The Coddling of the American Mind

Skenazy’s journey to infamy began in 2008, when she permitted her nine-year-old son, Izzy, to ride the New York City subway by himself. Izzy had been begging her for weeks to take him someplace he’d never been before and let him find his own way home. So, one sunny Sunday, Skenazy decided the time was right. She took him along on a trip to Bloomingdale’s. Confident that Izzy would find his way home and could ask a stranger for help if he needed it, she armed him with a subway map, a MetroCard, a twenty-dollar bill, and several quarters in case he needed to make a call, and then sent him on his way. Forty-five minutes later (right on time), Izzy arrived home (where his father was waiting for him) and was ecstatic about his success—and eager to do it again.
Skenazy published a column about this little experiment in childhood independence in The New York Sun,2 describing both Izzy’s joy and the horrified reactions she received from other parents who heard what she had allowed Izzy to do. Two days later, she was on the Today show, and then MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR. Online message boards were flooded with posts, mostly condemning her decision, though some applauded it. Soon, Skenazy was decried as “America’s Worst Mom.”3

Skenazy’s journey to infamy began in 2008, when she permitted her nine-year-old son, Izzy, to ride the New York City subway by himself. Izzy had been begging her for weeks to take him someplace he’d never been before and let

We’re going to give you two minutes of our platform to put your message out,” Gunn told Newsome. “Now, whether they disagree or agree with your message is irrelevant. It’s the fact that you have the right to have the message.”
Newsome took the stage. “I am an American,” he began, and the crowd cheered. “And the beauty of America is that when you see something broke in your country, you can mobilize to fix it.” But then, as he spoke about a black man being killed by police, the

xist,” he said. Hawk Newsome, the leader of the BLM counterprotesters, later said that he expected to “stand there with [his] fist in the air in a very militant way and to exchange insults.” Tensions mounted, and onlookers recorded video of the potentially explosive situation. Then the Trump rally organizer, who goes by the name Tommy Gunn, took the stage. “It’s about freedom of speech,” he said. And in an unexpected move, he invited Newsome and other BLM supporters onto the stage.

On September 16, 2017, on the National Mall in Washington, DC, a group of Trump supporters organized a rally they called “the Mother of All Rallies Patriot Unification Gathering.”82 Counterprotesters from Black Lives Matter (BLM) showed up and shouted at the Trump supporters. The Trump supporters shouted back. Someone onstage told the Trump supporters to pay no attention to the counterprotesters: “They don’t