DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: in a post titled “Bray New World,” Mark Steyn profiles Mark Bray, the professor who recently wrote Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, and who “passes for the intellectual wing of Antifa.” Steyn writes, “In The Chronicle of Higher Education Nell Gluckman offers a glowing paean to the man she dubs ‘The Button-Down Anarchist:’”

In fact, there’s a point Mr. Bray made in an interview that Mr. Scott often finds himself citing. “We don’t look back at the Weimar Republic today and celebrate them for allowing Nazis to have their free-speech rights,” he says. “We look back and say, Why didn’t they do something?”

Steyn responds:

It is a testament to the wholesale moronization of our culture that there are gazillions of apparently sane people willing to take out six figures of debt they’ll be paying off for decades for the privilege of being “taught” by the likes of Professor Bray. The reason “we don’t look back at the Weimar Republic today and celebrate them for allowing Nazis to have their free-speech rights” is because they didn’t. A decade ago, as my battles with Canada’s “human rights” commissions were beginning, I lost count of the number of bien-pensants insisting that, while in theory we could permit hatemongers like Steyn to exercise their free-speech rights, next thing you know it would be jackboots on the 401. As I said way back when:

“Hateful words” can lead to “unspeakable crimes.” The problem with this line is that it’s ahistorical twaddle, as I’ve pointed out. Yet still it comes up. It did last month, during my testimony to the House of Commons justice committee, when an opposition MP mused on whether it wouldn’t have been better to prohibit the publication of Mein Kampf.

“That analysis sounds as if it ought to be right,” I replied. “But the problem with it is that the Weimar Republic—Germany for the 12 years before the Nazi party came to power—had its own version of Section 13 and equivalent laws. It was very much a kind of proto-Canada in its hate speech laws. The Nazi party had 200 prosecutions brought against it for anti-Semitic speech. At one point the state of Bavaria issued an order banning Hitler from giving public speeches.”

And a fat lot of good it all did.

Or to put it another way:

The problem is, the Weimar Republic had such laws. It used them freely against the Nazis. Far from stopping Hitler, they only made his day when he became Chancellor. They enabled Hitler to confront Social Democratic Party chairman Otto Wels, who stood up in the Reichstag to protest Nazi suspension of civil liberties, with a quotation from the poet Friedrich Schiller:

“‘Late you come, but still you come,'” Hitler pointed at the hapless deputy. “You should have recognized the value of criticism during the years we were in opposition [when] our press was forbidden, our meetings were forbidden, and we were forbidden to speak for years on end.”

As the College Fix noted, in a post Glenn linked to earlier today, “Majority of Americans say colleges aren’t properly teaching ‘the value of free speech.’” And they’re not properly teaching history either. But they are teaching the value of violence: “When Bray recently appeared on Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd told him ‘You seem to be a very small minority here who is defending the idea of violence,’ Bray did not deny it.”

I wonder if Bray has ever asked himself or his Antifa buddies, “Are we the baddies?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU

Related: Professor who erased pro-life messages will pay $17,000, receive First Amendment training.

SO IT’S COME TO THIS: Occidental Professor Warns: Be ‘Suspicious of Males Who Strongly Identify as Men.’

NO REASON AT ALL WHY IT SHOULDN’T: If the Law Is This Complicated, Why Shouldn’t Ignorance Be an Excuse? On any criminal charge, it should be ground for acquittal that no reasonable person would have thought he/she was committing a crime.

AT AMAZON, deals on Office Supplies.

Plus, save in Sports and Outdoors.

MARINES LAND ON OKINAWA: The photo was taken during an exercise conducted November 2. The vehicle in the background is an Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAVP-7A1, which carries personnel). Here’s one “swimming”— this page also has background data on the vehicle.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? A Guide to the Most Expensive (and Useless) Holiday Items in the Crate and Barrel Catalog.

EVEN VOX IS GETTING CURIOUS: Sen. Rand Paul was violently attacked a week ago. We still don’t know why. What the hell is happening with this case?

HMM: Study: Some foods can help ease rheumatoid arthritis pain, progression.

ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS: Iranian Arab separatist shot to death in Netherlands.

An Iranian activist who advocated for the independence of the country’s Arab minority was shot to death in the Netherlands on Wednesday.

Ahmad Mola Nissi, 52, was a founder of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, or ASMLA, which advocates for an independent state in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan Province.

Dutch police said an investigation had been opened into the shooting and a suspect had been detained at the crime scene in The Hague.

“His involvement in the incident is being investigated,” police said about the suspect, according to Reuters. “Emergency services were at the scene quickly and reanimated the victim, but he died shortly later.”

The Netherlands have rolled out an impressive welcome mat for Islamic immigrants, but they have a less-than-impressive track record of providing security to genuine political refugees from Islamic countries.

I DUNNO, INTEREST IN CELEBRITIES SEEMS KINDA SHEEP-LIKE: Sheep Can Recognise Celebrity Faces From Photos Alone, Which Is Crazy.

FORMER ASSISTANT FBI DIRECTOR: Clinton Crimes 20 Times Bigger than Watergate.

ROY MOORE, WAPO, AND THE PROBLEM WITH AN UNTRUSTWORTHY PRESS.

THANKS, OBAMA! US Air Force official: Missile targeting Saudis was Iranian.

HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? When will the Earth try to kill us again? Most mass extinctions began with vast convulsions of Earth’s interior—can we detect that?

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot:

Who’s to blame for sexual harassment and assault scandals in Hollywood, the mainstream media, and corporate America that goes back decades, according to Newsweek? Hint: It’s not someone with any connection to either the media or corporate America, and only a passing connection to Hollywood. It doesn’t take a loudmouth Irishman to guess Donald Trump, even without the hints. Nina Burleigh writes that American men have a “Garden of Dicks” in their minds, and that its leader is the current president:

* * * * * * * *

You know who we don’t hear much about in this Garden of Dicks? Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton won office twice while facing complaints about his own behavior, including some women (Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey) who claimed he’d assaulted them, and another (Paula Jones) who claimed he’d come close to doing so. The only mention Burleigh makes of Clinton is that he was caught “seducing an intern in 1996,” but then only to juxtapose it with another allegation against Trump. Burleigh doesn’t even note that Clinton committed perjury in a deposition in the Jones case and ended up losing his law license over it in an attempt to get out from under Jones’ lawsuit for harassment and defamation. We also never hear about Clinton’s escapades with Jeffrey Epstein, who was later prosecuted for underage prostitution.

—Ed Morrissey, Hot Air, today.

Chaser:

When he called back, I decided my only defense would be to give him a quote that would knock his socks off. I also wanted to test the Post ‘s new “sizzle”-the paper’s post-We Broke the Lewinsky Story advertising hook. So when Howard [Kurtz] asked whether I could still objectively cover the President, having found him so attractive, I replied, “I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their Presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”

—Nina Burleigh, the New York Observer, July 20th, 1998.

DEFAULTSKI: Russia Comes to Venezuela’s Rescue as US Imposes More Sanctions.

The Putin administration agreed to the restructuring of the nearly $3 million in loans Venezuela has taken from the Russians—although the amount pales in comparison to the overall $120 billion debt Venezuela still grapples with.

Russia is restructuring 0.000025% of Venezuela’s debt? This is some rescue.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why some sharks are like blimps, and others are like airplanes.

REPORT: Fusion GPS Gave Russian Lawyer Dirt on Clinton to offer Don Jr.

RETENTION BLUES: Air Force Pilot Shortage Climbs to 2K Pilots, General Says.

As the final numbers were tallied for fiscal 2017, leaders said they weren’t surprised at the number of vacancies.

“Last summer, we were reporting to people that we were about 1,500 pilots short in the Air Force — and we expected it to get worse,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon.

“Almost 2,000 pilots short of a force that has 20,000 pilots, so that’s one in 10 that we’re short,” Wilson said, alongside Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein.

More flight hours, less PC BS.

SENATOR SPEAK WITH FORKED TONGUE: Warren Backpedals After Twice Calling Democratic Primaries ‘Rigged.’

Warren told MassLive.com on Wednesday that she believes the allegations in former acting Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile’s new book, but said while the allegations showed “bias” in Hillary Clinton’s favor, the primaries did not rise to the level of being “rigged.”

“While there was some bias at the DNC, the overall 2016 primary process was fair and Hillary made history,” she said.

A week earlier, the senator was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether she agreed with Brazile’s allegation that the process was “rigged” in Clinton’s favor. “Yes,” she answered simply.

Later that same day, Warren was asked on PBS’ “NewsHour” if the DNC’s actions meant “the election was rigged.”

“I think it was,” Warren responded.

Maybe she just believes it wasn’t rigged-rigged.

RASMUSSEN: Just 32% Think Hillary Clinton Won Democratic Nomination Fairly.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, TAXES-ARE-FOR-THE-LITTLE-PEOPLE EDITION: NY Times: Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Stanford, Texas & USC Are Among Colleges Using ‘Blocker Corporations’ To Avoid Taxes On Endowment Income. “Establishing another corporate layer between private equity funds and endowments effectively blocks any taxable income from flowing to the endowments, the reason they are called blocker corporations. The tax is instead owed by the corporations, which are established in no-tax or low-tax jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands.”

Related: The Ivory Tower Tax Haven.

WELL, GOOD: Vietnam Veterans Set the Record Straight After PBS TV Series Whitewashes Communism.