Young Minds, Fresh Ideas
First, the bad news:
Today’s college students are tomorrow’s attorneys, teachers, professors, policymakers, legislators, and judges. If, for example, a large fraction of college students believe, however incorrectly, that offensive speech is unprotected by the First Amendment, that view will inform the decisions they make as they move into positions of increasing authority later in their careers.
The results [of the survey] are notable for several reasons. First, the fraction of students who view the use of violence as acceptable is extremely high. While percentages in the high teens and 20s are “low” relative to what they could be, it’s important to remember that this question is asking about the acceptability of committing violence in order to silence speech. Any number significantly above zero is concerning… A surprisingly large fraction of students believe it is acceptable to act — including resorting to violence — to shut down expression they consider offensive. And a majority of students appear to want an environment that shields them from being exposed to views they might find offensive.
And in somewhat related news:
Pomona College emailed students Monday night to announce there would be no penalties imposed on Pomona students who were “present and did block access to buildings” during [Heather] Mac Donald’s speech, preventing audience members from getting into the venue or, for those few who made it in earlier, exiting.
Details of the incident, in which Ms Mac Donald had to be escorted off campus by police officers for her own safety, can be found here.
Update:
And because the above isn’t quite bad enough, here’s a video of students informing us that the masked thugs and sociopaths known as Antifa are merely trying to “educate” anyone who disagrees with them. For those who missed it, here they are randomly “educating” some young women.
student who complains that “Your protests are distracting me from learning the material that I paid to come here to college to learn”
Absolutely, it’s utterly self-indulgent and speaks to the character, and narcissism, of the people involved. The claims of “white supremacy” and of being “oppressed” are nakedly opportunist, especially at a college that costs $65,000 a year and which indulges in pro-minority racial favouritism in its admissions. Of course such favouritism often has consequences, in that in order to make up the “diversity” numbers, colleges may have to admit students who are ill-suited for degree-level work, even by the degraded standards found in some departments.
Fortunately, ‘activism’ provides a near-perfect excuse for any personal inadequacy. If you’re not a great student, or even a competent one, you can always invoke racism or “white supremacy” – even pre-emptively – as explaining why your grades are substandard, or why you can’t spell or structure sentences properly, or even turn up on time. Whatever the personal failing is, it’s the go-to excuse, and one that many educators and academic bureaucrats are inclined to indulge, however dishonest and preposterous it may be.
From the AJ+ reportlet on Reedies Against Racism:
… protesters say the course only gives one side of the story. So they posted alternative readings, focusing on racism in ancient Greece and Rome.
One of the alternative readings is from a transcript of an Angela Davis speech on the subject of her 1969 clash with administrators at UCLA over “her affiliations with the communist party”.
The other is Benjamin Isaac’s 2004 book, The Invention of Racism in Classical Iniquity. I’m no expert on this and in any case haven’t read the book (and so am happy to be corrected by someone who is and/or who has), but the introduction of that book here does not exactly inspire confidence:
LESS THAN A CENTURY AGO nobody would write or wish to read a book about racism. Indeed nobody was aware that such a thing existed, for the word does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) of 1910. The term racialism has been around a little longer: It first appeared in print in 1907. Does this mean that racism did not exist before the twentieth century? In fact there is a consensus that it originated in the nineteenth century and has its intellectual roots in that century, although some scholars give it a somewhat longer history.
While the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) does indeed date the use of racism and racialism back to the beginning of the 20th Century, the word race used to express pretty much if not exactly the same concept is a good deal older – as the very same dictionary points out:
1572 I. B. Let. to R. C. sig. B.i The Englishe race ouerrunne and daily spoiled.
1612 R. COVERTE True Rep. Englishman 39 He is a white man and of the Race of the Tartares.
Isaacs’ introduction continues:
In this book I shall argue that early forms of racism, to be called proto-racism, were common in the Graeco-Roman world. My second point in this connection is that those early forms served as prototype for modern racism which developed in the eighteenth century.
That sounds an awful lot like … well, actually, not just sounds like, but is a key claim from Karl Popper’s 1945 The Open Society and its Enemies. And yet, surprisingly, Isaac’s book contains just a single reference to Popper – and even that is given in a footnote which itself is referring to someone criticising Popper. Again, I’m no expert, but the fact that he doesn’t mention Popper directly at all does little to inspire confidence.
What’s further aggravating is that the current system as it exists would allow for those RAR students to introduce those readings into their course assignments. In fact, unless I’ve misunderstood the purpose of higher education, those RAR students would be positively encouraged to seek out independent research on the topic – wouldn’t they?
In any event, I see absolutely no justification for their histrionics (pun intended).
Wasn’t that first lecture in this introductory course at Reed a discussion of the Epic of Gilgamesh? I guess contemplating life in ancient Mesopotamia is “Eurocentric” now.
In order to deconstruct something, that thing must be constructed in the first instance. Are these students, who are presumably eighteen year old college freshman, already experts in this material such that they can move directly to trashing it?
Which suggests the question isn’t one of remembering, it’s one of what they’re allowed to get away with. And who is doing the allowing.
That is a very good question.
Inured as we inevitably become to violence, I was truly shocked by the brazenness of the ‘Black Bloc’ at the recent G20 summit in Hamburg. The (rather suspiciously sanitised) reports shown on mainstream media were bad enough, but watching some of the action in real time on YouTube and LiveLeak, with what can only be described as squadrons of black-clad thugs marching unimpeded down the streets of a major European city (firebombing every vehicle in their path and destroying much other property besides) was chilling. This is inexcusable and unforgivable.
If maintaining order was beyond the police, why weren’t the Armed Forces called in? Perhaps I’m an especially bad person and out of touch with the general sentiment, but I wouldn’t have been distressed to see these thugs mown down without mercy. For a modern state that usually can’t spend enough money on micro-managing its citizens’ lives to cede power so readily raises all sorts of questions.
If you’ll permit me to be bitterly cynical for a moment, these thugs are state agents and so no power has been ceded.
(I don’t literally believe this. But it’s a nagging viewpoint that I think deserves consideration at least; and perhaps the eloquent comment section here can better help me put it to rest.)
So, wearing my three-belled Cynic’s Hat, I’m going to assert that the first priority of a modern state is its self-preservation and self-perpetuation.
(This is not a criticism of modern states; it’s just that states lacking this priority tend to vanish and be replaced by states that do have it. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.)
Relevant to the preservation of a modern state is the destruction of possible threats and competing power centers while maintaining or increasing its own power and perceived legitimacy. The kind of black bloc thugs you observe, let us call them blugs, assist in all these four. They may not be on state payroll, but they function, objectively speaking, as state agents. Blugs can smash up social network nodes the state disapproves of, and the state can wring its hands while looking like it didn’t crack down personally. Blugs can be directed at targets with a hint-hint-punch-that-nazi. The existence of blugs excuses more state power, more state oversight, supposedly because these emergency measures are needed to stop the horrible things blugs are doing and the state is the only thing that can protect you from the blugs (read: the state forbids anyone else to stop the blugs). As blugs do not pose a threat to the state, the state does not immediately stop them, but allows them to run amok until such time as the state decides its perceived legitimacy would be better served by rounding up the blugs and doing horrible things to them. Probably right after the blugs have intimidated a suitable number of targets and/or are starting to go off the reservation.
If maintaining order was beyond the police, why weren’t the Armed Forces called in?
In Hamburg, likely fear of bad press. I imagine if the Polizei and/or Army were rolled out in force there would have been ululation about the rise of the Fourth Reich sufficient to cause earthquakes.
In the US and A we have the Posse Comitatus Act which specifically prohibits the use of Federal armed forces in a direct law enforcement role, although under certain legal and regulatory guidelines they can render assistance to civilian authorities (to include the rozzers).
OTOH, a governor can roll out the National Guard, but the chances of Governor Moonbeam Brown sending in a mechanized infantry company to shut up the clowns in Berkeley are non if not zero, asymptotically approaching zero.
An interesting case that went into the gray area occurred in 1957 when Governor Orval Fabus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block a group of black children from attending a hitherto all white high school. President Eisenhower’s response was to send in the very Federal 101st Airborne to escort and protect the kids, then federalized the Arkansas National Guard taking their command and control away from the state.
OTOOH, the Insurrection act does allow Federal troops to be used for natural disasters and the like, as well as conditions of lawlessness wherein a state is unable to maintain order (e.g., LA riots). Getting back to East Berlin on the Bay, the key word is “unable”, not “unwilling”, but if “anti”fa (or similar) is deemed to be an insurrectionist group, in theory Federal troops could be used, and comedy would ensue.
@Micro
Your analysis is persuasive. “Blugs” provide the state with plausible deniability until such time as the state chooses to intervene in order to increase its power over the hoi polloi.
Let me also suggest, the state’s coddling of the “blugs” for a time dovetails with the general statist/Leftist antipathy toward self-defense. Diminishing/removing/criminalizing self-defense allows the “blugs” to run rampant with little fear of grassroots retaliation. This places the state in the position of being the guarantor of personal security, but, as courts have held in the U.S., the state has no duty to protect individual citizens. In other words, if I’m under attack and call the police, the police do not have to respond. Further, I have no cause of action against the state if the police choose to eat donuts rather than respond to my frantic call for assistance while confronting a home invasion.
It’s no coincidence that the bulk of these incidents occur in places which have Progressive/Left governments.
@Farnsworth
Accurate primer on U.S. law. Take a pickled egg out of petty cash.
From a couple of weeks ago:
Douglas Murray, here.
the stage of pushing faeces through someone’s letter box
Again with the faeces. Most children outgrow fascination with their own shit at about age 3. The “ring the doorbell and run, leaving a flaming bag of dogshit on the stoop” stunt is more typical of immature schoolboys. I think this speaks to the emotional maturity of the “Antifa” cretins.
Sorry kiddos, infantile ≠ “transgressive”.
I think this speaks to the emotional maturity of the “Antifa” cretins.
They do seem to be people who were, shall we say, damaged in transit.
Above: Your moral superior.
Though I think the larger problem is the reaction to their thuggery and attempts to intimidate – or rather, the inadequacy of reaction. There will always be thugs, sociopaths and delinquent misfits, and there will always be excuses and activities that attract them in high concentrations. The problem, I think, is that these nasty little creatures are, for the most part, not being met, and met promptly, with suitable or sufficient pushback. Instead, we see excuses and open encouragement by older, more statusful people who are scarcely less delinquent. Many of whom are left in charge of educating teenagers.
David:
I’ve seen opinion polls that show that between 55-60% of Americans have a positive view of Bernie Sanders (a Socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union), 60-65% have a positive view of Michelle Obama (a more radical and less articulate version of her husband), and I’ve also seen polls that show that about 40% of white Americans have a positive view of Black Lives Matter, which is basically a militant Marxist black nationalist group. As if that’s not enough, kids in American schools (from Kindergarten to University) believe the United States invented slavery. What we are witnessing is the total transformation of American society, and it’s scary as hell.
kids in American schools (from Kindergarten to University) believe the United States invented slavery.
A point touched on previously in the last item here and subsequent comments. And which suggests that it’s unwise for a society to allow the left to gain a chokehold on the education of its children.
Ace had a piece yesterday regarding the creeping politicalization of everything in favor of the left. Thought it very good (link below). Specifically this part
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/371653.php
Ran across this “joke” from a friend. In the context above, I found the background rather…interesting…
It is all about balance, you know.
OTOH, a governor can roll out the National Guard, but the chances of Governor Moonbeam Brown sending in a mechanized infantry company to shut up the clowns in Berkeley are non if not zero, asymptotically approaching zero.
Correct, because we know that Brown doesn’t need to do anything from the state level, that would be unneccesarily repeating what’s already been done at the local level.
With the Shapiro talk and circumstances being the natural extension from what was seen and done before, the campus and civic level quite successfully emphasized that there would be open and free speech—yes, politically free more than financially, but that is a point . . .
I was not aware George Soros hired mercenaries. Or that someone espousing the ideas of Karl Popper would be innately more awful than an Arab prince or Russian billionaire.
I’ve seen opinion polls that show that between 55-60% of Americans have a positive view of Bernie Sanders (a Socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union), 60-65% have a positive view of Michelle Obama (a more radical and less articulate version of her husband), and I’ve also seen polls that show that about 40% of white Americans have a positive view of Black Lives Matter, which is basically a militant Marxist black nationalist group.
Erm??? Hang on a moment while some numbers get looked at . . . .
So, noting that there is indeed the faith focused right wing, Etc—Daesh and their ilk being excellent handy examples of the right wing going out the window internationally, where in the US there has been the recent eruption of articles noting a white christian minority.
Over on the equally extreme left wing are the identity focused Karl Marx variety splittists in the bars and the Adolf Hitler variety lunatics in the streets, along with other identity focused varieties.
In between we have Trump and have had Obama, on the US senior legislative level we have Pelosi and have Feinstein and thus very much in between and quite separate from the right and left wing liberal extremes we have the Conservatives, the ones focusing on getting stuff done . . .
Now of those numbers . . . .
I’ve seen opinion polls that show that between 55-60% of Americans have a positive view of Bernie Sanders (a Socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union), . . . Actually, never mind mind the label for Sanders that all sorts of sides and directions keep waving about, Sanders is proven Conservative, quite rather than left wing.
. . . 60-65% have a positive view of Michelle Obama (a more radical and less articulate version of her husband), . . . Granting that the main focus has been more on President Obama more than first lady Obama, again, quite Conservative.
‘k, given the rather established political reality, those numbers could indeed make sense. Conflating 55% to 65% being in favor of the noted Conservatives, that would indeed leave an opposing ~20% or so on the left wing and ~20% or so on the right wing.
. . . and I’ve also seen polls that show that about 40% of white Americans have a positive view of Black Lives Matter, which is basically a militant Marxist black nationalist group.
Hmmm. Well, with the first two number sets, you state Americans. Not pigeon toed Americans, not purple Americans, not pickyourlabel Americans, just Americans, across the board. And then you shift to counting white Americans, where tossing the Obamas into the first two rather underlines that color keeps being rather irrelevant . . . So this is a totally new and separate set of data. From there, of this quite different observation, the 40% number states that, as you put it, and I’ve also seen polls that show that about 60% of white Americans have a negative view of Black Lives Matter,
And then finally; As if that’s not enough, kids in American schools (from Kindergarten to University) believe the United States invented slavery.
Um. Kids is rather a range there . . . Kids in Kindergarten are also known for believing in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus. Of . . . kids in American schools . . , take 9,900 of same that prefer apples to oranges, and mix into ’em 100 that prefer oranges to apples, and As if that’s not enough, kids in American schools (from Kindergarten to University) prefer oranges to apples.
So I have a question. Regarding: What we are witnessing is the total transformation of American society, and it’s scary as hell. . . .
Can you tell us what that transformation is, how it is taking place, and why you find anything of it to be alarming?
Of the examples you’ve stated, the children reference is irrelevant, and with the political references, at absolute worst, what you are stating is: Yes, welcome to America, this is what we do, have been doing rather well for a couple of centuries, and expect to keep doing rather well . . .
Happily there is a glimmer of hope- colleges that allow this sort of stuff are losing out financially:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/jason-newman-colleges-pay-price-pandering-pc-mob/
Hal:
Bernie Sanders is a conservative?
Can anyone else decode the other nonsense in Hal’s post?
“Or that someone espousing the ideas of Karl Popper would be innately more awful than an Arab prince or Russian billionaire.”
–from a comment above
To be honest, Soros naming his foundation The Open Society Foundation (after Karl Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies”) is a bit like Antifa describing themselves as anti-fascist, while being the most fascist group in the West.
I was not aware George Soros hired mercenaries.
Well, like he’s gonna tell you. He is rumored, and call me crazy but rumors are as good as MSM news these days, to be the money behind moving Atifa and BLM’s around the country. Also note, I did say a George Soros, not necessarily the George Soros. I was responding to Tim Newman’s more general comfort that there exist these tough young men who are not snowflakes. I think it is rather presumptuous that the greater mass of them will side against the leftists, be they leftist snowflakes or not. The problem at its base is not physical, but political. If the political critical mass manipulates the laws and culture as they have continued to do up to today, if the police (polite society’s mercenaries) continue to stand down in the face of antifas and such, a handful of Tim’s friends are not going to make a difference. This rot has infiltrated into our military. If you talk to the average young veteran, a significant number, perhaps even a majority, are copacetic with much leftism.
Can anyone else decode the other nonsense in Hal’s post?
I usually wait for someone else to sift that stuff out. All started to look like word salad to me a couple months ago.
Your protests are distracting me from learning the material that I paid to come here to college to learn
I have a modest proposal. The instructors should announce that any class session interrupted by these little shits will be cancelled and not made up. Any material in that session’s syllabus will, however, remain on the midterms and final exams and no consideration will be given for missed classes whatsoever.
Then sit back and watch the engineering and physics students discourage these kinds of antics.
Surely a couple of AKs would be an even bigger advantage than a shield wall.
My point is that both sides have become rather clever about sneaking raw materials through the police cordons that can be hastily repurposed into short spears and tower shields. I think we can presume that even the police aren’t going to allow antifa to brazenly carry firearms into one of these imbroglios.
Should one side or the other decide to get in a little drilling in basic shield wall and maneuver tactics, they’re going to roll over their opponents without having to fire a shot.
“A point touched on previously in the last item here and subsequent comments. And which suggests that it’s unwise for a society to allow the left to gain a chokehold on the education of its children.”
-a reply from David
Yes, I remember reading about it here. I would guess that if you asked kids in Swedish schools (or anywhere else in the Western world) those same questions you’d get the same answers as the American kids gave. And I do mean kids (BOTH in universities and kindergartens). The only difference between universities and kindergartens is the age of the kinder. Those who need Play-Doh, colouring books and puppies when a “mean” conservative comes to speak at their university are NOT adults.
which suggests that it’s unwise for a society to allow the left to gain a chokehold on the education of its children
That.
Hal has a very idiosyncratic view of the word “Conservative”, which he uses to denote non-partisanship and feeling superior to both sides.
“Focus on the eventual and inevitable sweet release of death. It helps.”
Optimistic nihilism works for me.
I guess we white folks had better give up trying to not be RAYYYCISTS…
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/09/19/activist-seminar-white-people-racist-always-will/
I guess we white folks had better give up trying to not be RAYYYCISTS…
I see that, in what must be a triumph of hope over expectation, she displays her PayPal details.
Seriously, without the benefit of a severe education, would this person achieve anything other than an entry-level, minimum-wage job?
would this person achieve anything other than an entry-level, minimum-wage job?
Well, she achieved getting published in WearYourVoiceMag.com…
Well, she achieved getting published …
Sorry, champ, I should have further qualified my question by adding ‘in a sane universe’.
Hal has a very idiosyncratic view of the word “Conservative”, which he uses to denote non-partisanship and feeling superior to both sides.
Um, details?—do explain yer feelz bit that you’re feeling there, or so . . .
The very intriguing part is watching the two groups of people that you acknowledge there: One group is those of us who see and remain quite comfortable with politics being that wide spectrum from right wing liberal to conservative holding the center and then to left wing liberal—or vice versa, to taste. The other group of people is those who are somehow trapped into seeing only a binary left/right—and who then keep mumbling about the horrors of the other side.
Another analogy that’s popped into mind recently is that of The Stage, that place where all the work gets done, which is flanked by the right wing box seating and the left wing box seating. I’m not certain how large each set of box seating is, but the established fact is that the mere box seating is not the stage, and that the actual players go to and are on the stage.
As far as being known as the right wing liberals vs the left wing liberals vs the conservatives that both flank, for both sets of liberals there is that incessant demand of My agenda is superior because I say it is superior and I don’t have to explain and I have to have it all now!!!!!!!!! Very liberal, that, right wing or left, with no concept of consequence or how to get anything done except scream and point at the other box seating.
By contrast, with the actors on the stage, everything has to get looked at, everything has to get assessed, solutions to issues are proposed and discussed, in detail, all that conservative stuff that separate the conservatives from the ideologues and thus note the conservatives as, well, the Conservatives, instead of being some fictitious “other side” . . .
In the US, Sanders/Obama/Trump/Pelosi/Feinstein are the conservatives on the stage. Especially as the last year of headlines have shown, and continue to show, those stuck in the box seats keep getting very frustrated when doing the idiosyncratic binary math.—I am in my box seating with a value of zero, and everyone else is in that other box seating with a value of one. Sanders/Obama/Trump/Pelosi/Feinstein are outside of my box seating and therefore—and at that point the binary only mechanism seizes, because of course the conservatives are on the stage instead of being in the other box seating, the Conservatives are being watched from both the left and right wing box seating instead of being part of either.
A number of years ago there was a US military careers discussion program—some bit of very good Googlemancy will turn it up—where very bored career military were reminded that there are a lot of options available for career military. As I recall, the program was reported to have gone well, albeit with a rather surreal bit of summarizing by binary only staff claiming that This guy says if we’re bored, we need to go to the other side, and here in the military we call that treason!!!!
For those who successfully took part in the program, they were reminded that when in the US military infantry, there is the the US military artillery. When in the US military artillery, there is the the US military airborne. When in the US military airborne, there is the the US military logistics. When in the US military logistics, there is the the US military intelligence.
Etc.
In just that list alone, all of that list being only US military, that is five different variations, and that was just a random selection of the one US military, of the one US military spectrum. Just like there being the political spectrum, rather than then attempt to only see left/right
In the UK political spectrum, to attempt to ignore the reality of the stage flanked by box seats is even more impossible, because in the UK the conservatives are even The Conservatives, where Conservative Prime Minister May and Conservative Foreign Minister Johnson even have their own titles.—Albeit, not to be confused for Titles, for that see Lords, The House Of. In the UK political spectrum, with the Conservatives being the conservatives and vice versa, on one side is the right wing box seating that is called UKIP, and that lot, and then over on the other side is the left wing box seating that is called Labour, and that lot.
Soooo, all in all, when watching the rather idiosyncratic claim that there can be only right or left, seeing the attempts to ignore the permanent and ongoing and existent reality of the spectrum of left/conservative/right is a bit fascinating and quite puzzling.
Stop digging, @Hal.