A most ingenious paradox then - the only principled way to preserve minority and individual differences that threaten group norms, is to standardize ever more thoroughly, extend the ban to include EVERYONE's individual choices and differences, thus making everyone the same!

I might comfort myself that America is a haven for the egalitarian individual, that our ideals protect us from any such absurd Euro-socialist government excess, if this weren't so real as what's gone terribly wrong with our own liberal ideal of "public school" in recent decades.

Institutional School is much further down this road than most liberals I know can fathom, far along toward the even-handed backhanding of all individuality -- and far past the usual religion, race and ethnicity differences. When we finished destroying small neighborhood schools and forbidding most toys and games, hugs, aspirin, flags and gang colors, recess, proms and field trips (and even family trips that take kids out of school at any time), along with a whole list of disturbing words and drawings and fiction on or OFF campus, we still weren't standard enough to feel safe. We bought metal detectors and brought in drug dogs. We certified and fingerprinted everybody, just to be fair. Then we began to define every imaginable difference as an exceptionality needing extra treatment from the group, or deviance requiring expulsion from the group.

But wait, there was more we could do! Progress toward the even-handed backhanding of all individuals as a group marches on! Now schools are beginning to ban all purses and class party CUPCAKES, no exceptions so it's quite fair -- the one ring rules them all, everybody loses to the one normalized group, gazing like dull-eyed zombies in the direction they've been pointed, where nothing's left to see but the lowest common denominator (as printed in the answer key on page 497 of the standard text.)