Editorial | Back to the future

We don’t have a flux capacitor, heck, we’ve never even seen a DeLorean, but we do have the gigawatts to know that the past always looks better in the rearview mirror.
For some, anyway.
For the women of recent generations past, the struggle to get into med school, or law school, or simply to earn more than the current 84 cents to the comparable male wage dollar, a glance back does not beckon.
But for others, the old blather of where and whether women belong has become political gold.
Fair enough. We’re firm believers of “Tell us what you think and we’ll know who you are.”
Natter on.
But know this.
Scrubbed of its best-for-our-country, gender-role patina, the well-worn women-should-whatever is simply another argument that begins with a demographic of individuals and concludes with a word ending in “ism.”
Sub in your population group of choice and read the following blanket comments aloud:
(Demographic) don’t belong in combat roles or special forces.
(Demographic) don’t belong in careers like firefighting.
“Every effort should be made to not recruit (demographic) into engineering… and ditto for med school and the law and every trade.”
These statements were made about women by would-be appointees, government officials and politicians at the federal and state levels this week.
These, and similar diatribes, have been espoused, well, forever, about other individuals categorized by race, by religion, by what-have-you rather than ability and the equal opportunity to develop that ability for the good of themselves, their families, their communities and our country.
We are America’s future.
All of us.
And we belong where we say we belong.
Breeze editorial