…actually finds leftist bias in the curriculum.
Category Archives: Education
The Wall Street Protesters’ Demands
A response.
This is the sort of thing I was referring to when I said that Democrats and the left are anti-economics.
This Is A University
“There’s no freedom of speech here.”
The New Deal Was “A Wrong Turn”?
Of course it was.
It’s apparently politically unacceptable to point out that truth, but that’s largely because of decades of political indoctrination in state-run lower and higher education. We were taught in school that Roosevelt “saved capitalism,” which always struck me as a similar phrase to the Vietnam-era “we had to destroy the village to save it.” It started us down the wrong road, and we’re rapidly approaching a cliff if we can’t bushwhack our way back to the right path.
I Agree With Instapundt
Exactly the same example hopped immediately into my mind.
[Update a couple minutes later]
“They all look alike to them“:
I’ve suggested in the past that Obama is Pumpsie Green and but was sold to us as Jackie Robinson, but on reflection I think it goes deeper than that.
I think the press had Pumpsie Green in front of them but saw Jackie Robinson. They deceived themselves and moreover wanted to be deceived. As far was the press was concerned their desire for the political equivalent of Jackie Robinson blinded them to the point where any semi-qualified black candidate became Jackie
So naturally when some of us on the right objected to a person who was totally unqualified for office the press went wild, because it directly challenged their illusion and cried racism when it was just the opposite.
We on the right saw not a black man, but an unqualified inexperienced Chicago pol who just happened to be black. The press meanwhile saw not an individual but a symbol, it didn’t actually matter who he was, it mattered that he was. Or to put it bluntly, they couldn’t tell Jackie Robinson from Pumpsie Green because “they all looked alike to them.”
If Branch Rickey had done this in 47 the majors might still not be integrated.
As I’ve often noted, the true racists are on the left, almost inherently.
[Update a few minutes later]
I agree with Instapundit on this, too: “Half a century ago, insecure white bigots needed to put down black people so they’d have someone to feel superior to. Now they use Mississippi.”
Want Less Inequality?
Stop subsidizing schools and universities. The whole system really is a disaster.
Kindness Over Education
Virginia Postrel has a column about Harvard’s bizarre PC loyalty oath:
Course registration versus niceness; success versus compassion; “attainment” versus kindness. Something is missing from all these dichotomies, and that something is the life of the mind.
Where in the list of ranked values are curiosity, discovery, reason, inquiry, skepticism or truth? (Were these values even options?) Where is critical thinking? No wonder the pledge talks about “attainment.” Attainment equals study cards and good grades — a transcript to enable the student to move on to the next stage. Attainment isn’t learning, questioning or criticizing. It’s getting your ticket punched.
Just one more sign of the decline of the academy, as costs continue to rise.
Idiocracy
Here we have an example of a person apparently too stupid to have been admitted to the university. But they let her in anyway.
Campus Lunacy In Flagstaff
Students at Northern Arizona University had the police called on them by the administration for handing out American flags to commemorate 911:
The first administrator was followed by another administrator, who told the students that the university could use “time, place and manner” rules to determine that they were not allowed to pass out flags there without a permit. This administrator was followed by yet another administrator who claimed that the First Amendment meant “free speech in a designated time, place, and manner.”
That’s a reading of the First Amendment that only a bureaucrat could love. The Supreme Court has indeed determined that the government may enforce time, place and manner restrictions on expression, but these restrictions must be reasonable, content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest and must leave open ample alternative means of communication. So when the expression consists of a couple of people handing out flags while standing against the wall of a large room, one wonders what “governmental interest” is involved in telling students they can’t do so.
The fourth administrator to confront the students repeated “time, place and manner” four times when the students challenged her on how the university could stop its own students from standing around and passing out flags. After that, NAU called the cops. A police officer (who looked like she’d rather be somewhere else) came and took the names of the two remaining participants, saying that it wasn’t a legal matter but a university code of conduct matter.
Until Monday evening, when NAU most likely realized how bad punishing people for this was going to look, the students faced charges of “failure to comply with a university official” and “interfering with university activities.” The first charge only made sense if “Hey, you two, stop passing out flags to commemorate 9/11” is the sort of order you think university officials should be giving, while the second only made sense if “not observing the anniversary of 9/11” counts as a university activity.
These are the people who should be first to go when the bubble pops.
The Line Between Fascism And Fabian Socialism
…is very thin:
In Argentina, everyone acknowledges that fascism, state capitalism, corporatism – whatever – reflects very leftwing ideology. Eva Peron remains a liberal icon. President Obama’s Fabian policies (Keynesian economics) promise similar ends. His proposed infrastructure bank is just the latest gyration of corporatism. Why then are fascists consistently portrayed as conservatives?
Because the Left are always historical revisionists. They have to be to sucker the next generation of rubes.