Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Cases in Radical Classroom Indoctrination

If recent college graduates were to skim through the top departments listed at the latest U.S. News and World Report's "Best Social Sciences and Humanities Schools," they'd find listed among the premier institutions many of the radical academic programs exposed in David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin's outstanding new book, One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America's Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy.

Horowitz and Laksin provide what the book jacket describes as "the first major comprehensive, in-depth, multiyear investigation of what is being taught in colleges and universities across the country ..."

And the authors don't disappoint.

I found myself interested in the work not only as an extremely well-documented piece of research, but also from the perspective of an academic with a personal acquaintance or knowledge of many of the individual professors whose activities form the case studies. Compared to Horowitz's earlier work, One-Party Classroom shifts documentary methods from students' testimony to the actual course materials of the hardline leftist professor-activists themselves. This approach avoids the potential for contested interpretations of reported classroom indoctrination by going right to the source, to the professors' actual published course documents.

If
One-Party Classroom bears any flaws, it's in its repetition - but that's not the fault of the authors. Over and over again, across the case studies, and across the humanities and social sciences curriculum, the reader is introduced to a radical, mind-numbing structure of institutionalized social justice pedagogy at the nation's top universities. Frankly, there should be little defense of such classroom teaching, particularly if the goal of such undergraduate and graduate education is train tomorrow's revolutionary cadres.

What we see in the book, in case after case, is professors with little expertise in economics, history, international relations, or political science, lecturing and leading seminars in abstract courses in empires, global inequality, Marxist political economy, and so forth. I mean literally, English professors and media specialists are teaching courses in what would be advanced global politics courses, and even many faculty members in legitimately political subfields teach courses well outside of their scholarly training. The sense is that any leftist professor with an inclination toward teaching the next batch of radicals can offer a course in social justice education. For example, Professor Anthony Kemp in the Department of English at USC offers the "Theories of History, Ideology, and Politics"; and at the University of Texas, Professor Katherine Arens teaches a course in "Marxisms" for the Department of Comparative Literature (see Kemp and Arens' college websites
here and here, respectively).

The broader point is not that it's inappropriate to teach these subjects, it's that such courses are not taught from the perspective of critical inquiry and academic contestation. Radical theories of imperialism, capitalist oppression, or the social construction of just-about-everything, are offered without counter-challenge from opposite paradigms or methologies. Students are frequently evaluated not by academic scholarship but progressive activism - for example, LGBT "service learning" projects - and through uncritical writing assignments of ideological regurgitation.

I recommend One-Party Classroom to anyone interested in what's happening in higher education today, but especially to parents who are planning on sending their kids off to college, at great expense, often getting little return on the dollar in terms of classic learning or real disciplinary expertise for their children.

It's tempting to write off such professors and their courses as a few eccentric cranks here and there, easily avoidable and thus largely tolerated as ideological oddities. But it's not like that.


Just this week, the board of trustees at the College of DuPage, in Illinois, voted to rescind the implementation of a Horowitz-inspired "academic bill of rights" at the institution. Apparently, "Faculty leaders at DuPage and elsewhere" condemed the bill of rights as "an attack on academic freedom." But as we see over and over again, on college campuses around the country, there is no academic freedom for those holding traditional views to speak and discuss their ideas without disruption or threats of violence. Most recently, Congressman Tom Tancredo was prevented from giving a talk at the University of North Carolina. A mob of radical activists literally took over the campus at Chapel Hill to successfully hijack Tancredo's First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association.

This evening, while searching for information on the decision at the College of DuPage, I came across a number of writings by
Professor Dana Cloud at the University of Texas. Particularly noteworthy is her essay published this week at Dissident Voices, "The McCarthyism that Horowitz Built." As the title indicates, the piece attacks conservative challenges to leftist classroom indoctrination as "McCarthyism." As Professor Cloud alleges, "the noxious weeds of the new McCarthyism have begun to bear bitter fruit around the country."

Perhaps one might wish to take her argument seriously, except a look at her blog shows that in defending her practice of shouting down those with whom she disagrees, Professor Cloud is explicitly unwilling to extend to Horowitz the same kind of protections she claims are being denied to progressives:

... it is wrong to equate protest–even loud, disruptive protest–with censorship. Public disruption has been a staple of movements for social change in this country from the Boston Tea Party forward ....

Protest is not censorship; it is simply the exercise of more speech. Where would our democracy be without disruptive protests for women’s rights, civil rights for minorities, and for the meager protections and rights afforded gays and lesbians today?
Well, it's not "more speech" if the target of the protest is unable to get a word in edgewise.

But we don't have to adjudicate between the competing claims of Howoritz and Professor Cloud on who's censoring whom. We can simply look at Professor Cloud's own course syllabi for a glimpse of what this woman is all about. Take a look her Spring 2009 graduate syllabus for "
Rhetoric of Social Movements":

Over the past eight years, the assumptions of neoliberalism—that corporate globalization would forestall economic crisis, that there is no better social system than capitalism, that preemptive war is justified and necessary, that society offers every person who works hard and keeps the faith has the same life chances, regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or nationality—have fallen like a house of cards. Whereas during the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher could announce that “there is no alternative to capitalism” and Francis Fukuyama could declare the end of history (i.e., the end of major social transformation), the present economic crisis and upsurge of hope for change have prompted a rebirth of Keynesian liberalism; one can only expect that existing social movements will pick up momentum and that new social movements will arise from the gap between what the Obama administration promises and what it can deliver ....

This course will survey these disciplinary shifts in historical context. Our main theoretical frame will be that of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, whose theory of hegemony, culture, ideology, and oppositional consciousness unifies the concerns of most social movement theory and history through the present day. The course is also committed to providing a comprehensive survey of U.S. social movements—from the War for Independence to the contemporary movement for gay civil rights—because it is difficult to find a coherent account of this history anywhere at the graduate level. The lessons of the past are key to understanding the conditions of possibility for change today.
What's interesting in reading this syllbus is how the entire thrust of Professor Cloud's seminar curriculum explicitly ignores the central purpose of graduate education: to train scholars in the research and methods of an academic field in order to prepare them to make an original scholarly contribution to the discipline. In other words, as Professor Cloud's introduction makes clear, the purpose of her seminar is to elucidate and facilitate the "conditions of possibility of change today." In contrast, in political science at my former graduate institution and at sister departments, grad students are required to produce seminar research papers of publication-quality, and such research has become increasingly a requirement for the advancement to Ph.D. candidacy (see, for a leading example, the UCLA Department of Political Science Graduate Handbook).

Professor Cloud's pushback against David Horowitz as "McCarthyite" in her pamphlet writing is tantamount to shouting him down at the podium of a public lecture. The goal is indeed to protest and excoriate with the intent to silence. There is no effort to defend academic curricula or exchange ideas. To Professor Cloud, Horowitz represents the "fascist" campus police, storming colleges like the jackbooted stormtroopers of the interwar era.
Her real heroes are people like Willliam Robinson of UCSB, who has made a program out of equating Israelis to Nazis following Israel's recent military action against Palestinian rocket attacks on the civilian population within range of Gaza.

The case of Professor Cloud is repeated again and again on hundreds of campuses nationwide. A next step for Horowitz and Laksin will be to extend the analysis in One-Party Classroom into a larger statistical database of cases of radical activism and hardline left-wing indoctrination on America's campuses. There is no question that what progressive academics are doing is training the next generation of revolutionary hordes for the coming battles against the forces of "monopoly capitalism" and global inequality. These tenured radicals can't hide their program of indocrination and anti-intellectualism. Instead they decry "McCarthyism" and they pack college boards with progressive cronies and union hacks who have little interest in turning out highly-trained critical thinkers for the new millenium. Instead, we see the excoriation of efforts to restore intellectual diversity to scholarly programs - through the academic bill of rights, and so forth - as threats to "academic freedom."

It's a wacky world in the halls of academe today, but the more that clear thinking conservative activists and writers expose the campus radicals, the better by which the general public will be able to hold these left-wing intellectual mountebanks accountable.

Gavin "Clean Gel" Newsom Pushes Gay Marriage Vote in 2010

California may get its first "metrosexual" governor, if San Francisco Mayor Gavin "Clean Gel" Newsom is able to win the state's primary and general election next year.

Newsome's in the news today with
an interview at ABC News, where he claims that "the time is right" to vote on another state gay marriage initiative. See the whole article, "California Gay Marriage Backers Poised to Try Again in 2010."

Actually, Newsom's a municipal law-breaker, as far as I'm concerned. His policy of marrying same-sex couples in San Francisco in 2004 was later overturned by the California Supreme Court.

Recall that Newsom toured Southern California in March, kicking off his gubernatorial campaign. The news reports at the time focused less on Newsome's politics
than on his knowledge of the hairstyling gel, thus "firming up" his image as a political metrosexual, NTTAWWT:

Gavin Newsom may be running for governor of California, but "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest had something else in mind during his Tuesday morning radio chat with the San Francisco mayor: "What is that product that you put in your slick, shiny hair?"

"L'Oreal," Newsom responded. "And it's the Clean Gel. It's the Total Control Clean Gel, because they've got seven or eight products, and the other ones don't work."

"I'm talking to a metrosexual," Seacrest marveled.

So began the opening day of Newsom's weeklong effort to introduce himself to Southern Californians who know little about him, apart from his attempt to legalize same-sex marriage.
Hey, that's cool! Keep talking about the hair gel, buddy!

A divorced philandering ANSWER-backed gay rights activist and L'Oreal-combing soft-on-homicide open-borders San Francisco mayor!

What a campaign! Boy, he'll sweep the California heartland!

Inside the Mind of an Extremely Bitter Gay Man

It's useful to see Andrew Sullivan as a proxy for nihilist left-wing gay progressivism. Despite his claims to the contrary, Sullivan's widely considered a gay radical on the far left-wing of the spectrum.

As readers know, Sullivan routinely takes demonization of Republicans to the extreme. I've paid attention to his ravings, not just because he's still taken seriously on the left (and
in the White House, of all places), but because his singular issue is gay marriage; and the radical gay agenda is shaping up to be the key issue of today's culture war. I've been reading Sullivan's Virtually Normal off and on, to get a feel for where this man is coming from. He's something of a tragic, tormented soul, as anyone who reads his blog would know. His narrow jihad against Sarah Palin is mindless yet endless, although he also continues his obssessive attacks on the GOP as a whole as if it were a new Nazi Party.

Sullivan's hysteria is simply unreal sometimes, but behold his post today calling for a purge of conservatives, "
Who Will "Sister Souljah" Them?":

I'm not a Democrat and if pushed, I'd have to say right now I'm a libertarian independent. I'm uneasy about Obama's long-term debt, to say the least, but I'm intelligent enough to know it's not Obama's as such, but mainly Bush's, and I'm also cognizant that the time to cut back may not be in the middle (or beginning) of a brutal depression. On most issues, I side with what used to be the center-right, but the GOP is poison to me and many others. Why?

Their abandonment of limited government, their absurd spending under Bush, their contempt for civil liberties, their rigid mindset, their hostility to others, their worship of the executive branch, their contempt for judicial checks, their cluelessness with racial minorities and immigrants, their endorsement of torture as an American value, their homophobia, their know-nothing Christianism, and the sheer vileness of their leaders - from the dumb-as-a-post Steele to the brittle, money-grubbing cynic, Coulter and hollow, partisan neo-fascist Hannity.

I'm waiting for the first leading Republican to do to these grandstanding goons what Clinton once did to the extremists in his own ranks: reject them, excoriate them, remind people that they do not have a monopoly on conservatism and that decent right-of-center people actually find their vision repellent. And then to articulate a positive vision for taking this country forward, expanding liberty, exposing corruption, reducing government's burden, unwinding ungovernable empire, and defending civic virtue without going on Jihads against other people's vices.

If today's "conservatives" spent one tenth of the time saying what they were for rather than who they're against, they might get somewhere. But the truth is: whom they hate is their core motivation right now. That's how they define themselves. And as long as they do, Americans will rightly and soundly reject them.
Andrew Sullivan was one of the biggest and most vocal backers of the War in Iraq, and hence the Bush administration's policy of regime change. He renounced his views in 2006, and has become more bitter over time. You'd think he'd be more optimistic and, well, gay, considering the number of victories his radical homosexual agenda has achieved. My sense is that Sullivan, as much as anyone, knows that the gay marriage equality issue is far from guaranteed, so he's become more unhinged by the day, insuperably bitter, marinating in his hatred amid an extreme left-wing ideological environment that's presenting a chance of a lifetime.

This man is not a "libertarian independent." He's got no long-term grounding and is bereft of values. He's a political leech who bites onto the ideological wave of the moment. Why he remains popular is something of surprise to me, but amid all the Obamessianism of late, nothing should be surprising.

Related: The Politico reports that "Groups push for first gay Supreme Court justice" (via Memeorandum). Maybe the first gay Supreme might brighten sullen Sullivan's day.

Carrie Prejean Nude Picture Scandal!

I just got word from Robert Stacy McCain that Miss California Carrie Prejean has been exposed as having posed nude!

MSNBC has the story, "
Miss California: I’ll fight on despite racy photos":

With partially nude photos of her popping up on Web sites questioning her Christian credentials, Miss California USA Carrie Prejean has fired back, claiming the racy pictures are just modeling shots and vowing to continue her battle against same-sex marriage.

“I am a Christian, and I am a model,” Prejean said in a statement released overnight to the media. “Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos. Recently, photos taken of me as a teenager have been released surreptitiously to a tabloid Web site that openly mocks me for my Christian faith. I am not perfect, and I will never claim to be.”

But Alicia Jacobs, a judge at the April 19 Miss USA pageant during which Prejean made her highly publicized statement opposing same-sex marriage, said the pictures go beyond what the Miss California pageant says are appropriate.

“I can assure you they were quite inappropriate, and certainly not photos befitting a beauty queen,” Jacobs, a reporter for NBC’s Las Vegas affiliate, told NBC News.

The images may also hurt her status as a spokeswoman for conservative causes. “She can continue to advocate for causes, but I don’t think these causes are going to advocate for her,” Ken Baker of E! News told NBC.
Yeah, well, nobody's perfect, as they say. But I agree: It's pretty hard to be a spokesperson for traditional values when you're stripping down for racy lingerie shots.

I love Carrie Prejean, and she'll weather the storm, but it's just one more case of human frailty in the eyes of God, and no doubt the nihilist leftists will rush to hold her up as a poster girl for the "hypocrisy" of the fundamentalist right.

See
here and here for more details. Ms. Prejean's "modeling" shot is here.

I don't see a thread yet at
Memeorandum, but just wait. I'd bet this will be the leading story by late this afternoon, and I'll update at that time!

Big Hat Tip: Robert Stacy McCain.

**********

UPDATE: There's a Memeorandum thread now. Also blogging, Moe Lane, Red State, Flopping Aces, AmSpecBlog, and Taki's Magazine.

Charles Johnson and Andrew Sullivan: Separated at Birth?

Samuel Wurzelbacher's comments from his Christianity Today interview continue to dominate the news this morning. At issue is his remark on homosexuals, where he suggests, "I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children."

When read in the context of Wurzelbacher's deconstruction of the word "queer," the guy makes sense - at least from the perspective of a parent trying to instill strong moral values in his children.

Of course, "anywhere near my children" is politically incorrect, so Wurzelbacher's being hammered from both sides of the spectrum, and certainly there's room for debate on exactly what "threat" Wurzelbacher had in mind.

Still, I just can't help noticing how Charles Johnson and Andrew Sullivan performed some near-perfect telepathy in their respective, nearly-identical posts on the topic.

Here's Charles Johnson's, "
Joe the Plumber Speaks Out Against 'Queers'." Johnson cites the "anywhere near my children" quote but can't quit ("I could stop with that one, but there’s more"), and adds a couple more passages before the sigh ... "Good. Grief."

Here's Andrew Sullivan's, "
What Christianity Means to Some." Sullivan also cites the "anywhere near my children" quote, and then adds, "Sam Wurzelbacher has every right to keep his children away from anyone. But he is instilling bigotry at an early age. As is his party."

And there you have it.

Charles Johnson and Andrew Sullivan: Separated at birth now reunited to excoriate Joe the Plumber, the house bigot of the GOP.

P.S. I want neither Johnson nor Sullivan "anywhere near my children"!

The GOP and Moderates

Rick Moran on the Republican Party coalition, at Pajamas Media:

The fact that there are many in the party who actually think it a good idea to shrink the GOP by subtracting less conservative, less ideological, more moderate members is incomprehensible. In the minority already, draining the Republican Party of anyone who fails to demonstrate what many conservative activists determine as sufficient enthusiasm for their agenda strikes me as madness.

It’s not that the activists don’t have a point. Tossing aside conservative principles and running candidates who offer little in the way of contrast to the Democrats would be useless. But at the same time, there has got to be some recognition that the party must expand beyond the 30% or so of the electorate who identify themselves as “conservative.” Otherwise, you condemn the GOP to permanent minority status — a regional, monochromatic grouping that would exist largely in the south and pockets of the Midwest and Mountain West.
Read the whole thing, here.

Moran suggests that Jack Kemp would be "drummed out of the conservative movement today" for his moderate positions on immigration and race. That may be so on legalization, although I hardly think that home ownership for black Americans is a moderate position. Geez, why don't some of the base conservatives start talking up some of the former HUD Secretary's proposals? Kemp was light years ahead of his time. We could use more people like him.

P.S.: Moran doesn't really answer this question: If the GOP becomes "pro-choice, or pro-gay marriage, or pro-amnesty," why will moderates choose the Republicans over the Democrats?

Monday, May 4, 2009

Turning to Madrasas in Pakistan

From today's New York Times, "Pakistan’s Islamic Schools Fill Void, but Fuel Militancy":

Young boys reading the Koran at a madrasa in Multan, in southern Punjab Province. The concentration of madrases in southern Punjab has become an urgent concern in the face of Pakistan's expanding insurgency. The madrasas offer no instruction beyond the memorizing of the Koran, creating a widening pool of young minds that are sympathetic to militancy.

The caption to another photograph at the slideshow reads, "The impoverished expanse of rural southern Punjab, where the Taliban have begun making inroads with the help of local militant groups, has one of the highest concentrations of madrases in the country.

The full article is available here.

How Ezra Levant Beat Canada's "Human Rights" Censors

From Reason Magazine, Ezra Levant, "The Internet Saved My Tongue: How I Beat Canada's 'Human Rights' Censors":

Early on the morning of February 13, 2006, nearly 40,000 copies of the Western Standard rolled off the presses in Edmonton, Alberta. Tucked inside that week’s issue of Canada’s only national conservative magazine, on pages 15 and 16, was a story about the international controversy over a Danish newspaper that had printed a dozen satirical cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammad. Our article, which was illustrated by eight of the cartoons, would soon trigger a three year government investigation of whether I, as the Western Standard’s publisher, had violated the rights of Canadian Muslims by “discriminating” against their religion.

The investigation vividly illustrated how Canada’s provincial and national human rights commissions (HRCs), created in the 1970s to police discrimination in employment, housing, and the provision of goods and services, have been hijacked as weapons against speech that offends members of minority groups. My eventual victory over this censorious assault suggests that Western governments will find it increasingly difficult in the age of the Internet to continue undermining human rights in the name of defending them.
A phenomenal story, unreal in some respects. Read the whole thing, here.

Speaking about his dealings with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission, Levant laments, "the right to not be offended trumps freedom of speech in Alberta."

Fifty-Four Percent of Americans Oppose Gay Marriage

From the new CNN/Opinion Dynamics Poll:

A new national poll suggests that a majority of Americans oppose legalizing same sex marriages — but there's a vast generational divide on the issue.

Fifty-four percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday say that marriages between gay or lesbian couples should not be recognized as valid, with 44 percent suggests they should be considered legal.

Among those 18 to 34 years old, 58 percent said same-sex marriages should be legal. That number drops to 42 percent among respondents 35 to 49 years old, and to 41 percent for those 50 to 64 years of age. The poll indicates that only 24 percent of Americans 65 and older support recognizing same-sex marriages as valid.

While a majority of those polled oppose legalizing gay marriage, 6 out of 10 feel that states that do not recognize gay marriages allow civil unions. When it comes to supporting civil unions, the poll indicates a similar generational shift.
The key theme is the generation gap, as always, because gay activists assume that generational cohort replacement will make legalization of same-sex marriage inevitable. It's a questionable assumption. The number of young people supporting gay marriage isn't asoundingly high. Plus, when question items are broken down into clear choices, (a) support for gay marriage, (b) support for civil unions, or (c) support for neither, less than one third supported option "a" in a recent national survey, and only one in four in Iowa. And life experiences - entering the workforce, owning a home, raising a family, etc. - have the effect of promoting traditional expectations on the role of government in society. That is, people generally become more conservative with age, so today's older cohorts could very well be replaced by younger generations holding increasingly more traditional positions on cultural issues with age.

This is why, from the perspective of gay activists, the battle for same-sex marriage has moved far beyond the question of rights (gay Americans have equal rights under the law, in any case, and gay marriage is not a civil right, for that matter), and has instead shifted to an agenda of wholesale change in American culture and institutions, and especially religion.

Nowadays, as we have seen with the recent controversy over Carrie Prejean, but also today with
Samuel Wurzelbacher's statements, traditional Americans have been rebranded as "bigots."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Courts Granting Equality Between Same-Sex and Heterosexual Unions

If you read this piece at the Los Angeles Times carefully, you'll notice that gays are increasingly being afforded full family rights by the states (adoption, insurance, etc.) without changing the definition of marriage:

BUILDING MOMENTUM? Supporters of gay rights demonstrate in Philadelphia. Legal scholars expect several more states to legalize same-sex marriage this year.

When Maine's highest court ruled two years ago that lesbians Marilyn Kirby and Ann Courtney could adopt the two children they had cared for since 2001, the man who has led the state battle against gay marriage for 25 years got a glimpse of the defeat now looming.

"There's a sense people have -- a sense of inevitability -- and a tremendous sense of frustration because of the history of the gay rights fight in Maine," said Michael Heath, executive director of the Maine Family Policy Council.

He was referring to rights incrementally accorded to gay couples that have led to virtual equality between same-sex and heterosexual unions -- a significant trend occurring in Maine and other states where gay marriage remains banned, experts on both sides of the issue agree.

Those rights are expanding as legally married gay couples relocate to states that don't allow same-sex marriage, forcing courts, legislatures and employers to deal with the resulting issues of custody, divorce, inheritance and end-of-life decisions.

The adoption ruling in Maine had the effect of granting parental rights to same-sex couples. By the time the Legislature adjourns for the summer, experts expect Maine to become the fifth state to legalize same-sex marriage -- 11 years after voters banned it.

In New York, which doesn't allow same-sex marriages but recognizes those conducted elsewhere, recent court decisions have granted a divorce to two gay men and surviving spouse benefits to another.

In California, federal judges have twice overruled decisions by the federal government to deny healthcare coverage to gay employees' legal spouses, teeing up a constitutional challenge to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which forbids federal benefits for same-sex couples.

Same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and Massachusetts, which began the trend five years ago. (Iowa issued its first marriage licenses April 27, a few weeks after its Supreme Court gave approval; weddings in Vermont will begin in September.) Within a year, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York will probably follow suit, say sexual orientation scholars at the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute; New Hampshire's Senate approved a same-sex marriage bill Wednesday.

And as more same-sex couples wed in places where it is legal, the administrative fallout in other states is expected to keep expanding.
There's a couple of things going on here: (1) Many courts and legislatures are moving to expand equal protections to same-sex couples short of legalizing gay marriage, but the article also shows, (2) how gay activists are playing up the "inevitability" angle for all it's worth. Actually, less than one-third of American nationally, and even fewer in recent Iowa polling, support full-blown same-sex marriage rights (supporting civil unions instead). So, gay radicals - seeking to change the definition of marriage even though states are expanding gay partnership rights - will continue to push in the courts and legislatures at the state level to create a jigsaw puzzle of conflicting laws and regulations, attempting to tie the federal system in knots.

Conservatives know exactly what's happening:

These are serious cases of widespread importance, where we see same-sex couples attempting to use the laws of another state to push their agenda in a state that does not recognize their union," said Jim Campbell, litigation counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization.

"This is a danger that will spread to all states but will not necessarily result in same-sex marriage in all states," Campbell said, noting that opponents will continue to press their elected officials to reject same-sex marriage initiatives.

Julaine Appling, executive director of Wisconsin Family Action, agrees, saying her group "has always taken the position that these kinds of decisions should be made in the Legislature, where they can be fully vetted and can have public opinion given."
Well, gay activists really don't want to have their views "fully vetted." The more we actually hear these people, the less inclined are we to support their case.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times, "
Same-sex Marriages Gradually Gain Legal Ground."

Mario Lavandeira: "Lard Boy" of the Gay Marriage Movement

Perez Hilton, a.k.a, Mario Armando Lavandeira, has extended his shelf-life a bit by claiming copyright infringement for a 3-second video snippet of his "dumb bitch" attack on Carrie Prejean.

Patterico called him out (and is willing to fight Hilton in court), but I just love The Deceiver's take on it, dismissing the idea that he claimed copyright infringement out of embarrassment: "Perez Hilton Puts the 'Hippo” in “Hypocrite'":

I’m not sure Hilton is actually embarrassed. He’s never shown a capacity for it. No, he’s doing this out of spite, because he doesn’t like the unintended consequences of his actions. He’s an emotionally stunted bully, and he can’t handle it when somebody pushes back. Even when it means denying someone else’s right to Fair Use, after he’s made a name for himself by ineptly scrawling genitalia on stolen photos of celebrities and, when sued for violating copyright, declaring it Fair Use.

But then, this is hardly Lard Boy’s first instance of jaw-dropping hypocrisy. Just ask Jonathan Jaxson and Diane Wargo.

There's more at the link. Ouch factor courtesy of Glenn Reynolds.

Can't Touch This: Criticism of Obamessiah Off Limits!

From cocktail parties to late-night TV, American politics has turned into a no-slam zone for President Barack Obama, a.k.a, "Obamessiah."

Via
Memeorandum, Laura Varon Brown, at the Detroit Free Press, shares her story, in "Obama criticism shuts down conversation":

Parties were more fun when George W. Bush was president. You could debate, argue even, praise and condemn, throw darts and laurels and solve the world's problems over a bottle of wine.

No more. At least not in my circles. If you want to stop a conversation in its tracks, just question something President Barack Obama has said or done. It's not open to debate - and I don't think that's healthy, for the country or the president.

It's especially unsettling for a free speech girl like me. The First Amendment is important - but lately, it feels like my right of self-expression is being squashed.

One example: Obama's comment to Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show," comparing his bowling abilities to someone in the Special Olympics.

Can you imagine the uproar had Bush said that? He'd be banished from bowling alleys for eternity. His bowling average and IQ would have immediately been compared in Twitter messages demanding his resignation.

But instead, media and water cooler conversations the next day were about bowling scores and how tough the game can be. Anyone bringing up the insensitivity of the president's remark heard, "Come on, give the guy a chance. So he said one thing wrong. Anyone could have said something like that." End of discussion.
End of the presidential punchline as well.

As today's Los Angeles Times reports, "
Comedians are treading carefully as they test the limits of political satire with a black president":

On his HBO show, "Real Time With Bill Maher," the comedian routinely makes vicious fun of celebrities, politicians, presidents and even God. But he's learned that, for much of his audience, Barack Obama is off limits.

Not long after the historic presidential election, Maher joked that Republicans were feeling particularly superstitious: "They say the country is having bad luck because there's a black cat in the White House." The studio audience erupted in loud groans and boos - a reaction, Maher observed in a recent interview, that exceeded his often scathing attacks on organized religion.

"Obama is the new God," quipped Maher of the poorly received dig, which he pointed out pokes at conservatives more than the commander in chief.
You know, Maher dug down to the depths of depravity with his famous career-crashing line, "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

And now he can't even joke that Obama's the new God?

Now that's cowardly! But what can you do when criticizing a black president gets you attacked as "racist"?

We're all Obamessianists now ...

In Defense of "Rule 5"

Did readers know that American Power is actually one of the key inspirations for Robert Stacy McCain's "Rule 5" blogging? Yep, it's true. In response to this photo of Natalie Portman, posted March 2008, Stacy suggested that "Donald Douglas of American Power is a blogger after my own heart..."

Well, things have been taking off for Stacy since then. A lot of that has to do with his embrace of unapologetic "babe blogging," which is, of course, embodied in "Rule 5" of "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year."

"Rule 4" of the program is "
make some enemies," and it turns out that said "unfriendlies" (friendly unfriendlies, actually) came out of the woodworks this weekend in response to Stacy's analysis of the Carrie Prejean breast implant story. Here's the post, with the key passage in defense of "Rule 5":
To assert that my Rule 5 blogging is sometimes indecorous is to state the obvious. Being indecorous is kind of the point. We live in a world constrained by political correctness, including the feminist insistence (backed by threat of federal lawsuit) that even the mildest workplace acknowledgement of a woman's beauty is vicious "harassment."

So it occurs to me that normal red-blooded guys might need some kind of "safe zone" exempt from this uptight neo-Victorianism. Out there in the cruel world, a guy could be professionally ruined if he were overheard to remark, "Hey, nice stems on that blonde." But here? Heh.
Read the whole thing, here (via Memeorandum). After laying out what's really ailing conservatives and the GOP (with a whole lot of asides), Stacy concludes:
Dear ladies, forgive me if my irreverent remarks about Carrie Prejean's fake boobies offended your delicate sensibilities. Please understand that years of youthful association with companions of low character have irretrievably corrupted me, rendering me permanently unfit for polite society.
Geez, I hope those hot shots of Bar Rafaeli don't get me in hot water with the ladies!

Trig Trutherism Lives!

Here's Andrew Sullivan on Sarah Palin's recent comments about her pregnancy with Trig:

I tend to assume that everything Palin says is untrue until proven otherwise, and in this case, have no basis to confirm or deny anything.
As I've noted many times, like JammieWearingFool, "It Must Be Mental Illness: Sullivan Still Suffering From Trig Trooferism."

Of course, President Obama's a fan of Excitable Andy, notes Gateway Pundit, "
Obama's Favorite Blogger Is Still Discussing the Trig Palin Conspiracy." And as Scott at Powerline adds:

I hope the White House minders who are feeding Sullivan's deep thoughts to Obama don't hold back Sullivan's latest reveries on the Trig Palin conspiracy -- you know, the conspiracy to make out that Sarah Palin is Trig's mother. Sullivan's latest reveries on Trig are truly representative of Sullivan's illumination of the issues of the day. Unbelievable.
And in case you missed it from last year's campaign, "Don't Go Over There, But Sullivan Is Pushing (of Course!) Trig Trutherism Now":

Let's see a brain scan, buddy. Let's get some answers ... Medical fucking answers."
Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

Change! Blacks Better Off Under Obama

Gallup reports that black Americans say they are faring better under the Obama administration, "Major Gains in Blacks’ Ratings of Their Standard of Living":

Gallup Poll Daily tracking of Americans' assessments of their standard of living finds continued improvement among blacks after a dramatic 31-point spike in January. Blacks' score on Gallup's Standard of Living Index dropped to as low as -1 during the height of the financial crisis last October, remaining low in November and December, but it now stands at +62.
But you're going to love
the bottom-line analysis:

It is unlikely that the election of a new president would have much of an immediate effect on most individuals' actual standard of living. Most Americans would continue to work in the same jobs that they had before the election, with the same income and the same expenses. But having a president that one believes in may just lead people to have a much sunnier outlook, not only on the government but on other aspects of life, and may cause them to rate conditions in a variety of areas more positively.
You see? Change we can believe in! (Emphasis added.)

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Hugh Jackman Returns!

I spent time with my family this weekend. I took my boys to see Wolverine last night, and the whole family had breakfast this morning at Cheesecake Factory.

I've had the most fun with the "superheroes" flicks over the last few years, since I get to enjoy them through the experience of my boys. But my youngest son, 7, is the best. He's just totally into all of the Marvel guys, and we read comics and watch the older movies on DVD. On Halloween, my little "super" has been "The Incredible Hulk" and "Spiderman," and a couple of others.

During the movie (slight spoiler alert), when Wolverine emerges from the submersion tank and breaks away with the adamantium upgrade, my son blurted out, "he's nakie!" I just started laughing to myself! I just love to see him enjoying it, so full of wonder and exclamation.

Anyway, the
movie reviews were so-so, but I love Jackman's Wolverine simply because the dude's hot!

Anyway, check out the background story on Hugh Jackman at the Los Angeles Times, "Hugh Jackman Returns to Signature Role as Wolverine."

More later ...

Progressives Don't Want Specter!

Arlen Specter's getting the lefties all riled up with his comments today to David Gregory on Meet the Press: "I did not say I would be a loyal Democrat. I did not say that."

Steve Benen pretty much sums it up:

In the four whole days he's been a Democrat, Specter has voted against the Democratic budget, rejected a Democratic measure to help prevent mortgage foreclosures and preserve home values, announced his opposition to the president's OLC nominee, and this morning rejected a key centerpiece of the Democratic health care plan.
Benen suggests that Specter's initial signaling to the Democrats "practically begs for a primary."

William Jacobson's got a roundup on the additional outrage on the left, and see also Memeorandum.

Obama's Army of Followers

From the Associated Press, "Obamas take a walk, holding hands in the evening":

I'm guessing these folks weren't among the panicked New Yorkers during the recent Air Force One flyover in Manhattan!

California's Big Government Laboratory

George Will irks me sometimes, especially on foreign policy, but he nails it today with his essay on California as the laboratory of big-government liberalism, "No More California Dreaming."

Note in particular Will's comments on Proposition 1A, the May 19 ballot measure that proposes $16 billion in new taxes in exchange for the promise of "spending caps" in future budget years:
Proposition 1A would create a complicated - hence probably porous - spending cap and a rainy-day fund. Realists, however, do not trust the Legislature to obey the law, which may be why some public employees unions cynically support 1A ....

If voters pass 1A's hypothetical restraint on government spending, their reward will be two extra years (another $16 billion) of actual income, sales and vehicle tax increases. The increases were supposed to be for just two years. Voters are being warned that if they reject the propositions, there might have to be $14 billion in spending cuts. (Note the $15 billion number four paragraphs above.) Even teachers might be laid off. California teachers - the nation's highest-paid, with salaries about 25 percent above the national average - are emblematic of the grip that government employees unions have on the state, where 57 percent of government workers are unionized (the national average is 37 percent).

Flinching from serious budget cutting and from confronting public employees unions, some Californians focus on process questions. They devise candidate-selection rules designed to diminish the role of parties, thereby supposedly making more likely the election of "moderates" amenable to even more tax increases.

But what actually ails California is centrist evasions. The state's crisis has been caused by "moderation," understood as splitting the difference between extreme liberalism and hyperliberalism, a "reasonableness" that merely moderates the speed at which the ever-expanding public sector suffocates the private sector.

California has become liberalism's laboratory, in which the case for fiscal conservatism is being confirmed. The state is a slow learner and hence will remain a drag on the nation's economy. But it will be a net benefit to the nation if the federal government and other state governments profit from California's negative example, which Californians can make more vividly instructive by voting down the propositions on May 19.

Failing Teachers Get a Pass at L.A. Unified

Unless you're a parent or an educator, teacher tenure probably isn't the hottest of hot-button issues on your political agenda. But as we watch the debates over national education reform heat up in the years ahead, especially considering the refusal of the Barack Obama administration to support the Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington D.C.'s public schools, keep in mind this Los Angeles Times investigative report on firing teachers at Los Angeles Unified School District.

This part right here is actually
heart-rending:

Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare. In 80% of the dismissals that were upheld, classroom performance was not even a factor.

When teaching is at issue, years of effort - and thousands of dollars - sometimes go into rehabilitating the teacher as students suffer. Over the three years before he was fired, one struggling math teacher in Stockton was observed 13 times by school officials, failed three year-end evaluations, was offered a more desirable assignment and joined a mentoring program as most of his ninth-grade students flunked his courses.

As a case winds its way through the system, legal costs can soar into the six figures.

Meanwhile, said Kendra Wallace, principal of
Daniel Webster Middle School on Los Angeles' Westside, an ineffective teacher can instruct 125 to 260 students a year - up to 1,300 in the five years she says it often takes to remove a tenured employee.

"The hardest conversation to have is when a student comes in and looks at you and says, 'Can you please come teach our class?' " she said.

When coaching and other improvement efforts don't work, she said, "You're in the position of having to look at 125 kids and just say, 'I'm sorry,' because the process of removal is really difficult. . . . You're looking at these kids and knowing they are going to high school and they're not ready. It is absolutely devastating."
Read the whole thing, here.

The article cites
Obama's major address on education in March, where he announced,"It is time to start rewarding good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones ... I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences."

But as the Times piece indicates, the nation's tenure system itself may protect bad teachers from facing the consequences of their poor teaching. And, think unions!

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Jack Kemp, 1935-2009

Jack Kemp, in my mind, was the premier Republican on race relations in American politics. No one spoke to the power of markets and opportunity to empower black Americans as he did. His agenda as HUD Secretary in the first Bush administration would still be light years ahead if its time if applied today. We need more conservatives like him. What a wonderful man, and a great loss to the nation.

See Kemp's obituary at the New York Times, and also
Associated Press (via Memeorandum).

Plus, check Quin Hillyer's comments on Kemp from just a couple of months ago, "What conservatives need right now is another Jack Kemp for a younger generation."

Renewing Socialism? Don't Even Think About It ...

Leo Panitch, a professor of political science at York University, Toronto, is the author of Renewing Socialism, and is the editor of a reader in international political economy, American Empire and the Political Economy of Global Finance.

Professor Panitch obviously takes his Marxism seriously, and he makes the case for the resurgence of Marxist theories as the basis for a new-age political economy of socialism at the new Foreign Policy, "
Thoroughly Modern Marx."

Here's a passage from the essay, where Panitch waxes eloquently on "the way to bring about radical change" amid global economic "crisis":

The irrationality built into the basic logic of capitalist markets—and so deftly analyzed by Marx—is once again evident. Trying just to stay afloat, each factory and firm lays off workers and tries to pay less to those kept on. Undermining job security has the effect of undercutting demand throughout the economy. As Marx knew, microrational behavior has the worst macroeconomic outcomes. We now can see where ignoring Marx while trusting in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” gets you ....

Although he made the call “Workers of the world, unite!” Marx still insisted that workers in each country “first of all settle things with their own bourgeoisie.” The measures required to transform existing economic, political, and legal institutions would “of course be different in different countries.” But in every case, Marx would insist that the way to bring about radical change is first to get people to think ambitiously again.
This is a man who's apparently made his entire academic career as a Marxist political scientist. He is, in other words, the real thing - an academic scribbler giving theoretical strength to madmen in authority.

I mean, what is this, workers need to "settle things with their own bourgeosie"? Well, of course that's simply a euphemism for the final solution to the capitalist problem. I wonder if this Panitch guy really believes his theories, or, rather, if he understands the implications of them.
Read the whole essay. He genuinely wants to eviscerate markets, the price mechanism, and private property. Although radical leftists will disavow the connections (they're "progressives" nowadays), Marxist economic theory has been tried. With applied socialism we got the Marxist-Leninism of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, and later the forced collectivization of the rule of Josep Stalin. We could go down the list from Chairman Mao to Comrade Fidel in Havana. The Marxist model is the foundation for all of these regimes, and since when did the "dialectical" get separated from the "socialism" in the theoretical model of dialectical materialism? I think today's economic "crisis" has engendered historical amnesia.

NOTHING'S CHANGED!

Forget all the revisionism. Forget Althusser and Gramsci, or whichever contemporary postmodernist who's detailed some unreadable post-revisionist synthesis of the foundational praxiology of Marxian orginalism - or whatever else you might find
on left-wing syllabi throughout the academy. Marxists hate the individual. They hate the political economy of liberty. You cannot make a functioning society on the basis of increasing immiseration of the entrepreneurial/investing classes. It defies not just logic and imagination, but empirical reality. No economic system in the history of the world, not one, has provided a greater good for a greater number in terms of material well-being and human happiness. When leftists like Panitch excoriate markets as engendering the "worse macroeconomic outcomes," the solution is to eliminate the "microrational behavior" that led to that equilibrium in the first place. Translated: Kill the capitalist producers and consumers who multiplied by the millions make up the microfoundations of the political economy of human freedom.

But we don't have to rehash the classical economic arguments that have been reproduced in traditional economic tracts over the centuries to understand the poverty of socialism. (Pick up any mainstream economics textbook and you'll still see the basic suppy and demand curves of capitalism's unregulated market as the basis for economic growth and societal prosperity.) No, just look at those collectivist societies today that still cling to the burnt totalitarianism of the 20th century. The new Foreign Policy contains compendium of essays outlining and analyzing the current structural foundations for "
the next big idea." It's all about transcendance!

But the most imporant piece in this entire edition is the photo essay by Tomas van Houtryve on Communist North Korea, "
The Land of No Smiles:

Renowned documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve entered North Korea by posing as a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory. Despite 24-hour surveillance by North Korean minders, he took arresting photographs of Pyongyang and its people—images rarely captured and even more rarely distributed in the West. They show stark glimmers of everyday life in the world’s last gulag.
Be sure to check the entire slideshow, but these two images capture the deathly nightmare of the socialist vistion:

UNEASY STREET: Van Houtryve arrived in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, during a normal work week in February. He found its main thoroughfare entirely empty. “Nobody’s out. No couples with babies, nobody taking a walk,” van Houtryve says. “You could wait 10 minutes before you ever saw a car.” Only a few old Mercedes—the exclusive privilege of top bureaucrats—cruise Pyongyang’s streets. North Korea has just a few hundred thousand cars for more than 20 million people. The country has only 1,000 miles of paved road.

SHOP GIRL: This is shopping in North Korea. The clerk sits in the dark, unheated special store, waiting to turn on the lights for foreigners, the only permitted customers. “She’s wearing a ski jacket or parka; the rest of this time they’re sitting there with the lights off, freezing,” van Houtryve says. The goods—toys, televisions, and the like—are imported from China. The store only accepts euros.

At his essay, Panitch dismisses President Barack Obama's environmental proposal for a cap-and-trade system as tinkering around the edges. Panitch exhorts his followers to think big!, to completely overcome "the logic of capitalist markets."

Yes, and when we do that, we'll too be wearing ski parkas in our state-run apartment buildings (if we were lucky enough to score a lottery ticket putting us at the top of the waiting list), while the streets outside remain totally desolate from society's absolute absence of economic intercourse and human freedom.

Full Metal Saturday: Bar Refaeli

It's been busy blogging around here the last few days. In fact, I hope readers send viral my first hand report from yesterday, "Pasadena "May Day! May Day!" Anti-Socialism Rally."

And I'm going to busy today as well, running my boys around to art classes and math tutoring. So I'd better started with my "
Full Metal Reach Around" and "Rule 5" action. Check out Bar Rafaeli and "The 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition Cover":


Those just tuning in to my Saturday "Reach Around" tradition might check out how it's done at No Sheeples Here!: "Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around." Plus, TrogloPundit's got, "A little early Rule #2 action." And the guys at Maggie's Farm get hot with some linky love of their own!

"Rule 5" is key to the genre, so I'm happy to find David at Thunder Run doing
some hot Rule 5-ing! And don't forget to check out Wellywanger!

I'm checking over at
Monique Stuart's, and she's branching out into "hotness" analysis. Suzanna Logan's on the case as well. And as Fausta Wertz illustrates, even German Chancellor Angela Merkel's good for a little Saturday fun! And more at Pat in Shreveport's, "Saturday Linkage with Russell Crowe."

See also:


* Astute Bloggers, "MAY 2ND 1989: THE IRON CURTAIN OVER HUNGARY COMES DOWN."

* AubreyJ, "Short note from AubreyJ ..."

* The Blog Prof, "NY Gov Patterson Settles Racial Discrimination Suit."

* Common Sense Political Thought, "
Just give us the dirt."

* Crush Liberalism, "Photo of the week, “Barney Frank” edition."

* Gayle's Place, "
Let Me Become an Illegal Alien, PLEEEAAASE!"

* Hummers and Cigarettes, "Progressives: Finding Humor In Their Hypocrisy."

* Instapundit, "CONCORD MONITOR: The More Restraints On Earmarks The Better."

* Legal Insurrection, "Why Is Deval Patrick On Anyone's List?"


* Little Miss Attila, "Stacy McCain Tries to Annoy Feminists ..."

* Michelle Malkin, "
Obama’s choices: Gird your loins," on David Souter's retirement.

* Midnight Blue, "
@FollowFriday," on Sarah Palin on Twitter.

* Moe Lane, "
Joe Sestak not making way for Arlen Specter?"

* PFB Blog, "
Sexist Beyonce Says Michelle Obama is her “hero”."

* Pundit & Pundette, "
Creating demand for bigger government."

* The Real World, "
LIE: TAX CUT FOR 95% OF AMERICANS."

* The Rhetorican, "
Clash of the Enlightened Beings Continues!"

* Riehl World View, "
He Who Judges."

* Right Wing Sparkle, "
Kathleen Parker Finally Gets Something Right."

* Robert Stacy McCain, "
Video: Gay gynephobia."


* Snooper Report, "The changing World."

* Sparks From the Anvil, "Waterboarding Pales in Comparison to the Comfy Chair."


* Sundries Shack, "Souter’s Gone. Let the Democratic Carnage Begin!"



Teacher Scolds Student for Reading Fox News Webpage

Check this out, from Rush Limbaugh: "Teacher Scolds Student for Reading Fox News Webpage":
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Mitchell, 18 years old, Traverse City, Michigan. Hello, and welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, how are you doing?

RUSH: Good.

CALLER: I was just calling to talk to you. I'm a senior in high school and today I was on the Internet reading Fox News, and my teacher came up behind me and found out I was reading Fox News and yelled at me in front of the whole class and said I was not allowed to read Fox News in class, that I'm only allowed to read BBC and stuff of that nature.

RUSH: Wait a second. I want to get a picture here. You've got your computer on in class. You're legally allowed to have the computer on in class?

CALLER: Yes. There's a whole bunch of computers in the classroom. It's a computer classroom and I'm sitting there, and he comes up behind me and I'm reading Fox News.

RUSH: What is the class? Is it computer science? What is the class?

CALLER: It's a video production class, and I'm already done with the video I was producing, so...

RUSH: So you're reading Fox News, the teacher comes up and spots that, says, "You can't read that!" in front of the whole class?

CALLER: In front of the whole class. And then he proceeded to give me a ten-minute lecture on why I can't read Fox News.

RUSH: Summarize it in 30 seconds.

CALLER: Something like they actually know that they have, you know, conservative views they're trying to push on me and all these different things that there are speaking points that they tell their reporters to report on to get me to believe certain ways and that I can only listen to BBC and other news venues.

RUSH: Did your teacher say anything about me?

CALLER: No, but I pulled up the Rush Limbaugh page directly after that, just to tick him off some more, but he walked away because he was so mad at me before I could show him.

RUSH: Well, you must try. That's great. Now, this is fabulous. That's guts! That's courage! Tell him he can't listen to Fox, pulls up my website. Do it again with the teacher behind you. Be defiant there. Because we lie. We lie. We're "spreading propaganda." It's scary. It is really scary to find out just how ignorant and stupid so many American teachers in this country are. They're just activists. They're nothing more than activists. They're not teachers at all.

END TRANSCRIPT
Score another one for the "there's no left-wing indoctrination in the schools" proponents!