THEY HATE YOU, THEY REALLY HATE YOU: University’s Anti-Bigotry Reading List Includes Book That Equates Conservatism With Racism.
Archive for 2020
July 16, 2020
MATT TAIBBI: Year Zero.
It is impossible to disentangle this profoundly negativistic portrait of the American experiment from the admitted context of the 1619 Project: an effort by the nation’s leading elite media organ to explain the Democratic Party’s loss to Trump. Would this have been published if Hillary Clinton had won the White House?
As journalism, 1619 read almost exactly like the paper’s post-mortems on the 2016 election – probably not an accident, since Baquet told us it was conceived identically as an effort to “understand the forces that led to the election of Donald Trump.” In both cases history was reduced to a simplistic showdown between evil racists and oppressed peoples.
The best explanation for these sudden reversals in rhetoric is that Trump broke the brains of America’s educated classes. Like Russian aristocrats who spent the last days of the Tsarist empire flocking to fortune-tellers and mystics, upscale blue-staters have lost themselves lately in quasi-religious tracts like White Fragility, and are lining up to flog themselves for personal and historical sins.
In desperation to help the country atone for their idea of why Trump happened, they’ve engaged in a sort of moon landing of anti-intellectual endeavors, committing a generation of minds to finding a solution to the one thing no thinking person ever considered a problem, i.e. the Enlightenment ideas that led to the American Revolution.
Read the whole thing.
Oh, and speaking of Russian aristocrats just before Year Zero arrived: Woke America Is a Russian Novel.
The metaphysical gap between mid-19th-century Russia and early-21st-century America is narrowing. The parallels between them then and us now, political and social but mostly characterological, are becoming sharper, more unavoidable.
We can reassure ourselves by repeating obvious truths: The United States is not czarist Russia. The present is not the past. History does not repeat itself. But those facts are not immutable laws so much as observations, and even though they are built on solid foundations, those foundations are not impervious to shifting sands. We can go backward. We can descend into a primal state we thought we had escaped forever. That is the lesson of the 20th century.
The similarities between past and present are legion: The coarsening of the culture, our economic woes, our political logjams, the opportunism and fecklessness of our so-called elites, the corruption of our institutions, the ease with which we talk about “revolution” (as in Bernie Sanders’ romanticization of “political revolution”), the anger, the polarization, the anti-Semitism.
But the most important thing is the new characters, who are not that dissimilar to the old ones.
Also well worth a read.
NONSENSE THIS IS ALL JUST SPONTANEOUS ANGER OVER THE DEATH OF GEORGE FLOYD: Video shows protesters get shipment of bats before Brooklyn Bridge brawl.
IT’S GOING TO BE UGLY: Chinese scientist who fled to US vows to spill secrets of ‘coronavirus cover-up.’
SO ONCE AGAIN THE WOKE ARE RECAPITULATING THE ARGUMENTS OF SOUTHERN SEGREGATIONISTS: African American History Museum’s website says being on time is a marker of ‘whiteness.’
The National Museum of African American History & Culture wants to make you aware of certain signs of whiteness: Individualism, hard work, objectivity, the nuclear family, progress, respect for authority, delayed gratification, more.
Well, okay then, Lester.
WALTER MONDALE COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Biden Will Impose Highest Capital Gains Tax Rate Since Jimmy Carter in 1977.
On Oct. 23, 2019 Biden said:“So every single solitary person, their capital gains are going to be treated like real income and they are going to pay 40 percent on their capital gains tax.”
On Sept. 27, 2019 Biden said: “I’m gonna double the capital gains rate to 40 percent.”
On Oct. 15, 2020 Biden said: “I would raise the capital gains tax to the highest rate of 39.5 percent, I would double it.”
On Aug. 21, 2019 Biden said: “The capital gains tax should be at what the highest minimum tax should be, we should raise the tax back to 39.6 percent instead of 20 percent.”
On Dec. 9, 2019 Biden said the capital gains tax rate “could go higher” than 40%.
Taxes aren’t the only way that Biden will ensure you have less money: Biden’s fracking ban will derail environmental and economic gains.
Classical reference in headline:
THE OTHER 46% HAVE SEEN A RECENT VIDEO OF BIDEN: Only 54% of Americans Think Biden is Capable of Debating Trump.
UPDATE: “Have” vs “Haven’t” typo fixed!
TIME FOR CHANGE: Education or Indoctrination?
Plus this from GWU Law Professor John Banzhaf. I’m quoting extensively because he emailed this with no link:
How Trump Can Legally Crack Down on Colleges’ “Radical Left Indoctrination”
Not Through Tax Status, But Through His Free-Speech-on-Campus Executive Order
WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 14, 2020) – President Donald Trump has tweeted that he is ordering the Treasury Department to re-examine the tax-exempt status of some universities, saying too many “are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education.” But federal law prohibits the Internal Revenue Service, which is part of the Treasury Department, from questioning the tax-exempt status of organizations “based on their ideological beliefs.”However, while Trump cannot direct the revocation of their tax exempt status,he might be able to seriously threaten their federal funding, or at least cause federal investigations which, by themselves, can have a major impact, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.
Interestingly, organizations, students, or professors who are conservative, or who for whatever reason support his policies, or are simply concerned – like Professor Banzhaf – about protecting free speech on their campus, seem to have the power to trigger just such actions.
There have been numerous reports providing examples of where state universities have allegedly violated the First Amendment rights of students, professors, and/or invited guest speakers – often those whose views oppose or even attack so-called “radical left” positions – and in some cases it appears that even judges have agreed that the university’s action was illegal.
In such a situation, any student or faculty member – or perhaps even an outside organization – might file a formal complaint, anonymous or otherwise, under Executive Order 13864, which was issued on March 21, 2019, and is apparently still in force but untested.
The order mandates that “to advance the policy described in subsection 2(a) of this Order, the heads of covered agencies SHALL in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, take appropriate steps, in a manner consistent with applicable law, including the First Amendment, to ensure institutions that receive Federal research or education grants promote free inquiry, including through compliance with all applicable Federal laws, regulations, and policies.” [emphasis added]
The policy set out in Section 2(a) requires “compliance with the First Amendment for public institutions and compliance with stated institutional policies regarding freedom of speech for private institutions.”
The mandatory nature of the order was made very clear by the President’s remarks accompanying its release:
“Taxpayer dollars should not subsidize anti-First Amendment institutions. . . . Universities that want taxpayer dollars should promote free speech, not silence free speech. . . . protect the First Amendment and First Amendment rights of their students, or risk losing billions and billions of dollars of federal taxpayer dollars. . . . If a college or university doesn’t allow you to speak, we WILL NOT give them money. ” [emphasis added]
So a single simple formal complaint alleging that a state university violated the First Amendment by unfairly and perhaps even illegally impeding – or even threatening to impede – First-Amendment-protected speech which was critical of so-called “radical left” views, but was more tolerant and permissive of speech which aligned with such views, could trigger a formal federal investigation possibly leading to a cutoff of certain federal funds.
According to the executive order, the “covered agencies” from which funding could be terminated are the “Departments of Defense, the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Energy, and Education; the Environmental Protection Agency; the National Science Foundation; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”
Federal investigations, even if there is little likelihood that funding will actually be terminated, can be very expensive, embarrassing, disruptive, and otherwise harmful to any university unfortunate enough to become subject to one.
Indeed, it has been suggested that one reason for the issuance of the executive order, and for the choice of agencies which are covered, was to provide a strong incentive for faculty members, especially those involved with research, to begin speaking up and defending free speech when violations occur or are threatened on their own campuses.
This is particularly true for professors working in STEM fields or medicine, since they and their universities rely more heavily upon federal research grants than professors in the humanities. Indeed, some have argued that this order, once enforced, could help provide an important counterbalance, since humanities professors (who much less frequently have major federal grants) reportedly have been more supportive of campus free speech violations, with those in other disciplines largely doing nothing.
Now those STEM and health professors dependent upon research grants will have a very powerful incentive to speak up when their university tries to violate the First Amendment rights of students, faculty, or invited speakers; whether their speech reflects the view of the “radical left” or the “radical right,” suggests Banzhaf.
Those who doubt that federal complaints, and the investigations which they often trigger, can have a major impact on university policies need only look at the huge effect complaints filed by students under Title IX have had on university policies regarding date rape and other forms of sexual abuse on campus.
Naturally, students and faculty with what some might characterize as “left-leaning” (if not “radical left”) views can likewise file complaints under the same Executive Order if the First Amendment rights of speakers sharing their positions are violated, but it remains to be seen if such instances are as numerous as those more frequently reported interferences with conservative views, or if executive branch agencies under Trump will treat them as equally serious and as warranting federal investigation.
However, interference with the speech of those on the left would seem to be far less frequent, suggests Banzhaf, since a recent study have shown that the college administrators who interact with and directly affect students – e.g, planning programs, handling discipline, etc. – are even more overwhelmingly liberal (reportedly by a 12-1 ratio) than faculty (estimated at 6-1).
Faculty and students take note, and file complaints as appropriate.
AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: US has withdrawn from 5 bases in Afghanistan after Taliban agreement.
YEP, THEY SQUANDERED THEIR CREDIBILITY, WHICH IS PUBLIC HEALTH’S KEY ASSET: The mask fiasco shows the dangers of a ‘noble lie.’
Related: Why our public health leaders didn’t push face masks early and are now regretting it.
On Feb. 29, the U.S. surgeon general begged people not to buy masks, saying they were “not effective in preventing general public from catching #coronavirus.” On March 8, Dr. Anthony Fauci went on “60 Minutes” and said “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
That means that the curmudgeonly group of reluctant mask wearers had a lot to hang their hat on: the literal words of the nation’s top health officials from three months ago. Given the inconvenience, that doubt is enough to keep them from wearing a mask most of the time in businesses.
Lying is bad.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY? Is porn just harmless entertainment? Colson Center offers three concrete reasons to conclude otherwise.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED. On Bari Weiss’s Resignation: Where Did ‘Cancel Culture’ Begin?
THEY CHOSE… POORLY: Protesters in Kentucky Charged With Trying to Intimidate the Attorney General.
SOROS SPENDING $220M TO ELECT MORE LOONIES TO LOCAL PROSECUTOR JOBS: Oh boy, just what America needs, more Soros-backed DAs like the one in St. Louis who seized the McCloskeys’ firearms.
DEEP TROUBLE IN THE CASTLE ON THE MALL: A thorough ideological disinfectant scouring is clearly needed at the Smithsonian.
July 15, 2020
DEMOCRAT-RUN STATE GETS HARSH: 87 protesters arrested at Kentucky attorney general’s home. “News outlets report protesters with the social justice organization Until Freedom gathered Tuesday for a sit-in at the home of Daniel Cameron. Police say they were charged with the felony crime of ‘intimidating a participant in a legal process’; disorderly conduct, and trespassing.”
