguing the holier-than-thou approach simply exacerbates the problem.

Anonymous said...

Well what a coincidence hey Donal?

This courageous, or foolish depending on your point of view, young lady's performed the experiment which I outlined in another thread. It appears that her results support my theory that "progressives" are more committed to non-violence and tolerance in the abstract and rather more intolerant and prone to violence when things aren't quite so abstract and they have a numerical advantage.

Happy Elf Mom (Christine) said...

Brave kid.

Yeah, I hope her schoolmates learned something, but I'm not going to hold my breath.