NO APOLOGY NECESSARY:  Greg Jones at The Federalist: “Sorry, Everyone, America Isn’t That Racist.”

It’s called “proof by example,” and it happens all the time. We take one event and point to it as evidence of a trend or, even worse, a universal fact—a dog attacked my child, therefore all dogs are vicious and should be put down. Despite its popularity, particularly in political debate, proof by example is a logical fallacy. But logic is officially an endangered species in today’s hyperpartisan political environment.

Recent events nationwide, particularly the cold-blooded murder of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, at the hands of a revoltingly racist white supremacist, have propelled this faulty reasoning to new heights. Dangerous ones, in fact: the conversation surrounding race in America has rapidly evolved into a hyperbolic echo chamber into which today’s pundits, politicians, and professors repeatedly shout their false narrative. . . .

The most serious accusation, however, was lobbed from what has become the most ridiculously reactionary arena in all of American cultural and political life: academia. In response to the Charleston slayings, Occidental College Professor Caroline Heldman labeled America a “white supremacist society.” You hear that? Constant racism; America is a sewer; we are all white supremacists. Apparently the America of 2015 is identical to the America of 1860.

News to me, and if I had to guess to 99 percent of the other 300-plus million Americans that peacefully coexist with members of all races day in and day out. Unless, of course, I am so lucky as to “exist in a vacuum” of peace and tranquility light years beyond what most Americans experience. Judging from my neighborhood, and a few commonly ignored statistics, I highly doubt it.

America is a lot of things; racist isn’t one of them.

Consider, for example, that in 1958 a mere 4 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. By 2013, that number had grown to 87 percent. In 2012 these once-taboo unions hit an all-time high. . . . In fact, just a little more than two years ago The Washington Post, the same paper that featured Robinson’s editorial, found that America was in fact among the least-racist nations in the world.Ku Klux Klan membership has shrunk drastically from millions a century ago to fewer than 5,000 today. . . .

Most of us interact with people of numerous races daily without conflict or incident. Our friends, and even spouses, have skin colors different than ours, as do our teachers, doctors, and nurses. That’s because proof by example isn’t reality, and the actions of one man or three cops do not define a society of more than 300 million.

The heightened liberal/progressive cry of “racism!” has caused me to start disregarding the appellation. It’s now just background noise that I tune out, rather than taking seriously. Perhaps more significantly, it has started to make me look at blacks with trepidation and less comfort, because now I wonder if they always think such bad things about me regardless of how I behave toward them. I am even beginning to look at old friends and colleagues differently, because I wonder if they think of me as “white,” and “privileged,” rather than just a person who has faced struggles just like everyone else.  That’s not progress, folks; it’s regression.

Thanks so much for all the racial healing, President Obama. You have really used the “first black President” title to help heal past wounds and move this country forward to a happier, more unified place.

WHAT YOU’D SEE if you were flying across the Galaxy.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Boeing just patented a jet engine powered by lasers and nuclear explosions. Personally, I think that everything should be powered by lasers and nuclear explosions. Technically, though, these are thermonuclear explosions, which of course only makes it cooler. . .

ECONOMIC FIGHT CLUB: KRUGMAN, STEPHEN MOORE SLUG IT OUT AT FREEDOM FEST: “All in all this was a very interesting discussion. Of course I was not convinced by anything Krugman had to say but I did think it was a good-faith conversation on a variety of topics. If this shows up on video somewhere I urge you to watch — it is well worth your time.” While you’re waiting, don’t miss Liz Sheld’s play-by-play recount.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 792.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: “OPM Doesn’t Know Who It Will Hire to Protect the 21.5 Million Individuals Affected by Hack.”

PUBLIC PENSION CRISIS: Passing the Disappearing Buck.

Welcome to the village of La Grange, IL., where local officials hope that more than just the good among their peers do indeed die young. At least, that’s what their pension plans indicate. . . .

Basically, the outdated tables don’t factor in the increases in life expectancy. In La Grange, the switch to the more recent mortality tables saw the village’s minimum required contribution increase by 20 percent. At the same time, in order to keep their funded statuses within reason (often while increasing future outlays), pension funds use estimates of expected investment returns that are at best Panglossian and at worst criminally deceptive. . . .

To put this in context, an average diversified portfolio yielded only “a 2.6% net annualized rate of return for the 10-year time period ending Dec. 31, 2013.” The disparity between projected and actual returns is dire, and means that any estimation of pension liabilities is understated.

In the private sector, such a shuffling of assets, or passing of a disappearing buck, is known as a Ponzi scheme. Meanwhile, union bosses—who purport to care deeply and singularly about the protection of their employees—continue siphoning assets from the drying well, hoping their day of retirement comes before the day of reckoning.

Reckoning day — put your money in the mattress.

MEDIA FAIL: THE FLAWED EARLY COVERAGE OF 1995 OKLAHOMA CITY FEDERAL BUILDING BOMBING:  From Joseph Campbell, whose previous book was the Blogosphere favorite Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, and whose latest work is 1995: The Year the Future Began. At his new 1995-themed blog, Campbell writes that when it came to the Oklahoma City bombing, “The news media — especially broadcast outlets — leaned hard on what proved to be an erroneous presumption.” Unexpectedly:

As such, the reporting in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing offers a telling reminder about how early news accounts of a major disaster tend to be misleading and off-base.

“It is,” I write in my latest book, 1995: The Year the Future Began, “a vulnerability the news media seldom seem to anticipate, or to learn from.”

In pushing the flawed narrative in April 1995, the news media effectively laid the groundwork for enduring suspicions that the bombing at Oklahoma City was the work of a broad and shadowy international conspiracy which, in one inventive telling, included the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef.

But as I write in 1995, the 20 years since the bombing at Oklahoma City has produced no compelling evidence that the conspiracy extended beyond an undistinguished trio of disaffected U.S. Army veterans: Timothy J. McVeigh, the remorseless ringleader who was executed in 2001; Terry Nichols, the principal accomplice who is in prison for life, and Michael Fortier, who knew about the bomb plot but did nothing to stop it.

That, I write, “was the likely extent of a ragtag conspiracy that brought about the Murrah Building’s destruction,” killing 168 people and injuring more than 680 others.

“But for many Americans,”I add, “it was just too ragtag, too improbable to embrace. The gravity of the attack in Oklahoma City — not unlike the assassination of President Kennedy — seemed to cry for a plot more substantial and a conspiracy more elaborate and sophisticated than misfit Army buddies angry at the federal government.

But the news media’s first instincts 20 years ago were to press the Middle East angle, and press it hard.

In contrast of course, today, the CAIR-chastened media now sees the vast right wing conspiracy hidden behind every corner, with shadowy Reds (Red Staters, in this case) lurking everywhere.

I recently read Campbell’s new book, and it’s a fascinating snapshot of a year that foreshadows our current era in many respects; his chapters on the Oklahoma City bombing, the OJ trial and even the birth of Internet institutions such as Amazon are particularly engrossing, with many new details for those who thought they knew all the angles to those once ubiquitous stories.

ALL IS PROCEEDING AS MILTON FRIEDMAN HAS FORESEEN: Why The Euro Is Failing.

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WALL STREET JOURNAL: Wisconsin’s Friend at the IRS: Emails Show a Common Cause in Restricting Political Speech:

Wisconsin’s campaign to investigate conservative tax-exempt groups has always seemed like an echo of the IRS’s scrutiny of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. It turns out that may be more than a coincidence.

Former IRS tax-exempt director Lois Lerner ran the agency’s policy on conservative groups. Kevin Kennedy runs the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) that helped prosecutors with their secret John Doe investigation of conservative groups after the 2011 and 2012 recall elections of Governor Scott Walker and state senators.

Emails we’ve seen show that between 2011 and 2013 the two were in contact on multiple occasions, sharing articles on topics including greater donor disclosure and Wisconsin’s recall elections. The emails indicate the two were also personal friends who met for dinner and kept in professional touch. “Are you available for the 25th?” Ms. Lerner wrote in January 2012. “If so, perhaps we could work two nights in a row.”

This timing is significant because those were the years when the IRS increased its harassment of conservative groups and Wisconsin prosecutors gathered information that would lead to the John Doe probe that officially opened in September 2012. …

These interconnections matter because they reveal that the use of tax and campaign laws to limit political speech was part of a larger and systematic Democratic campaign. Speaking at the University of Wisconsin in 2010, President Obama sent his own political message to investigators.

“Thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, [Republicans] are being helped along this year, as I said, by special interest groups that are allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on attack ads. They don’t even have to disclose who’s behind the ads,” he said. “You’ve all seen the ads. Every one of these groups is run by Republican operatives. Every single one of them—even though they’re posing as nonprofit groups with names like Americans for Prosperity, or the Committee for Truth in Politics.”

Conservative nonprofits like the Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce were later subpoenaed and bound by secrecy orders as their fundraising all but ceased. Liberals worked together to turn the IRS and the GAB into partisan political weapons.

Reminder: In 2009, President Obama “Joked” About Sending The IRS After His Enemies.

WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? WE ARE! AT THE TWERPS WHO MOCKED ROMNEY FOR WARNING ABOUT CHINESE HACKERS: Twitchy rounds up numerous examples of low information voters from 2012 who look awfully foolish today, not the least of which was the “Security-illiterate OPM director [who] accused Mitt Romney of having ‘little understanding’ of [the] 21st century:”

Mitt Romney’s statements reveal “little understanding of what’s going on in the 21st century”: http://t.co/0JBikUFh #RomneyNotReady

— Katherine Archuleta (@Archuleta2012) October 22, 2012

I’ve saved a copy of the above Tweet, just in case Ms. Archuleta’s Twitter account is also “hacked,” and it disappears.

TWEET OF THE DAY: “We’re at the point where we’re just managing the decline” should be the epitaph of Obama’s Presidency. Though to be honest, it’s not so much being managed as being encouraged.

IF BY “POSSIBLE,” YOU MEAN “LIKELY,” SURE: Is it possible the biggest threat to the bull market in U.S. stocks is Washington, D.C.?

IT’S LIKE WE’RE NOT EVEN TRYING TO WIN: The Staggering Cost Of A Largely Failed Fight Against ISIS.

UPDATE: Related: A Strategy To Defeat ISIS Without Strengthening Iran. I think the White House wants to strengthen Iran.

OFFICER JACK DUNPHY ON THE FOLLY OF POLICE ‘DE-ESCALATION:’ “As has been recently proved in Baltimore, where a decline in arrests was mirrored by a spike in violent crime, the only thing restraining the predatory impulses in some people is the fear of the police. Remove that fear and you unleash terror on the city.”

But then, in their heart of hearts, some view that as a desirable feature, not a bug.

BILL WHITTLE’S AFTERBURNER: Democrats’ Horrible Racist Past.

ASHE SCHOW: Due process for campus sexual assault is not a left/right issue.

The fight over campus sexual assault and due process has somehow devolved into a Republican vs. Democrat issue. The most vocal supporters of draconian sexual assault policies are Democrats like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Claire McCaskill of Missouri. There are several prominent Republicans on a Senate bill to curb sexual assault, but none have made a name for themselves as a proponent.

Meanwhile, the print and online commentary voices defending due process rights for the accused have been mostly right-leaning. The only television voice on the issue of due process has been Fox News.

There have been exceptions to this, but unfortunately, the issue has become a way for political opponents to score points against each other. Those who favor due process are accused by liberals of being “rape apologists,” while those who favor the accusers are excoriated by right-leaning media.

That sentiment has muddied the issue. Due process used to be deeply important to liberals. Toughness on crime was more commonly associated with Republicans. Now the tables have turned and it makes no sense.

Due process should concern everyone. So should sexual assault.

Related: Police officer brags about circumventing due process in sexual assault cases.

FORMER CNN ANCHOR LYNN RUSSELL: ‘NOTHING TO DEBATE,’ HAVING A GUN SAVED MY LIFE.

A MUST-READ FROM ACE: Donald Trump And The Class War Within The RNC.

The war is between two groups. My terminology may not be perfect, and there is lots of give in these terms, but the war is between the Middle/Working Class (hereafter just the Middle Class) and Professional Class, which I sometimes call the “Comfortable Class.”

Both classes, frankly, disgust me, depending on the day of the week.

The Middle Class is naked with class resentment and don’t seem to mind if the world knows they are seething angry at the Professional Class (whom they feel, correctly, disrespect them). They tend to push a “politics” which is less about actual policy and more about asserting the cultural class supremacy of the Middle Class.

The Professional Class is composed of both actual professionals, who are a fraction of the class, and the larger number of people who aspire to join the Upper Middle Class, but are actually Middle Class.

The Professional Class loves denigrating the Middle Class. One of its proudest achievements is that it’s not the Middle Class, but something more.

Also, the Comfortable Class does in fact enjoy showing the liberals that they’re not like that rabble, the White Working Class, by making a bigger deal than necessary over PC lapses by the Middle Class.

The Comfortable Class is very PC. It has, in fact, incorporated most of the mores and forbiddances of the Establishment Left. When people call members of this class “sort of liberal,” they’re 100% accurate.

This is why you’ll never see true conservatism win in DC — the actual representatives you send to DC are almost entirely members of the Comfortable Class, or soon will be (you become the fish you swim with). And they are in fact much, much closer to the Establishment Left than they are the mores and customs of the Middle Class they are nominally allied with.

I despise this class more than the Middle Class.

I’m going to be perfectly honest now and tell everyone what I hate about them.

Read the whole thing.

OF OBERGEFELL AND OSTRACISM: After the Supreme Court’s decision on Same Sex Marriage, Dan McLaughlin of Red State was quoted as saying, “Now the contest begins to see who’ll be the angriest winner.” Last week it was George Takei of Star Trek making racist slurs against Clarence Thomas. This week, Max Lindenman of Patheos spots Sally Kohn tossing her name into the ring:

Just as I was learning not to hate the term “national conversation,” gay marriage supporters have decided to quit speaking to us. That would, at any rate, be the earnest wish of Daily Beast columnist Sally Kohn. In last Sunday’s piece, “The New, Post-Homophobic Christianity,” she ticks off all the denominations that have changed their teachings on homosexuality and asks “Will anti-gay Christians be politically and socially ostracized?”

Her answer: “I sure hope so.”

Regarding the social part, I’m curious to know what, exactly, Kohn is thinking. As Br. Dominick Bouck, O.P. observed in First Things, there was a time not so long ago when she was ready to credit “conservatives” with being “emotionally correct,” if nothing else. Did she read the majority decision in Obergefell and exclaim: “By the Goddess! All along those bastards were playing footsie with due process and equal protection! ‘Emotional correctness’ my eye!”? Or is she convinced that offering us the cold shoulder is the best way to make us change our minds?

Or as Ed Morrissey asks at Hot Air, is religion “The new Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?”

(H/T: The Anchoress.)

THE HILL: Top three House Republicans want OPM head fired.

The top three House Republicans on Thursday called for the firing of the agency head at the center of what’s believed to be the largest government data breach of all time.

Moments after the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) revealed that the personal information of 22.1 million people had been exposed by two separate hacks at the agency, three GOP leaders called for agency chief Katherine Archuleta to resign.

“President Obama must take a strong stand against incompetence in his administration and instill new leadership at OPM so we can move forward in a fashion that begins to restore the confidence of the American people,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement.

Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Steve Scalise (R-La.) released coordinated statements also calling for Archuleta’s head.

In recent weeks, a growing chorus of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle has called for Archuleta’s firing, arguing she repeatedly ignored the warnings of her inspector general, who raised numerous red flags about the OPM’s security weaknesses.

Related: Senate Dem: OPM Head Must Go.

Sen. Mark Warner (Va.) on Thursday became the highest-ranking Democrat to call for the resignation of the agency head at the center of one what’s thought to be the largest government hack ever.

Minutes after the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) revealed that the personal data of 22.1 million people — more than 5 times the initial estimate — had been exposed by two separate hacks at the agency, Warner called for the agency’s chief, Katherine Archuleta, to resign.

He is the first Senate Democrat to do so.

Prediction: He won’t be the last. And Archuleta, of course, mocked Mitt Romney for worrying about Chinese hackers in 2012.

If I were Mitt, I’d run in 2016 with bumper stickers that say “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!” Because, you know, he was right about everything.

INTO THE ABYSS — FROM THE HALLS OF ACADEMIA TO THE COVER OF VANITY FAIR: “The Caitlyn (née Bruce) Jenner case has engendered if not a new subject at least a newly publicized and sensationalized one. For an old-timer like myself, transgenderism is reminiscent of the postmodernism that swept the universities several decades ago,” Gertrude Himmelfarb writes in the new issue of the Weekly Standard:

Indeed, transgenderism now looks like a more dramatic, audacious, and, it may be, perilous form of postmodernism. Like postmodernism back then, so transgenderism today is moving very far, very fast. Before it goes much further, one might look back upon its predecessor as a cautionary tale, recalling its aspirations but also its tribulations.

A passage from an article I wrote almost 20 years ago may help put the current issue in historical perspective:

Imported from France (which had acquired it from Germany), postmodernism made its appearance in the United States in the 1970s, first in departments of literature and then in other disciplines of the humanities. Its forefathers are Nietzsche and Heidegger, its fathers Derrida and Foucault. From Jacques Derrida postmodernism has borrowed the vocabulary of deconstruction: the “aporia” (the dubious or enigmatic nature) of discourse, the “indeterminacy” of language, the “fictive” nature of signs and symbols, the self-referential character of words and their dissociation from any presumed reality, the “problematization” of all subjects, events, and tests. From Michel Foucault it has adopted the focus on power: words and ideas as a means of “privileging” the “hegemonic” groups in society, and knowledge itself an instrument and product of the “power structure.” Thus traditional discourse and learning are impugned as “logocentric” (dominated by the word), “phallocentric” (dominated by the male), and “totalizing” or “authoritarian” (in the presumption that reality can be contained and comprehended).

Read the whole thing.

RELATED: Speaking of Heidegger, ‘Professor Shocked, Shocked To Find Out Prominent Nazi Was An Anti-Semite.’

WELL, YES: Wired: The OPM Hack May Have Given China a Spy Recruiting Database.