The pedophilia of politics

I was sitting in the living room of a friend, a Hungarian immigrant artist, surrounded by her impeccably leftist artist friends.
She had a serious question for them. She had to introduce it. She found it necessary to emphasize her honesty and genuine desire to get an honest answer to a question that truly troubled her.

She told a joke to a friend that she considered funny, but the friend, who happens to be a teacher, got really offended. She really did not mean to offend, but she really found the joke funny and now would like to understand what is wrong with it or to put it in a different way, what is wrong with her not knowing that already.
Was she wrong telling the joke or was she wrong finding it funny? She is from a different culture, English is her second language and she needed the help of her Canadian friends to explain the errors of her way.
Here is the joke:

What’s the difference between a teacher and a pedophile?
It’s that a pedophile really likes children.

I knew the joke and I always found it funny. I found it very funny. Like any good joke, it exposed some fundamental truth, but let me get back to this later.

My friend got her answers, sort of. It was a fabulous spectacle of touchy-feely condescension. They explained to her that pedophilia is a really bad crime and perversion and that even the hint of the comparison can be deeply offensive to a teacher who takes her calling very seriously. She should understand such sensibilities and realize that something that offensive, that rude, cannot be funny. The consensus was clear, pedophilia is not a joke and neither is a teacher’s devotion to the welfare of her students. It was also hinted, or maybe even suggested by her, that the reason she found it funny was that she came from a less sensitive culture.

I decided to sit out the conversation. I did say, when asked, that I also found it funny, but hey, I am coming from the same culture.
The fascinating part of the conversation was the lack of analysis. Nobody talked about the joke.

I still don’t know what our friend thinks about the scene. I don’t know how ‘honest’ her question was. Did she really want an answer to a disturbing personal dilemma, or was she just testing the reaction of her cultural milieu? If the later, then did she get her answer? What did she expect the outcome to be? An honest discussion of the joke and its implications?
Did she not come from the same culture I did? Can’t she remember the pressure to conform and the fear of not doing so? I also don’t know how far her own analysis went. All I know is that the joke IS funny.

The joke

What makes it so very funny is that the comparison can most definitely be made.
Pedophiles really like children. They like children for very selfish reasons without any regard or concern for the harm they are causing to them through satisfying their perverted urges, but they do like them.

How about unionized public school teachers? How does their liking of children manifest itself?
Through their constant demands for more money, less work, more benefits, less children in their classes, more job-security, less accountability? The quality of teaching is in inverse proportion with the resistance against any quality control and accountability. If we look at the reality of what they do instead of the rhetoric behind their demands, we would be hard pressed to find ANYTHING that would indicate any liking of children.

There must be some teachers who actually care, but I also know that they are swimming against the current. The politics behind the profession provides strong incentives against actually liking children. I personally know teachers who went into early retirement because their dedication was frustrated by the politics of the profession. It is a well known fact that teachers in private schools are not only performing better on lower salaries and benefits, but they also have a much higher rate of job satisfaction.

For unionized teachers, the children are just the excuse for their demands, just a justification for their own existence. We can most definitely say that pedophiles are selfish, self-serving monsters who do not give a damn about the welfare of children, but how exactly is this different from teachers who use them for their own selfish reasons?

Of course they are offended when someone points out the parallel.

Teachers have to pretend that they like children when most of them obviously do not. Compared to them, pedophiles really like children.
I could go on bashing the education system but there is another lesson in this joke that we should take to heart:

There is plenty of evidence to show that socialism and socialist policies are overwhelmingly harmful for their supposed beneficiaries (read Losing Ground).

The true beneficiaries of leftist/statist politics are NOT the recipients of the various benefits the re-distributive state provides, but the members of the distributor classes. (see my post on Socialist class theory).

Leftists in general do not give a damn about the harm they cause, all they care about is satisfying their own perverted urges to gain righteous self satisfaction and a comfortable living playing Robin Hood.

Compared to them, pedophiles are at least honest. They don’t pretend.