I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: President Donald Trump’s, and America’s, greatest asset is the histrionic Left’s willingness to air, proudly, their bats**t insanity for all to see.
The RNC has put together an ad summarizing a demonstration of this willingness.
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: The normalization of madness.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Apparently harassing a sitting United States Senator over fear said Senator might vote for a Supreme Court nominee that might not support a pro-abortion agenda without restriction by sending them coat hangers is a thing now.
The self-defeating left in action: showering Susan Collins with coat hangers. pic.twitter.com/yizm33k8o9
— Adrian Vermeule (@avermeule) June 30, 2018
That this is being sent to Sen. Collins (R-ME), who is openly in favor of legal abortion, is beyond absurd… but perhaps not as absurd as Richard W. Painter, a U.S. Senate candidate from Minnesota!
The circumstances of Justice Kennedy’s resignation must be investigated by the Senate Judiciary Committee before any replacement is considered. The Constitution does not give Trump the power to use underhanded means to induce Supreme Court resignations.https://t.co/S6m5oLg9mV
— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) June 30, 2018
Action of Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America
WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great- Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
The recent term of the United States Supreme Court resulted in numerous 1st Amendment victories for the right to free speech. Workers are now no longer required to subsidize the speech of labor unions and pay the so-called fair share, for example. More importantly, they also defended the right to the free exercise of religion by declaring that religious groups who run crisis pregnancy centers to shill for abortion and supporting the Colorado baker who was punished by unselected bureaucrats who openly were hostile to the Baker’s religious beliefs.
Who would object to letting people say what they want or refuse to say what they don’t want?
Freedom is an obstacle to the Left, who seek compulsion and domination in order to force their Agenda on us. Sadly, one of those who believe in a “right” to compel others is Justice Elena Kagan who whined about how conservatives were “weaponizing the First Amendment”.
Yes, the 1st Amendment is a weapon—it is a defensive weapon that protects us from the likes of people such as Justice Kagan. The New York Times (i.e. the “Old Gray Crone”) joins in on the whining about how the state can’t throttle free speech when it comes to politics by limiting the means and ability to organize and effectively have their voices heard, and how free speech in general is a threat:
“Many on the left have traded an absolutist commitment to free speech for one sensitive to the harms it can inflict.
“Take pornography and street protests. Liberals were once largely united in fighting to protect sexually explicit materials from government censorship. Now many on the left see pornography as an assault on women’s rights.
“In 1977, many liberals supported the right of the American Nazi Party to march among Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Ill. Far fewer supported the free-speech rights of the white nationalists who marched last year in Charlottesville, Va.
“There was a certain naïveté in how liberals used to approach free speech, said Frederick Schauer, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
“‘Because so many free-speech claims of the 1950s and 1960s involved anti-obscenity claims, or civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests, it was easy for the left to sympathize with the speakers or believe that speech in general was harmless,’ he said. ‘But the claim that speech was harmless or causally inert was never true, even if it has taken recent events to convince the left of that. The question, then, is why the left ever believed otherwise.’
“Some liberals now say that free speech disproportionately protects the powerful and the status quo.”
In other words, the Left never supported the principle of free speech, but simply used it as a tool when useful when they were trying to gain power, and abandoned it when they acquired that power and found the principle dangerous to their power.
The California Supreme Court, by declaring that a law that is impossible to follow, effectively banned the sale of new models of semi-automatic handguns.
“The California Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a lawsuit that sought to invalidate a state law requiring new models of semi-automatic handguns to stamp identifying information on bullet casings.
“The court ruled unanimously that gun rights groups could not overturn the law on the grounds that complying with it was impossible. The groups argued that technology did not exist to meet the stamping requirements, and a law couldn’t mandate something that was not possible.
“Writing for six of the justices, Associate Justice Goodwin Liu said impossibility can sometimes lead courts to excuse a failure to comply with a law, but it can’t be the basis for invalidating it.”
News of the Week for July 1st, 2018
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Unwoke things must go.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Apparently, for a university named in part for Gen. Robert E. Lee, it is beyond the pale to have a children’s book about… a horse.
“On March 9, the Washington and Lee University Bookstore and the Lee Chapel Museum Shop removed a book from their shelves after a Washington and Lee (W&L) professor accused the book of painting a sympathetic picture of the Confederate States of America and the Old South.
“The book in question was a children’s book written about Robert E. Lee’s beloved companion and most trusted warhorse, Traveller.
“My Colt: The Story of Traveller was written by Margaret Samdahl, who worked at the Lee Chapel Museum for 13 years. Samdahl says that she decided to write the book to respond to Lee Chapel patrons’ demands for a child-friendly book on Traveller. Using the Special Collections archive at Washington and Lee as well as other research materials available at Leyburn Library on W&L’s campus, Mrs. Samdahl embarked on a decade-long effort to bring the story of Traveller to a younger audience.”
Mandatory “diversity” training and “social justice” workshops are common on college campuses, and increasingly in the real world. However, not only being forced against one’s wishes to be subjected to this brainwashing insanity, but also being forced to pay for that privilege is yet a further turn of the screw, as is the case at a “Multicultural Self-Awareness Workshop” that all Michigan State University Extension employees will be required to attend and pony up $75 to attend.
From their website announcement:
“All MSU Extension employees regardless of funding source or appointment are expected to attend this ‘cornerstone’ multicultural workshop which sets an organizational framework for recognizing, understanding and appreciating differences.
“During this two-day Multicultural Self-Awareness Workshop, participants will explore ways in which to view interactions with people different from themselves. The emphasis is on differences rather than similarities. The workshop focuses on the individual and helps explore belief systems about multiculturalism to identify feelings and values from a multicultural perspective. This intensive learning experience focuses on increasing awareness of several areas of prejudice, discrimination and oppression, including racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism and ableism. Participants are encouraged to reflect on how they’ve learned to think about human differences and on the widespread tendency to view differences within a monocultural view of ‘better than/less than’ thinking. In addition, participants have opportunities to apply what they’re learning to work-related scenarios and explore alternative, more helpful behaviors.”
This is the academic equivalent of making a condemned man pay for the rope with which he is hanged, and with far less dignity.
Of course, the Progressive Left find mathematics to be #Problematic. Unless Progressive “ethics” and “philosophy” are intimately intertwined with the teaching of mathematics, mathematics per se causes “collateral damage” according to a chapter from the textbook “Philosophy of Mathematics Education Today”. The abstract states:
“In this chapter I challenge the idea that mathematics is an unqualified force for good. Instead I show the harm that learning mathematics can inadvertently cause unless it is taught and applied carefully. I acknowledge that mathematics is a widespread force for good but make the novel case that there is significant collateral damage caused by learning mathematics. I describe three ways in which mathematics causes collateral damage. First, the nature of pure of mathematics itself leads to styles of thinking that can be damaging when applied beyond mathematics to social and human issues. Second the applications of mathematics in society can be deleterious to our humanity unless very carefully monitored and checked. Third, the personal impact of learning mathematics on learners’ thinking and life chances can be negative for a minority of less successful students, as well as potentially harmful for successful students. I end with a recommendation for the inclusion of the philosophy and ethics of mathematics alongside its teaching all stages from school to university, to attempt to reduce or obviate the harm caused; the collateral damage of learning mathematics.”
Mathematics is a tool of the Capitalist oppressors!
“Money and thus mathematics is the tool for the distribution of wealth, […] It can therefore be argued that as the key underpinning conceptual tool mathematics is implicated in the global disparities in wealth.”
Mathematics is a tool of the Patriarcy™ and White Supremacy!
“So two of the detrimental effects of images of mathematics that I shall foreground here are first the negative impact on female students following on from the masculine image of mathematics. Second, the negative impact of mathematics related experiences and images on the attitudes and self-esteem of a minority, including many girls and women”.
Mathematics is objective, logical, and rational. While it may be used as a tool of evil or of good, it is still just a tool of understanding and the language we use to understand, as much as is possible, objective phenomena and processes. That ethics and philosophy exist so that we can apply moral restraints on any tool, does not mean that the tool per se is #Problematic in anyway whatsoever. Mathematics, per se, does not and can not cause “collateral damage”. Sometimes an equation is just an equation, and not merely the means of oppression or liberation.
Hat Tip: Campus Reform and National Review.
News of the Week for June 24th, 2018
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