Archive for 2024

IT WASN’T A DIVORCE, THEY JUST WALKED OUT: Academe’s Divorce From Reality.

Over the last 10 years or so, a cultural revolution has been imposed on this country from the top down. Its ideas originated in the academy, and it’s been carried out of the academy by elite-educated activists and journalists and academics. (As has been said, we’re all on campus now.) Its agenda includes decriminalization or nonprosecution of property and drug crimes and, ultimately, the abolition of police and prisons; open borders, effectively if not explicitly; the suppression of speech that is judged to be harmful to disadvantaged groups; “affirmative” care for gender-dysphoric youth (puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones followed, in some cases, by mastectomies) and the inclusion of natal males in girls’ and women’s sports; and the replacement of equality by equity — of equal opportunity for individuals by equal outcomes for designated demographic groups — as the goal of social policy.

It insists that the state is evil, that the nuclear family is evil, that something called “whiteness” is evil, that the sex binary, which is core to human biology, is a social construct. It is responsible for the DEI regimes, the training and minders and guidelines, that have blighted American workplaces, including academic ones. It has promulgated an ever-shifting array of rebarbative neologisms whose purpose often seems to be no more than its own enforcement: POC (now BIPOC), AAPI (now AANHPI), LGBTQ (now LGBTQIA2S+), “pregnant people,” “menstruators,” “front hole,” “chest feeding,” and, yes, “Latinx.” It is joyless, vengeful, and tyrannical. It is purist and totalistic. It demands affirmative, continuous, and enthusiastic consent.

People are fed up, and I don’t just mean people who voted for Trump.

Read the whole thing.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN ON JACK SMITH’S COLLAPSED TRUMP CASE: “Special Counsel Smith has had a full and fair opportunity to prove—before the trial court and now on appeal—that he was lawfully appointed and lawfully compensated. He failed to establish those specific points in court. As a result, the DOJ may and (in my opinion) should sue for return of illegal salary paid by the U.S. Treasury to Smith and his staff (that is, those not otherwise employed at DOJ). Special Counsel Smith failed to prove that the documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago belong to the U.S. government or any of its agencies. Trump should move, and if necessary sue, for return of all his files taken by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago.”

Well, I’m a make-the-rubble-bounce kinda guy, so yeah.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: No Labels goes after opponents of third-party presidential bid in court..

Leaders of the centrist group No Labels abandoned a planned third-party presidential bid in April after a successful campaign by Democratic allies of President Joe Biden damaged their public appeal and undermined their ability to recruit electable candidates.

Now leaders of No Labels are fighting back in three federal courtrooms with a sprawling legal-discovery effort aimed at exposing the secret machinations they believe led to their project’s demise. Leaders of the moderate Democratic group Third Way and of Investing in US, a political operation funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, are fighting to limit the document production.

But documents already unsealed by the courts reveal remarkable details about private proposals for a wide range of hard-nosed tactics that would go beyond public efforts like ads, op-eds and meetings to discourage the No Labels campaign. The documents include emails exchanged between various Democratic strategists involved with efforts to oppose No Labels.

“Our main focus should be brand destruction but, where possible, we also need to throw up any and all roadblocks to stop them from being successful at signature-gathering,” Lucy Caldwell, one of the anti-No Labels strategists, wrote in a document uncovered during the legal battle.

“Moderate Joe” Biden has always been a bully, and his White House team (or cabal, if you prefer) reflected that.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Don Surber: “You’re not the media!” is a compliment.

Plus: “The people who work at NBC News will not have careers in journalism 10 years from now. And the reason they won’t is not because of the technology. It’s because they have no credibility.”

MARK JUDGE: Washington Post Shake Up Should Shake Out Ruth Marcus. “Marcus is an apologist for the Justice Department and the deep state who rejoices whenever the government abuses its power to destroy people. . . . When Marcus comes across a genuine example of government overreaching to ‘punish enemies,’ she always takes the side of the Stasi.”

HE RECOGNIZES THE STRONG HORSE: Indonesia’s New President Makes Three Stunning Concessions to China. “In a joint statement with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on 9 November, Prabowo acknowledged Chinese maritime claims that Indonesia had long rejected. Despite leading the most populous Muslim-majority country, he affirmed China’s right to deal with Xinjiang as it pleased. He also endorsed China’s vague vision of the geopolitical order, something that Indonesia has long been wary of.”

More:

It had always been apparent that the new Indonesian president, despite his strongman image and past criticism of his predecessor’s approach to the South China Sea, would deal with China cordially. Indonesia has security concerns about Chinese maritime claims, but Prabowo’s concessions was probably economically motivated. This motivation will continue to dominate, since Prabowo is aiming to achieve 8 percent annual economic growth. Indeed, the Beijing visit came with considerable pledges for economic cooperation on green energy and tech, amounting to US$10 billion.

But economic gain does not need to come at the cost of sovereignty. Past Indonesian administrations were able to get economic benefits from China and even the Soviet Union without sacrificing sovereignty.

Back in those days, the Soviets didn’t have anything like the Pacific fleet China is developing now — and Indonesia had Moscow and Beijing to play off one another. These days, Russia isn’t a player anywhere near Indonesia’s neighborhood and the US looks like the weak horse.

RABBI MICHAEL BARCLAY: Harvard Again Shows Its True Colors. “It is profoundly sad, but I was 100% accurate about Harvard and Garber. The university and this man have shown their true colors in their actions this week regarding Jewish Studies at the university, and a Professor of Yiddish named Saul Zaritt.”