Warren Smith Learns It's Not Enough to Be Right

Leftists don't care about facts

A few months ago, a Massachusetts high school teacher named Warren Smith went viral for the following exchange with a student. In it, he helps the student understand why he’s been thinking about J.K. Rowling all wrong. She’s not a “transphobe” for knowing how chromosomes work.

What Smith does here is remarkable. In an age when the highest goal in any debate is to “own” your opponent — humiliate him, shout him down, ruin his life for daring to disagree with you — Smith helps this young man actually think about the things he’s saying.

“People tell me Rowling is a bigot.” Yeah, that’s because they’re bigots. They took her perfectly reasonable statements about human biology and human society, and twisted it all around to whip up a witch hunt (sorry) against her.

Not because she’s wrong. Because she’s so plainly, irrefutably right — and winningly clever about it — that it’s an impediment to their goals.

These tykes grew up reading her books, yet now they’re flabbergasted that she’s running rings around them. Yeah, kids, she’s smarter than you. That’s why your parents made her richer than the king of England. Which, in turn, is why you can’t shut her up.

Smith helped this kid realize he was getting bad information from partisans, and had fallen into groupthink. And Smith did so calmly and in plain English, without lording it over the kid or making him feel stupid.

Critical thinking. In 2024. Wow.