It has been a banner week for left-wingers who have no idea what conservatives believe.
Between accusing pro-lifers of opposing generous prenatal policies and accusing school choice advocates of opposing the elimination of school district boundaries, it’s clear some in the left-wing intelligentsia genuinely have no clue what the other side wants.
Puck News Washington correspondent Julia Ioffe, for example, argued this week that pro-lifers don’t support making fathers as responsible and involved as mothers.
“If you are anti-choice and you want to make sure women carry every pregnancy to term, why not make the person who created the pregnancy contribute?” she asked in a social media thread that began with her noting the Soviet Union had prenatal child support policies. “Why not have men pay child support to the women they impregnate? Surely, it is not the woman’s responsibility alone?”
To whom is she addressing this question? It cannot be pro-lifers, because I assure you they are very much on board with the idea of the father being every bit as responsible as the mother for the well-being of the unborn child. Indeed, the entire pro-life movement is centered on the idea a child should not only be allowed to live but that it should also have a happy and stable home, with two parents, raised lovingly and with intention and care.
It may come as a wonderful surprise for Ioffe to discover this is the case. A wonderful surprise, that is, were it not for the fact her question is obviously posed in bad faith, meant to point out some supposed hypocrisy that doesn’t exist within the pro-life movement.
And Lord knows there is a lot of bad faith on the Left, especially insofar as abortion laws are concerned.
Elsewhere this week, The New York Times magazine’s historical fiction enthusiast Nikole Hannah-Jones went after school choice advocates.
“Why do ‘school choice’ advocates never advocate eliminating school district boundaries/funding schools by local property tax and allowing poor, black students to attend white, wealthy schools in neighboring municipalities?” she asked. “They don’t really want choice, they want privatization.”
School choice. What she is describing here, the elimination of boundaries and allowing underprivileged students to attend the same schools as their wealthier peers, are the basic tenets of school choice as fought for by conservatives and libertarians.
Again, to whom is Hannah-Jones directing her comment? Has she ever spoken with a school choice advocate? Has she taken so much as five minutes to read up on what the movement supports? If she had, she would know the things she mentions are precisely the aims of the movement.
It appears, however, that she has neither met a school choice advocate nor taken the time to study what advocates believe. If she had, she wouldn’t have posed the question and its erroneous conclusion in the first place.
Also, speaking of denying poor people choices, it’s worth noting Hannah-Jones is the same journalist who said this week that when it comes to parents who question or oppose what’s being taught in public schools, they have a choice: “Homeschool or pay tuition.”
This is a telling sentiment, the idea that single mothers and double-income households should simply home-school if they believe teachers are pushing weak or even harmful curricula. This is to say nothing, of course, of the childless taxpayer who is forced to pay for the lousy curricula regardless.
If these people had any dignity, character, or intellectual curiosity, they’d wake up one morning and realize they’ve been fighting caricatures their entire lives. This seems unlikely, though, considering their ignorance is a natural byproduct of their overwhelming pride and general distaste for learning.
“Lol thanks,” Ioffe said this week after National Review’s Dan McLaughlin recommended specific titles for her to read regarding the USSR’s supposedly generous prenatal child policies, “I’ve read everything.”
