LIFE AMONG THE RADICALS:

Radical communities select for particular personality types… They attract hurt people, looking for an explanation for the pain they’ve endured… However, radical communities also attract people looking for an excuse to be violent illegalists. And the surplus of vulnerable people attracts sadists and abusers ready to exploit them. The only gate-keeping that goes on in radical communities is that of language and passion—if you can rail against capitalism in woke language, you’re in…

Abusers thrive in radical communities because radical norms are fragile and exploitable. A culture of freewheeling drug and alcohol use creates situations predators are waiting to exploit. A cultural fetishization of violence provides cover for violent and unstable people. The practice of public “call-outs” is used for power-plays far more often than for constructive feedback… Having somebody yell at me that if I didn’t admit to being a white supremacist her friends might beat me up, and that I should pay her for her emotional labour, was too much for my ideology to spin.

As Norman Podhoretz once wrote about his time as a nascent anti-Vietnam War radical,  “Do you realize that every young person in this room is a tragedy to some family or other?”

OOPS: Mapping Service Blurs Out Military Bases, But Accidentally Locates Secret Ones.

THE DARK NIGHT OF FASCISM IS ALWAYS DESCENDING IN THE UNITED STATES AND YET LANDS ONLY IN EUROPE: Anti-Semitism in EU worse over past 5 years. “Almost a third of European Jews avoid attending events or visiting Jewish sites because they do not feel safe.”

Europe has imported an awful lot of anti-Semites in recent years, and yet the words “Muslim” and “migrant” or “immigrant” are missing from Florian Eder’s Politico report.

AT AMAZON, 12 Days of Deals, Day 10.

IS THE WOMEN’S MARCH MELTING DOWN?

According to several sources, it was there—in the first hours of the first meeting for what would become the Women’s March—that something happened that was so shameful to many of those who witnessed it, they chose to bury it like a family secret. Almost two years would pass before anyone present would speak about it.

It was there that, as the women were opening up about their backgrounds and personal investments in creating a resistance movement to Trump, Perez and Mallory allegedly first asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people—and even, according to a close secondhand source, claimed that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade. These are canards popularized by The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a book published by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam—“the bible of the new anti-Semitism,” according to Henry Louis Gates Jr., who noted in 1992: “Among significant sectors of the black community, this brief has become a credo of a new philosophy of black self-affirmation.”

The socialism of fools, to coin a phrase.

FINANCIAL TIMES: Protests Show Leading France Is an Impossible Job.

As Glenn has noted before, big government types only complain that this or that country has become “ungovernable” when the people resist big government schemes the people never wanted.

VIRTUE SIGNALING IS A POWERFUL DRUG: 48 Yale Students Arrested During Protest.

In the annals of pointless protests, this may be the most pointless:

Forty-eight students at Yale University were arrested Friday during a protest in the investment office calling on the university to divest from Puerto Rican debt and fossil fuel companies. According to a press release from Fossil Free Yale, the student group organizing the protest, the sit-in began at noon Friday and continued until 5 p.m., when police began making arrests. More than 350 students rallied outside the office, cheering on the students being escorted by the police.

Let’s imagine the students “won,” and the university divested on Day X from Puerto Rican debt and fossil fuels. You know what would have changed in the world on Day X plus whatever? Exactly nothing. Of course, if the students really, truly wanted to help Puerto Ricans, I’m sure there are plenty of charities that would love to accept the difference between their $73K a year cost of Yale attendance and the cost of attending State U., if students were inclined to make a real sacrifice rather than engaging in political theater.

EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DeVOS’S PANEL ON SCHOOL SAFETY WILL RECOMMEND THE WITHDRAWAL THE OBAMA-ERA SCHOOL DISCIPLINE GUIDANCE: At least that’s what the Washington Post is reporting. If so, this is excellent, excellent, excellent news (for reasons that go well beyond school safety).

MACRON WASN’T FRANCE’S “LAST HOPE FOR REFORM.” He was actually a last effort at preserving business as usual.

ON THIS DAY IN 1725 (Old Style Nov. 30), GEORGE MASON  WAS BORN: He is often called the father of the Bill of Rights for two reasons: He was the principal author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, upon which Madison later based the Bill of Rights. And, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, he was prominent among those who refused to sign the draft document because it did not yet contain such a bill.

As a result of pressure from Mason and others, a Bill of Rights had to be promised in order the secure ratification.

YES, IT WAS CLEAR BEFORE, BUT HE’S REMOVED ALL DOUBT: James Comey Is Proving that He’s a Partisan. Almost everyone in Washington nowadays seems to be more interested in performing for the approval of a select audience of their peers than in, well, anything else.

I STILL CARE, BUT I’VE BASICALLY GIVEN UP ON GETTING ANYONE ELSE TO: Ballooning debt harms our youth, but Trump doesn’t care — and neither does anyone else.

This piece reminds me of the late Insta-Dad’s prophetic take on the TARP bailout: “The bad thing is that the federal government has figured out that it can borrow a lot more money than it previously thought.”

CRYBULLIES: Students Demand Comedian Sign ‘Safe Space’ Contract Ahead of Charity Event.

ROGER SIMON: Is Hollywood Dead?

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: 4 Reasons Deplatforming Controversial Figures Is a Terrible Idea.

GLENN BECK PAYS OFF $27,000 WORTH OF LAYAWAY BALANCES AT TEXAS WALMART:  “‘We were really inspired by [actor] Tyler Perry and what he did at the Walmart in Atlanta,’ Beck said in the video, ‘so we’re going to buy everything in layaway as well for everybody who has put anything in layaway”…In the video, Beck challenged Bill O’Reilly, Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, and others to follow Perry’s lead.”

MORE LIKE CUBA EVERY DAY: Russia sends 2 nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela.

WATCH THEM WRIGGLE, WATCH THEM SQUIRM:University contradicts itself on why it banned professor who exposed ‘predatory’ publishing of colleagues. Put “snitches get stitches” into Latin and you get a pretty believable university motto here. . . . “Indicium enuntiata adipiscitur.”

USS MICHAEL MONSOOR ARRIVES IN SAN DIEGO: The second ship in the Navy’s Zumwalt-class of guided- missile destroyers will be commissioned in January 2019.

I ACTUALLY AM ASKING FOR A FRIEND: Is there some way to convert a Keynote file to Word or Pages? I don’t use Keynote, but I’ve got a friend who’s in a jam. It won’t open in those programs, and I can’t seem to save it to anything that converts.

PRIVACY: Australia passes new law to thwart strong encryption.

The new law, which has been pushed for since at least 2017, requires that companies provide a way to get at encrypted communications and data via a warrant process. It also imposes fines of up to A$10 million for companies that do not comply and A$50,000 for individuals who do not comply. In short, the law thwarts (or at least tries to thwart) strong encryption.

Companies who receive one of these warrants have the option of either complying with the government or waiting for a court order. However, by default, the orders are secret, so companies would not be able to tell the public that they had received one.

“It’s a big deal,” Adam Molnar, a lecturer in criminology at Deakin University in Australia, told Ars.

However, the law as currently written seems to contain what some view as a loophole. The statute says that companies cannot be compelled to introduce a “systemic weakness” or a “systemic vulnerability” into their software or hardware to satisfy government demands.

In other words, the new law is just as confused as the notion of having a “safe” backdoor past encryption.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: VIDEO: Students at Savannah’s College of Arts and Design oppose Clarence Thomas building… but don’t know why.

One student, after saying she would sign the petition, admitted, “I don’t know I haven’t done much research on this. I just saw the petition and that’s the extent of it.” Another student in support of the petition echoed a similar sentiment, saying, “well I don’t actually know what he did,” while yet another added, “I really don’t know anything about him.”

One student went so far as to compare Thomas to Hitler, though when asked if he could name anything Thomas had done to justify such a comparison, the student admitted, “I mean not in particular.”

Embarrassing. But not surprising.

AT AMAZON, Fresh Deals on Top Rated Products.

Plus, Shop Top Gift Ideas.

And, Shop Amazon – Best Selling Products – Updated Every Hour.

Also, browse the Kindle Deals of the Day.