Raising a mercenary army of racists on public funds 83

Honors program at one university pays students to take “white privilege” and BLM courses

That is the headline of this article – a factual report with critical comment – at Liberty Unyielding:

The question that naturally arises is whether these students would take the courses if they weren’t bribed to do so, although knowing today’s campus climate, the answer is probably an emphatic yes.

An honors program at a public university gives students a scholarship and early course signup and lets them use laptops if they take classes on subjects like “white privilege” and Black Lives Matter [BLM], which both have community engagement components.

Sam Houston State University in Texas (SHSU) offers a scholarship of up to $2,800 to students who take these courses or others as part of its Elliott T. Bowers Honors College. Students who gain admission into the Honors College can sign up for courses earlier than their non-Honors peers, obtain access to a special computer center, and “automatically receive the Bowers Scholarship upon acceptance into the college”. The Honors students also graduate with distinction and gain usage of cameras, video cameras, and laptops for their class projects.

As SHSU is a taxpayer-funded public school, Americans of all colors, ethnicities, and political persuasions are financing this subversive course.

Subversive and racist:

Understanding Whiteness: Historic and Contemporary Viewpoints on Privilege,” asks SHSU Honors students “how might white people better understand white privilege and their potential role in dismantling systemic racism?” and requires students to “engage in personal self-reflection” and “educate others about white privilege through action research projects and community engagement initiatives.”

“Systemic racism” is treated as an established fact. The implication is that contempt for black people is mystically inherent in all white people because they are white, in the same way that Christians believe “original sin” is mystically inherent in all human beings because they are human.

The seminar examines “white privilege” from modern and historical perspectives — e.g., “the social construction of whiteness” — as well as “key historic events and movements advancing white privilege (eugenics, global colonization, holocaust).”

Eugenics is almost universally regarded as immoral.

Nations of various human colors have been colonizing foreign territories for millennia. At present, Islam is colonizing Europe.

Holocaust? As an example of “white privilege”?  Presumably the privilege of the white Germans. But weren’t the European Jews who were massacred also white?

The Black Lives Matter Honors College seminar is taught by associate professor Ervin Malakaj, who co-chairs SHSU’s Diversity Committee for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Ervin Malakaj is an associate professor of German at SHSU.

“The Black Lives Matter movement has called on Americans to address the racial violence, mass incarceration, and dehumanizing social policies directed at African Americans,” reads the seminar description.

The implication there is that “racial violence” is a carried out only or mainly by whites on blacks. That is not true.

Go here to read a superbly well-researched article by Heather Mac Donald on The Myth of Criminal-Justice Racism, in which she demolishes false allegations of “mass incarceration” and racial inequity. “The most poisonous claim in the dominant narrative is that our criminal justice system is a product and a source of racial inequity,” she writes.

What “dehumanizing social policies directed at African Americans” are there?

The course seems to be intended to indoctrinate students with lies calculated to rouse distress and indignation.

Whose idea was it to pay people to be aggrieved and enraged?

And worse. To take action –  which is surely implied by the phrase “community engagement”:

The BLM course is part of SHSU’s Academic Community Engagement (ACE) program, which blends teaching with community engagement.

Are there no intelligent, rational, well-informed, pro-American sages in the universities objecting to proposals for degree courses that stoke racial hostility and potentially encourage violence? If there are, they must be a very small and ineffectual minority. Tenured teachers would not risk their jobs by making a public fuss about this inculcation of racist ideology into generations of  Americans.

Posted under Commentary, education, Race, United States by Jillian Becker on Tuesday, March 7, 2017

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The arbiters of truth 315

From now on, when you write news on Facebook, it will be judged by certain people – specially talented, it is implied, in being totally uninfluenced by their own likes and dislikes – and if they reject it as untrue, it will be …

Deleted? Banned? Demoted? Obscured?

Discredited, anyway.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Facebook Inc. is inching closer to fact-checking the news on its platform, a role that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg shunned a month ago, by rolling out steps to weed out “the worst of the worst”, the social media platform said on Thursday.

It has inched all the way. It is commissioning fact-checking.

Facebook said it has identified several markers of sites that consistently peddle fake news, and it will demote posts from those sites in people’s news feeds.

It is also outsourcing the delicate task of determining whether individual stories are true or false to a few external organizations and tweaking its news feed algorithm based on their rulings. It is unusual for Facebook to entrust outsiders with this much power to influence the way posts are played in the news feed, the central stream of information that is customized for each user by Facebook’s algorithm. …

Mr. Zuckerberg initially dismissed concerns over fake news, but later backed away from that stance. Still he remains wary of Facebook becoming the “arbiters of truth” … 

By drafting the help of a network of fact-checking groups affiliated with the Poynter Institute, a journalism nonprofit based in St. Petersburg, Fla., Facebook is seeking to keep the task at arm’s length. …

(More about Poynter below.)

The fact-checking organizations — Snopes.com, PolitiFact, ABC News, Factcheck.org and the Associated Press — will sift through the flagged stories to determine if they are fake. It will be up to those organizations to determine whether or not to fact-check them. …

Facebook’s partnerships immediately sparked questions among users and conservatives on the neutrality of the fact checkers themselves.

“Fact checkers all seem to be from the left,” said a Twitter message from the account of Republican strategist Evan Siegfried. “Not good for conservatives.”

If a fact checker determines articles are untrue, those stories will appear lower in Facebook’s news feed and publishers can’t promote them with Facebook ads, the company said. The links will also carry a warning label to indicate that their accuracy is in dispute.

ABC news and the Associated Press (AP) as arbiters of truthful reporting? Orwell, your Ministry of Truth exists, and rules over us! Both are notoriously left-biased. (Read about ABC’s bias here. As for AP – Google “Associated Press misreporting” and see instantly on page one just some of the topics they’ve lied about.)

But wait! Worse is to come.

Aaron Klein writes at Breitbart:

The organization partnered with Facebook to help determine whether a certain story is “disputed” is financed by billionaire George Soros and a slew of other left-wing funders.

The partnering organization is Poynter. It has set up a new subsidiary for this task, the International Fact-Checking Network, and yes, it is funded by George Soros, the ideal man to head Orwell’s Ministry of Truth!

The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept, and Facebook yesterday announced it will work with “third-party fact checking organizations” that are signatories to the code of principles.

Facebook says that if the “fact checking organizations” determine that a certain story is fake, it will get flagged as disputed and, according to the Facebook announcement, “there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed”.

IFCN is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. A cursory search of the Poynter Institute website finds that Poynter’s IFCN is openly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Poynter’s IFCN is also funded by the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Omidyar Network has partnered with the [Orwellian-named] Open Society on numerous projects and it has given grants to third parties using the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Tides is one of the largest donors to left-wing causes in the U.S.

Another significant Poynter Institute donor is the Craig Newmark Foundation, the charitable organization established by Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark. On Monday, just days before the announcement of the Facebook partnership, Poynter issued a press release revealing that Newmark donated $1 million to the group to fund a faculty chair in journalism ethics.

States the press release:

The gift will support a five-year program at Poynter that focuses on verification, fact-checking and accountability in journalism. It’s the largest donation Poynter’s ever received from an individual foundation.

The Newmark Chair will expand on Poynter’s teaching in journalism ethics and develop certification programs for journalists that commit to ethical decision-making practices. The faculty member will also organize an annual conference on ethics issues at Poynter and be a regular contributor to Poynter.org.

Newmark funds scores of liberal groups also financed by Soros, including the Sierra Club, the New America Foundation, and the Sunlight Foundation.

Newmark also finances the investigative journalism group called the Center for Public Integrity, where he serves on the board.  Soros’s Open Society is another Public Integrity donor.

Soros has earned his megafortune in part by short selling currencies and causing economic crises. He is credited with breaking the pound on September 16, 1992 in a day that became known in Britain as “Black Wednesday.” He reportedly made $1.2 billion from that crisis.  In 2002, he was convicted for insider trading.

And that’s the least of his offenses. See the very long list of the organizations through which he works his evil will, and read what their principles and purposes are.

Poynter, meanwhile, has hosted controversial journalism programs in the past, including one that was accused of downplaying the threat of global Islamic terrorism. FoxNews.com reported the course suggested reporters “keep the death toll from Islamic terrorism in ‘context’ by comparing that toll to the number of people killed every year by malaria, HIV/AIDS and other factors”.

It is typical of the Left to compare terrorism to accidents and diseases, as though no moral decision is involved in the committing of random murder. This amounts to a condoning of terrorism, which positively encourages it.

The course taught reporters that the term “jihad” means internal struggle, and it discussed what it claimed was the issue of “right-wing activists” attempting to link American Muslims to terrorism.

As examples of fact-checking, the propagation of such blatant lies does not inspire confidence.

The section includes the good-journalism tip that reporters should check to see if experts they’re interviewing “have a bias or a stake in the story you are covering.” But then it only cites examples of anti-Muslim groups.

The course in Islam, Fox News reported, was supported by a group calling itself the Social Science Research Council, which has received funding from Soros-financed groups.

In response to the report, the Poynter Institute explained that it created the course “as a tool for journalists who want to be accurate in educating their audience about the religion and culture of Islam, Muslim communities in the U.S., and the distinctions between Islam as a political movement and the radical philosophies that inspire militant Islamists”. 

As there is NO distinction to be drawn between “Islam as a political movement and the radical philosophies that inspire militant Islamists”, those journalists who long to achieve strict accuracy will be teaching a lie from the get-go.    

“We believe there is a need to better understand the complexities of Muslim societies and the online course offered by Poynter and Washington State University is a vital resource toward that end,” Poynter added.

The values underpinning the course are truth, accuracy, independence, fairness, minimizing harm and context — the core journalistic values on which we build all our teaching here at Poynter.”

No one should be surprised at Poynter’s capacity for self-deception. It is what makes Leftism possible.

What of the other “fact-checkers”  on which Facebook will rely?

Poynter owns the Tampa Bay Times, and the Tampa Bay Times owns Politifact,

Politifact declares about itself:

PolitiFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times and its partner news organizations to help you find the truth in American politics. …

Control of the newspaper and its operations, however, lies with a single executive. Upon retirement, that leader picks a successor. …

We received a grant from the Democracy Fund that has assisted us in expanding to new states. …

For our PunditFact project — which fact-checks talking heads and opinion leaders – we have received grants from the Ford Foundation and the Democracy Fund. Seed money for the project was provided by craigconnects. …

The Democracy Fund is administered by the iniquitous United Nations. The Ford Foundation funds such causes as Black Live Matter.

 When it comes to the question of “Who is PolitiFact?” or “Who pays for PolitiFact?”, we can assure you that no one is behind the scenes telling us what to write for someone else’s benefit. We are an independent, nonpartisan news organization. We are not beholden to any government, political party or corporate interest. We are proud to be able to say that we are independent journalists. …

Sorry, but we find that really, really hard to believe.

Then there is Snopes.com. It too is heavily left leaning(Read about it here and here.)

And what of Factcheck.org?

We quote from (conservative) Free Republic, which investigated it:

The “Truthfulness” website called FactCheck.org is itself decidedly BIASED toward the LEFT …

Among several proofs of this assertion, it cites this:

The sponsoring agency behind FastCheck.org, is itself supported by the same foundation, the ANNENBERG FOUNDATION, that Bill Ayers secured the 49.2 million dollars from to create the Chicago ANNENBERG Challenge “philanthropic” organization in which Barack Obama was the founding Chairman of the Board for and Ayers served as the grant writer of and co-Chair of for its two operating arms.

That’s Bill Ayers the terrorist. Read here how he and Barack Obama tried to “push radicalism in schools” through the Annenberg Challenge.

Free Republic concludes its report on Factcheck.com with a question:

Does the LEFT have no conscience at all?

Answer: Absolutely none.

Has all this been revealed to Mark Zuckerberg? Does he not know or not care?

Facebook is a global platform. With this ploy, the lying Left has brought off a power-grab of immeasurable proportions. From now on it will be the arbiter of truth, all over the world.

And for the Left, “truth” equals political correctness.

But does anyone over there on the Left know what you stand for now? Where you’re going, or why?

Trump’s excellent contract with the voters 81

Here is Donald Trump’s Gettysburg Address, delivered October 22, 2016.

It is in large part a description of what he would do to cure the extreme corruption now rotting the US system of government.

What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.

It is a contract between myself and the American voter – and begins with restoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington.

Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:

● FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;

● SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);

● THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;

● FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;

● FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;

● SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

On the same day, I will begin taking the following 7 actions to protect American workers:

FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.

SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.

FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately.

FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.

SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward.

SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the· money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.

Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:

FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.

SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities.

FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.

FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.

Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:

1. Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.

2. End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.

3. American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.

4. School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to gives parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.

5. Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.

6. Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.

7. End Illegal Immigration Act. Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

8. Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.

9. Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values.

10. Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.

On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.

This is my pledge to you. And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people. 

The contract presents a fair prospect for the future: a more prosperous, more secure, free America.

Do most voters want such a country?

Or do they want a dictator, and under her rule, low economic growth, higher national debt, more terrorism, more crime, more government control, and continuing corruption?

Waiting to know is a period of dread.

Tell them 122

*

Why was Obama, the Islam-loving communist, twice voted into the presidency of the capitalist, Islam-attacked, United States?

Why do most Americans “think” that Obama is doing a good job – though they know the economy is bad, millions are unemployed, businesses are overburdened with regulations, travelers are manhandled and humiliated at airports, an American ambassador was killed abroad with impunity, the Taliban is back in business in Afghanistan, the Middle East is in flames since Obama assisted the displacement of allied rulers with Islamic fundamentalists … and so on and on?

Why do millions of Americans “think” that economic equality is morally desirable?

Why are tens of millions content to live on state support without attempting to improve their standard of living by their own efforts?

Why do millions of university students in America admire intellectuals who hate America, such as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and make an icon out of the sadistic mass-murderer Che Guevara?

Why? Because they’ve been told to. They’ve been told that good people do and “think” these things. They want to be good. They believe what they’ve been taught.

The same answer applies to: Why Muslim women believe they must put up with being sexually mutilated and enslaved to men. Why multitudes the world over believe that there was a nation called Palestinians who were driven off their land by aggressive usurping Jews. Why Christians believe that a man who once lived and died lives on as one part of a three-part god. Why Muslims and Christians imagine that when you are dead you are still alive in another place. Why Jews believe that their benign and omnipotent God has some unknowable but just purpose in having six million of them enslaved, starved, tortured and murdered by Nazis.

They believe these things because they were taught them. All this was drummed into them. They were raised to know that that is how it ought to be. 

Few if any ideas are easy to spread. To get an idea accepted by large numbers of people takes patience, persistence, conviction, tireless energy on the part of those who want to spread it. The idea need not make good sense, be reasonable, come with proofs that it will work as its advocates say it will. It doesn’t even have to appeal strongly to the emotions. It just needs to become what “everybody” accepts.

If you want your idea to prevail over others, this is what it takes. First the conviction that it is right and everyone should know it. Next, a decision to spread it. Then energy, persistence, patience – and eventually force.

What made Christianity catch on? It wasn’t the life-style – poor, austere, hard, humble. Even the promise of eternal life was not a reliable recommendation as anyone’s eternity could as easily be endless agony as endless bliss (it was and is a 50-50 tossup). The theology was so hard to make sense of that the Church itself to this day has not settled it. And the morality it demanded was against human nature. So what made it succeed? Energy, persistence, patience, indoctrination, force.

See how long it took. From the time St Paul invented “Jesus Christ” to the time the emperor of Rome (Constantine) accepted the new god and the doctrines that had accreted to him, thus making it fashionable to be Christian (just a few decades before force was applied and it became compulsory), nearly three hundred years had passed. Three hundred years of persistent, patient, energetic proselytizing. Even then, it was not securely implanted in the minds of the subjects. One Emperor – Julian – came along and actually tried to reverse the trend by suppressing Christianity and re-instating paganism. He didn’t have enough time. He died in battle, his successors went back to favoring Christianity, and the Emperor Theodosius decreed that Christianity was to be the religion of the state. With him the final phase of force arrived.

Marxist Communism took less time to get a real grip on the minds of multitudes. Means of communications had speeded up considerably between the 4th and the 19th centuries, but still it took half a century (if one arbitrarily dates it from the first publication of Marx’s Das Kapital in 1867 to the success of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917). And still the same method had to be employed: energetic, patient, persistent proselytizing. Much repetition was required. The fever of enthusiasm had to be caught by two generations of intellectuals before the infection became a pandemic. Then came force. 

The creed must become the norm. So pervasive must the doctrine be that anybody who does not subscribe to it wholeheartedly will appear egregious; an oddball, a rebel, a danger to everyone else and even to himself. The orthodoxy must be accepted without question as good, so anyone who opposes it is ipso facto a bad person.

By the late 20th century communications had become even faster, so the New Left, rising in 1968, could achieve the peaks of power in Europe in less than thirty years, and  in America in forty years. It started as a weak revolutionary movement which brought nothing good with it to Western Europe and America, but much that was bad: recreational drugs, AIDS, and terrorism as self-expression. New Leftists complained that they had too much freedom, too much choice, that tolerance of their politics was repressive. And this irrational case was widely accepted, even while, on the other side of the iron curtain, a young man burnt himself to death to protest against the lack of freedom, choice, and tolerance.

The New Left movement was ignorant, blind, puerile, unreasonable, sadistic – yet it became, it has become, the prevailing belief-system of the greater part of the Western world, and at present in almost all “free” countries the standard ideology (or religion) of the state, no matter what political party is in power. How?

The plan was made. The plan was put into execution. Gramsci supplied the phrase for the overall strategy: “The Long March through the Institutions”.   It wasn’t enough that the New Leftists should protest, should threaten and carry out violent attacks, should shout and write and display their slogans. They must take over the institutions of power, everyone of them: the smallest citizens’ groupings – such as library committees – were not too small. But none were too big. Town councils had to be infiltrated and eventually dominated; then newspapers, radio and TV channels; boards of education very importantly; the schools, the universities; the civil service; the law courts; a major political party; then the country’s legislative body, and eventually the pinnacles of power, prime ministerships, presidencies. Police forces and the military were formidable challenges. The tactic was first to discredit them and pressure them from outside by means of public opinion guided by the converted press; then to infiltrate them; finally bend them from within to conform to the doctrine and advance the cause.

Meanwhile books, films, articles, lessons, lectures, systems of reward, prizes must all promote the cause. It took decades, but it succeeded. Even in America now there have been at least two generations raised on New Left doctrine through schools, universities, books, films, the press, and TV.

How otherwise could the free Western world, whose policies and armies opposed the oppressing, enslaving Communist Eastern world, have been successfully converted to the very doctrine that oppressed, enslaved, tortured and mass murdered? It didn’t take reason. It didn’t take persuasion. The idea was no more innately and manifestly true and good than the idea of Christianity. But as in the case of spreading Christianity, it took conviction, decision, planning, energy, persistence, repetition, and finally force.

Only Leftist doctrine – government control of the economy, government provision of welfare, confiscatory and punitive taxation – is politically correct now in America. Collectivist thinking is the norm. Good people vote left. (When, in 2008, a Californian woman came upon a stall set up on a main street to canvass votes for the Republican presidential candidate John McCain, she called the police, and was astonished to learn that to solicit public support for the anti-collectivist Republican Party was not illegal.) Again, as with Christianity, the allegiance to the doctrine has little or nothing to do with its ideas. Most adherents could not explain what the ideas are. But they know that good people find them good, that good people vote for them. And that is all they need to know. Who doesn’t want to think of himself as a good person?

But the question of how did this become the case has not been fully answered. There is another aspect to the story. In order for one doctrine to succeed, it is necessary for other, counter doctrines to fail. If the ancient world had had enough confidence in paganism, enough enthusiasm for it, hadn’t taken it for granted, hadn’t become bored with it, hadn’t ignored the Christian missionaries with their crazy talk, could the weird, obscure, muddled, sorrowful, other-worldly new religion of Christianity have prevailed?

And the success of Leftism now – would it have happened if the conservative Right had been paying attention? Remember that old saying that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance”? Well, the Right was not being vigilant. It didn’t bother to argue against political correctness. It disregarded the cynical shenanigans going on in the United Nations as if it were nothing but a zoo housing many clamorous beasts who were safely confined and could in no way threaten American life, liberty or happiness. If it was made to feel now and then the bullying, deceitful, sly, sometimes violent tactics of the Left, it shrugged them off. Conservatives went on being civil and preferring honesty when the world’s mood had changed to favoring lies and abuse. They put their confidence in the fact that America had been founded as the political embodiment of the idea of personal freedom; had demonstrated to the world – forever, they believed – that freedom brought prosperity and might and stunning innovation. They assumed that the rightness of individual liberty, the capitalist system, and government by the people had been established forever. So strong and free a country could afford to be tolerant. Let some wild, immature, misguided persons preach despotism (Communism, Socialism, Progressivism, Greenism, whatever), the system was strong enough to be hospitable to alien ideas, and to allow dissent or even rebellion. Tested, it would prove itself inviolable. It could not only withstand opposition, it could absorb it and dissolve it. No special effort was required. American history was on the side of those who would defend freedom and the constitution. The separation of powers would protect them. The free press would dilute propaganda. Open enquiry in the academies would ensure that all points of view were argued and the most rational, the most humane, would persuade serious scholars. But they were wrong.

In their complacency, conservatives did not even notice the Long March. They could not mark its stations of success. Even now there are deluded Republicans who have not absorbed the fact that most Americans like collectivism; that they don’t object to electoral fraud; that they accept a failing economy; that many would rather live on government handouts than become rich; that being rich has become a morally bad thing; that it’s okay for foreign powers to develop weapons that can kill vast numbers of Americans; that the press does not report what is happening in the world but only what it wants to happen; that courts of law are willing to prefer foreign law to the Constitution; that it doesn’t matter if American representatives abroad are attacked and murdered; that freedom has become a term worthy only of contempt; that American history is a trail of shame; that a cruel religion is being allowed to seep through the body politic, and is protected and advanced by the government itself.

But now millions of conservatives are waking up and are asking, how did this happen? It happened because people patiently, energetically, persistently planned it and made it happen.

What can we do about it, they ask themselves and each other.

What they have to do about it is change the minds of the people. First they must be sure that they want the free republic the founders established; that they want to maintain free markets; that they don’t want a welfare state; that they do want to preserve national defenses; that they want indoctrination in the schools to stop; that they want to forbid the application of foreign law; that they do not want to go on funding an institution – the UN – that consistently works against their interests. Then they must decide that their political philosophy is right, uniquely right, and must be implemented at any and all costs. Then they must start teaching it. With energy, persistence, patience and fiery enthusiasm. It will take time. But that is the only way. Teach, preach, argue, use every method that works. Give up the idea that it’s better to be gentlemanly than to sink to using the methods of the opposition; that if you do as they do you will have betrayed the very values that you are fighting for. They have made the fight low and dirty. Get down in the dirt and fight it.

How badly does the conservative right want to win power in America? How important is it to them that they should?

If it is important, tell the voters, tell the children that the free market is the only means of creating general prosperity, and why. Tell them that central planning of an economy cannot work, and why. Tell them why competition is good for everyone, producers and consumers alike.

Tell them what profit is and why it is essential for ensuring abundance.

Tell them that only where people are free can there be discovery and innovation, improvement in everyone’s daily life, better technology, the advance of civilization. Explain why. Show them the proofs of history.

Tell them the truth about life in the Third World. Not politically correct sentimental drivel, but the actual awful facts about life in most other countries.

Tell them why impartial judgment is the only means to justice; why all sane adult citizens must be treated equally by the law; why people must be judged by their actions, not their intentions or feelings.

Tell them why government should be kept small and its powers limited. Tell them what the essential tasks of government are: protection of the nation, of the individual, of liberty, of the rule of law itself. And why governments should not be allowed more power and money than it needs to fulfill its few essential functions.

Shout down the shouters. Tell Muslims what is wrong with their creed and why American secularism is better. Don’t allow them to build a protective wall around themselves to shut out criticism of their absurd and savage beliefs.

Tolerate only the tolerant and tolerable.

It will take time. Start now. Stop short of force. But tell them.

An equal and opposite reaction 22

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The Left in power has been brutal. Throughout the West, in government, in the media, in the academy, in the law courts, in society generally, wherever the Left is dominant, it is aggressive, dishonest, unjust, discriminatory, uncivilized. It is dour, it is harsh, it is smug, it is solemn, and with all that it is also boring.

The unmannerly Left has given rise to the unmannerly Alt Right.

These are extracts from a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, telling the clucking old women of both sexes and all ages who want to get rid of the mocking Alt Right what they must do to achieve that end:

Now, various media and political figures have tried to define the alt-right, with varying degrees of accuracy, over the past few weeks. Which is to say no accuracy at all.

Hillary Clinton, just before reading out some of my headlines, called the alt-right an “emerging racist ideology”. Of course, she also constantly hallucinates about a “vast right wing conspiracy” …

According to Vox, the alt-right is “a movement lurking in Reddit and 4chan threads and in community blogs and forums, a movement of right-wingers who openly argue that democracy is a joke”.

This is typically nonsensical bilge from Vox, given that the alt-right were also apparently responsible for the outcome of the Brexit referendum.

Salon is more succinct. “The alt-right, also known as white nationalism.” …

Almost everything you read about the alt-right is wrong. It isn’t just white nationalists. … And the movement certainly isn’t led by me — although the media seems determined to crown me its queen. …

Just to be clear, I don’t consider myself a member of the alt-right. …

Of course, to the mainstream media, reporting accurately on the alt-right, and understanding the movement’s nuances instead of just shrieking “RACISTS”, is tantamount to leading the movement. …

Yes … there are racists in the alt-right — but the movement is much bigger than just them.

The left’s motivations in branding the alt-right as skinheads with Twitter accounts are easier to understand when you realize that the left is responsible for creating it in the first place, as I’ll explain in a moment.

The problem is, they’re smearing an entire political generation as racist, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.

The inability of the establishment right to decipher the movement is slightly different — they just don’t get it. I don’t think any of the people at National Review are bad people — they just don’t understand what they’re seeing. They don’t get cultural politics, they don’t get Millennial politics, and thus they don’t get the alt-right. The only tools they have to understand the movement are those handed to them by the political left. …

The media desperately wants to define the alt-right by the worst 5 percent of its members. They take the genuinely anti-semitic racists  …  and use them to define the whole movement. The left is obsessed by white supremacy, which in reality makes up an infinitesimally small number of people.

I see two primary motivating factors behind the rise of the alt right.

The first is a millennial generation that’s fed up with identity politics and its hypocrisies.

I see old-school conservatives who have had enough of mainstream politicians ignoring their concerns about immigration and cultural politics. I see intellectuals desperate to discuss dangerous, forbidden ideas as the left tries to make the overton window narrower and narrower.

And millennials are proving phenomenally talented at converting their parents, who might be disaffected republicans or tea partiers with Alt-Right thinking. …

The second is anti-white racism.

Progressives in America today believe that you can’t be racist unless you’re white, or unless you have what they call “prejudice plus power”. This argument, dreamed up in gender and African studies departments, does nothing more than give people an excuse to attack others for their gender, their sexual orientation, or the color of their skin, in the same way that eugenics gave people an excuse to view others as subhuman nearly a century ago.

Ironically so-called white privilege is the privilege to be discriminated against.

The idea that women and minorities, who have advocates for their special status in every university, every political party, and every media organization don’t have power behind their prejudices is also, frankly, absurd.

Racism is everywhere in America today. So is sexism. It’s in our university faculties.

But it’s not the racism you think.

It’s on the pages of the Washington Post. It’s on the pages of The Guardian. It’s in Hollywood. It’s on MSNBC.

Let me read you some statements which highlight the sort of casual racism and sexism that is deemed acceptable by the establishment today.

“The Beginning Of The End For Angry White Males.”

“Feminists Don’t Hate Men, But It Wouldn’t Matter If We Did.”

“When Whites Just Don’t Get It”

“As A White Man, I’m Surprised More Women Aren’t Tweeting The Hashtag #KillAllWhiteMen”

“Women Should Speak First In Class, Says SMU Professor. Really, Do Men Have To Speak At All?”

These are headlines from The Guardian, The New York Times, The Independent, The National Post, and the Chicago Tribune.

The key question behind all this is: are we going to have identity politics for everyone, or identity politics for no-one?

At the moment, we have identity politics for everyone except white men. If you advocate for men’s issues, The Guardian will call you a misogynist and a sexist. If you advocate for whites, The Guardian and National Review, and everyone else will call you a racist.

Meanwhile, other groups – women, gays, blacks, Muslims – are not only allowed to advocate for their group’s interests, but allowed to be openly racist and sexist towards white men.

When they do so, they receive support from the Silicon Valley’s tech giants, who manage an increasing share of our lives. When a parody group called the Feminist Software Foundation tried to create a browser extension that took all instances of “white men” in articles and changed them to “Jews” — making Guardian articles read like Mein Kampf — the extension was banned from both Chrome and Firefox.

Not for antisemitism, you understand. But for showing the Left up as racists.

I’d prefer we had no identity politics at all and that we judged people, as someone once said, not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. But if you’re going to have identity politics, you have to have them for everybody.

You might not like the result.

The younger, millennial members of the alt-right are, for the most part, not white nationalists. But they’re being pushed toward racial humor by the progressive left.

The left is responsible for me. The left is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. The left created the alt-right.

If you’re on the Left, and you’re looking out at the alt-right with horror, and want to destroy it, guess what? You probably can.

Here’s the bad news: your current tactics aren’t working, and are in fact having the opposite of their intended effect. Name-calling, public shaming, and tearing your hair out over Pepe the Frog* is simply ineffective and is enlarging the ranks of the troll army every day you continue to do it.

Here’s the good news: there are a few simple things you can do to nuke the movement.

I’m happy to tell you what they are, because I know you’re not going to do any of them.

But I want to you to listen, because I want you to understand how your actions created this phenomenon.

The first thing you have to do is stop being hypocrites.

Double standards are everywhere in coverage of the alt-right. Whenever confronted with a left wing or minority- radical movement, the Establishment will wring its hand about addressing the “root causes”. But they accuse anyone who does the same for the alt-right as necessarily endorsing the worst of its proponents.

Just look at the media’s coverage of Black Lives Matter, and how it gives a pass to horrifying behavior, behavior that goes far beyond what the alt-right does on Twitter. Oh, someone with an anime avatar tweeted a racial caricature at you? That’s nice — Black Lives Matter has killed police officers.

And they’re still being championed by the mainstream press. Is it any wonder that people sympathize with the alt-right, when they’re at the losing end of such a blatant double standard?

And again you push older people to the alt-right. Who do you think stopped giving millions of dollars to Mizzou following their Black Lives Matter protests? Here is a hint — it wasn’t jobless gender studies majors, or young engineers whose job was replaced by an H-1B visa holder, it was established donors ranging in age from 40-65.

It’s double standards that are at least in part fuelling the alt-right, and not Donald Trump. If you think the alt-right is going to evaporate with the God Emperor, think again.

The genie is not going back in the bottle. And I don’t care if I just appropriated the culture of some Arab country by saying that, or infringed on a Disney company trademark for that matter.

Here’s one for Hillary Clinton: you gotta stop calling half the country racists.

Establishment columnists argue that responding to racism with racism is wrong, but this is an oversimplification of what’s going on with the alt-right. …

The millennials in particular are simply responding to real racism with trolling, as a means to expose the double standard. When the double standard disappears, I expect this “performative racism” if you like, will too.

Performative racism doesn’t mean racism-lite. It means memes. It means jokes. It means 19 year old boys saying stuff to get a reaction. …

What I do see is a lot of young people trying to get a reaction. That’s the Troll Manifesto: find something that a person in power is sensitive about, rightly or wrongly, and joke about it relentlessly until they acknowledge you. …

People ask why the alt right has to be so mean and why I make mean remarks about people.

Because it’s fun! And progressives made it fun by finger wagging.

The Left has demonized and censored people who speak about taboo issues respectfully and seriously. … If you’re going to get ostracized for having un-PC views no matter how you present them, why not be an asshole about it?

To stop the mayhem, the establishment needs to do one very simple thing: stop punishing people for jokes. Stop punishing people for ideas. And stop other people from doing so as well. The bigger of a taboo you make something, the more attractive it is for young pranksters.

I’m going to read out a quote from early alt-right intellectual, the Jewish entrepreneur and writer Curtis Yarvin:

“If you spend 75 years building a pseudo-religion around anything – an ethnic group, a plaster saint, sexual chastity or the Flying Spaghetti Monster – don’t be surprised when clever 19-year-olds discover that insulting it is now the funniest thing in the world. Because it is”

The establishment has done exactly that. They’ve built a religion around left-wing identity politics, complete with blasphemous words and excommunication. And, surprise surprise, shattering those quasi-religious taboos has become hilarious for a huge section of the youth.

The thing I most hate about the Left is that they want to stop us laughing – to prescribe which jokes are okay and which are not okay to make in public and to draw artificial lines around certain subjects. I find all sorts of inappropriate things funny. Islam, trannies, AIDS.

These are all innately hilarious things. Now and again I even enjoy a good rape joke — especially if I’m the butt of it. Telling me I’m not allowed to laugh at something does not make it unfunny. …

Sir Tim Hunt, a British chemist … was working on the cure for cancer before he abruptly became the target of a feminist sting operation.

They deliberately and maliciously took a section of his speech to a room of female South Korean scientists out of context, in which he jokes about women in laboratories “falling in love and crying all the time”. The comment was meant to mock outdated sexist attitudes, but it was presented by feminists as a serious claim on the part of Tim Hunt.

The lie was swallowed by the academic establishment, which forced Hunt to resign from his position at University College London. It took months and months of relentless efforts from conservatives and moderates to clear his name. ..,

There are countless others.  … There was also Razib Khan, a geneticist who lost an opportunity at the New York Times over his views on human biodiversity, and now writes for the alt-right Unz Review.

These are the people being driven into the arms of the alt-right by the excesses of the left.

As well as jokes, there’s something else that establishment elites need to stop demonizing as racism: national pride. During the 2015 election in England, a left-wing candidate for parliament called people who fly the English flag “simpletons and casual racists”. And this is nothing compared to some of the things said by university academics about displays of national pride.

The globalist elites, who assemble in places like Dubai, Davos, and whatever unfortunate country hosts the Bilderberg Conference, don’t have a nation.

Whether they’re from Istanbul, London, or Beijing, global elites tend to dress the same, act the same, talk the same, and think the same. They look at what’s different and unique about their home countries, and squirm in embarrassment.

We don’t.

If you want to draw people away from the alt-right, this has to stop. If you want to identify with the jet setting, cosmopolitan, nationless elite, that’s fine. I like being rich and powerful too.

But stop looking down on people who want to stay true to their roots, and remember the national values and traditions that made our progressive, globalized civilization possible. Because for every national flag you take down to replace it with the faceless and sinister logo of the European Union, the International Olympics Committee or the United Nations, ten more will fly upwards in protest.

This is what and who we are.

Leftists will insist that racism underpins national pride, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Most members of the alt-right, even the serious ones, will agree that they want everyone to have national pride, not just western countries.

And they’re right — the instinct for belonging, for a sense of common identity, is universal. The global elite’s foolish quest to suppress this instinct is one of the reasons why the alt right, as well as the populist nationalist right, have gained so much ground so quickly.

Millennials have grasped an issue that the globalists have been ignoring for a long time: that immigrants should come to America from hellholes to better their family, not to turn America into the hellholes they fled from.

If there’s one thing that fuels anti-establishment sensibilities of all kinds, it’s the idea that the truth is being suppressed.

Sometimes the alt-right gets accused of flirting with conspiracy theories. Sometimes they do, mostly with a nod and a wink.

But other times they are right to be suspicious.

Straight white men have been lied to and lied about in this country for decades, whether it’s the wage gap myth or the hysterical witch hunts and kangaroo courts on campuses that police sexual misunderstandings between horny teenagers.

The politically correct establishment suppresses the facts.

Just look at the way the media behaves after a terrorist attack. Witness the desperation with which they avoid mentioning the name and backgrounds of the attackers, who are nearly universally Islamic. That’s if they can be bothered to interrupt an Obama speech to cover terrorist attacks in the first place.

America just suffered three terror attacks in 12 hours this weekend. Hillary couldn’t decide if it was a bombing, Bill de Blasio wouldn’t call it terrorism, and no one other than right-wingers were willing to label it “Islam”. Once again, everyone but the right look ridiculous.

Meanwhile, these are the same people who call white men racists and rapists without any evidence. …

And, of course there are those truths that are increasingly impossible to ignore. Like the fact that all cultures are not equal. Some are homophobic, anti-semitic. Some, as the German city of Cologne and the English town of Rotherham tragically found out, are rape cultures. And unlike college fraternities, it’s actually real this time.

I am of course referring to the fact of Muslim culture, which as it stands today is utterly incompatible with western liberal values. It amazes me that so many otherwise-sound libertarians and conservatives fail to grasp this simple fact, or brand it racist.

If you want to preserve capitalism, it’s probably unwise to let a million hardline bolsheviks into your communities. Likewise, if you want to preserve what the Left claims are the best things about western culture — tolerance, women’s rights, gay rights, religious freedom — it’s time to close the door on Muslim immigration. There is no gray area.

Everyone’s heard the old cliche: when you attempt to suppress something, you drive it underground. Well it’s true. But it’s even worse when you drive talented, skilled people underground. Because then they find each other. And they start building a rebel army. Everyone fired from their jobs, or suspended from their university, or kicked off social media becomes another soldier in their ranks.

The alt-right is a cultural rebel army. …

The good news is, the alt-right in its broadest definition isn’t in fact to any degree traditional white nationalist …

A huge proportion of the alt-right today are millennials, ranging from teenagers up to the younger members of Generation X. Primarily white, but also consisting of increasing numbers of minorities. Jews fed up with the pro-Islam attitudes of elites. Asians who are now being penalized by affirmative action. Black groups like the Hoteps, fed up with Black Lives Matter.

These aren’t white nationalists — they’re drawn to the alt-right because of the hypocrisies of identity politics, and by the joy breaking the rigid taboos of the establishment. …

White males are responsible for everything that the left have advocated for in the past: gay rights, women’s rights, civil rights, tolerance, the abolition of slavery, the establishment of the welfare state, and so on and so on.

They are right to be confused at being named Satan by the progressive left. …

I’m under no illusions that the left will abandon what have become some of its core operating principles. … What motivates the left now is anti-white hatred, particularly of straight men. …

“Systemic racism and “white privilege” are bullshit, unfalsifiable and bonkers pseudoscientific concepts designed to disempower white men in the societies and civilization they’re primarily responsible for creating.

Unless the left abandons this insane hatred – and as I say, I doubt they will – the alt right will continue to grow, and in the future we can expect to hear more and more about the horrors of cartoon frogs*.

 

*See the Wikipedia entry on Pepe the Frog. Extract: “The campaign website for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton released an article stating that Pepe was associated with white nationalism.”

Hate crimes 2

A person’s emotions and unrevealed thoughts, though they might be suspected, can seldom be proved.

And however aggressive thoughts and emotions may be, they are not in themselves criminal. They may be “sinful” to a Christian, but a crime and a sin are not the same thing. A crime is a deed done; a sin of thought is at worst only a potential crime. Sin is defined by faith, not reason, and faith does not – cannot – subject its dogma to the rigorous examination practiced in secular courts of law.

When a crime is committed, its perpetrator should be punished regardless of what emotions or thoughts motivated him. (Self-defense is an exception as the desire to live and not be harmed is assumed to be universal.)

Some crimes, it’s true, having no obvious or discoverable motive (such as gain), can plausibly be attributed to hate, jealousy, fear, or revenge. And a perpetrator might say that he was driven by the force of an emotion. But still, traditionally it is what he actually did that brings him before the judgment of society and its law.

Yet codes of law do exist that allow strong emotion to be taken into account – as a mitigating not an aggravating circumstance. In France, for instance, the crime passionel – a crime committed out of strong feeling such as, and usually, jealous love – is allowed special consideration for lighter punishment or none. It may be charming to find a place for sentiment in law, for love, or compassion, or “empathy”; but to esteem passion more highly than personal responsibility is to undermine the dependability of the law. The law must be dependably impersonal, objective, impartial, neutral, even-handed or it is not just.

Must be? Increasingly, the political Left – the side of the emotions – favors the idea of treating a defendant leniently if he is “underprivileged”, harshly if he is “privileged”. Obama and his Supreme Court pick Sonia Sotomayor have expressed a preference for “empathetic” judgment – finding according to the personal feelings of the judge. If judges always or often did that, it would be the end of the rule of law. If people permit them to do it, they’re demolishing the house that shelters them.

Some seem to think a judge is right to find for someone with whose opinions he agrees, and against someone whose opinions he dislikes, regardless of the merits of their cases. A British judge, for example, let off vandals who had been proved guilty, because they said they were doing it against the state of Israel which they deemed oppressive, and in sympathy with Palestinians whom they deemed victims of Israeli oppression. Because the judge shared their opinions of Israel and the Palestinians, he acquitted them. If all judges made their judgments on such grounds of personal preference, it would clearly be the end of justice and the rule of law.

Most if not all “hate crime” is attributed to “racism”. As “racism” is an attitude of mind that taints the individual, it is a sin rather than a crime. If it prompts a crime, it is the crime that is wrong, not the attitude of mind or depth of feeling behind it.

But almost everywhere in the Western world, the attitude and feeling are now regarded as more important, more to be condemned, than the actual crime. Since the rise to power of the New Left  in politics, education, and the mass media, “racism” tops almost every other offense.

And yet … It appears that in practice the gravity of the “racist’ offense depends on which “race” is carrying out the attack on which other “race”. Some – like the vandals in Britain – are given a pass on the grounds that they are the more unfortunate. (An extension of the crime passionel idea.)

What is “racism”?

“Racism” has come to mean dislike of a race, a nation, or a religious group. It is not applied – though it applies logically – to a group defined by occupation; say lawyers, or bankers, or the executives of corporations, all of whom are subjected to hate as an entire class.

The FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” But that motivation remains guesswork, dependant on opinion and prejudice, which makes its even application impossible.

If a rule against racism were to be applied evenly, the defendants in the British case would not have been acquitted – and the judge would have been seen as committing a hate crime himself.

But to apply such a rule evenly would be to return to dependably impersonal, objective, impartial, neutral, even-handed justice.

That such real justice looks outdated, signifies that the Left has won. 

*

We have said that judgment needs to be of the crime itself, regardless of its motive.

But are there some crimes for which the only discoverable or imaginable motive is “hate”?

Certainly there are.

And is the hatred motivating the perpetrators of such crimes sometimes a hatred of the race, or nation, or religion of their victims?

Certainly it is.

The worst hate crime in this century – worst in numbers, method, and effect – was what has come to be called simply “9/11” – the bombing of the World trade Center twin towers in New York on September 9, 2001. It was obviously motivated by religious hatred.

We argue that the motive does not excuse the crime. The motive does not make a crime less or more criminal.

But the Left holds that the motive of hate, however it is detected, does make a crime worse.

Any crime done out of hate is worse because of the hatred?

Well, no – comes the reply – not any crime. To conclude that would be logical, reasonable, Rightist.

In the case of 9/11, the argument goes, the hate was justified, because the crime and the hatred were in retaliation for prior crimes of hate committed by “the United States”, and/or “capitalists” involved with trade whose headquarters actual and/or symbolic were the World Trade Center, and/or President George W. Bush, and/or the Right in general.

In fact, many Leftists – or “social justice warriors”, SJWs – go so far as to argue that nothing done by the Left against any of those villains, even if done in a spirit of hate, can be classed as a hate crime, because it is always justified revenge. So the Left and its allies cannot commit a hate crime. For instance, a blow against a Muslim because he’s a Muslim is a hate crime, yes; but a blow by a Muslim against a non-Muslim because he’s a non-Muslim, is not a hate crime. Because Muslims are oppressed, strikes by Muslims are never morally wrong. The same argument applies if the striker is Black, or identified with any group they define as “oppressed”. The chief oppressors are always the United States, capitalists, white men, Israel, conservatives and Republicans.

All “oppressed” perpetrators of avenging attacks are justified by their victimhood. They cannot be accused of hate crimes. They are the eternal victims of hate crime.

And who are the “oppressed”? They are who the SJW’s say they are.

Posted under Commentary, Crime, education, Ethics, Islam, Israel, jihad, Law, Leftism, media, Muslims, Palestinians, United Kingdom, United States by Jillian Becker on Tuesday, September 13, 2016

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Come and be brainwashed 5

The National Coalition Building Institute provides this course in political correctness.

Clichés of leftist ideology are repeated with all the critical thoughtfulness of a caged parakeet:

Welcoming Diversity Workshop

NCBI’s award-winning Welcoming Diversity / Prejudice Reduction Workshop is a one-day, experiential program that has been presented to thousands of schools, colleges and universities, corporations, government agencies, trade unions, religious institutions, community organizations, and other groups throughout the world.

The Workshop consists of a series of incremental activities that helps participants to:

celebrate their similarities and differences,

recognize the misinformation they have learned about various groups, including their own,

learn about and reevaluate personal attitudes and behaviors that are based on the impact of prejudice and discrimination,

claim pride in their group identities,

understand the personal impact of discrimination through the telling of stories,

and learn hands-on tools for dealing effectively with offensive remarks and behaviors.

Some universities make it compulsory for all teaching staff to subject themselves to this childish and insulting nonsense.

Posted under education, Leftism by Jillian Becker on Tuesday, August 30, 2016

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The death of our culture and the merits of apartheid 179

Our culture is under attack. Everything that was bequeathed to us by dead white men  – Socrates, Archimedes, Newton, Shakespeare, Einstein … – must go. Worthless. Useless. Insults to the living.

Okay. So what will we the living have instead?

We? There is no “we” that includes the likes of us.

We can cling to all that old stuff if we want to. The non-white living – at least the rising generation of them as represented in the academies – want nothing of us.

Apartheid – segregation – is the order of their day.

Walter Williams writes at Front Page:

As the fall semester begins, parents, students, taxpayers and donors should be made aware of official college practices that should disgust us all.

Hampshire College will offer some of its students what the school euphemistically calls “identity-based housing”.  That’s segregated housing for students who — because of their race, culture, gender or sexual orientation — have “historically experienced oppression”.  I’d bet the rent money that Hampshire College will not offer Jewish, Irish, Polish, Chinese or Catholic students segregated housing. Because there is no group of people who have not faced oppression, Hampshire College is guilty of religious and ethnic discrimination in its housing segregation policy.

University of Connecticut administrators think that more black men will graduate if they spend more time together. According to Campus Reform, they are building a new residence hall to facilitate just that. Dr. Erik Hines, the faculty director for the program, said that the learning community “is a space for African-American men to … come together and validate their experiences that they may have on campus. … It’s also a space where they can have conversation and also talk with individuals who come from the same background who share the same experience.” By the way, Hampshire College and the University of Connecticut are not alone in promoting racially segregated student housing.

Then there’s an effort for racial segregation in classes. Moraine Valley Community College attempted it in a class titled “College: Changes, Challenges, Choices”. It mandated that some class sections be “limited to African-American students”. The college defended racially segregated classes by saying that they make students “feel comfortable.” After facing massive national notoriety, the college just recently abandoned its racial segregation agenda.

Suppose a student at Ripon College enrolls in a chemistry, math or economics class. What do you think ought to be the subject matter? Zachariah Messitte, Ripon’s president, who is also a professor in the politics and government department, has encouraged fellow professors to disparage Donald Trump, arguing that it’s “fine” for professors to “acknowledge Trump’s narrow-minded rhetoric” in class, suggesting that Trump’s “bigotry” is a valid topic for most any course.

For professors to use their classes to proselytize students — and for a college president to urge it — is gross academic dishonesty. I’ve been a college professor for nearly a half-century. I challenge anyone to find a student who can say that anything other than microeconomic theory, with a bit of physics and biology thrown in now and then for good measure, was discussed in my class.

Adding to campus lunacy are classes such as “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame” at the University of South Carolina. Cornell University’s physical education department offers a class titled “Recreational Tree Climbing”.  At Georgia State University, the English department offers a course called “Kayne [?] vs. Everybody”. At Tufts University’s Experimental College, one can take a class called “Demystifying the Hipster”. Skidmore College’s sociology department offers “The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media”. Frostburg State University’s physics department offers “The Science of Harry Potter”, where it examines some of the tale’s magic. Georgetown University offers “Philosophy and Star Trek”, arguing that “Star Trek is very philosophical” and adding, “What better way, then, to learn philosophy, than to watch Star Trek, read philosophy, and hash it all out in class?”

That these and other nonsense classes exist may reflect several things. There is the notion of shared educational governance, wherein presidents and boards of trustees have little say-so about what passes for college education. The faculty runs the show. Students may be academic cripples and require such nonsense. Those are the most optimistic assessments. Or such academic nonsense may indeed reflect that presidents, academic administrators, faculty members and students actually believe that such classes have academic merit.

So that’s the culture of the near future? And beyond it … ?

Posted under education, Race, United States by Jillian Becker on Wednesday, August 24, 2016

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The university: a place of rage and fear 136

A university is no longer a place of free speech where, among other scholars, and under the guidance of the erudite, you gain knowledge, learn to think, acquire skills through the training of your brain and in some disciplines your hands, so you can make a contribution to the world and be rewarded with the wherewithal to live a good life. No.

It is a place you pay a vast sum of money to attend in order to shiver and quake and weep, and gnash your teeth, and shriek at your instructors, and parade your weaknesses with pride and your color with arrogance or apology depending on what it is: white with apology, other with arrogance.

Is it worth paying that vast sum of money just to perform acts of desperate suffering, shrink away in specially protected corners, crow over others or be crowed over?

Well, maybe the crowing over others is good fun. But at such expense? Couldn’t you do it back home, now and then, for nothing?

When it comes to choosing illustrations of terror-and-grief performances and speech censorship at universities, we have an embarrassment of riches. But they are hardly needed. Everyone who watches TV and scans a newspaper on line has surely seen the screaming acts on campuses, the invasions of quiet libraries by noisy aggressive mobs, the wild attacks in lecture halls on persons non grata, and read about the revisions of the English language by which deranged administrators struggle to ameliorate the noisy sorrow of the “students”.

Here are a few items of university news cited by John Hawkins at Townhall:

“Vote Trump” Written In Chalk On The Sidewalks Of College Campuses

We’ve now reached the point where liberal students have become so sheltered that merely seeing support for a candidate that they don’t like sends them into a tizzy.

Just hours before four bombs ripped apart two transportation systems in Europe, Emory students were dealing with their own supposed terror situation. … Someone had the audacity to scribble “Trump 2016″, “Vote Trump”, and “Trump!!!” with a writing utensil preferred by toddlers. The erasable chalk around the campus, with a simple political message, was all it took for these easily offended people to completely lose it, suffering emotional unrest that officials were forced to deal with.

The campus publication, The Emory Wheel, actually took this “chalk situation” seriously, seemingly siding with the crybaby college students who demanded to know how someone could rape their “safe space” with a candidate’s last name. Rather than walking over the words, or simply wiping away the words instead of their tears, 40 students banded together to protest this sidewalk “terrorism” inside the administration building.

“I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe here,” one female student said. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it [sic] as well … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school.”

Calling America “A Land of Opportunity”

The University of California sent a handout to faculty recently that includes a list of offensive statements. According to the handout, “America is the land of opportunity” will be banned from campus. … A University of California faculty leader-training handout instructed professors not to say that “America is the land of opportunity” because that’s a racist, sexist microaggression.

According to the handout, called Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages they Send, the statement asserts that race and gender do not play a role in life successes — despite the fact that saying opportunities exist and saying that opportunities are more easily attainable for some people than others are not mutually exclusive assertions.

Other microaggressions listed on the document include asking, ‘Where are you from or where were you born?” (because it suggests that the person you’re asking is “not a true American”); asking a post-doctoral minority student whether he or she is lost in the halls of a chemistry building (because it “makes the assumption that the person is trying to break into one of the labs”); and having students fill out forms on which they have to check a box indicating whether they’re male or female.

The school will now ban the phrase, “America is the land of opportunity”.

The Word “Man” Being Too Much For Students At Princeton

The Princeton University HR department has largely wiped the word “man” from its vocabulary.

The relatively new policy in effect at the Ivy League institution spells out the directive in a four-page memo that aims to make the department more gender inclusive.

Instead of using “man”, employees are told to use words such as human beings, individuals or people.

The memo goes on to list a variety of occupations that typically include the word “man” in them and offers replacements: business person instead of businessman, firefighter instead of fireman, ancestors instead of forefathers, and so on.

In a statement to The College Fix, John Cramer, Princeton’s director of media relations, said the guidelines “reflect the university’s initiative of fostering an inclusive environment”.

Princeton’s LGBT Center also offers a guide on various gender pronouns for those who identify as “transgender, genderqueer, and other gender-variant”, suggesting “ze, zie and hir”, “they and theirs’, and “Ey, em, eir and emself”.  

The Name “Lynch”

Students are demanding that … Lebanon Valley College administrators remove or modify the name of the “Lynch Memorial Hall” — not because the man it was named after was a racist, but because these students cannot handle the word “lynch”.  Lynch, of course, is a term that means to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal sanction.

The hall was named after Clyde A. Lynch, who served as president of the college during the Great Depression and raised more than $500,000 for the physical education building that bears his name.

Just a few urgent changes in the process of totally transforming the land of the free and the home of the brave into a country safe for crybullies and ignoramuses.

Posted under education, Race, Sex, United States by Jillian Becker on Saturday, August 20, 2016

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Voting for Karl Marx 175

Of course a vote for Obama can be counted as a vote for Karl Marx. A vote for Bernie Sanders too. And Hillary Clinton. Indirectly.

Mark Dice asks Americans who have been to school – and graduated – whether they will consider voting for Karl Marx himself, now that “he is standing as an Independent”.

Some say they will. Others – more prudent and thoughtful types – explain that they need to find out a bit more about him before they commit themselves.

Posted under education, Marxism, United States, Vietnam by Jillian Becker on Monday, August 15, 2016

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