Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Economics, Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Higher Education

4 Comments

…is in decline. It has been for many years, but only now are more people finally noticing:

The president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has summed up the consensus among faculty: “The sad truth is that US higher education is in decline.” A poll in 2012 showed that 89 percent of American adults and 96 percent of senior academic administrators agree that American higher education is “in crisis.” When a recent dean of Harvard College writes a book subtitled How a Great University Forgot Education and laments “the loss of purpose in America’s great colleges”—meaning Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the other elite universities that follow their lead—the presumption must be that something has gone very wrong. These are the opinions of academics, most of whom are by no means conservative.

Some authorities still insist that colleges, even if they teach no specific knowledge, at least improve “critical thinking.” But this contention is not borne out by a test designed to measure such thinking, the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). Since the 1980s the improvement in students’ CLA scores during their four years of college has dropped by about 50 percent, and such improvement now averages just 7 percent over the first three semesters.

Along with government-recommended nutrition, this is one of the biggest public-policy disasters of our time. And it doesn’t even mention the degree to which the student-loan debt for these worthless degrees blights the lives of young people, while lining the pockets of banks and colleges at no risk to them.

[Update late morning]

I think it says something about the state of higher education, and particularly BU, that economics major Alexandria O-C is so fundamentally ignorant about not just the federal budget, but basic arithmetic.

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The FISA Warrant

7 Comments

OK, one post (at least) before I hit the road. The big news this weekend, is that Judicial Watch (finally) got a (heavily redacted) copy. Of course, the mainstream media is lying (or to be more charitable, ignorant and desperate to maintain the narrative) about its implications. I’m seeing lots of tweets from partisan hacks in both media and politics (like Adam Schiff) that this somehow undermines the Nunes memo, when in fact it supports it.

It’s been amazing how both sides can look at the same fact pattern here, and see a completely different narrative. It’s almost like the blue/yellow dress, or the “Laurel/Yammy” thing. The other thing that’s amazing is the dramatic historical role reversal, with Democrats defending the (corrupted) intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, and going into full McCarthy mode over Russia Russia Russia. Not to mention the amnesia about the Obama administration and “the eighties called, they want their foreign policy back.”

I’d expand on this and dredge up more links if I had more time, but I have to hit the road. But feel free to comment.

[Update a few minutes later]

The FBI goes full Nixon with the FISA report.

This is a clear abuse of power, and a much bigger scandal than Watergate, perhaps the greatest one in the nation’s history.

[Tuesday-afternoon update]

Byron York: The next step is to declassify the entire thing. I think it would be better to bring in someone else to go through it with White House staff, maybe out of Bolton’s office, to determine which things would actually damage NatSec if declassified, and which are only covering up the obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

[Update a couple minutes later]

OK, not what I’ve read the piece myself, that’s basically what they’re proposing, so it’s a misleading hed. Probably not Byron’s fault.

Humor, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Unmasking Antifa

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Three reasons it’s a bad idea.

I’m not sure he’s entirely serious.

[Update a while later]

Related: Why Leftists become thugs:

What turns people into wicked punks while they no doubt continue to believe themselves to be decent and good? Bad ideas, that’s what, ideas that give people license to answer words and policies with terror. What’s the bad idea on the left? Control. The notion that the left’s cause is so righteous it needs to pay no mind to liberty but simply deserves to win by any means necessary. Let five judges on the Supreme Court make law and damn the “outdated” Constitution. Give unelected bureaucracies like the EPA the power to regulate people’s lives without appeal or oversight. Give ignoble gnomes like Peter Strzok the wherewithal to criminalize the political opposition. And of course, bring on the socialism: a philosophy that declares a person’s work, his time, his life, his property belong not to him but to the state. Control.

Yup.

[Update a few minutes later]

Sarah Hoyt: The Left misunderstands the Constitution. Again.

[Late-afternoon update]

The power-hungry Left loses its cool. Though “power-hungry Left” is redundant.

[Late evening update]

Glenn has a good point on how Leftists become thugs. Maybe the causation goes the other way.

Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

The Democrats’ (Un)Civil War

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It’s the left against the far left. Of course, I always find this sort of thing amusing/infuriating:

A group of moderate Democratic lawmakers sounded the alarm Thursday over the party’s shift to the left, saying the embrace of ultra-liberal policies could endanger their efforts to capture Congress in the November midterm elections and the White House in 2020.

There is nothing “liberal” about them at all, let alone “ultra-liberal.”

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems related somehow: Hillary says that Brett Kavanaugh will bring back slavery. Gee, that’s not hyperbolic and demagogic at all.