OH, I THINK THAT’S PRETTY MUCH THE GOAL: Strangling the Free Mind: Schools that censor students’ speech teach them permissibility of sacrificing free speech for a competing social good.
Archive for 2016
January 5, 2016
DIVERSITY PROBLEM: American Academics Have Moved Sharply To The Left.
What might account for the pronounced rise in the number of self-identified liberals at the expense of moderates and conservatives, starting in the mid-1990s? The Heterodox Academy post speculates that “things began changing in the 1990s as the Greatest Generation (which had a fair number of Republicans) retired and were replaced by the Baby Boom generation (which did not).”
This probably tells part of the story, but we suspect there is more going on here than organic generational replacement. One possibility is that the story told in the graph represents the legacy of the “canon wars“—the intense battles over humanities curricula between traditionalists and multiculturalists that took place during the 1980s and 1990s. Despite some consequential traditionalist protestations, like Allan Bloom’s blockbuster 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, “its generally agreed,” as Rachel Donadio has written, “that the multiculturalists won the canon wars.” The multiculturalist victory had at least three consequences: a reduced emphasis on what was traditionally called “the Western canon” in general education classes, the expansion of the “studies” departments (African American studies, gender studies, Jewish studies, Chicano studies), and the implementation of “harassment” codes that, in practice, were more often used against people who opposed the multiculturalist project. Whether or not you approve of these developments, it’s easy to see how they could have made scholarly minded students with traditionalist leanings less inclined to get a PhD and enter an academic humanities or social science department (the Heterodox Academy posts notes that most of the conservatives in the chart come from STEM departments and professional schools).
I think that trustees, state legislators, alumni, and others should look into remedying this.
SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS AT OBERLIN DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ETHNIC FOOD.
Brevity is always a goal when it comes to Internet journalism. Are the last three words of that headline really necessary?
KURT SCHLICHTER: Loser GOP Candidates Need To Stop Making Asterisks of Themselves.
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WHY DON’T WE JUST SELL OFF THE LAND AND APPLY THE PROCEEDS TO THE NATIONAL DEBT? In Oregon, frustration over federal land rights has been building for years.
ROGER SIMON: Ted Cruz’s Foreign Policy Adviser Writes a Book on… Art?
It’s almost an insult to Victoria C. Gardner Coates to begin a review of her excellent David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art (published today by Encounter Books) by noting the author is the chief foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz. Her intertwining history of art and democracy is far more interesting than any campaign tome I can think of (not a high bar, I know). Nevertheless, it’s 2016 and obviously Coates’ work is going to be getting more attention than normal because of her association with a potential president — and, in this case, that’s good.
Coates — no neophyte in the political world (she worked for Donald Rumsfeld) — is an art historian by profession with a University of Pennsylvania PhD, specializing in the Italian Renaissance. She has helped curate major exhibitions at the Getty Museum and elsewhere. In David’s Sling she brings her interests together, unpacking the complex relationship between art and democracy from the Athens of Pericles and Phidias all the way through the World War I France of Clemenceau and Monet and on into more recent times with Picasso and Guernica.
That will likely come as a shock to the left, but then, they’ve been underestimating the breadth of interests of conservative Republicans since Coolidge era. Or as Jay Nordlinger wrote a decade and a half ago in his review of Reagan In His Own Hand:
[W]hen excerpts from the book appeared in the The New York Times Magazine, I got a marveling phone call from an old friend, reared in the liberal Democratic (and Reagan-hating, or at least-belittling) faith. “Can you believe it?” he said. “Can you believe how impressive these things are? They are completely at odds with the image we have of him.” I could only respond, Reagan-style, “What do you mean ‘we,’ Kemosabe?”
Funny how that keeps happening — it’s as if “Progressivism” is still stuck in century-old mud.
WHERE HAS THE MEDIA BEEN? HOW CAMPUS CENSORSHIP NEVER WENT AWAY: “Most people are familiar with the supposed heyday of political correctness of the 1980s and ’90s, but there is a popular misconception that speech codes and censorship were defeated in the courts of law and public opinion by the mid-’90s,” my fellow Insta-co-blogger Greg Lukianoff writes at Ricochet. “In reality, the threats to campus speech never went away. Before examining what has changed to alarm the public—rightfully—about the state of open discourse in higher education, it’s important to note what hasn’t changed.”
The media was fine with political correctness and censorship when it mostly being used against the right. But sooner or later, all revolutions eventually devour their own; which is why the MSM woke themselves somewhat from their slumber last year. Or as Kevin Williamson noted when lefty Jonathan Chait issued his widely-disseminated cri de coeur on the dangers political correctness in New York magazine last year, “Chait’s recent critique of political correctness insists that the phenomenon has undergone a resurgence. It hasn’t; contrary to Chait’s characterization, it never went away. The difference is that it is now being used as a cudgel against white liberals such as Jonathan Chait, who had previously enjoyed a measure of immunity.”
(Oh and speaking of Chait, perhaps to make up for an argument that last year that advanced the right, he’s now turned to eliminationist rhetoric to try to mend fences: “New York Magazine’s Chait ‘Votes’ For Oregon Militia Members To Be ‘Killed.’”)
BIG TOBACCO SEES BIG PROFITS COMING IN LEGALIZED MARIJUANA: Want to be the Marlboro Man of Marijuana? The tobacco giants see legal marijuana in their future and $50 billion in new profits. And, oh by the way, did you know Richard Nixon’s Justice Department funded studies by the tobacco industry on what legalization would mean for them and how best to take advantage of it? Here’s a sample:
“We are in the business of relaxing people who are tense and providing a pick up for people who are bored or depressed,” the tobacco memo added. “The human needs that our product fills will not go away. Thus, the only real threat to our business is that society will find other means of satisfying these needs.”
Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has what may be the least expected news of 2016.
ASHE SCHOW: Variety critic names ‘The Hunting Ground’ among worst films of 2015.
Entertainment magazine Variety asked its movie critics to name the worst and most overrated films of 2015.
The only female critic to provide for the list, Ella Taylor, listed “The Hunting Ground” as a film that received “empty prestige.”
“Speaking of shoddy journalism,” Taylor wrote after naming “Truth,” the film that attempted to vindicate Dan Rather, the worst film of the year, “the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has succumbed without a murmur to ‘The Hunting Ground,’ placing on its documentary feature shortlist a loaded piece of agitprop that plays fast and loose with statistics and our sympathy with victims of campus sexual assault.” . . . The filmmaker’s response to criticism has been, essentially: “Nuh uh, anyone who disagrees with us is pro-rape.”
It’s propaganda, pure and simple, of a sort that will probably be mocked in future generations if it’s remembered at all. Out: Reefer Madness. In: Raper Madness.
ANDREW KLAVAN: “Trump’s Nomination Would Represent a Paradigm Shift” — but not necessarily a good one, Andrew writes:
Trump is a lifelong left-wing friend-of-Democrats campaigning as a Republican for his own reasons. He’s a demagogue, and he’s good at it. Sometimes he speaks truth and often he spouts trash, but what’s the difference? He doesn’t believe any of it anyway. He’s simply saying whatever words he feels will tap into legitimate right-wing anger and working-class angst.
A Trump candidacy would probably result in a Clinton presidency and that, I suspect, would be fine with Trump. If, on the other hand, he went on to win the White House, I’m guessing we’d have four more years of the same kind of lawless and mean-spirited incompetence we’ve had for the last eight. American political life throws up hucksters like Trump from time to time, but usually we figure them out before they rise too far or do too much harm. I’m guessing we’ll figure it out this time too, but maybe not.
If Rubio or Cruz or any other decent Republican is nominated, I’ll support him with joy and enthusiasm against the dishonest, corrupt and anti-libertarian Clinton. If Trump gets the nod, I’ll become a one-man rebel outpost, preaching right principles in a dark time.
Good luck with that — as Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist recently wrote in article titled “When It Comes To Donald Trump, I Hate Everyone,”
A Twitter user who goes by the name Political Math said of these people, and please excuse his French, “The world makes a lot of sense when you realize that the #1 priority of Trump supporters is to tell you to go [expletive deleted] yourself.” He added, “And I don’t mean this as a slur: Trump supporters are really just *more* sick of bull[deleted] out of DC than they care about Trump.”
Curiously enough, so is Andrew, but I doubt Trump’s supporters will be able to see that about him. And thus 2009 and 2016 will likely come full circle:
CHRISTIAN ADAMS ON OBAMA’S COMING UNCONSTITUTIONAL GUN GRAB:
Americans are a well armed people, they treasure their Constitutional rights to defend themselves and their Constitution.
I’m frequently asked what can be done about it. Impeachment of the president is not the answer because it would only strengthen Obama, not weaken him. It is a waste of time. But impeachment of any attorney general or assistant attorney general who oversees such an anti-constitutional act is a different beast. Better still, hold the individual federal employees that design and implement any federal gun grab accountable, both in Congress and in the public discourse. We all know who Lois Lerner is. Let’s see who will be the face of Obama’s coming gun grab.
Read the whole thing.
HAWKS AND DOVES: The 2016 Presidential Candidate Intervention Meter.
What’s interesting is that the GOP leaders, Trump, Cruz and Rubio, are nowhere near the top.
HILLARY: ELECT ME AND I’LL GET TO THE BOTTOM OF UFOS AND AREA 51. “Ahem. These two had eight years to pursue any curiosity they had about UFOs and Area 51. It’s one thing to pander to the UFO conspiracy theorists as an outsider. It’s another to do it as part of the Clinton Restoration. What exactly would have changed since Hillary and Podesta left the Clinton White House 15 years ago, and Podesta left the Obama White House in February of last year?”
Let’s face it — Hillary is simply covering up the SHADO-y forces she and the government-media complex first buried deep underground decades ago:
Related: “Reminder: Bill Clinton Believes in UFOs and the JFK Conspiracy, And Hillary Talks to Ghosts. But these weird New Age nonsense beliefs — dopey pseudoreligions taking the place of actual religions — will be ignored, while the media continues to jeer at people for reading the Bible.”
GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND: Sally Kohn of the Daily Beast refers to “the Ruby Ridge massacre in Waco, Texas.”
“Doubling down on dumb,” Kohn follows up by asking for ‘giant glaring difference’ between Wisconsin and Oregon, gets an earful.
ROSS DOUTHAT: I UNDERESTIMATED DONALD TRUMP.
I sold Trump wildly short, and his entire campaign to date has proven it.
First, Trump has had a very easy time turning his celebrity fan base into a meaningful constituency. Exactly how meaningful remains to be seen, but for months far more Republicans have told pollsters that they intend to vote for him than have rallied to any other banner. They may not all be Trump voters in the end, but that there is a significant Trump faction in our politics no sane observer can deny.
Second, that faction has turned out to include precisely the kind of voters Romney needed in 2012 and who stayed home instead: Blue-collar whites with moderate views on economics and a weak attachment to the institutional G.O.P. (So weak, a recent New York Times analysis makes clear, that many are still registered Democrats.) These “missing white voters” might not have put Romney over the top, but they certainly would have helped his chances in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan — all places where Trump is running strongly at the moment.
Third, even as he’s wooed the disaffected and non-ideological, Trump has also won over or at least neutralized an important segment of the conservative media.
Hey, maybe he’s smarter than you think.
Yeah, but it’s pretty much their only idea.
RAPE CULTURE: On Perilous Migrant Trail, Women Often Become Prey to Sexual Abuse.
One Syrian woman who joined the stream of migrants to Germany was forced to pay down her husband’s debt to smugglers by making herself available for sex along the way. Another was beaten unconscious by a Hungarian prison guard after refusing his advances.
A third, a former makeup artist, dressed as a boy and stopped washing to ward off the men in her group of refugees. Now in an emergency shelter in Berlin, she still sleeps in her clothes and, like several women here, pushes a cupboard in front of her door at night.
“There is no lock or key or anything,” said Esraa al-Horani, the makeup artist and one of the few women here not afraid to give her name. She has been lucky, Ms. Horani said: “I’ve only been beaten and robbed.”
Hey, it could be worse. You could be on an American college campus. I hear things are really bad there.
January 4, 2016
SHE CROSSED THE “ARKANSAS MAFIA:” Woman Who Confronted Hillary Clinton Over Rape Claims: My Kids Are Being Threatened.
NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN PROVIDES the Washington Establishment’s take on the rise of Trump.
BE KILLED BY MUSLIMS, BLAME ALL RELIGION: “I’m just guessing the cartoonist meant to attack religion in general and to be very obviously not about Islam.”
Violence works. Which is why I think we should respond violently to savagery.