Which America Do You Want to Live In?

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit,"ROGER SIMON: COVID May Be Waning, but Will They Tell Us?." 

And quoting National Review:

And it’s ending, despite Biden and Fauci’s dreams of endless lockdowns: “On Saturday in New York City you needed a vaccine passport to eat in a restaurant or grab a drink in a bar, work out in a gym, go to a movie, or attend any sporting event. Just four hours to the west nearly 110,000 maskless Penn State Nittany Lion fans who had to provide no health records to anyone to attend the game reveled in their school’s biggest football game in two years, packed as close together as possible all clad in white in one of the great football cathedrals of this country. Watch this video and tell me which America you want to live in, the one where you have freedom and embrace life or the one where you either bow down to the authoritarian whims of a group of leaders who don’t even follow their own rules or have no ability to do anything.”

R.T.W.T. 

 

Glenn Reynolds, The Social Media Upheaval

Instapundit was on the 4:00pm Fox program today, discussing "cancel culture" (what else?), which I thought was cool, as I did get that Instalanche last week, and he's an expert on this stuff anyway (as you can tell, from reading his own book about it). 

At Amazon, Glenn Reynolds, The Social Media Upheaval.

Instalanche!

Actually, I received not just one, but two!, in the past few days, for my post, "Biden, Harris, Psaki and Other Top Staffers Afraid to Appear in Sunday News Shows (VIDEO)."

On Sunday, Ed Driscoll, one of the main co-bloggers at Instapundit, linked my post, probably just moments after I tweeted it to him. 

And then Stephen Green, also one of the other main stalwart co-bloggers over there, linked it again this morning. 

It's pretty gratifying, especially since I've had little time to blog, and I sure appreciate getting tons of traffic, and I welcome the Instapundit readers. 

But I want to thank MY loyal readers most of all, who number probably just in the hundreds, and if the number's over a thousand, that's on a good day. So thank you again for your all your support, for coming here to read, and to shop occasionally at my Amazon links. 

I've been doing this a long time, and some of the the greatest blogs from back in the day, at the height of the blogosphere, probably around the time from the Iraq war in 2003 (or maybe a little earlier, like 9/11) to the years of both the Obama administrations, are long gone; and back then, blogging was bigger and way more influential, than, say, social media (and especially Twitter, which itself was better back in the day, around the first part of the Obama years, before they starting f*cking with all the stupid "algorithms").

So, thanks for reading. This blog isn't going anywhere, but the volume of posting will rise and fall, perhaps a lot, depending on how things are going right here at home, with my wife and two sons, because, like everybody else, this godforsaken pandemic has messed everything up, including not just income flow, but the way the world works, how people literally "go to work," and how people engage and socially interact. It's killing people, literally, with the rise not just deaths from Covid-19, which are horrifying, but perhaps even more dangerously long-term, from the increasing social despondency and isolation people are enduring, particularly young people, whose life chances have been set back years, and even decades, if this economy flounders, or inflation surges, and the national debt keeps growing, and on, and on.

So, thanks again, dear readers, I appreciate the support. 

I'll be back with more later, probably in the late afternoon or early evening. 

Glenn Reynolds, The K-12 Implosion

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, The K-12 Implosion.

It’s Not Just Google — All of Silicon Valley Has a Trust Problem Now

That's for sure.

At Instapundit, "MY USA TODAY COLUMN: It’s not just Google — all of Silicon Valley has a trust problem now. “When a gigantic corporation that controls our data and knows us intimately takes a controversial political stance, it ought to make us worry”."

Glenn Reynolds, The Education Apocalypse

I read this one a couple of years ago, and it's great!

At Amazon, Glenn Reynolds, The Education Apocalypse: How It Happened and How to Survive It.

Trump Will Test Democrats' Tax Patriotism

From Professor Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Trump Will Test Democrats’ Tax Patriotism: President’s plan would make high-tax blue states pay their fair share."

Deal of the Day: Stuhrling Original Watches

At Amazon, Stuhrling Original Mens "Specialty Grand Regatta" Stainless Steel Professional Swiss Quartz Dive Watch.

More, Save on Stuhrling Original Watches.

Plus, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - Complete Collection One [Blu-ray], and Steins Gate: Complete Series Classic [Blu-ray]. (Plus, scroll down for up to 61% off "Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood" and "Steins Gate: The Complete Series.")

And from Glenn Reynolds, An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths.

Still more, from James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus, America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century—Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come.

BONUS: From Professor Joseph Nye, Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics.

Feminist Fruitcake Emma Sulkowicz Makes 'Rape' Porn Video in Sick Attempt to Extend Her 15-Minutes

This woman is seriously bonkers.

The Other McCain reports, "‘Mattress Girl’ Emma Sulkowicz Releases Crappy Porn Video With French Title."

She needs help, and that's the order of the day by overwhelming acclimation.

Comment from @Jezebel on #MattressGirl #EmmaSulkowicz's rape re-enactment art porn: pic.twitter.com/eJ2jA5wlA6

— Barbarian Brad (@Barbarian_Brad) June 5, 2015

How do you say FUBAR in French? @AmPowerBlog https://t.co/ymAvFkXnsC

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 5, 2015

If this video is actually Emma Sulkowicz, she is mentally ill. Period. http://t.co/k2VPh44JdR

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 5, 2015

More from Joe Cunningham, at Red State, "Emma Sulkowicz: Martyr of Frauds."

Expect updates.

Today's Feminists Are Too Fragile to Read

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "When a professor criticizes equal rights law, it is not a violation of equal rights":

They told me that if I voted for Mitt Romney, campus witch hunts would leave professors afraid to write about feminism. And they were right!

Barack Obama is the president, of course, not Mitt. But Obama's Department of Education has taken such a broad view of the federal Title IX antidiscrimination law ("No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.") that we have reached the ultimate in absurdity: Feminist students silencing feminist professors in the name of equality.

Feminist professor Laura Kipnis of Northwestern University published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February, decrying "sexual paranoia" on campus and the way virtually any classroom mention of sex was being subjected to an odd sort of neo-Victorian prudery: "Students were being encouraged to regard themselves as such exquisitely sensitive creatures that an errant classroom remark could impede their education, as such hothouse flowers that an unfunny joke was likely to create lasting trauma. ... In the post-Title IX landscape, sexual panic rules. Slippery slopes abound."

This article sat poorly with campus activists, who in response reported her for sexual harassment, on the theory that this article (and a follow-up tweet — yes, that's right, a tweet) somehow might have created a hostile environment for female students, which would violate Title IX as interpreted by the Education Department. Because, you see, female students, according to feminists, are too fragile to face disagreement. And they'll demonstrate this fragility by subjecting you to Stalinist persecution if you challenge them, apparently...

More.

Read about the professor (me) brought up on Title IX charges over an essay. My Title IX Inquisition https://t.co/7arRrbuUv6 via @chronicle

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 29, 2015

TITLE IX Update: After 72 days it turns out that a preponderance of the evidence doesn't support the allegations. https://t.co/EmIdJEWhYK

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 31, 2015

"My Title IX Inquisition." Here's a link to a PDF version. http://t.co/aaR3ZgjxaT

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 31, 2015

Roasting 'Progressives of Palor' LOL!

You gotta love Twitter!

Love it when progressives of pallor get roasted ==> https://t.co/LtGi2aFrnW

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) May 31, 2015

'Show the GOP who is the party of old, fat, white people': Instapundit mercilessly mocks Bernie Sanders event http://t.co/ygAeE4qydN

— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) May 31, 2015

The Education Apocalypse

I started reading Professor Glenn Reynolds' new book, The Education Apocalypse: How It Happened and How to Survive It.

It's an updated version of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.

So many of the predictions in the earlier version were coming true the revised edition warranted a whole new title. The preface to the new volume lays out the dynamics quite well. A quick and concise read --- and very enjoyable.

Plus, Father's Day - Gifts in Kitchen & Dining.

I'll have more blogging tonight and through the weekend.

Virginia Postrel Joins Glenn Reynolds

They're talking about education. It's quite interesting and informative.

#Shirtstorm: Glenn Reynolds' Column on #Shirtgate Brings out the Leftist Crazy

At Twitchy:

Heh. Shrinkage: More charges of 'doxxing' by Instapundit 'downsized' by accuser http://t.co/yJKfEEBC1e Leftists are simpletons straight up.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 16, 2014

Why Do White Feminists Hate, Fear Minority Men?

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "Catcalling a two-way street":

Stop frigid white liberal feminists from criminalizing minority men. From @Instapundit. http://t.co/bNwXFZQWRo

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) November 3, 2014

Last week there was a bit of a kerfuffle over a video of a woman walking the streets of New York and being catcalled by guys. Most of the catcalls were comparatively tame, though not all were, and the result was a predictable storm of attention on the Internet via Twitter and other social media, exactly as the video's producers — an outfit called ihollaback.org — intended. But then some things departed from the script.

First, Slate's Hanna Rosin noted that pretty much all of the guys pictured were lower-class blacks and Latinos. Where were the white guys? The video's producers said they just weren't able to get much good footage of them, for a variety of reasons. Whether, in the 10 hours of filming it took to produce their two-minute video, there just weren't enough white guys saying offensive stuff, or whether the producers just had bad luck or whether they edited out the white guys, the result was that they released a video about "street harassment" that was also, quite plainly, a video of minority men harassing a white woman. And whether or not it deserves the charges of outright racism and classism, or even comparisons to The Birth of a Nation, that it got from some minority critics, that's indisputably what it is.

This raises two questions in 21st-century America. One involves diversity and multiculturalism: Different cultures and ethnicities have different ideas of what constitutes appropriate intersexual behavioral, and there's no particular reason why the standards of upper-middle-class white feminist women should set the norm for everyone. In the old melting-pot days, it might have been appropriate to say that minorities needed to be assimilated to traditional WASP standards of decorum — "civilized" or "elevated" in the idiom of the day. But we've long since moved past the notion that there is only one legitimate way to behave as an American. (WASPs, in fact, are now often portrayed as unpleasantly frigid, sexless, and over-controlled). And, that being so, it would be astonishing if the only place where WASP standards still continued to rule was in this particular area. Should it be a crime to say hello to a stranger? Are women so delicate that they need patriarchal protection simply to go out and about? And if so, what does that say about women's ability to function independently in the larger world?

Keep reading.

The Hidden Story Behind Stop Rush

At Rush's page, via Instapundit, "Actually, this reads like Limbaugh’s thinking of suing."

Look at the unadulterated Hate fest going on at the #stoprush vine... Good lord these people need help... They make my skin crawl.

— Beanfrompa (@BeanfromPa) September 25, 2014

How Legal Education is Changing

From Glenn Reynolds, at the University of Tennessee College of Law, "Legal Education: It’s Not Like ‘The Paper Chase’ Anymore":

Now more than forty years old, the movie The Paper Chase—and the hit television series that it spun off—still embodies the way many people think of legal education. But for better or worse those days are long gone. Today’s law students have to deal with a world in which legal education is more expensive—and high-paying jobs are scarcer—than they were back then. That’s also putting a lot of pressure on law schools.

The movie opens with an enormous classroom, holding a large number of students anxiously awaiting the arrival of Professor Kingsfield, who proceeds to perform what he calls “brain surgery” using no more than Socratic dialogue and a chalkboard. The students are anxious to make good grades, because with good grades they can get jobs at big law firms on Wall Street and elsewhere, where the pay is high and making partner is a guarantee of lucrative lifetime employment.

Today, most of that has changed...

Keep reading.

Toss Out Abusive College Administrators

Oh, I wish, heh.

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today:

Like most professors, I hate doing administrative work. And since somebody has to do it, universities have increasingly built up a corps of full-time administrators. That's fine, but lately, the administrative class has grown too numerous and too heavy-handed. As colleges and universities increasingly face financial pressures, it's time to rethink.

Full-time administrators now outnumber full-time faculty. And when times get tough, schools have a disturbing tendency to shrink faculty numbers while keeping administrators on the payroll. Teaching gets done by low-paid, nontenured adjuncts, but nobody ever heard of an "adjunct administrator."

But it's not just the fat that is worrisome. It's administrators' obsession with -- and all too often, abuse of -- security that raises serious concerns. At the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Clyde W. Barrow, a leading professor, has just quit, complaining of an administration that isolates itself from students and faculty behind keypads and security doors.

Isolation is bad. But worse still is the growing tendency of administrators to stifle critics by shamelessly interpreting even obviously harmless statements as "threats." A recent example took place at Bergen Community College, where Professor Francis Schmidt was suspended, and ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination over a "threat" that consisted of posting a picture of his 9-year old daughter wearing a Game Of Thrones T-shirt. The shirt bore a quote from the show, reading: "I will take what is mine with fire & blood." Bergen administrator Jim Miller apparently thought the picture, which was posted to Schmidt's Google Plus account, was somehow intended as a threat to him. (Schmidt had filed a labor grievance a couple of months earlier.)

What kind of person claims that a picture of a 9-year-old girl wearing an HBO T-shirt is a threat? The kind of person who runs America's colleges, apparently. And Miller, alas, is not alone in his cluelessness and, apparently, paranoia.

Last year at the University of Wisconsin at Stout, theater professor James Miller had a poster from the television series Firefly on his door. It included a picture of Captain Mal Reynolds, a character played by Nathan Fillion, and a quote from the show: "You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me. And you'll be armed."

Campus police chief Lisa Walter removed the poster, regarding it as a "threat." After Stout complained to no avail, he replaced the poster with one reading: "Fascism can cause blunt head trauma and/or violent death. Keep fascism away from children and pets."

This poster, too, was interpreted as a threat, which led to a visit from the campus "threat assessment team." After nationwide mockery (Fillion, and fellow Firefly cast member Adam Baldwin, joined in, as did many of the show's fans), the university retreated, and promised to change its approach in the future. Presumably, Chief Lisa Walter carries a gun, and I wonder if that's a good idea in someone so skittish that she sees a movie poster as a "threat."

Meanwhile, at the University of Colorado, the American Association of University Professors has produced a report on the university's running "roughshod" over academic freedom as part of an anti-sexual-harassment campaign in its philosophy department and -- again -- using campus police to strongarm a faculty member over an obviously bogus threat...

Keep reading.

I wish it wasn't so, but my campus is no exception.

'The Second Amendment as Ordinary Constitutional Law'

A quick but fascinating read, from Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "MY LATEST LAW REVIEW ARTICLE..."

Click through at the link.

Michelle Fields Interviews Glenn Reynolds

And they talk about the professor's recent book, The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.



And at Instapundit, "THE LEARNING CURVE: In the Weekly Standard, Jonathan Marks reviews my The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself."