An opinion piece featured in the San Francisco Chronicle (a serious newspaper, not a fringe online website) appears to include an extreme leftist and likely Marxist individual, who proposed ‘giving away children’ and ‘universal orphanhood.’
I wish I were kidding.
The article was titled, Want true equity? California should force parents to give away their children. It is so out there, I honestly can’t tell if it’s a serious take or the most thinly veiled sarcasm in an attempt to prove a point.
I thought of how to best present this piece to our TPUSA readers, and I landed on simply taking main quotes, letting you read them for yourself, and providing short commentary on the most critical issues with it.
“If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require parents to give away their children,” the article read.
“Today’s Californians often hold up equity — the goal of a just society completely free from bias — as our greatest value. Gov. Gavin Newsom makes decisions through ‘an equity lens.’
Institutions from dance ensembles to tech companies have publicly pledged themselves to equity.”
Joe Mathews, Want true equity? California should force parents to give away their children
Right off the bat here, I want to remind people about ‘equity.’ If you’ve noticed in the last couple of years, the left has begun to interchangeably use the terms ‘equality’ and ‘equity.’ THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING. I’ve got another post that I’ll link to explaining the difference when that’s out.
Second (and we’re only in the first paragraph) is that I’m going to give a hard stop to the notion that ‘equity’ is often the goal of Californians. The socialized makeup of a centrally planned economy is not at the front of the mind for an overwhelming majority of Californians. We’ll let Mr. Matthews continue.
“My solution — making raising your own children illegal — is simple, and while we wait for the legislation to pass, we can act now: the rich and poor should trade kids, and homeowners might swap children with their homeless neighbors,” he writes.
Joe Mathews, Want true equity? California should force parents to give away their children
I’m not sure how much commentary I need to give here. Do you know a single person who would willingly and joyfully give their kids to someone else for the sole purpose of raising them in a ‘more equitable way?’ Let alone finding a bum in the tent cities of Los Angeles or San Francisco and dropping your kids off there for the meth head to raise them?
Mr. Matthews continues to give a terrible rationale for his silly argument before going on to say:
“Perhaps such coercion sounds dystopian. But just imagine the solidarity that universal orphanhood would create. Wouldn’t children, raised in one system, find it easier to collaborate on global problems?”
Joe Mathews, Want true equity? California should force parents to give away their children
No.
He brings it home with this:
“Now, I don’t expect universal support for universal orphanhood. A few contrarians, lost in the empty chasm between American extremes, might object to this rational proposal on emotional grounds.”
Joe Mathews, Want true equity? California should force parents to give away their children
There it is. Only a few contrarians (people who take the contrary side for the sole purpose of going against the grain) would dare disagree with the totally rational proposal of giving your kids to homeless people. And they’d only disagree on emotional grounds. Got it 👍🏽.
There isn’t much more that you need to hear from me regarding the analysis. Mr. Matthews’s article speaks for itself, and it will be interesting to see if it takes stronger hold among the lefty community.
I’ve reached out to Mr. Matthews for comments and to see if he’d like to defend his arguments in a public forum. I have not yet heard back.
