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.]

SCOTUS rules for the continuance of DACA

The New Neo Posted on by

The way it went:

“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies. ‘The wisdom’ of those decisions ‘is none of our concern,’” Roberts wrote in his opinion. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action.”

Roberts wrote that the administration “failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance,” as well as the impact the decision would have on DACA recipients who have relied on the program.

“That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner,” Roberts wrote. “The appropriate recourse is therefore to remand to DHS so that it may consider the problem anew.”

Clarence Thomas, in the dissent:

Without grounding its position in either the APA or precedent, the majority declares that DHS was required to overlook DACA’s obvious legal deficiencies and provide additional policy reasons and justifications before restoring the rule of law. This holding is incorrect, and it will hamstring all future agency attempts to undo actions that exceed statutory authority.

I’m in agreement with Thomas.

It’s certainly possible that the order could be reworded so that it would be considered “reasonable” by the Court. But that doesn’t fix the problem of what the Court did today (and of course if Trump isn’t re-elected, it’s not going to happen). It seems to me that the Court is basically saying they don’t like Trump’s order and therefore they won’t allow it to stand, even though Obama’s order was almost certainly deeply flawed.

One thing this decision underlines is that at this point Justice Roberts (a Bush nominee to the Court) is a reliably liberal vote, or at the very least the new swing vote.

Another thing it underlines is that the liberals on the Court have consistently applied subjective feeling standards (as well as mind-reading, in some of its decisions) to reach the goal it happens to like. Aeons ago when I was in law school, I had to read many appellate decisions and a large percentage of them were SCOTUS decisions. I agreed with the results of some and disagreed with the results of others. I found some arguments more persuasive than others, as well. Sometimes I would have liked a different result in terms of the ruling’s effect, and yet the argument for it was so solid that I had to admit that, my personal preferences aside, it was the correct ruling.

But very seldom if ever in those days did I find that a ruling with which I disagreed had really poor reasoning behind it, rather than just questionable reasoning. In recent years, though, that’s been happening more and more frequently – the rulings with which I disagree involve either some sort of tortuous and convoluted reasoning/sophistry, or the application of a subjective and arbitrary judgment.

ADDENDUM: In 2018 I wrote a post about Roberts, and I’d like to repeat here something I said back then:

I believe that there are at least three more things operating with Roberts…The first is that most people, especially ambitious people—and that includes SCOTUS justices—are attracted to power. Power is enticing, and increasing one’s own power is always tempting. So what could be more powerful for Roberts than becoming a swing justice? It would mean that a great many huge and important cases would turn on what Roberts thinks.

Secondly, Roberts was nominated by George Bush. What better way for Roberts to prove that he’s no “Bush judge” than to vote with the liberals? So that’s another motivation…

Thirdly, I’ve noticed a tendency in Roberts—long before Trump became president—to vote in the way that is least likely to upset the status quo apple cart. For example, in the case of Obamacare, Roberts found a “creative” way to avoid a bold overturning of a bill that had been passed by Congress…

Today’s decision by Roberts falls along those lines – to choose the least disruptive path in terms of keeping the status quo.

Jonathan Chait’s misleading guide for liberals trying to figure out what happened

The New Neo Posted on by

I have a clue for Jonathan Chait: he knows very little about conservatives. For example:

One universal fact of political life is that people tend not to enjoy highlighting faults committed by their own side, and often respond to others bringing up behavior they don’t want to defend outright by deflecting blame.

Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan – you must not have done much hanging out on the right, because the right’s favorite occupation (perhaps even more beloved than trashing the left) is to trash the Republican Party.

Chait continues:

…[W]while few leftists go so far as to explicitly advocate violent or destructive acts, refraining from criticism of violent protests is, among parts of the far left, almost a social norm.

A social norm. In other words, it’s become required groupthink to wink at violence and excuse it away. And I would say that many leftists are also explicitly advocating destructive acts these days.

More:

The preconditions that permitted these events to go forward are the spread of distinct, illiberal norms throughout some progressive institutions over the last half-dozen years. When I wrote about the phenomenon in 2015, a common response was to dismiss it as the trivial hijinks of some college students, a distraction from the true threats to democratic values. It certainly was (and remains) true that the right poses a vastly greater danger to liberalism than does the far left.

Chait basically has no idea what he’s dealing with. As someone who’s looked at political life from both sides now, I can say in no uncertain terms that old-fashioned liberalism – the kind I grew up with, the kind that valued free speech and liberty, the kind that would never condone violent riots and destruction of property – has far more in common with conservatism than it does with the far left. Conservatives are Chait’s friends here, not his enemies. But he’s utterly unaware of it.

Chait continues:

Nonetheless, it is an error to jump from the fact that right-wing authoritarian racism is far more important to the conclusion that left-wing illiberalism is completely unimportant.

The cluelessness continues. Chait equates “the right” with “right-wing authoritarian racism.” I guess he believes his own propaganda.

Both American public opinion and many institutions have moved left on race and gender during this time. It is a positive change opening humane new possibilities for reform, but it has come along with some illiberal side effects.

No Jonathan dearie, they’re not “side effects” that will fade away once the wonderful humane goal is reached. The goal will never be reached, and the side effects are essential and will not be dropped from the program. Some day you may find yourself the target. Do you not study history at all?

…[The left] frequently collapses the distinction between words and action — a distinction that is the foundation of the liberal model — by describing opposing beliefs as a safety threat.

I feel like it might be time to start screaming at Jonathan, because maybe if I talk louder he’ll hear me. That distinction may be “the foundation of the liberal model” – a foundation that conservatives share, by the way – but it is not the foundation of the leftist model. The foundation of the leftist model is “whatever gets us power.”

I’m going to stop there, because anything I’d say about the rest of Chait’s piece is either irrelevant or redundant.

But why, you might ask, do I care about Chait’s inability to understand the danger the far left represents not just to the right, or to the US, but to beliefs and values he professes to hold? Because, at least theoretically, old-fashioned liberals who believe in those old liberal values like freedom of speech, and the difference between words and acts, could – if they stopped thinking that conservatives are their evil racist enemies – find common ground with them to fight the evils of a far left that threatens us all.

I doubt it will ever happen. And Chait’s article is a good example of why.

Education and the New White Man’s Burden of the Left

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the way the leftist mantras go:

All white people are responsible for the sins of every white person throughout time.

Unlike whites, not only are all non-white people not collectively responsible for the sins of other non-white people, but non-white people are responsible for no sins. Even the individual non-white person is not responsible for his/her own individual sins.

Instead, white people are responsible for the sins of non-white people as well. If a non-white person commits a crime, for example, it’s because he/she has been driven to it by a condition caused by white people, such as poverty, injustice, and unemployment.

I wrote the above before I saw this letter from an anonymous person self-identified as a UC Berkeley professor of history. Here’s an excerpt:

…I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a narrative of white guilt.

If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam.

These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department…

The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is.

No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd. For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.

Near the end of the letter, the author – who describes him/herself as a “person of color” – writes:

The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating. No other group in America is systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.

No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites.

This is the same message Shelby Steele delivered in the video I posted previously today. It’s something various black conservative academics have been saying for quite some time now. To me, it rings true and makes psychological sense. But it’s been drowned out, for the most part. Why is that?

I believe it’s because it’s a tough-love type of message, hard to hear and even harder to act on. It is also more cerebral than the competing message, which is deeply emotional and shouted to the rooftops by the MSM and just about every cultural institution in the US today. How can the quiet message of the Shelby Steeles of the world compete?

The NY Times was clever in pushing its deeply mendacious 1619 Project to rewrite American history. Never mind that historians across the land – even historians sympathetic to the left – spoke out against it and tried to correct it. Their cries of “False!” haven’t won the day, because I’m sorry to say that there are way too many people uninterested in the facts as opposed to the emotionally satisfying narrative, and believing history is just a bunch of competing narratives anyway. Why not come up with the narrative you want to be true, and spread it around?

All one has to do is watch the statues being pulled down or defaced these days – including those of abolitionists and people such Lincoln – to understand that the “America and its history are irredeemably evil” message has won the day, at least with enough people willing to act on it and enough people supposedly in charge of our institutions willing to step aside and let them do it.

How else to explain the inclusion of the destruction of monuments to those who fought against slavery? No heroes are allowed to remain – certainly no old white heroes – in the story of America’s original sin of racism. All are collectively guilty.

The seeds of this were planted long ago – even earlier than this passage from Allan Bloom’s 1987 work The Closing of the American Mind:

Contrary to much contemporary wisdom, the United States has one of the longest uninterrupted political traditions of any nation in the world. What is more, that tradition is unambiguous; its meaning is articulated in simple, rational speech that is immediately comprehensible and powerfully persuasive to all normal human beings. America tells one story: the unbroken, ineluctable progress of freedom and equality. From its first settlers and its political foundings on, there has been no dispute that freedom and equality are the essence of justice for us. No one serious or notable has stood outside this consensus…All significant political disputes have been about the meaning of freedom and equality, not about their rightness. Nowhere else is there a tradition or a culture whose message is so distinct and unequivocal…

But the unity, grandeur and attendant folklore of the founding heritage was attacked from so many directions in the last half-century that it gradually disappeared from daily life and from textbooks. It all began to seem like Washington and the cherry tree—not the sort of thing to teach children seriously. What is influential in the higher intellectual circles always ends up in the schools. The leading ideas of the Declaration began to be understood as eighteenth-century myths or ideologies. Historicism, in Carl Becker’s version (The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, 1922) both cast doubt on the truth of the natural rights teaching and optimistically promised that it would provide a substitute. Similarly Dewey’s pragmatism—the method of science as the method of democracy, individual growth without limits, especially natural limits—saw the past as radically imperfect and regarded our history as irrelevant or as a hindrance to rational analysis of our present. Then there was Marxist debunking of the Charles Beard variety, trying to demonstrate that there was no public spirit, only private concern for property, in the Founding Fathers, thus weakening our convictions of the truth or superiority of American principles and our heroes (An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 1913). Then the Southern historians and writers avenged the victory of the antislavery Union by providing low motives for the North (incorporating European critiques of commerce and technology) and idealizing the South’s way of life. Finally, in curious harmony with the Southerners, the radicals in the civil rights movement succeeded in promoting a popular conviction that the Founding was, and the American principles are, racist…

Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.

Again, contemplate that that was published in 1987 and probably written somewhat earlier. The ground was prepared long ago, and what Bloom wrote in his book could be considered a sort of prophetic vision of things to come, but a prophecy of the logical rather than the extra-sensory variety.

NBC goes after The Federalist and enlists Google in the campaign

The New Neo Posted on by

The goal is to starve conservative outlets of money and ultimately reduce their reach, leaving the MSM the only ones standing.

The accusation in this case? This:

Criticizing the media.

NBC wrote a story and demanded that Google do something about Google ads appearing on The Federalist.

“The Federalist published an article claiming the media had been lying about looting and violence during the protests, which were both included in the report sent to Google.”

Another complaint was about comments at the Federalist that NBC thinks are racist. But under present law and usage, comments have not been considered the responsibility of sites such as The Federalist, or blogs such as this one. I police mine to a certain extent, but that’s a personal preference.

NBC also refers to The Federalist as a “far-right” site. Ludicrous. I read the Federalist regularly and it’s one of the best, most well-reasoned, most basic conservative and somewhat libertarian sites on the internet. Nothing “far” about it, except to the left.

Oh, and the NBC division devoted to this sort of thing is called the “NBC News Verification Unit.” So apparently NBC has its own little MiniTruth, dedicated to trolling rival conservative sites and reporting them to Teacher Google.

See also this post at Legal Insurrection for more information.

Every American should be outraged at this. But I assume at this point that many (most?) will either not hear about it, or will just shrug and say “Well, they deserved it, they’re racist liars.”

Oh, and as the LI post points out:

I mean, hello, has anyone ever ventured into the cesspool of YouTube comments? Anyone? Google should be banning itself, if the standard were equally applied.

Also under attack is ZeroHedge; I’m not especially familiar with that one. But I am extremely familiar with the Federalist. And I’m extremely familiar with YouTube comments, which are the Wild West and often quite a repository of all sorts of hate.

I don’t have ads on my site. I could get a little revenue from them, but not enough to make a difference, and I don’t like the look of ads nor the way they slow a site down. And I don’t want to be beholden to an ad provider; I’d rather just ask for money directly.

Which reminds me…I may do that soon. I’m obviously not the most effective business person on earth.

[ADDENDUM: Please see this as well.]

Re-education camps for us kulaks

The New Neo Posted on by

This guy is advocating it:

On Monday, Palmer informed his 330,000 Twitter followers that conservatives cannot be teachers, police officers, doctors, lawyers, coaches or hold any position of management or leadership. In fact, Palmer doesn’t even think conservatives are human beings and should only be allowed menial labor jobs until he determines they are ready to join the human race.

“Conservatives CANNOT be teachers, police officers, doctors, lawyers, coaches, or bosses. It’s constitutionally unfair to others who are subjected to the conservative’s deranged judgment. Conservatives can do menial work until they’re ready to join the human race,” he said…

“We should rehabilitate any conservatives who are willing to try. We should pay for them to undergo therapy and retraining so they can understand the world around them. But first we must get them out of positions of influence, because they’re infringing on the rights of others,” he added.

One of the responses to the tweets (Palmer’s tweets themselves are now removed) was “Ok, Stalin.” Actually, I wonder whether Palmer is even aware of Soviet history, or that of Cambodia. But it doesn’t really matter, because it probably wouldn’t change his mind.

Perhaps you can dismiss Palmer as being on the fringe, although with a third of a million followers it wouldn’t seem that way. But the speed at which events are moving indicates that today’s fringe can easily be tomorrow’s mainstream, and even those who are against something like this could already be afraid to speak up.

And isn’t something akin to this policy already being followed, to a certain extent? Universities only have a few conservatives left as professors and I’m not at all sure that any conservatives remain as administrators. Teachers, likewise. Mainstream journalism, for the most part, also has been purged and the process is being further refined, with the remaining conservatives and/or moderates relegated to what the left calls Faux News. The left is now busy getting rid of scientists who are not following the leftist party line. And social media platforms are disproportionately banning conservative voices.

And then there’s that Utopian street fair Summer of Love extravaganza in Seattle known as CHAZ:

Almost immediately, activists established a social structure based on a “reverse hierarchy of oppression”: Native American, black, and trans women are the highest authority; diversity determines individual social status; and whites are called upon to perform rituals of atonement. Through a series of speeches and community gatherings, activists have sought to implement the social theory of “decolonization,” which, in the words of Black Lives Matter activist Nikkita Oliver, means overthrowing capitalism, eliminating the structures of “patriarchy, white supremacy, and classism,” and returning the land of the autonomous zone to displaced Native American tribes.

In practice, the CHAZ leadership has taken small steps toward reversing the power structure and redistributing resources. Black and Native American speakers have been “centered” in leadership roles in all community meetings, with white audience members asked to “move past guilt or fragility” and “commit to long-term action and accountability.” At one evening event, an indigenous-rights activist with a purple bandana wrapped around his face announced a campaign for immediate small-scale reparations: “I want you to give $10 to one African-American person from this autonomous zone,” he said to a large crowd gathered on a baseball field. “White people, I see you. I see every one of you, and I remember your faces. You find that African-American person and you give them $10.”

Though activists have largely succeeded in creating a multiracial coalition, the CHAZ leaders have sometimes adopted policies of explicit segregation, with some spaces reserved for BIPOC—“Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.” Activist Marcus Henderson, an urban farmer with an engineering degree from Stanford, created a shared agricultural project in Cal Anderson Park with a sign announcing: “THIS GARDEN IS FOR BLACK AND INDIGENOUS FOLKS AND THEIR PLANT ALLIES.” As Henderson told reporters, the urban garden is a response to “the question of how Black people have been disenfranchised for so long” and a demonstration of “collective land ownership, taking back property and really making it work for the people.”

Who are the true racists here?

Please read the whole thing.

Coleman Hughes: our moral confusion

The New Neo Posted on by

I agree with Coleman Hughes that the images we see on videos such as George Floyd’s death tap into older images in a way that arouses emotion rather than logic:

An article written by Hughes can be found here.

Hughes is about 24 years old, which I find encouraging in terms of hope for the younger generation. Here he uses the kind of thinking I gravitate to: logic based on evidence. As I wrote earlier today, I think the majority of people are more than willing to ignore such things in favor of emotion. Our current educational system, the MSM, and social media platforms such as Twitter reward and magnify emotion over reason, accentuating and augmenting that human tendency.

[NOTE: Pure logic without any emotion can sometimes produce awful results as well.]

Orthodox Jews in NY fight back against their oppressor de Blasio

The New Neo Posted on by

In addition, there’s this lawsuit:

Two Catholic priests and a trio of Orthodox Jews are suing Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo — accusing them of an “unprecedented abuse of power” in shuttering houses of worship while supporting mass protests…

“These orders, both the emergency stay-home and reopening plan declarations, clearly discriminate against houses of worship,” their attorney, Christopher Ferrara, said in a statement. “They are illegally content-based, elaborate, arbitrary and pseudo-scientific.”