At Amazon, Robert Kagan, The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941.
.jpeg)
Friday, March 31, 2023
You Can't Cancel Me, I Quit
It's Mary Eberstadt, at the Wall Street Journal, "I was supposed to speak at Furman University. I decided to beg off rather than indulge an angry mob":
I was scheduled to give a speech on Monday at Furman University about my recent book, “Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.” I canceled it. Here’s why. In the spring of 2014—in retrospect, the dress rehearsal for cancel culture—some commencement speakers around the country were disinvited or withdrew themselves from consideration owing to left-wing protests. I wasn’t among them. A few faculty members at Seton Hall University tried to have my invitation rescinded on the grounds that I wasn’t what they meant by “Catholic”—progressive. They failed. I delivered my address as scheduled at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Arena to some 6,000 graduates, families and friends, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters. It was a thrilling event. I enjoy talking to students. I teach graduate students and young professionals, and I founded an organization that helps mentor hundreds of women involved in journalism and media, many of them right out of college. Those experiences probably explain why I had never been the object of protest by students. But 2023 is light years from 2014. Some months ago, the head of Furman’s Tocqueville Program invited me to give a public lecture about “Primal Screams.” Not knowing a soul there, I googled. Nestled in scenic Greenville, S.C., the university was founded in 1826 by the Southern Baptist Convention. Furman’s website features young people said to be “innovative in their thinking, and compassionate in their approach to career, community, and life.” The Tocqueville Program has hosted impressive speakers. This seemed a promising opportunity to visit an attractive campus, befriend some students and faculty, and talk over ideas. What could go wrong? Well, consider what happened to the speaker who preceded me last month in the same series: Scott Yenor, a professor of political science at Boise State University. Mr. Yenor had been invited to speak on “Dostoevsky and Conscience.” An inhospitality committee sprang into action, “triggered” not by his speech topic but by opinions that he had expressed elsewhere, including his critique of feminism and support for “sex-role realism.” Scores of faculty and student protesters “silently” objected inside and outside as he spoke. Three armed policemen were assigned to his protection. Within the auditorium, protesters lined the walls the professor had to pass, holding posters with ad hominem slogans and quotations of his taken out of context, staring balefully at him throughout. I called Mr. Yenor to ask for his take. “Never in my life have I experienced a crowd so uninterested in learning, and so unwilling to hear,” he said. “They were simply filled with malice.” No one in the administration commented on his treatment, much less apologized for it. Soon after, something called the Cultural Life Program at Furman, which requires students to attend a certain number of public speeches, mysteriously decided to deny credit for mine unless the program inserted a different faculty interlocuter rather than the one who had invited me—presumably because the latter would have been too supportive. An article was posted by the independent online student newspaper, the Paladin, attacking the Tocqueville Program, applauding the public abomination of Scott Yenor, darkly noting that Catholics had been invited as speakers, and taking potshots at me. There’s no evidence that the indignant writer had read my books or even knew their titles. The piece accused me of perpetuating “dangerous” (dog whistle) myths, adding that students “demand to interrogate” (another whistle) the Tocqueville Program. Posters advertising my speech disappeared en masse around campus the week before the event. They were replaced and disappeared again. Furman community members following social media and conversations on campus relayed independently that the protest was expected to be “substantial,” as two put it. They also informed me about a letter that was sent by some students to the Cultural Life Program’s committee, caricaturing my work and calling me names in an effort to revoke credit for attending my speech. As I mulled what to do about such unexpected hostility, different calculations came to mind. What might be the odds of an ugly Yenor-style experience? Likely high. What about the odds of physical injury? Low, but not nonexistent...
Twitter's Transgender Ideology Problem
From Amuse, "Twitter's Transgender Day of Rage":
Twitter suspended more than 5,000 conservative accounts for sharing evidence of far-left incitement from The Trans Radical Activist Network (its account wasn't suspended). Not since the conservative purges related to January 6th and Covid-19 have so many Twitter accounts been locked and suspended in such a short period of time. Twitter’s head of trust and safety said she suspended more than 5,000 accounts for sharing evidence of an event titled “The Trans Day of Vengence” scheduled on Saturday by a group called The Trans Radical Activist Network in Washington DC. Many of us who didn’t share the details of the event got caught up in Twitter’s pro-trans dragnet. In my case, my account was locked for tweeting this:The left’s constant narrative to children and individuals who struggle with identity is that anyone who opposes surgical intervention for children is “literally trying to kill” them making violence like we saw yesterday in Nashville ‘justified’ in the eyes of many Democrats. ~ @amuseEventually, I was allowed to delete the offending tweet and my account was restored. Out of an abundance of caution, I deleted every tweet and retweet related to the transgender movement I had made since the Nashville shooting—clear evidence of the chilling effect of Twitter’s continued censorship regime. I wasn’t alone. Federalist CEO Sean Davis was locked out of his Twitter account after reporting on the “Trans Day Of Vengeance”. Davis wrote,“The cold-blooded mass murder at a Christian school in Nashville by an apparent transgender person came just days before a planned ‘Trans Day Of Vengeance’ organized by the Trans Radical Activist Network.” ~ @seanmdavDavis chose not to manually delete the tweet as I did. Twitter already removed the tweet but requires in some sort of “Orwellian re-education exercise” that users ALSO delete the tweet—Davis has refused. Twitter also locked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's congressional account @RepMTG after she criticized The Trans Radical Activist Network’s plan to hold their "Trans Day of Vengeance" despite the Nashville school shooting by a transgender activist.1 Ironically, the group’s own Twitter account @Trans_Radical was not suspended despite using it to promote their planned vengeance event in Washington DC on Saturday.2 Independent journalist Andy Ngô’s @MrAndyNgo account was locked after he pointed out that The Trans Radical Activist Network had locked its own account after it was caught promoting its vengeance event outside the Supreme Court...
White House Calls on Russia to Release Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich
A journalists worse nightmare.
At WSJ, "Biden Calls on Russia to Release Journal Reporter":
WASHINGTON—President Biden urged Russia to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich Friday—shouting “let him go” as he boarded a helicopter—amid a rift in U.S.-Russia relations already so wide that the two powers barely maintain diplomatic communications. Mr. Biden said the U.S. didn’t plan any expulsion of Russian diplomats. “That’s not the plan right now,” he said from the South Lawn of the White House before departing for Joint Base Andrews. Past expulsions have prompted tit-for-tat retaliation from Moscow, leaving both the U.S. Embassy in Russia and Russia’s Embassy in Washington with skeleton staff. More than three dozen top global news organizations joined in the call for Mr. Gershkovich’s release, saying they were deeply troubled by his detention. “Gershkovich’s unwarranted and unjust arrest is a significant escalation in your government’s anti-press actions,” they said in a letter to Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. “Russia is sending the message that journalism within your borders is criminalized and that foreign correspondents seeking to report from Russia do not enjoy the benefits of the rule of law.” The sunken state of U.S.-Russia ties will make any agreement on the release of Mr. Gershkovich, 31, difficult to secure as he heads toward a trial in a court under the control of Russia’s security service, the FSB, U.S. officials say. Such a court is expected to operate on the orders of the Kremlin, increasing the prospect of a conviction after a trial that may be held in secret. The FSB said Thursday that Mr. Gershkovich was detained Wednesday for alleged espionage while on a reporting trip to the Russian provincial city of Yekaterinburg, around 800 miles east of Moscow. The Journal vehemently denied wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Gershkovich and called for his immediate release. In Washington, President Biden urged on Friday Mr. Gershkovich’s release. “Let him go,” he said. Kremlin watchers say Mr. Gershkovich was likely detained so Moscow could use him in a prisoner swap. The fact that Russia has charged him with espionage, rather than a common criminal offense, suggests the Kremlin will want a big prize in return for his release, said John J. Sullivan, who served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow until last year. “This is not an arrest that the local police or FSB would do on their own,” said Mr. Sullivan, now a distinguished fellow at Georgetown University in Washington. The charge of espionage, he said, is a big development and a very bad sign. The arrest of Mr. Gershkovich, a Russian speaker whose parents came to the U.S. from the former Soviet Union, marked the latest diplomatic flashpoint between Moscow and Washington. The two countries, already on opposite sides of the war in Ukraine, have also clashed over the arrests of each other’s citizens and the state of nuclear-arms treaties. The U.S. has also led an array of countries in imposing sanctions on Russia in a campaign to choke its economy following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “The Wall Street Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gershkovich,” the Journal said. “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family.” Although Moscow has arrested American citizens on espionage charges, the detention of a journalist is rare. The last U.S. journalist to face such a charge was U.S. News & World Report journalist Nicholas Daniloff in 1986. In that case, Moscow had a clear motive: Three days before Mr. Daniloff’s arrest, the U.S. had detained a Soviet employee of its United Nations delegation in New York in a Federal Bureau of Investigation sting. After intense negotiations, Mr. Daniloff was released less than three weeks later in an exchange for the diplomat. Mr. Daniloff denied the espionage allegation. A swap for Mr. Gershkovich could be more difficult today because of the poor state of U.S.-Russian relations, former diplomats say. In 1986, relations between Moscow and Washington were on the upswing, and both sides were anxious to try to preserve some of the progress. Today, ties are on a downward trajectory, and Russia’s rhetoric suggests it sees itself in an existential conflict with the U.S., said Andrew Weiss, a vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he studies Russia and Eurasia. Along with diplomacy, people-to-people contacts between the two countries have dried up, and the business relationship, which was never extensive, “is largely in tatters,” Mr. Weiss said...
Monday, March 27, 2023
Justine Bateman Defends Her 'Old Face' (the Decision to Grow Old Naturally and Forego Cosmetic Surgery, Etc.)
She says she doesn't give a s***, but you know she does. Why is this even news?
See, "Justine Bateman confronts obsession with her ‘old’ face: ‘I don’t give a s–t’."
She appeared recently on "60 Minutes Australia."
Excerpts from the @60Mins Australia piece on being free of the fear of one’s face aging.
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) March 21, 2023
(Entire segment is on @60Mins’ YouTube channel)
Don’t be distracted from all the opportunities coming your way.
Read @FACE_the_book for more.https://t.co/qGDP9IDOxB pic.twitter.com/Chv012SJCy
Left Is Not Woke
From Susan Neiman, at UnHerd, "The true Left is not woke: Progressive activists have forgotten their roots."
CHANGE: 32 States and Counting: Why Parents Bills of Rights Are Sweeping the U.S.
From Stephen Green, at Instapundit, “'The proposed laws have fueled questions about the role parents should play in their children's education. At the same time, they have fanned partisan flames, weaponizing a longstanding concept – parental rights – that academic experts and advocates alike say should not be politically charged'.”
Americans Pull Back From Values That Once Defined United States, Poll Finds
I teach this. My son was just saying, "This is nothing new to you." He's right. It's not. But it's cool to have a WSJ article I can share with my students and use in assignments.
See, at Wall Street Journal, "America Pulls Back From Values That Once Defined It, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds: Patriotism, religion and hard work hold less importance."
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Shop Deals
And, PowerSmart Self-Propelled Cordless Snow Blower Included Battery and Charger, 24-Inch, 80-Volt, 2-Stage Snow Thrower with Steel Auger.More, BLACK+DECKER Workbench, Workmate, Portable, Holds Up to 550 lbs, Vertical and Horizontal Clamping Options, For DIY, Woodworking and More (WM425-A).Plus, Dreo Space Heater, 24" 11ft/s Fast Quiet Heating Portable Electric Heater with Remote, 3 Modes, Overheating & Tip-Over Protection, Oscillating Ceramic Heater for Bedroom, Office, and Indoor Use, Black.BONUS: David B. Auerbach, Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities.
Friday, March 17, 2023
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Corporate Diversity Pledges Fizzle Amid Layoffs, GOP Backlash
Ha!
At Bloomberg:
Workplace diversity and inclusion efforts adopted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and ensuing protests are fading as sweeping layoffs blunt companies’ bold commitments to boost underrepresented groups in their C-suites and ranks. The global Black Lives Matter movement that followed Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody in 2020 prompted a hiring boom for diversity, equity, and inclusion professionals and pledges by major employers to address racial inequality in the workplace. But many of those hired—largely people of color—to diversify the workplace have been let go over the past year amid ongoing layoffs as a cost-cutting measure. Employers have cut DEI roles at a higher rate than others, according to a February study from workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs. More than 300 DEI professionals departed companies in the last six months, including Amazon.com Inc., Twitter Inc., and Nike Inc., the report found. These diminishing roles have left observers questioning whether the sense of urgency to increase workforce diversity that corporate leaders made almost three years ago was genuine or simply a reactionary business decision to mitigate reputational risk. “They heard concerns about the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Fast forward to three years later, that push isn’t that much present in the media every day and prevalent on social media,” said Robert Baldwin III, founder and managing attorney at Virtue Law Group, a plaintiff-side labor and employment firm. “Since that push isn’t that prevalent,” they don’t feel the pressure to prioritize racial diversity and inclusion, he said. DEI U-Turn The slashing of these roles indicates that some companies don’t see DEI as essential, said Jean Lee, president and CEO of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, which advocates for diversity in C-suites. “This is concerning,” because prospective workers from underrepresented backgrounds might get discouraged from seeking employment at companies that have taken a drastic U-turn with their diversity and inclusion efforts, Lee said. It may also take a toll on the output and morale of remaining workers, who would question their employer’s commitment to diversity and be forced to take on the responsibility of reporting workplace issues to management and advocating for their needs. “I think the most important thing employers must consider is the message they’re sending” if they’re cutting back DEI initiatives, Lee said. “That affects your brand and communication.” Lee, who advises employers on DEI matters, said many companies are grappling with how to use layoffs to cut costs amid inflation and rumblings of a looming recession without undermining their diversity efforts. Liability Potential In addition to potentially harming employee morale and hiring efforts, employers risk exposing themselves to litigation because DEI leaders are often the ones who spot pitfalls and report unaddressed workplace issues that carry serious legal consequences, employment attorneys said. Research by a US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission task force found that a lack of diversity and inclusion in the workplace can promote discriminatory behavior and allow such conduct to go unchecked. “When you are gutting the roles of people tasked with holding you accountable and ensuring your workplace is diverse and inclusive, what follows is increases in instances of bias,” said Samone Ijoma, an employment attorney at Sanford Heisler Sharp LLP. “I do think that getting rid of the people with that expertise, and who are working to change corporate culture, would likely lead to more lawsuits in that realm,” she added. Diversity shouldn’t be treated as a project to fill a quota, but must be viewed as a business strategy that leads to better outcomes, she added...
There's No Such Thing as Being Transphobic
It's Megan Murphy, on Substack, "Spoiler: it's because there's no such thing as a trans person":
The easiest way to combat transgender ideology is to simply not go along with it. Don’t play along with the notion that one must use “preferred pronouns.” (Sexed pronouns are not a matter of preference, they are not an opinion or a judgement, they are a matter of grammar.) Don’t play along with the idea that it is possible to be “born in the wrong body.” (You are born with a sexed body, and unfortunately you don’t get a say in that.) Don’t play along with the idea that it is somehow special or original to not relate to every single stereotype associated with "masculinity” or “femininity.” (No one does. We are have our own personalities and preferences, and while femininity is more commonly associated with females and masculinity with males, how we feel about those sterotypes does not dictate our sex. If it did, we would be changing sex all the time and we would all be “trans.”) “Trans” is not a real, valid category with a coherent definition, which means that “transphobia” is also not a real, valid, or coherent concept. I realize some make the argument that being “polite” about such things is a better means to bring people over to “our side” or open people up to listening to our concerns, but I actually think it just creates an incredibly confusing conversation. It also opens us up to debates around things like “trans rights” (not a valid concept) or which kids are “really trans,” and therefore would benefit from being medicalized as “trans kids” (no child should be and there is no such thing as a “trans kid”). I fail to see why lying is polite or useful when talking about things like legislation and policy. It certainly isn’t polite or useful when dealing with kids whose brains are not fully developed and are at risk of having their bodies destroyed for life on account of said lies. You might like to think of yourself as a “live and let live” kind of person. You might think there are more important issues than transgenderism. You might think, “Why not just let some people identify however they like.” But we are talking about something much bigger: the truth. And reality. We are also talking about women’s rights and the safety and wellbeing of kids. But if anything, truth and reality are hills worth dying on. Trans activists are manipulating reality and impeding our ability to speak the truth via language. Don’t play along.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
