A SCHOOL’S RATIONALE FOR BANNING SUPERHERO LUNCHBOXES COULDN’T BE MORE MORALLY CONFUSED, Jonah Goldberg writes:

If you know anything about superheroes, the underlying morality is pretty much everything. Supervillains use their powers for evil ends. Superheroes use theirs to protect the vulnerable and uphold the good. Teaching kids that there’s no difference between the two is the very opposite of moral education.

It reminds me of William F. Buckley’s famous retort to those who claimed there was no moral distinction between the United States and the Soviet Union. If you have one man who pushes old ladies in front of oncoming buses, Buckley explained, and you have another man who pushes old ladies out of the way of oncoming buses, it simply will not do to describe them both as the sorts of men who push old ladies around.

A country, and a civilization, that actively chooses to render such distinctions meaningless has lost the confidence to sustain itself.

There’s an added irony here. Around the time little Laura’s school was cracking down on Wonder Woman lunchboxes, two women, Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver, passed the Army Ranger training course for the first time. The news was hailed across the country as a huge step forward for women.

Are these women role models or not? Are they heroes? Or should they be condemned for their willingness to use violence when necessary? Maybe Laura should get a Griest and Haver lunchbox and find out.

If there’s an upside, today’s kids are learning vital lessons in how political correctness works, and how it enables the Outer Party members serving in the Educational-Industrial Complex to toil without thinking. (Gentlemen, you can’t think independently here, this is a school system!) If today’s trends continue, little Laura will really have her eyes open when she arrives for freshman* orientation in college.

*If colleges of the future still use that highly problematic word, of course…