Happy Earth Day!

Five squirrels down and one more to go in order to rid my attic of short and medium term infestation.

Reducing Mother Earth's carbon pawprint one squirrel at a time!

What did you do today to prevent global catastrophe?

Another Contradiction of the Left

...trying to make it illegal for law abiding citizens to own guns while at the same time advocating for porous open borders whereby criminal organizations can smuggle guns into the country from Mexico. 

Home for Liberal Leftists

Some Courageous Princeton Students Fight Back!

Their letter to the president of Princeton here.

The difference between the activist left and right explained in a single paragraph:

Academic discourse consists of reasoned arguments. We simply wish to present our own reasoned arguments and engage you and other senior administrators in dialogue. We will not occupy your office, and, though we respectfully request a minimum of an hour of your time, we will only stay for as long as you wish. We will conduct ourselves in the civil manner that it is our hope to maintain and reinforce as the norm at Princeton.

ESPN is Wrong (as usual) on Mizzou

Howard Bryant begins his article with the following:

Despite its complex web of allegiances and rivals, the dynamic that doomed Missouri system president Tim Wolfe and school chancellor R. Bowen Loftin was quite simple: It was the workers versus the owners, the little versus the big, the invisible versus the invincible.

The power of the Missouri football team provided the fulcrum, because money ultimately forced the action. But so much of the uprising was rooted in the frustration of minority students facing years of entrenched racism. 

 It all stemmed from a movement addressing major offenses that were deemed too trivial by an administration whose only response had been to advise that the slapped get tougher, have thicker skin, get over it.

First, there are no owners of universities, unless, since Missouri is a state school, one thinks that the owners are the tax-payers.  But the president is no more of an owner than the board which appoints him, and no more of an owner than the faculty or the students.  They all "own" the university if we want to call it that.  Second, it's not true that the administration's only response had been to advise that the "slapped get tougher."  It has been reported that the president met with students personally.  As well, it has been reported that one of the drunken students who made the racial slurs was removed from campus until campus disciplinary proceedings run their course.  Third, the reported evidence of "entrenched racism" consisted of a nut who scrawled feces (!) and a couple jerks who spat racial epithets at a school with over 35,000 students.  Are we to think that the student body, professors, and administration at large are by and large racists?  Fourth, though the football team no doubt provided the final muscle to upend the president from his presidency, the power of the football team is overrated.  It is only the action of the football team in combination with the progressive radicals that provided the impetus.  As David French writes,

If you think football players are suddenly all-powerful, imagine a counter-factual — like a “strike” by a few players in solidarity with an athlete wrongfully convicted by a campus sex assault tribunal, or a stand in solidarity with a team chaplain under fire for allegedly offending the LGBT community. Would ESPN fawn all over them, celebrating their courage? Would faculty and radical students extol them as heroes? Would a university president and chancellor step down within 48 hours in response to an athletic cry for religious liberty? Student-athletes can’t even figure out a way to be fairly compensated for the billions in revenue they bring to college athletics. Powerful? Only when weaponized by the campus Left. The story at Mizzou is the same old story we’ve reading and watching since the Sixties. Radicals rule.

Read French's other devastating critique.  Excerpt:

Closeted campus conservatives are worse than useless. Indeed, their very timidity contributes to the narrative that there is something shameful about their beliefs. To read anonymous letters from professors who are afraid to “out” themselves in a hostile campus culture is to read the sad dispatches of people too pitiful for their profession. Do something else, anything else, than merely sit and watch while the revolutionaries shred the Constitution, reject our culture, and assert their own will to power.The true shame is that it doesn’t even require actual courage to defeat the university Left, just a tiny bit of will — a small measure of staying power. No one is shooting at trustees. No one is beheading professors. There’s no guillotine in the quad. Instead, campus “leaders” tremble before hashtags and weep at the notion of losing a football team so inept that it couldn’t score a touchdownthrough most of the month of October. Let them strike. With an offense that inept, the SEC won’t even notice.These are the times that try men’s souls? No. These are the times of men without chests. The Left has the will to power. University leaders have no will at all. They have earned nothing but contempt.

Racist Photo ID's

From here:

All-Gender Bathrooms on Campus

A reader sends a link to more lunacy from bastions of higher indoctrination.

In an effort to further erode traditional sex and gender norms accommodate members of a diverse University community, several River Campus restrooms have been reassigned as all-gender. To date, 16 restrooms have been converted to provide single-stall, all-gender accessibility, and University Facilities and Services is currently evaluating other single-use type restrooms that may similarly be converted in future months.
John Cullen, coordinator of outreach for the Susan B. Anthony Center, noted that the LGBTQQIAAPG Advocacy Committee formed this past spring to provide leadership on enhancing the LGBTQQIAAPG climate at the University was very instrumental in moving this initiative forward. And this past spring semester, the Students’ Association Government adopted Resolution 13, which advocated in part for individuals of all gender identities and expressions to have access to safe and inclusive restrooms.

Apparently Rochester didn't get the memo from the University of Toronto.

Men Are Stronger Than Women (on average)

Zexy

I posted before on a study which claims that conservatives and progressives are about equally anti-science.

Well, I'm beginning to wonder if that is correct.  It occurred to me that the study about which I posted seems to ignore some obvious propositions about sexuality progressives have a tendency to deny.

Just take the painfully obvious claim of common sense that men are stronger than women on average and ask yourself how many progressives today would think you are a sexist for even thinking about this let alone believing that it's true.   It took me exactly one Google search on the first page to find people at TED actually debating the issue, like this guy at the top of the page:

Zis is What the World is Coming To

Read about it zhere.

Oh, and by ze way, zis is one of ze reasons college costs zo much.  We're paying people like zis.

"[W]e should be rid of the last vestiges of Goldsteinism when the language has been cleaned."

The Confederate Flag

 I'm from the North but now live in the South. As such I have no strong ties to the Confederate Flag (in fact, I have no emotional ties at all.) But I have a friend Jay who is Southern. Let it be noted that Jay is the furthest thing from a racist as anyone who knows him will tell you; he also loves the South and thinks the following about "the flag": It is sometimes thought of as a symbol of racism. But for him, he does not think of it as a symbol of racism. He realizes that some think of it as (at least in part) a symbol of racism, but as he views the matter it is one of the primary symbols of the South (the land of BBQ, blues, the SEC, etc.) with which he identifies. In fact, he wants to take the flag back and reclaim it, not as a symbol of racism but as a symbol of all (and only) the good things he thinks it once stood for and can stand for. Moreover, he argues that the flag is a symbol of a region (or states or nation) which has a complicated past and that all flags are symbols of a similar mixed bag. (A number of progressives I know shutter in horror more at the U.S. flag than the "Hammer and Sickle."  I know numerous Christians who loathe their own Christian flag.)

When I was growing up in the Midwest, the Confederate Flag was rarely thought of as a symbol of racism. Everyone I knew identified it with the Dukes of Hazard and country music. For various reasons, race relations have gotten worse in the last couple decades and the Confederate Flag is thought of by many now as (only) a symbol of racism.   As few as four years ago, most blacks did not have a negative view of the flag. 

Some questions: Why is that?  How was it that people in favor of Clinton were able to use the flag seen above just a few years ago without weeping and gnashing of teeth?  Why is it that some say today that the flag is "too toxic for public use."  (Do they think it caused nine murders?) How did that happen and who turned it toxic?

The who is fairly easy: the left (and people who jump on the bandwagon--the mindless "memers" who want to be on the "right side of history" and form beliefs on the basis of volume and not arguments.)  But why?  Well here is a theory subject to empirical disconfirmation.  The South, post-Clinton has turned strongly Republican.  Moreover, the South is one of the final strongholds in support of traditional marriage, gun-rights, anti-abortion, Federalism, and all the things progressives hate.  Slavery and racism are only a small part of what accounts for today's reaction to the flag I reckon, except insofar as progressives would be out of a job if not for their Marxist bent to turn every issue into an issue of class, race, and gender warfare and then exploit said warfare.  If there is one group that has universal scorn heaped upon it in my own corner of the cultural elite--academia--it is the South.  Your chance of landing a job drops if you are a white man with a southern accent.  (If you ask your favorite professor if this is true and he denies it, he is either lying or a dolt.)  And how many people in the media have a southern accent?  Hardly any because they don't want to sound southern.

So the hatred of the Confederate Flag, I suggest, is not due entirely to its history with slavery or racism.  And it is not because the South has become more racist in the last couple decades that the ire is hire.  (Ask yourself this: how many white Southerners do you actually know who are racists?  How many do you know who are not?  Are there more or fewer racists today than 20, 50, 100 years ago?  What are the percentages?)

The flag is a symbol.  And like any other symbol its meaning can be complicated and its meaning can change.  

So we are faced with either of two options:

(1) Get rid of the flag.
(2) Change its meaning for good.

The KKK burns crosses in yards.  For some, the sign of the cross is associated with hatred and racism.  One could thereby not use the cross as a symbol.  Or one could redeem the symbol.
Is the Confederate Flag as a symbol irredeemable? I fail to see that it is.  (And please, no swastika comparisons unless you care to fully tease out the analogy.)  If Obama, Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and so forth all stood together and said,

"We know the flag has such and such a history.  We know that in the eyes of many it is a symbol of slavery and racism....But we also know the good of the South and how far it has come.   The Confederate Flag was once a symbol of division and racism but we will not let racists own the meaning of the flag just like we will not let the KKK own the meaning of the Cross...."

you cannot tell me that if there were this concerted effort by the right and left to pour new meaning into the Confederate Flag that eventually more people would think of it positively than negatively.

So those are the options and I have no dog in this fight.  I can predict that (1) will prevail and not (2).  That is because progressivism is on the upswing and there is no great love of the South therein.  Slacktivism is too tempting especially when accompanied with a feeling of moral superiority.   

The Duggars, Hypocrisy, and the Left

Allan Brocka: "A Tweet so that the world may know I am an idiot." 

The unmitigated schadenfreude after it was revealed that 12 years ago one of the Duggar's sons was involved in forcible fondling of other minors is morally repulsive to watch.  Here is a family against everything progressives stand for and, look, they have a sinner in their midst!  Gotcha! Isn't it great! (Or at least someone who was a sinner 12 years ago before he grew up and got married.)

And as always, enter the left's mindless script of "self-righteousness" and "hypocrisy."  Of course anyone who knows what hypocrisy is, knows that there is no evidence here at all that any of the Duggars are hypocrites.  But most progressives don't seem to know what hypocrisy is (which is not to say that they are not guilty of it.)

This brings to mind a post from the Maverick six-years ago.  Here is an excerpt:

I am suggesting, then, that hatred of religion is at the root of the Left's excessive and unbalanced animus against hypocrisy.  Of course, I am not implying that hypocrisy is good; it is plainly bad.  But what wants explaining is the Left's mindless fury at it and those who seem to exhibit it.  In her fine essay, "Let Us Not be Hypocritical," Daedalus, vol. 108, no. 3, Summer 1979, pp. 1-25, Judith Shklar points out that every other vice and every other evil can be excused after it has been duly analyzed and understood, but not hypocrisy, which to many today appears as the summum malum.  Why is hypocrisy singled out as the worst of evils?

It is worth noting that hypocrisy is not among the Seven Deadly Sins:  pride, lust, anger, avarice, gluttony, sloth, envy.  Does that tell us something?  I'm not sure.  Does it tell us that religionists are less appalled by hypocrisy perhaps because of a sober acceptance of human wretchedness and of the unavoidable gap between what we are and what we ought to be, a gap not to be bridged by human effort alone?   I am also struck by the fact that hypocrisy cannot be easily subsumed under any of these heads.  Hypocrisy is not a species of pride or lust or anger, etc.  If it is a sin, it is is a sin against truthfulness. But on second thought, perhaps hypocrisy can be understood as a type of pride.  The proud man, blinded by his own excellence, cannot see his own faults.  Lucifer the light bearer's very phosphorescence hid from him his finitude and creaturely status and transmogrified him from light bearer to Prince of Darkness.  Lacking humility and incapable of accurate self-assessment, the proud man imagines himself to be better than he is.  He is arrogant in that he arrogates to himself qualities that he does not in fact possess.  But this doesn't really support the notion that hypocrisy is a species of pride.  The proud man, blinded by his excellences, is blind to his faults.  But it seems that the hypocrite must be well aware of his faults so that he can hide them from others.  He must know his true motives in order to dissemble them. 

Another point worth noting is that in our culture, dominated as it is by liberals and leftists, most of the Seven Deadly Sins are not reckoned sins at all.  Given that sin is a religious concept, there cannot be sins for those who deem religion buncombe from start to finish.  But one can believe in vice without believing in sin.  I think it is safe to say that most Americans today do not consider any of the Seven Deadly Sins to be vices, with the possible exception of sloth interpreted as laziness rather than as acedia. 

TB: Bill might be right that hatred of religion is at the root the matter.  But I would add that it is a hatred of religion which particularly manifests itself in strict moral codes (e.g.) antithetical to the deliverances of the '60's.

Sex Ed Show for 8-year-olds

Progressives have a European fetish.  If Europe does it so should backward U.S. of A. Progressives absolutely adore Europe.  It's often quite embarrassing that they happened to be born in the wrong continent.

Well, now we can bring some cutting edge European culture to the U.S. with only a few digital files!  Without doubt, PBS could stand a ratings boost.  Act now, before you're on the (dreaded) wrong side of history.  [Bonus: Swedish 3-10 yr. old penis and vagina video.]

The Graduation Day Degree Gap

Unsocial injustice!  Discrimination!

Having a Family/Private Education Are Unfair Advantages

Philosopher Adam Swift knows that having a family gives children an advantage.  But lockstep with progressive ideology hellbent on upsetting traditional values, he follows it to its (il)logical conclusion: for the sake of the egalitarian utopia, we should be concerned about reading bedtime stories to our children because it gives them an unfair advantage; furthermore, private education should be abolished.  This is not the Onion, folks.  This is reality.

Read the entire excerpt::

‘I got interested in this question because I was interested in equality of opportunity,’ he says.

‘I had done some work on social mobility and the evidence is overwhelmingly that the reason why children born to different families have very different chances in life is because of what happens in those families.’

‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.’   

‘It’s the children’s interest in family life that is the most important,’ says Swift. ‘From all we now know, it is in the child’s interest to be parented, and to be parented well. Meanwhile, from the adult point of view it looks as if there is something very valuable in being a parent.’ [So instead of abolishing the family...]

‘We could prevent elite private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships, whereas if we say that you can’t read bedtime stories to your kids because it’s not fair that some kids get them and others don’t, then that would be too big a hit at the core of family life.’

‘I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,’ quips Swift.

‘It’s true that in the societies in which we live, biological origins do tend to form an important part of people’s identities, but that is largely a social and cultural construction. [TB: Care to give an argument for that?] So you could imagine societies in which the parent-child relationship could go really well even without there being this biological link.’

‘Nothing in our theory assumes two parents: there might be two, there might be three, and there might be four,’ says Swift.

‘We do want to defend the family against complete fragmentation and dissolution,’ he says. ‘If you start to think about a child having 10 parents, then that’s looking like a committee rearing a child; there aren’t any parents there at all.’  [TB: Oh, good, seems we're in excellent hands.  Thanks for pulling us back from the ledge of lunacy.  The rational cutoff, according to our family expert, isn't two but nine.]

As I have noted numerous times on this blog, progressives like Swift conflate ("social") justice with fairness as well as equality.  But justice, fairness, and equality are not the same.  Judgments about fairness and equality necessarily involve making comparisons, whereas judgments about justice need not.  I can judge that I have unjustly given you too little money simply by noting that I have given you less than what I promised for the work that you did irrespective of what anyone else has made. You can judge whether I gave you an unjust grade simply by looking at your work and my rubric in the course syllabus irrespective of whether I gave a fair/equal distribution of grades to the entire class (e.g. everyone including you got a "C").  

Instead of fretting about reading bedtime stories to his children, perhaps Swift should consider reading them this Bible story.

Starbucks and Race

I was asked my thoughts on the whole Starbucks "Race Together" catastrophe.  I really don't have any great thoughts on the matter.  What thoughts I do have are summed up by this:

Another Victim of BIG Pizza

Over 350 lb. robber steals cash and pizza from Domino's.  

Just another victim of the evil Republican establishment getting fat off its victims (special thanks to the NY Times progressive go-to economist for this bit of hilarity).

Calvin & Hobbes Take Leftwing Feminist Ideology to Its Logical Conclusion

Bill Watterson must have had something like this in mind when he came up with that strip.    Liberals are hilarious.

Check out the "Genderbread Man Person" by "social justice" author, Sam Killermann Killerperson, which was apparently a part of the material given to the teachers for their "training." (No, I'm not making that name up.)

Public tax dollars hard at work!

Obama to Ban AR-15 5.56 mm Ammo With Executive Action

Here and here.

But now [The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] says that since the bullets can be used in semi-automatic handguns they pose a threat to police and must be banned from production, sale and use...Federal agencies will still be allowed to buy the ammo.

Well, uh, that is sort of the point.  The Second Amendment wasn't put in place to make sure that hunters can still have guns for hunting--no 18th Century fool would have thought otherwise.  It was put in place because the Founders put the brakes on governments' tyranny and complete monopoly on the use of force.  The well regulated militia ain't the National Guard.

Too Many Old White Men at School

A reader of the blog (a faculty member at a university) chimes in with the following story:

I was in a Dean’s office earlier today, meeting about some matter, when an email arrived in her in-box detailing the following: another Dean was stepping down. Let’s call the Dean I'm in the office with “Dean.” Here is our commentary about the email starting with what "Dean" said:

Dean: “Awwww…that’s sad.”

Me: “Why?”

Dean: “Well, because she’s like the only non-old-white-male Dean we have.”

Me: “Uhhh…so?”

"Dean" then goes to her computer, looks up all of the Academic Deans and goes down the list, saying (repeatedly): “White man. White man. White man. White man…”

Me (again): “And your point is…?”

Dean (looking at me incredulously): “You seriously don’t think that’s a problem?!?!”

Me: “Nope. Not at all.”

Dean: “Yep, that’s what any white man would say.”

Me: “Stereotype much?”

Note from TB: The Dean thinks there is a problem.  Is there a problem?  Is the problem with the school or with the Dean?  What is the problem exactly?  Exercise for the reader: precisely explain what the problem is and then give a cogent argument that there is a problem here.

National Pubic Radio and the Tit of the State

As I'm listening to an NPR news report about a documentary (surprise) fighting "racism and homophobia" this MavPhil post is timely.  (Oh, no.  Frank Deford is now coming on to preach talk about some lefty issue sports.)

I reproduce below the words of the Maverick Philosopher: