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1/ Okay right-wingers, this lib is going to give you some free advice again. Yes, I know “if you don’t like it you can leave” is a good and standard response to most things. But when it comes to universities, the fourth estate, etc. we normal liberals NEED you to show up.
2/If you want the perfect example of why, read Nanny Returns. As in, the sequel to The Nanny Diaries. Yes, really. Stop laughing.
3/ The book takes place in 2008. The protagonist goes to work for a prep school on the upper east side clearly modeled after Trinity. The school is constantly exchanging its past at a deep discount for a piece of the future, and that comes back to bite them in the ass.
4/The school (“Jarndyce” in the book)’s board pushed out the old guard by upping the donation ante and firing faculty and staff who didn’t agree with their vision. The new headmaster, plucked from a public school in Long Island and speaks exclusively in buzzwords and corp jargon.
5/The heads of the board of trustees are, respectively, a cable news host (modeled on Olbermann) and the first female head of a consulting firm. They insist the school move out of its historic building and be placed in an all-glass prison in the meatpacking district.
6/ they’re awful awful people who only care about aesthetics and status, but they hand wave that away because they donated to Obama 
. They talk about the school’s “Harry Potter” factor, and they increasingly talk about students like they’re customers. Consumers.
. They talk about the school’s “Harry Potter” factor, and they increasingly talk about students like they’re customers. Consumers.
7/ When one boy (and son of a board member) loses a student council election and acts out, his teacher— who happens to be one of the school's most effective and compassionate instructors—punishes him and calls his behavior unsportsmanlike. Because it was.
8/ The boy (and his friends) then attack his teacher + the faculty who backed her up with obscene videos and vicious insults online. The kids should be expelled. But they’re children of board members, who block the students' expulsion and demand instead the dismissal of the
9/ teacher who was the main target of their smear campaign, i.e. the teacher who put the boy in his place and served as his home room teacher and coach for years. Meanwhile, the board continues to push out old faculty who believe in tradition and merit by threatening to take away
10/ their health care. They focus on building a rooftop garden with a helicopter launch pad, uniforms by Agnes B, and investing the school’s endowment in a hedge fund they see as a star on the rise. Plot twist, it isn’t. The firm collapses by the end of the book, and by extension
11/ so does the school. The alumni won’t save it, since the things that made it great—the traditions, the culture, the familiarity, the great education, were gone. And besides, they had been pushed away for decades.
12/ Before the crash even, the school becomes a source of mockery. At a benefit gala, people discuss what its become (they let in media parents! They fired x!) in hushed tones.
13/ Now, right wingers. Sub all of the greed and glitz for overspending on diversity officers. Look at the faculty being pushed out of schools today by new money wokelord board members because of “racism,” or not fitting with their vision. Does none of this sound familiar?
14/Do you want this to happen to you? Whether it’s your kids’ public elementary school in a great district or your college, attended by multiple generations of your family, do you think this is OK? Do you really want to let yourself be pushed out of decision-making positions?
15/ if you can’t ally with us, moderate liberals who appreciate teacher-centric, disciplined, rigorous education and the celebration of merit, then what the he’ll are you even conserving? Do you care about posterity?
16/ So, conservatives, if you’ve made it this far, pick up some chick lit this weekend. Or maybe just read @realchrisrufo’s articles until you get angry and remember your Buckley, Burke, (or hell, Pat Buchanan) roots. Stop the ducking homeschooling. Go take part in society.
17/ I never thought I’d say this, but we need you.
