This is just appalling. There is nothing conservative about racism. There is also nothing liberal (in the true meaning of that word) about it. But it fuels the Left.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Homophobic Men
…have intense homosexual impulses.
This surprises me not at all. I suspect many of them are bi-sexual.
Obama Gets It Right
It’s not often I can have a post title like that, but I agree with Glenn:
President Obama was perhaps inspired by a recent article in The Atlantic by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Lukianoff and Haidt describe in some detail the way in which college sensitivities have undermined teaching, to the point that some criminal law professors — in law schools — are afraid to teach about rape, and where “trigger warnings” and concerns about “microaggressions” rule the day.
Rather than respond to such complaints with a suggestion that the complainers might be better off under professional psychological care than enrolled in institutions of higher learning, university administrations have tended to go along, even though the complainers represent a rather small fraction of the student body. The result has been a sort of arms-race of oversensitivity, in which each complaint is trumped by one still sillier, until we have reached the situation that Lukianoff, Haidt — and Obama — deplore, in which student mental health may actually suffer, and professors worry that they’ll be pilloried for saying that something “violates the law” because the word “violates” may trigger rape anxieties.
In Monty Python’s Holy Grail, the knights decide to skip a visit to Camelot because “it is a silly place.” With college costs (as President Obama has also noted) skyrocketing even as students seem to be learning less and finding greater difficulty obtaining suitable employment after graduation, higher education administrators should worry that more and more students will draw a similar conclusion. Perhaps President Obama’s warning will get their attention.
This might be the closest he’s ever come to a “Sister Souljah moment.”
The Debate
Ashe Schow has a roundup of each candidate’s features and failures.
I have to say that I find the (mostly male) criticism of Fiorina’s “sternness” and failure to smile silly. And maybe even sexist. In her deep knowledge of the issues, willingness to do her homework, and articulation, she is the anti-Trump.
[Afternoon update]
More debate observations from Andrew McCarthy.
[Update a while later]
According to the overnights, it was Carly’s night, and The Donald is starting to hemorrhage support from women:
A Fiorina surge would be more dangerous to the rest of the field than a Carson surge because there’s no reason to think she won’t continue to have excellent substantive debates. Carson tends to disappear at these things and his policy proposals seem like afterthoughts vis-a-vis his persona. If you’re backing him, it’s because you believe in the man and what he represents as a healer and a political outsider, not because you’re excited about his immigration proposals or whatever. Fiorina knows the issues, she’s unflappable, and she’s better than the boys are at taking Trump down a peg. Her weakness is her record at HP, but she was prepared for that last night and Republican voters have proved themselves willing to nominate a CEO whose business was responsible for many layoffs. Besides, the guy who’s ahead of her in the polls is a billionaire whose catchphrase is “you’re fired.” He’s the last person who’s going to try to Romney-fy Fiorina in the debates. I don’t think she’ll be the nominee, but that feeling owes more to simple tradition — people who haven’t held office before don’t win presidential primaries — than to any reasoned “here’s why Carly can’t win” argument. Of the three outsiders in the field, she’s easily the one the donor class would be most comfortable with as nominee. If people like Walker and Christie and even Jeb start to fall away, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Fiorina pick up some of their money (although most of it will go to Rubio).
As I’ve repeatedly noted, Trump is the “front runner” only in the sense that he has a plurality in a field of over a dozen candidates splitting a majority. Seven out of ten want a non-Trump. Some non-Trump is going to consolidate that vote.
Bobby Kennedy Jr.
It was always obvious that he was a moron, but I hadn’t realized what a scumbag he is as well.
I’ll never understand Kennedy worship.
The Latest Outrage From The Left
Yes, heaven forfend that police should be involved in investigating rape.
Defying Darwin
A Colorado park stays closed because too many people are taking selfies with bears.
I think we should just let evolution take its course, myself.
Social Psychology
A new paper on the lack of political diversity in the field, and its consequences.
The War On College Men
A Democrat representative from Colorado steps it up a couple notches:
The main result of adopting Polis’s approach would be to create — since we all know this policy is aimed at male students, and almost exclusively enforced against them by a university “diversity” bureaucracy in which men are wildly underrepresented — a hostile educational environment for male students. As the Pope Center for Higher Education, which conducted a study of gender representation among “gender equity enforcers,” found, “Considering that the overwhelming preponderance of sexual harassment allegations are directed by women at men, the disproportion of women to men in the positions charged with interpreting and enforcing the sexual harassment rules is a legitimate concern. Are male students who are accused of sexual harassment likely to receive fair-minded treatment in these offices?”
If even a false accusation of sexual assault is grounds for expulsion, the result is to burden student sex lives with fear. That’s doubly so when the enforcers are so heavily non-male. Men who fear that they may be so targeted — and remember, you don’t even have to have dated a woman to be falsely accused — cannot possibly enjoy college in a normal fashion.
These people are insane totalitarians. If you wanted to destroy academia, it would be hard to do a better job.
College Graduates
…don’t know much about the Constitution.
What a mess. This is shameful. They should be learning those sorts of things in high school. But instead, they’re propagandized about how we’re destroying the planet and how the US is the worst country in the history of humanity.
[Update a while later]
Related: Six questions you should ask about your children’s school:
If you want your child to grow up to be an independent thinker and a leader, take a look at the curriculum with this question in mind: Is your child being taught to learn in an objective fashion, or play political ball in a bureaucratic system?
If it’s a public school, it’s most likely the latter.