Conservative editorial and political commentary.

Stupidity in media, education and government.

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Separatist Indoctrination at Brown University
In one of the most finely written pieces I've ever had the pleasure to read, Alex Schulman (writing in FrontPage) spells out the intellectual decay at one of America's preeminent Ivy League schools. It's a must read!

The administration backpedaled almost immediately, coddling the criminals who stole the papers, and convening a "faculty forum" for healing (read: appeasing the offended blacks and ashamed white leftists) where not a single speaker coherently supported the Herald's perfectly ethical decision to run the advertisement. It was during Horowitz-gate that I finally saw, in all its glory, how elite schools had turned their back on every decent, tolerant, humanist, liberal value we are supposed to stand for and how, in the process, the academic left has made race virtually impossible to discuss in an intellectual manner.

Read the whole piece here>>
posted by Kevin Kelley at 8:13 AM

 
But What About the U.N.?
Jonah Goldberg, writing in National Review, highlights some of the stupid arguments you're likely to come across. The following passages are instructive.....

One is tempted to explain the very concept of "sovereign" in "sovereign state," but since those who use this argument are already deeply antagonistic to the idea that America has any right to do anything on its own, let's just skip right past that. Instead, let's go to the moral heart of the matter. People who think we must go through the U.N. seem to believe that the U.N. is an objectively neutral or moral institution. In their eyes, getting approval from the U.N. is like getting approval from a judge or a priest. Or, they think the U.N. is where the nations of the world put aside their petty self-interest and do whatever is in the best interests of humanity.

There's only one problem with this. None of the nations in the U.N. — especially the permanent members of the Security Council — are acting on such pure motives. France isn't opposed to invading Iraq out of an abiding love of peace. It's opposed to an American invasion largely because France has been trading with Iraq for years, despite the sanctions. France has billions of dollars in oil contracts it doesn't want to lose. Which is why, according to numerous accounts, the French have made it known that if they can keep their existing contracts, they will probably approve a U.S. invasion.

Or, consider Russia. Russia's foot-dragging is also largely about oil — and securing the $8 billion Iraq already owes them. But Russia also wants the U.S. to turn a blind eye to its military abuses in Chechnya and Georgia. And, by the way, a precondition for China's vote is tacit American approval of a Chinese crackdown on separatist Muslim Uighurs. Now, how is it that an American invasion of Iraq is somehow morally superior with U.N. approval if that approval can only be bought by American support for bloodshed elsewhere? Altruism and charity aren't the coin of the realm on the Security Council; blood and oil are. As the editors of National Review put it in the latest issue: "We will leave it to the shrinks to determine why American liberals consider it a mark of morality in foreign policy when that policy coincides with Russian and French strategies that are themselves arrived at for the crassest of reasons. In general, making 'international opinion' the benchmark for right and wrong is a mistake, since so much of it is driven by fear, self-interest, and greed."

Read the whole piece here>>
posted by Kevin Kelley at 1:32 PM

 
NPR spins for Torricelli
There's media bias and then there's media bias. The latter usually involves leaving inconvenient facts out of a story, which NPR did spectacularly this morning when reporting the meltdown of Robert "the Torch" Torricelli's Senate campaign yesterday. The New Jersey Democrat, having been outed as the crook that he is, was trailing heavily in the polls this last week against GOP newcomer Douglas Forrester.

With control of the Senate hanging on several races that are polling as statistical dead heats, the Democrats came up with a plan to have Torricelli drop out and be replaced by a more likable candidate. There's only one problem--established election law prohibits doing this within 48 days of the election. You would think that this would be a newsworthy item in the NPR reporting?

Perhaps if the candidate were Republican it might have made it into the piece, but instead NPR decided to ignore the legal aspects, moving quickly to tell the heartwarming story of how the Democrats had previously been suffering under the weight of the Torricelli albatross, but could now shop for a new, more honest candidate--implying that somehow this had something to do with clearing their good name.

At the moment, Hispanic Rep. Bob Menendez is most likely to fit the Democratic strategy since the laws can always be bent or broken if it helps a member of an established victim group.

From Fox News......

New Jersey electoral law permits the replacement of a candidate on a statewide ticket up to 48 days before the election. Torricelli, whose campaign was torpedoed by mounting allegations of corruption, missed the deadline by 12 days.

But laws apparently don't apply when they conflict with what works best for Democrats.....

Democratic officials contended that county clerks would have "ample opportunity" to substitute a new name for Torricelli's, and that voter confusion would result otherwise.

The reason why there are laws against this is to prevent "bait-and-switch" tricks like this one. The Democrats have already held their primary in which two or more candidates were already presented to voters. Those voters cast their ballots, and now the Democratic party wants to void the voters choice under the concept that Democratic candidates are simply interchangeable if it helps them win. The intellectually honest way to look at this is whether you would stand for it if the situation were reversed, and you can bet that if the Republicans tried something like this the Democrats would come unglued. Sadly, this is a lesson lost on the modern Democratic party.

Kevin Kelley
posted by Kevin Kelley at 8:59 AM

 
Alert--Conservative Thought Smuggled Into Boulder--Something Should Be Done!
As many of you know, I like to highlight local journalism (mostly at the end a pike, although I wish it were otherwise). Surprising though it might be, the editor of the Boulder Weekly is something of a conservative--he might call himself a libertarian--I don't know for sure, but his writing takes a distinctly conservative bent. Here is Wayne Laugesen drawing a connection between the modern ACLU and the Ku Klux Klan.

Note that while the following passage makes a direct connection, the article itself works more toward a philosophical one. Nonetheless, Wayne once again sticks it to the Boulder liberal community which fashions itself as the pinnacle of tolerance while aligning itself so often with groups that would gladly remove ideas and freedoms from the public square.

"In a 1947 Supreme Court case, justices picked up this [separation of church and state] metaphor and elevated it to a virtual rule of constitutional law," Dreisbach explains. "This misinterpretation has become the central metaphor that's used to restrict the role that people in communities of faith can play in the public marketplace of ideas."

Dreisbach and Hamburger, who worked separately, each blame former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black for erecting the wall and promoting the myth that the First Amendment regulates religious expression. Black's motive? Hatred and fear.

"Justice Black was a member of the Ku Klux Klan who was nurtured on anti-Catholicism," says Dreisbach. "His greatest fear was the Catholic parochial school. He sought to erect this high, impregnable wall of separation as a way of ensuring that Catholic schools would be marginalized."

I always like to note that "separation of church and state" is not a direct quote from the Constitution. The "establishment" clause simply prohibits the government from taking a particular side in religious matters, thus removing the danger of a state sponsored religion enjoying preferential treatment over other religions (like the Church of England). Whenever I hear some otherwise well educated adult arguing that we shouldn't have a congressional chaplain or the words "In God We Trust" on our money, I just cringe....."It's because the Supreme Court screwed up-Ok"!

Read the whole piece here>>
Kevin Kelley
posted by Kevin Kelley at 1:46 PM

 
University IQs
The following letter to the editor was published in the Raleigh N.C. News and Observer, and constitutes one of the more arrogant and sanctimonious examples of what's wrong in academia. Read it and puke! Thanks to David Horowitz's wonderful website Frontpage for the lead.

Voting IQs
Regarding John Leo's Sept. 17 Op-ed article "Faculties in need of balance":

So John Leo and the (oh so diverse!) American Enterprise Institute think there is insufficient diversity of political affiliation among university faculty. Their poll numbers show that Republicans are a small minority of the professoriate. True, and rightly so.

In seeking faculty, universities look for people who can analyze and discuss matters of some complexity, who are unafraid to challenge the wisdom of simple solutions, and who have a sense of social responsibility toward those who cannot buy influence. Such people tend to be put off by a political party dominated by those who believe dogmatically in the infallibility of the marketplace as a solution to all economic problems, or else in the infallibility of scripture as a guide to morality.

In short, universities want people of some depth, subtlety and intelligence. People like that usually vote for the Democrats. So what?

Lawrence Evans
Durham

The writer is professor emeritus of physics at Duke University.

Everything in this letter is deserving of ridicule, but one of the less obvious points I'd like to highlight is the part about the "oh so diverse!" American Enterprise Institute. Evans appears oblivious to the fact that all those conservative think tanks out there are populated with the orphaned conservative talent that is denied a home and intentionally silenced by the likes of Dr. Evans and his cronies on the hiring committees. In their smug wisdom, they have determined that some ideas are just too dangerous for debate--and besides, those pesky conservatives are always bringing up things like history--getting us off topic about how great socialism would be if only genocidal sociopaths didn't arrive on the scene in the absence of property rights, freedom of religion, freedom of expression and people with the courage to stand up and defend individual liberty. And this guy probably considers himself an intellectual!

Kevin Kelley
posted by Kevin Kelley at 11:47 AM