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A grade school boy is removed from class because he brings a plastic toy soldier holding a tiny plastic rifle to show his friends.
A girl faces disciplinary action for providing a friend with an over-the-counter pain medication.
Planting a kiss on a little girl's cheek leads to a tiny Romeo being slapped...with a charge of sexual harassment.
Jokes? Exaggerations? The stuff of fiction?
No. Simply the logical results of the latest buzzwords held so dearly to heart by the intolerant bureaucrats entrusted with educating our children:
Zero tolerance.
Zero tolerance of weapons at school, especially guns. Zero tolerance of drugs. Zero tolerance of inappropriate contact between a male and a female. Zero tolerance of noncompliance.
Zero tolerance of common sense, proportionality, and freedom.
Of course, no one suggests that children should be randomly consuming recreational or any other drugs or that packing real weapons to class is a good idea. What is lacking in the hysterical attitudes exhibited by too many of our educators and officials is the ability to think in terms of principles rather than rules. Reasonable concerns of children unwittingly consuming harmful substances or inadvertently injuring others is twisted and transformed into rigid application of rules regardless of context or facts.
The putative Drug War that provides the engine for much of this absurdity is, in actuality &endash;&endash; as others have rightly observed &endash;&endash; a war on people. Because the rationale behind this assault on the citizenry cannot withstand a close scrutiny in the hard, clear light of facts and logic, those who wage this conflict retreat from the effort of focused thought and the immoral implications of their daft behavior. Safely repeating their mantra of "following the rules," they dispense with personal responsibility and blindly punish those who have committed no offense.
When a nine-year-old boy is suspended for passing out breath mints; when a fourteen-year-old girl is removed from classes for bringing a prescription drug (despite carrying a note from her mother); when a thirteen-year-old is sent home for wearing purple lipstick, something beyond a desire to ensure the safety of our student population is at work. Protection from legitimate dangers does not require such heavy-handed actions as strip-searching young girls to catch a supposed thief.
As is usually the case when the government is involved, conformity, control, and expansion of power over the individual motivates those who refuse to examine their own conduct too closely. This attitude of, "Don't question my authority. Do it my way because I said so. Do it because I can make you do it," will, in fact, intimidate many people into obeying even the most outrageous of commands.
Other individuals, however, will witness this kind of arbitrary exercise of force, of might makes right, and begin to question the legitimacy of such leadership and the inane rules the bureaucrats seek to force down their throats. When legal adults under twenty-one are arrested and charged with OWI/DUI despite a blood alcohol count of only .02, these recalcitrant young people may recognize the blackmail inherent in the government's threats of withholding highway funds if "zero tolerance" laws for underage drinkers are not passed. The fact that such a low alcohol level poses no true danger to anyone may lead the skeptical to question the actual goals of the politicians pushing such a policy.
With luck and hard work, hopefully more and more of our youth will have zero tolerance for those aspects of our culture which genuinely deserve this type of an attitude.
If more citizens one day have zero tolerance for such government abuses as occurred at Waco and Ruby Ridge; if more of us begin to hold zero tolerance for asset forfeiture and the destruction accompanying the Drug War; if those questing for actual safety accept zero tolerance for gun control and the plethora of agencies &endash;&endash; such as the DEA, EPA, and the BATF &endash;&endash; demanding the right to protect us from ourselves; if every individual develops zero tolerance for violations of our Constitution and the myriad infringements of our rights both small and large, then and only then will we be able to restore balance to our social institutions and establish the freedoms and liberty we each deserve as unique and individual human beings.
