Kevin D Williamson on New York City Council’s perverse choice of heroes: 

The Communist movement worldwide murdered some 100 million people over the course of the 20th century. The Soviet enterprise specifically, to which Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were fiercely committed — they are described as “devoted” in the Soviet literature — had at the time of the Rosenbergs’ recruiting already intentionally starved to death some 8 million people in Ukraine for the purposes of political terror. I do not wish to include them here, but put “Holodomor” into Google images if you want a visual indicator of this. 

Janice Fiamengo on toxic feminism: 

Repeating the [‘male privilege’] mantra is a hazard to your mental and emotional health. If you come to believe it, it requires your shame as a man.

John Galt on leftist thuggery and tantrums: 

So inured are we to the childish, yet violent behaviour of the left, that for the most part we are more disgusted than surprised, but could you imagine the opposite happening? A bunch of sneering Young Conservatives turning up to protest at the Labour Party conference? No – me neither. This is the fundamental problem at the heart of the left – that when their arguments are rejected by the electorate, they don’t seek better arguments, they just reach into their grab-bag of socialist solutions for what has worked in the past and try and apply that. The problem being that strikes and sit-ins and the rest of the panoply of student union politics seldom works in the real world for the simple fact that the real world is not made up of 20-somethings who’ve never had a job and have too much time on their hands. As the left crumbles, expect more intimidation and “Direct Action,” but the more they do it, the more the general populace will become alienated by it and contemptuous of those who practice it.

Regarding the above, our dear friend Laurie Penny offers her wisdom. 

And added via the comments, Matthew Hennessey on “progressive” priorities: 

How else to explain the decision earlier this year to allow 33-year-old Rebecca Wax to graduate from the Fire Academy despite having failed the Functional Skills Test five times? The FST was designed to mimic the conditions of an actual fire. Probationary fire-fighters are required to complete a gruelling six-floor obstacle course while hauling 50 pounds of gear and breathing through an oxygen tank. Wax succeeded in completing the course on her sixth try but took nearly four minutes longer to do so than is typically permitted. Nevertheless, she was allowed to graduate and was assigned to Engine 259 in Sunnyside, Queens. FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro admitted at a city council hearing in December that the department had lowered the fitness bar to allow more women to pass the test.

Dramatically lowering standards of competence puts lives at risk, both of fire-fighters and the public, but apparently what matters is that we mustn’t have a fire department that’s mostly male.

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