To the public, all lives matter…

The New Neo Posted on by

…although to the elites, Democratic politicians, and to the left (is that redundant?), BLM is the new religion and “all lives matter” is unforgivable racist heresy against it. The fact the black lives are included in “all lives” is explained away by the left with various sophistic ploys. But believing all people matter is actually quite the opposite of racism in any sane definition of the word.

Here’s the poll:

Twice as may Americans back the “All Lives Matter” slogan over the “Black Lives Matter” slogan, says a new Rasmussen survey of 1,000 likely voters.

Among blacks, a 47 percent plurality picked “All Lives Matter” over the 44 percent who picked “Black Lives Matter.”

The June 15-16 poll asked respondents: “Which statement is closest to your own?”

“Black Lives Matter” was picked by 30 percent of voters, including 35 percent of voters under age 40, and 63 percent of liberals.

“All Lives Matter” was picked by 59 percent of all voters, 58 percent of swing-voters, and 56 percent of “moderate” voters.

“Black Lives Matter” was more favored by wealthier people. It was backed by just 34 percent of people earning less than $30,000 but by 53 percent of people who earn above $200,000. The slogan was picked by just 22 percent of high school graduates but by 41 percent of people with professional degrees.

Even Democrats are fairly evenly split. And even young voters seemed to prefer all lives, as do black voters (more narrowly).

The poll is somewhat comforting, at least as far as I’m concerned. It suggests that Martin Luther King’s message still has more resonance with US voters than that of the BLM would-be replacements. It also, however, indicates something more depressing, a phenomenon that is one of the strange hallmarks of our time – although it’s not just of our time – that so-called “elites” and in particular intellectuals are far more susceptible than other people to propaganda and in particular to leftist propaganda.

I wrote a post twelve years ago (yikes, twelve years!) that’s quite appropriate, and I’m going to quote it here (the “Podhoretz” in the first sentence is Norman, not his son John):

Podhoretz offers some wonderful quotes from Orwell on the subject, and they’ve worn very well over the years. Try this one on for size, from 1937 (appearing in Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier):

“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker. nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England.”

Orwell’s “Notes on Nationalism” is another case in point. There is a fair amount in it with which I disagree, to be sure. But the following is spot on, both then and now. It illustrates the military defeatism of the intellectual Left, its susceptibility to wild conspiracy theories, and the origins of both phenomena in the Left’s hatred of the West [one of Orwell’s most famous remarks on the stupidity of intellectuals occurs here; emphasis mine]:

“The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. When Hitler invaded Russia, the officials of the MOI issued “as background” a warning that Russia might be expected to collapse in six weeks. On the other hand the Communists regarded every phase of the war as a Russian victory, even when the Russians were driven back almost to the Caspian Sea and had lost several million prisoners. There is no need to multiply instances. The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also.

Unhinged they are, and unhinged (and pretty much unchanged) they remain.

I said they remain “unchanged,” but I’ll amend that. They’re now worse. Antifa is, among other things, a movement of mostly college-educated youth who think they know better than the stupid populists and are willing to put their fists where their mouths are.

Happy Father’s Day!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This a slightly edited version of a previous post of mine.]

It’s Father’s Day. A sort of poor stepchild to Mother’s Day, although fathers themselves are hardly that. They are central to a family.

Just ask the people who never had one, or who had a difficult relationship with theirs. Or ask the people who were nurtured in the strength of a father’s love and guidance.

Of course, the complex world being what it is, and people and families being what they are, it’s the rare father-child relationship that’s entirely conflict-free. But for the vast majority, love is almost always present, even though at times it can be hard to express or to perceive. It can take a child a very long time to see it or feel it; but that’s part of what growing up is all about. And “growing up” can go on even in adulthood, or old age.

Father’s Day—or Mother’s Day, for that matter—can wash over us in a wave of treacly sentimentality. But the truth of the matter is often stranger, deeper, and more touching. Sometimes the words of love catch in the throat before they’re spoken. But they can still be sensed. Sometimes a loving father is lost through distance or misunderstanding, and then regained.

There’s an extraordinary poem by Robert Hayden that depicts one of these uneasy father-child connections—the shrouded feelings, both paternal and filial, that can come to be seen in the fullness of time as the love that was always, always there. I offer it on this Father’s Day to all of you.

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

A much-needed dance break

The New Neo Posted on by

One of my favorite ballet dancers of all time, Maya Plisetskaya, with some enticing and energetic cultural appropriation. Circa 1959:

I saw Plisetskaya in person right around the time this was filmed. She tore up the stage. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dancer more exciting.

More on monument destruction: no historical assist allowed

The New Neo Posted on by

I just published this long post on how the current riots and statue-toppling represents a war on Western Civilization.

I want to add something here, on a related topic. John Hinderaker of Powerline has written a piece today on much the same theme (although he’s not as wordy as I). It ends this way:

Every four years it is said that the current election is the most important one in our lifetimes. This time, it is actually true. Not a single Democratic Party official, to my knowledge, has condemned the anti-American madness that is sweeping across the nation. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are fully on board with the extremist elements in their party–I am starting to wonder whether there is any Democratic Party apart from the extremist elements–and the Democrats’ presidential nominee is a senile nonentity who, in office, would be controlled by the radicals. It is absolutely essential to our country’s future that Donald Trump be re-elected.

UPDATE: Hans Bader has more, including this quote from Frederick Douglass about Grant:

“To him, more than to any other man, the Negro owes his enfranchisement,” Douglass said. Douglass eulogized Grant as “a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point. In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.”

But then, liberals hate Douglass, too.

Similar to the point I made at the end of my post, about Martin Luther King.

I well remember a time in the mid-to-late 60s when I became aware of the Black Power movement and the Black Panthers and their messages. One of the things I recall happening is the rejection of white allies who had been with them in their fight for liberty and voting rights and an end to segregation. They were kicked out and not wanted anymore, sometimes even insulted and reviled.

This is the same impulse. Not only do the BLM and Antifa movements and the left hate Douglass (and perhaps Martin Luther King, at this point), but they hate any historic white person such as Grant and Lincoln, not just in spite of what such people did to assist black people in their struggle, but because of it. Assistance from any white person, after all, means that one didn’t do it all by oneself. It means that some white people helped.

The desire to reject that aspect of history is the same impulse that led to the otherwise puzzling choice to vandalize the Robert Gould Shaw monument in Boston. This is not random, nor is it an accident or error. This is the left.

The war on Western Civ: why destroy statues of Ulysses S. Grant or Francis Scott Key?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “AesopFan” calls attention to this:

I have little doubt that there are some people who “just want to break things.” But no; the mobs are not going after Grant and the others (including Junipero Serra, Cervantes, Francis Scott Key, and some abolitionists) because they “just” are destructive. They are destructive of some very particular things: Western culture as a whole, which they label as “white supremacist.”

They started with Confederate monuments, to which most white people and people in general had no particular attachment. Now it is Western civilization as a whole, and in particular statues of those people with the following characteristics: (1) anyone having owned even one slave, even for a short time (note the seamless segue from Confederates to slaveowners, which can include a far larger group of Americans and even several Founding Fathers) (2) anyone who can be labeled as colonial (Serra would fall into that group) (3) anything that celebrates the US and its history (its history also being irredeemably based on “white supremacy” and slavery, a la the mendacious NY Times 1619 Project, coming soon to a school near you).

This is an international undertaking, too. It’s happening in Britain, for example. And the vandals count on the passivity of authorities, particularly in very blue cities. In that, they have not been disappointed.

I called them “vandals,” but this is not “mere” vandalism as the term is ordinarily used in casual conversation. It has a great deal more resemblance to the historic group who gave the word its name and sacked Rome in 455. The parallel is certainly far from perfect; for one thing, most of the current group are Americans (I suppose there might be some foreigners, but I doubt their numbers are great). From that Wiki page [emphasis mine]:

A cause of significant controversy is the claim that the sack was relatively “clean”, in that there was little murder and violence, and the Vandals did not burn the buildings of the city. This interpretation seems to stem from Prosper’s claim that Pope Leo I managed to persuade Genseric to refrain from violence. However, Victor of Vita records that a number of shiploads of captives arrived in Africa from Rome, with the purpose of being sold into slavery. Similarly, the Byzantine historian Procopius reports that a church was burned down. Some modern historians like John Henry Haaren stated that temples, public buildings, private houses and even the emperor’s palace were sacked. Besides taking many Romans as slaves, the Vandals also committed other depredations like taking immense quantities of gold, silver, jewels and furniture, destroying works of art, and killing a number of citizens.

I won’t even weigh in on the controversy; suffice to say that the current crop have bigger fish to fry than just looting a city. They want to topple the government and they want to rewrite history according to their lights.

Some coverage of the San Francisco event (remarks in brackets mine) in a Bay area paper:

Protesters [note the euphemism] in Golden Gate Park toppled statues of Fr. Junipero Serra, Francis Scott Key and President Ulysses S. Grant on Friday night, spurring a national debate [oh, so what they really want is that great supposed goal of liberals and the left: debate and “dialogue”] over the complex legacies of those historical figures amid a broader movement to remove what critics say are monuments to white supremacy [indeed it is a very broad movement that labels the figures of American history and their accomplishments as being examples of white supremacy that therefore must be obliterated and their memory sullied].

A group of roughly 100 people [very few, but enough – if there is no defense mounted against them by authorities] pulled down the monuments displayed in the park’s Music Concourse near the de Young Museum and California Academy of Sciences, an eyewitness said. Police were called to the area just after 8 p.m., and said people in the group threw objects at the officers. The crowd dispersed around 9:30 with no arrests or reports of injuries [no arrests for assaulting officers or destroying public property – and I wonder how many officers were there, and what their orders were, although I can guess the number was small and their orders were to do nothing].

One video posted to Twitter showed the group using a strap to topple the statue of Serra. Photos also showed people vandalized a monument to Spanish writer Miguel Cervantes [his selection was probably either a mistake, or considered an example of Western culture, all of which must be destroyed], the author of “Don Quixote.” And parks officials said the group vandalized several other features in the Music Concourse as well, including sculptures, benches and a fountain [that’s the part that is the more pure destructive impulse, trying to ruin a public space for everyone and put one’s mark on it – which IMHO is the same impulse that leads to a lot of graffiti].

And this sort of response from the mayor is exactly why they do it, and why this will continue in blue cities (remarks in brackets mine):

“Every dollar we spend cleaning up this vandalism takes funding away from actually supporting our community, including our African-American community [about which they could not care less, as evidenced by all the destruction recent rioters have wreaked in black communities in particular],” [Mayor] Breed said. “I say this not to defend any particular statue or what it represents [of course not; can’t do that], but to recognize that when people take action in the name of my community, they should actually involve us [Breed is black, and she was indeed raised in the projects in poverty, so when she says “my community” she means it. She also was by no means one of the most radical of the candidates for mayor when she ran, and my guess is that she is walking a very fine line here because she actually is well aware that this is not going to help the black community].”

Breed continued, “I have asked the Arts Commission, the Human Rights Commission, and the Recreation and Parks Department to work with the community to evaluate our public art and its intersection with our country’s racist history [so in other words, the rioters/vandals win and are going to be rewarded for their behavior].”

Who is doing the vandalizing? It’s obviously a combination of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, with a mixture of some of those people who “just want to break things.” But this is organized and this is a serious attack on US history, an attack helped along by the educational system and the MSM, two fronts on which it is already quite well advanced. That is what allows it to flourish.

It wasn’t enough to banish Western Civ from the required courses. Nor was it enough to establish departments of Black Studies or units in elementary schools on Black History and its heroes. The persistence of actual Western Civ and its fruits in science, art, liberty, and the like must be destroyed, and the symbols of US and Western history pulled down and replaced by history as written by the liars at the NY Times and the haters in the academy, as well as the fake historian Howard Zinn.

I wonder – and I am serious here – how long Martin Luther King’s statues can stand. And I do not mean that they will be threatened by white people, although I suppose the few remaining actual white supremacists might stage something. What I mean is that Antifa and Black Lives Matter, as well as progressives everywhere, have roundly rejected King’s message of “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” King’s dream has died – at least for now, and for the foreseeable future – and only the statues remain.

Clever slogans: Black Lives Matter

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night when I awakened several times, thinking, it occurred to me that although the left fights on all fronts, one of them is in the matter of words, in particular the names it gives organizations. For example, Black Lives Matter. Who but the most rabid neo-Nazi could ever object, if the name is taken at face value? Of course black lives matter. The name is one of the reasons that BLM is attractive to so many people and has gained so much support so quickly. Almost no one would disagree with the sentiment.

But nothing is just face value for the left. For example, implicit in the phrase “Black Lives Matter” as a rallying cry by the left is the idea that there is some vast array of people (not just the minuscule number of actual real live neo-Nazis) who think that Black Lives Don’t Matter. After all, Black Lives Matter the organization (which I’ll henceforth abbreviate in this post as BLM) has to be set in opposition to something order to make sense as the name of a protest movement.

So BLM is implying some version of these things: black lives don’t matter to police, black lives don’t matter to the right, black lives don’t matter to white people, black lives have never mattered in America, and perhaps also the all-important if you don’t agree with what BLM is doing and saying, then you think that black lives don’t matter and you want black people to suffer and to die. Oh – and also, if you don’t display our sign, then you might just be a racist who doesn’t think black lives matter.

There’s quite a lot packed in there, isn’t there, in what appears at first to be a straightforward slogan with which almost everyone can easily agree? BLM has become much more than the name of a protest movement. It’s become a sacred phrase. Any disagreement with any aspect of it, or of the program being pushed under its name, is equivalent to blasphemy and/or heresy. In that respect, BLM is a quasi-religion. A strict one, at that, in which one can question neither the tenets nor the clergy.

Why else would saying “All Lives Matter” get people fired from their jobs, unfriended on Facebook, and in some cases raked over the coals until they commit an act of penitence? Consider that “all” actually includes “black” rather than excluding it, so it is not a contradiction to the BLM message. Unsuspecting and naive people, who take the BLM slogan at its word, have made the error of assuming that an inclusive “All Lives Matter” message does not conflict with BLM, and have uttered the “all” word without realizing that they are calling down the wrath of the BLM faithful on themselves by speaking heresy rather than agreement.

Is the corollary of BLM – with its rejection of even the possibility of saying with inclusive goodwill that all lives matter – the idea that white lives matter less (or not at all)? You’re not allowed to even ask the question. Nor are you allowed to point out the indisputable fact that black-on-black crime is a huge problem causing great suffering in the black community. Such crime is re-defined by the left as the fault of white racism as well, and mentioning it is a racist deflection from the problem of blacks being killed by white police officers, which matters even more because the black lives that matter most are the ones killed by white people.

Another look at Robespierre

The New Neo Posted on by

This was first written in 2006. But it’s a very timely piece.

Unfortunately, I fear that taking a look at Robespierre will always be timely [comments in brackets mine]:

Robespierre’s constituency outside the Convention was the mob, roaming the streets of Paris, the center of the Revolution…The mob in Paris consisted largely of destitute sans-culottes (“without knee breeches”), who maintained themselves by a mixture of crime, prostitution, begging, and odd jobs. Robespierre and his followers incited them to action whenever political expediency called for it. But even when unincited, having nothing better to do, they formed the crowd that watched the public executions, jeered and abused those about to die, rejoiced at the severed heads, adulated the leaders temporarily in power, and cursed them after they fell…

What Robespierre had unloosed were the most depraved urges of society’s dregs. The resulting anarchy temporarily served his purpose, much as the Kristallnacht served Hitler’s, the purges Stalin’s, and the cultural revolution Mao’s. Each perpetrated the terror to frighten opponents into abject submission and establish himself more firmly in power…

These atrocities were not unfortunate excesses unintended by Robespierre and his henchmen but the predictable consequences of the ideology that divided the world into “friends” and less-than-human “enemies.” The ideology was the repository of the true and the good, the key to the welfare of humanity. Its enemies had to be exterminated without mercy because they stood in the way. As the ideologues saw it, the future of mankind was a high enough stake to justify any deed that served their purpose. As Loomis puts it, “[A]ll who played a role in the drama . . . believed themselves motivated by patriotic and altruistic impulses. All . . . were able to value their good intentions more highly than human life. . . . There is no crime, no murder, no massacre that cannot be justified, provided it be committed in the name of an Ideal.”

The ideal, however, was simply what Robespierre said it was. And the law was what Robespierre and his followers willed it to be…The justification of monstrous actions by appealing to a passionately held ideal, elevated as the standard of reason and morality, is a characteristic feature of political ideologies in power… The shared feature is that the ideal, according to its true believers, is immune from rational or moral criticism, because it determines what is reasonable and moral…

…All the current political choices, consequently, were choices between good and evil, allowing Robespierre to demonize his opponents…

This piece of sophistry was then new, but to those who look back on the twentieth century [or forward into the 21st] it is depressingly familiar from the use that many murderous regimes have made of it. They all claimed that their aim was human well-being, but that incorrigibly wicked enemies, who have disguised their true nature and conspired against the noblest of aims, threatened its achievement. The supposed threat was so serious, and the aim so important, as to warrant extreme, albeit temporary, measures—to identify enemies, unmask their conspiracies, and exterminate them. To a handful of clear-sighted and courageous heroes of the revolution—like the KGB, the SS, and the Red Guard—falls the duty of performing these necessary tasks. They must harden their hearts and do what needs to be done in the interest of the greater good. The grave threat averted, the extreme measures will no longer be necessary, and then human well-being will be within everyone’s reach.

That’s why process and the rule of law are so important.

But the Robespierres of the world would be nothing without their followers and/or collaborators. Why would people follow or at least not oppose such a person?

Many followed because [Robespierre] let them act on their worst urges, which they had to suppress when law and order prevailed.

Others—overwhelmed by the political changes, by the widespread chaos and uncertainty, by the blood that had already been shed—yearned to understand what was going on, what justified it, and what its aim was. Many people accepted Robespierre’s explanation, bombast and implausibility notwithstanding, because any explanation of what they were living through was better than no explanation.

But the chief reason that people followed him was fear. No one was safe, and people hastened to testify by words and deeds that they were loyal, enthusiastic supporters. Robespierre wielded his power over life and death as arbitrarily as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao did. Arbitrariness is the key to terror: if there are no rules, justifications, or reasons, then everyone is at risk. People can try to minimize the risk only by outdoing others in toeing the line. Dictators understand that, and it explains much of the “spontaneous demonstrations” and public adulation that they extract from the duped and terrified people at their mercy.

Andrew C. McCarthy on the Rayshard Brooks shooting charges

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s another excellent article by Andrew C. McCarthy.

Also, here’s a comment I found in the thread there. This is the question I’ve been wondering about, too: why would any sane person want to be a police officer, at this point?:

Who would sign up for a job where you’ll be hated by those you serve, not allowed to protect your own life or health, and assumed guilty in any instance where your interactions with criminals go badly for the criminals?

And although so far this police-are-evil phenomenon seems to mostly affect blue cities, I fear that police around the country will begin to feel a generalized disillusionment and betrayal, and recruiting good police officers will be that much harder everywhere in the US.

Not to mention crime going up. That seems inevitable, too. The number of violent confrontations with police may go up, too, not only because of the rise in crime but also because of the spread of the idea that cops are your automatic enemies. And if a black person thinks a white police officer is by definition out to kill him, that could be a motivation to resist arrest. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here’s what Burke County, Ga., Sheriff Alfonzo Williams (who is black) has to say about Officer Rolph and Rayshard Brooks:

“Five seconds; 1,001, 1,002, 1,003, 1,004, 1,005. That’s five whole seconds. If an officer is hit with that Taser that he, all of his muscles will be locked up and he’ll have the inability to move and to respond. And yet he is still responsible for every weapon on his belt.

“So, if that officer had been hit, he still has a firearm on his side and the likelihood of him being stomped in the head or having his firearm taken and used against him was a probability. And so he did what he needed to do. And this was a completely justified shooting,” Williams said…

“We’re sending the wrong message to our black youth. We’re telling them that it’s OK, that they can run from the police, that they can take a weapon from the police, they can fight with the police, and point their weapon at the police, and expect nothing to happen. That is the wrong message to send to black youth.”

I think many of the people sending this message know they are sending this message and that it will lead to more killings of black men and more murder arrests of white officers, as well as more hatred against police and between the races. That is their goal, I believe, bread and butter for those who gain fame and money from stirring up such feelings. For some, it’s a matter of fame and fortune. For others it’s a matter of aiding the leftist revolution they so desire. The two motives are not mutually exclusive, either. They can easily co-exist in one person.

Indoctrination – this was in 2007. Since then, this sort of thing has taken over campuses.

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a fascinating video because it seems almost archaic. It documents the leftist, racist indoctrination occurring on a single campus in 2007, and how some students and faculty, along with FIRE, helped stop it when they learned of it.

Back when this was made, the viewers were probably shocked and surprised, and the content of the thought programming probably seemed extremely far-fetched and unusual. Now it’s standard, mostly accepted, and widespread.

FIRE has lost on campus and the leftists have won. At least, that’s the way it looks at the moment, and unless there’s a massive backlash I don’t see much of a change for the better.

In addition, at this point most of the faculty has changed, as well, and fewer professors have either the courage or the inclination to speak out against indoctrination. Sometimes, it’s because of fear; they are silent or compliant in an attempt to avoid becoming the next target of the organized leftists on Twitter and elsewhere. The rise of Twitter is only one of the differences between then and now, but it’s an important factor.

Without further ado – the video:

What happens in the university hasn’t stayed in the university

The New Neo Posted on by

For a while years ago, it seemed to the casual observer as though the worst excesses of cancel culture and the attacks on free speech and academic freedom were confined to the university, and that the forces behind them were weaker outside the university.

That made sense, in a way. After all, a great deal of leftist thought took hold early on in the university and came to dominate, affecting the minds of the students there. But it has gone on for decades, and now we’re reaping the reward – that is, the whirlwind.

Now a couple of generations steeped in leftist thought have gone out into the world. They are not just voting, but working in many fields and dominating in some: journalism, education, law, the government of blue states and cities, entertainment, dot coms, many other businesses, and increasingly the upper levels of the military. The older leftists and liberals, some of whom actually did care about things such as free speech, are retired or retiring or dead or dying out or being frightened into silence and/or acquiescence.

So what was once behavior confined to universities is everywhere now. They are ignorant and they are entitled and they want to take over. They have older and more entrenched allies in power in blue states and blue cities, who will act in concert with them and protect them. They do not respect the rule of law except when it benefits them, they are intolerant of anyone (even on the left) who disagrees with them, and they are aggressive against those they consider their enemies. That aggression includes widespread false charges of racism under a ridiculously expanded definition, and they are just fine with destroying that person.

Twitter and other social media facilitate their task greatly. In fact, I doubt this would be happening now, and certainly not on the present scale, without it. But it began in the university, and that is still the far-left’s most potent tool of indoctrination.

[NOTE: I personally observed some of this thirty years ago when I was in graduate school and spoke out against it (to no avail), although at the time I had no framework to understand it and didn’t put it into a political context. By then it was actually already fairly well advanced, but I’d been mostly away from the university setting prior to that, and quite unaware that it had been going on all that time.]

Vengeance, they name is Paul Howard

The New Neo Posted on by

DA Paul Howard of Atlanta took overcharging to a whole new level in his press conference on Officer Rolfe, who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks.

Shipwreckedcrew at RedState has written at length on this in several posts. From the first one:

The idea that the elected District Attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, would prostitute himself to the mob by filing idiotic felony murder charges – which carry a potential death sentence under Georgia law — against Atlanta PD Officer Garrett Rolfe would be hysterically funny if it wasn’t so outrageous.

But the words that came out of DA Paul Howard’s mouth in explaining the rationale behind the charges reveal him to be a duplicitous, money-grubbing, vote-hungry, and allegedly a thief and lecherous sexual harasser who recognizes Garret Rolfe as the “meal ticket” by which he might hold on to his position come August. Within the last couple hours the Georgia Bureau of Investigation — who Howard had asked to conduct the investigation of the shooting — issued a public statement that it was unaware that a press conference was going to take place, and it was not consulted on the filing of charges. GBI stated that its investigation is still ongoing.

What follows at that point is a description of the trouble Howard himself has been in well before the killing of Brooks. I’ll skip all of that; you can go to the link to read it. Later on:

I’ve watched the 45-minute press conference from earlier today. I can’t believe other prosecutors were willing to stand behind him while he embarrassed them all. But it might just be the case that they all know their positions in the office ride on the back of him winning re-election in 9 weeks so it’s just a matter of their own self-preservation.

Basically, Howard misrepresented Brooks’ demeanor by leaving out the facts that he resisted arrest by starting a physical fight, grabbing a taser and using it – you know, those little details. He also reminded everyone that Rolfe now faces the death penalty.

In the second post in the series, shipwreckedcrew writes:

As I sat down to write what was going to be Part 2, I continued to watch the press conference where DA Howard said things I would not be surprised to hear coming out of the mouth of a first-year law student — but only if that law student was in the process of flunking his/her Crim Law or Evidence classes — or both. I then had a chance to catch the interview of the attorneys of the second officer, Devin Brosnan, by Fredo Cuomo on CNN, and later the interview of Off. Rolfe’s attorney on the Laura Ingraham show. What they added to the factual puzzle here made the commentary of DA Howard during his press conference even more farcical. Rolfe’s attorney is going to chew up any Assistant District Attorney who tries to bring this case to court.

It’s almost impossible to write coherently about this story because the comments and explanation by DA Paul Howard in the press conference were legally incoherent. I don’t know which of his idiotic statements to deal with first. Or do I deal with his fabrications?

True, and I also saw that interview with Rolfe’s attorney on the Ingraham show.

This egregiousness and obviousness of Howard’s lies are so blatant that I faced a similar feeling of being overwhelmed in trying to deal with writing about them. That’s really why I’m relying heavily on shipwreckedcrew, who’s done his/her homework and also knows more about the details of the law than I do. But one thing I do know is that our legal system is now hopelessly compromised, and that a DA can stand there and recite such misleading propaganda with a straight face – and not have anyone but the right criticizing him – is evidence of how far gone it is.

More from the link:

The second officer involved in the incident, Devin Brosnan, has now been charged with one count of aggravated assault, and two counts of failure to comply with his oath. DA Howard could not have been more clear or direct in his statement that Officer Brosnan had agreed to “cooperate” and become a “State’s Witness”. He said that Off. Brosnan was going to put out a statement in a few days about Off. Rolfe’s conduct, but he was not emotionally prepared to do so today. Near the end of his comments, DA Howard came back to this point and said Off. Brosnan would be “one of the first APD officers willing to testify against someone in his own department.”

CNN’s Fredo Cuomo’s interviewed the two attorneys for Brosnan. When asked about Howard’s claims, their disgust at DA Howard’s comment was evident. They said Brosnan had given a statement to investigators and had met with the DA’s office for an interview on Tuesday. Fredo Cuomo asked if a deal had been made for his testimony, and the attorneys were incensed. They said Brosnan should not have even been charged, much less talk about whether he should cut a deal. They said he is not a “State’s Witness” and they have no agreement with DA Howard or anyone else. They said “He’s a witness. He’s given a statement and voluntarily sat for an interview.” They said he’ll continue to do both for any legitimate investigation. If subpoenaed he’ll testify. But to say he was testifying for one side or the other was just a lie.

One of so many lies told by Howard it would be hard to list them all.

Another interesting fact from that link:

[Officer Brosnan’s lawyers] also claimed that Brosnan had been diagnosed with a concussion suffered during the fight with Brooks prior to Brooks escaping with Brosnan’s Taser. They then added a new fact that I hadn’t seen reported yet — during the fight, Brooks was able to use the Taser on Brosnan, causing Brosnan to collapse forward, landing on his head, and that was how Brosnan suffered the concussion. Brosnan told other officers and paramedics at the scene that he was still dizzy and seeing stars. He said in his statement that when he was following behind Rolfe, he didn’t know who was firing when he heard gunshots. He ducked behind a car in the drive-thru lane for cover, and then made his way over to where Brooks was laying in the parking lot with Rolfe standing over him. The attorneys said that Brosnan’s statement was that he didn’t even realize at first that Brooks had been shot because of his head injury. All he remembered was that Brooks had fought with them, he ran off, and then seeing Brooks collapsed in the middle of the parking lot. The attorneys said DA Howard and his office were uninterested in Brosnan’s medical records showing he’d been diagnosed with a concussion during the Tuesday interview.

Much more at the link. And see also this.

They’re still trying to cancel William Jacobson at Cornell

The New Neo Posted on by

Professor William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection reports on the latest in the campaign against him:

Earlier this week, the Black Law Students Association circulated an email statement to the Cornell Law School community repeating many of the false and misleading accusations against me that I have covered in earlier posts.

But it went beyond that. They refused my offer to debate their representative and a faculty member of their choice, issued a call to boycott my course, and demand the law school screen faculty hires for ideological purity…

You can read more of the letter at the link. Here’s an excerpt:

…[W]e further urge the administration to critically examine the views of the individuals they intend to employ. Faculty members who challenge students to debate them on the motives of those fighting to preserve Black life are clearly more interested in amplifying their own agendas than engaging in thoughtful and reflective discourse. Professor Jacobson has claimed no expertise nor any specialized training on matters of race and racial justice, rendering any future discussions on the matter entirely unproductive. We are not interested in subjecting ourselves and our community members to dialogue that reinforces the false dichotomy of “right” versus “left” when it comes to our humanity.

And another email, this time from the leftist National Lawyers Guild, called for a boycott of Professor Jacobson’s classes at Cornell.

In his post, Professor Jacobson writes:

With the slogan “Silence is Violence” being used at the law school, there will be enormous pressure for student groups to go along. Not to do so would be deemed an act of “violence.”

This is an attempt not just to scare students away from my course, but to scare students away from speaking their minds, and to create a faculty and student purity test.

I have received numerous emails from students telling me I have a lot of “quiet” support at the law school, but that students are afraid to speak out for fear of career-ending false accusations of racism. I deeply appreciate the expressions of support, and I understand why you cannot speak out. You don’t want to be subjected to the type of smear campaign to which I have been subjected.

This toxic atmosphere didn’t need to take place. At a time when the law school desperately needs an adult in the room, so to speak, we have faculty and a Dean who denounce me.

These elements are all too familiar: the inappropriate labeling of disagreement as racism, the refusal to debate the labeled person (can’t have that person actually defend him/herself in the court of public opinion), and the acquiescence and cooperation of an administration that either agrees or is too frightened to disagree.

Some of these elements were already outlined by Allan Bloom in his book The Closing of the American Mind. It was written in 1987, but a large section of the book discussed events that had taken place in 1969 at – of all places – Cornell.

I’ve written a lot about Bloom and about Cornell, which I consider the template for what’s been happening on campuses ever since, accelerating in the last five years or so. Please read this previous post of mine, which starts out by discussing a program at UCLA from the 60s, but then segues into a discussion of Cornell in 1969. I suggest you read the whole thing, and I strongly suggest you read this City Journal article that goes into some depth on the subject.

But here is Allan Bloom’s description, which I offered in this post (you may be puzzled by Bloom’s mention of Alan Keyes; he was at the time a Cornell student, black, who was being threatened by the militants for not standing with them; much later Keyes was Barack Obama’s hastily appointed opponent in his Senate race after the other Republican nominee was forced out) [emphasis mine]:

The [Cornell] provost was a former natural scientist, and he greeted me with a mournful countenance. He, of course, fully sympathized with the young man’s [Keyes’] plight. However, things were bad, and there was nothing he could do to stop such behavior in the black student association…He added that no university in the country could expel radical black students, or dismiss the faculty members who incited them, presumably because the students at large would not permit it.

…The provost had a mixture of cowardice and moralism not uncommon at the time. He did not want trouble. His president had frequently cited Clark Kerr’s dismissal at the University of California as the great danger…At the same time the provost thought he was engaged in a great moral work, righting the historic injustice done to blacks. He could justify to himself the humiliation he was undergoing as a necessary sacrifice. The case of this particular black student [Keyes] clearly bothered him. But he was both more frightened of the violence-threatening extremists and also more admiring of them. Obvious questions were no longer obvious. Why could not a black student be expelled as a white student would be if he failed his courses or disobeyed the rules that make university community possible? Why could the president not call the police if order was threatened? Any man of weight would have fired the professor who threatened the life of the student [the student was Keyes]. The issue was not complicated. Only the casuistry of weakness and ideology made it so…No one who knew or cared about what a university is would have acquiesced in this travesty. It was no surprise that a few weeks later—immediately after the faculty had voted overwhelmingly under the gun to capitulate to outrageous demands that it had a few days earlier rejected—the leading members of the administration and many well-known faculty members rushed over to congratulate the gathered students and tried to win their approval. I saw exposed before all the world what had long been known, and it was at last possible without impropriety to tell these pseudo-universitarians precisely what one thought of them.

It was also no surprise that many of those professors who had been most eloquent in their sermons about the sanctity of the university, and who had presented themselves as its consciences, were among those who reacted, if not favorably, at least weakly to what was happening. They had made careers out of saying how badly the German professors [during the Nazi era] had reacted to violations of academic freedom. This was all light talk and mock heroics, because they had not measured the potential threats to the university nor assessed the doubtful grounds of academic freedom. Above all, they did not think that it [academic freedom] could be assaulted from the Left or from within the university…These American professors were utterly disarmed, as were many German professors, when the constituency they took for granted, of which they honestly believed they were independent, deserted or turned against them…To fulminate against Bible Belt preachers was one thing. In the world that counted for these professors, this could only bring approval. But to be isolated in the university, to be called foul names by their students or their colleagues, all for the sake of an abstract idea, was too much for them. They were not in general strong men, although their easy rhetoric had persuaded them that they were—that they alone manned the walls protecting civilization. Their collapse was merely pitiful, although their feeble attempts at self-justification frequently turned vicious. In Germany the professors who kept quiet had the very good excuse that they could not do otherwise. Speaking up would have meant imprisonment or death. The law not only did not protect them but was their deadly enemy. At Cornell there was no such danger…There was essentially no risk in defending the integrity of the university, because the danger was entirely within it. All that was lacking was a professorial corps aware of the university’s purpose, and dedicated to it. That is what made the surrender so contemptible.

As I said, that was written in the late 1980s. I think that at present the dangers of standing up for academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the right to disagree are more serious. I also think we continue to have some people of courage, and Professor Jacobson is one of them.

[NOTE: In this article, Steven Hayward of Powerline describes a related recent experience of his at Berkeley.]