This Cheerleading Story Tells You So Much About What’s Going Wrong With Modern American Society

This Cheerleading Story Tells You So Much About What’s Going Wrong With Modern American Society

This story is such a perfect example of what’s going wrong with far too much of American society that it deserves more attention.

A Nebraska high school is drawing the ire of the ACLU after its cheer team rejected, for a third time, a young girl with no arms and no legs. The school says she can’t perform the basic cheer functions. The ACLU says she should be given a pass.

“I just think it would be fun,” 16-year-old Julia Sullivan, who gets around in a wheelchair, told the Omaha World-Herald.

But she’ll have to find another way to pass the time after trying out and not making the team. That, her parents and lawyer say, is unfair.

“We would agree that there are some activities such as football where the ability to run and tackle are fundamental to the sport,” Kevin Schneider, the family’s attorney, told the World-Herald. “Making reasonable accommodations and modifications for cheerleading are not fundamental in that same way.”

The parents complained to the school board about Julia’s situation, asking it to step in after citing the Americans With Disabilities Act. They believe Julia should have been given special accommodations, and that her disability should have been taken into consideration during the scoring.

After deliberating behind closed doors, the board decided not to do anything.

Is this 16-year-old girl a bad person for wanting to be a cheerleader? No, she’s not. It’s hard to blame any 16-year-old girl for WANTING to be a cheerleader. Moreover, she has no arms and legs, so she’s certainly a sympathetic character. You almost naturally want to root for her.

Unfortunately, for far, far too many people in American society in regard to far, far too many issues, that’s as far as their thinking goes.

She wants it. They feel sympathy for her. So, she should have what she wants.

Unfortunately, as Thomas Sowell noted in his latest column, there’s more to the story.

Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.

In this case, Julia Sullivan is unable to do the basic functions that people expect a cheerleader to do. So, in other words, she would drag down the entire cheerleading squad if she made the team. So, there are consequences to giving her what she wants.

Moreover, there aren’t an infinite number of cheerleaders. If Julia Sullivan makes the team, it means a much better qualified cheerleader would be punished by not being allowed to participate.

Additionally, as we see so often in society today, the people who are ostensibly trying to “help” are sending a terrible message. Instead of saying to Julia Sullivan, “You’re facing bigger challenges than most people, but you can overcome them by working harder and smarter,” her parents and the ACLU are essentially telling her, “The world should hand you whatever you want on a silver platter because you’re disabled.”

The “bad guys” in this story are not the school board, that’s refusing to hand a “sympathy” cheerleading slot to Julia Sullivan, the “bad guys” are her parents and the ACLU for trying to insert politics and political correctness into a process where it doesn’t belong.

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