++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Time will tell whether Obama has the personal integrity and decency to take a page from George Bush and keep his mouth shut as Trump struggles with the awesome task and responsibilities he has assumed.
Personally, I believe Obama is too narcissistic to take a back seat particularly as his legacy unravels.
Meanwhile, if the Demwits re-elect Pelosi, elevate Ellison to head the DNC as Pocahontas and Socialist Sanders dictate the direction of the Party that would validate the fact that oblivion is their goal. (See 1 and 1a below.)
A healthy republic dictates the need of a rational and viable alternative to whichever party is currently in power but if the Demwits think so little of their moral obligation then they deserve, and will have earned, their right to wander in the wilderness until logic penetrates their skulls.
===
Far too many decisions, over the last decades, have been driven by intimidating opponents, scientific conclusions based on false analysis, personal attacks on those holding views that differ from elitists, Liberals and progressives, devious political manipulations, rioting and destruction of personal property, holding everyone ot PC stupidity etc. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
Since Obama, we have witnessed a surge in police assassinations, racial up-rises and riots, campus attacks on those expressing differing views and you know the list of objectionable's. Even the election of Trump has been characterized by a plethora of repugnant behaviour. (See 2c below.)
The idea that you do not have to provide identification to vote is beyond logic yet, those concurring in this insanity are deemed racially motivated. Tolerating the flooding of our nation by illegal immigrants to the point that we no longer are a nation respecting/enforcing the rule of law is nothing short of sick.
Hopefully a new day is dawning as the spread of discontent with past attitudes and actions is evident by the increase in red counties appearing on the reconstituted political map.
Frankly I am delighted to witness Trump respond to those who attack and besmirch him. It is about time we had a leader who is willing to give back more than he gets.
Trump outlined what he hopes to accomplish and was legally elected. Now implementation is the next order of business.
+++
Why the media is distrusted. (See 3 below.)
Why are so many liberals smug? (See 3a below.)
===
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) Bannon Critics Okay with Sharpton, Ellison
A few days after 18-year-old Mike Brown was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri, White House officials enlisted an unusual source for on-the-ground intelligence amid the chaos and tear gas: the Rev. Al Sharpton, a fiery activist who became a household name by provoking rather than pacifying….
In Ferguson, Sharpton established himself as a de facto contact and conduit for a jittery White House seeking to negotiate a middle ground between meddling and disengagement. “There’s a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down,” a White House official familiar with their dealings told me. “He gets it, and he’s got credibility in the community that nobody else has got. There’s really no one else out there who does what he does.”
Let us be grateful for that. If one wanted to send a sane message about justice and peace, Al Sharpton is arguably the worst person to call. He is an instigator, not a peacemaker, someone who rose out of obscurity by propagating the false Tawana Brawley rape case in which New York city cops were accused of raping a black teenager. As Investor’s Business Daily noted, Tawana Brawley paid for her part in that big lie. Al Sharpton never has.
Sharpton embraced the “hands up, don’t shoot” mantra meant to indict racist cops and police departments after the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri after he committed a strongarm robbery on his way to assaulting Officer Darren Wilson. Blessed are the peacemakers, but Al Sharpton is not one of them.
The Sharptons of the world don’t want to solve the real problems of the black community, preferring to exploit back unrest with clueless race-baiting such as when Sharpton and his National Action Network organized the “Justice for All” March in Washington, D.C. last December:
Then there was Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem in 1995, subject to the Sharpton campaign to drive out "interlopers." To scare the Jewish owner away, Sharpton turned a tenant-landlord dispute into a racial conflict, resulting in arson of the store and seven deaths.
So the liberal left was okay with Sharpton, but thinks Steve Bannon is a “white nationalist” who threatens all human decency? This comes as the Democratic National Committee considers Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, the only Muslim in Congress who has deep ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, for the position of SNC Chairman. As the watchdog group Jihad Watch reports:
Also, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) raised large amounts of for Ellison’s first campaign, and he has spoken at numerous CAIR events. Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Nor did the liberal left and the mainstream media, forgive the redundancy, have problems with the curious pasts and associations of Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin: As Investors Business Daily has editorialized:
As Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review, Huma Abedin’s family and work history suggested a devotion to Islamic supremacist ideology that may go a long way to explaining our imploding Middle East policy from Baghdad to Egypt:
Steve Bannon is not a white nationalist. He is a patriotic American. Steve Bannon’s only real crime is helping to get Donald Trump elected President of the United States.
The mainstream media, having failed to derail or even anticipate Donald Trump’s victory, have now seized on discrediting one of the architects of his victory, calling Navy veteran, entrepreneur, and Breitbart publisher Steve Bannon a “white nationalist”. They cite as evidence some Breitbart headlines designed to provoke and attract readers as being beyond the pale. Compared to what? The New York Times, perhaps?
Sharpton embraced the “hands up, don’t shoot” mantra meant to indict racist cops and police departments after the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri after he committed a strongarm robbery on his way to assaulting Officer Darren Wilson. Blessed are the peacemakers, but Al Sharpton is not one of them.
The Sharptons of the world don’t want to solve the real problems of the black community, preferring to exploit back unrest with clueless race-baiting such as when Sharpton and his National Action Network organized the “Justice for All” March in Washington, D.C. last December:
“You thought you’d sweep it under the rug. You thought there’d be no limelight,” he said. “We are going to keep the light on Michael Brown, on Eric Garner, on Tamir Rice, on all of these victims because the only way -- I’m sorry, I come out of the 'hood -- the only way you make roaches run, you got to cut the light on."As IBD notes, Al Sharpton has made career of anti-Semitic and racial agitation:
Sharpton has made a career of racial incitement. He once called Jews "diamond merchants" and described whites moving businesses into Harlem as "interlopers."He helped incite three days of anti-Semitic rioting in 1991 in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, turning a tragic traffic accident into a riot where two people died and more than 100 were wounded.
Then there was Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem in 1995, subject to the Sharpton campaign to drive out "interlopers." To scare the Jewish owner away, Sharpton turned a tenant-landlord dispute into a racial conflict, resulting in arson of the store and seven deaths.
So the liberal left was okay with Sharpton, but thinks Steve Bannon is a “white nationalist” who threatens all human decency? This comes as the Democratic National Committee considers Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, the only Muslim in Congress who has deep ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, for the position of SNC Chairman. As the watchdog group Jihad Watch reports:
Ellison has spoken at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Yet ISNA has actually admitted its ties to Hamas, which styles itself the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Justice Department actually classified ISNA among entities “who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.”It gets worse. In 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Muslim American Society is a Muslim Brotherhood organization: “In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.” That’s from the Chicago Tribune in 2004, in an article that is now carried on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, Ikhwanweb.
Also, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) raised large amounts of for Ellison’s first campaign, and he has spoken at numerous CAIR events. Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Nor did the liberal left and the mainstream media, forgive the redundancy, have problems with the curious pasts and associations of Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin: As Investors Business Daily has editorialized:
Abedin also has some interesting family connections. Her father is said to be close with the Saudi government's Muslim World League, and her mother is said to be a member of the Muslim Sisterhood. World Trade Center bombing prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review: "The ties of Ms. Abedin's father, mother and brother to the Muslim Brotherhood are both specific and substantiated."The Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt with the Obama administration's approval after it had all but abandoned the government of Hosni Mubarak, a long-time ally and friend. It was while Abedin was advising Hillary that State dropped its long-standing policy of having no dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood.
As Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review, Huma Abedin’s family and work history suggested a devotion to Islamic supremacist ideology that may go a long way to explaining our imploding Middle East policy from Baghdad to Egypt:
Ms. Abedin worked for many years at a journal that promotes Islamic-supremacist ideology that was founded by a top al-Qaeda financier, Abdullah Omar Naseef. Naseef ran the Rabita Trust, a formally designated foreign terrorist organization under American law. Ms. Abedin and Naseef overlapped at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA) for at least seven years. Throughout that time (1996–2003), Ms. Abdein worked for Hillary Clinton in various capacities.The Democratic Party also had no problem with venerating former KKK member Robert Byrd or with Hillary Clinton’s admiration for Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, whose objective was the extermination of the black race. They are quite about the racism of the Orwellian-named Black Lives Matter movement or that Jim Crow laws were written by Democrats.
Steve Bannon is not a white nationalist. He is a patriotic American. Steve Bannon’s only real crime is helping to get Donald Trump elected President of the United States.
The mainstream media, having failed to derail or even anticipate Donald Trump’s victory, have now seized on discrediting one of the architects of his victory, calling Navy veteran, entrepreneur, and Breitbart publisher Steve Bannon a “white nationalist”. They cite as evidence some Breitbart headlines designed to provoke and attract readers as being beyond the pale. Compared to what? The New York Times, perhaps?
Publishers don’t necessarily control every jot and tittle of content in their publications, but if one concedes the point of Bannon’s critics, those who have problems with Bannon advising Trump had no problem with race-baiter Al Sharpton serving as adviser to President Obama on, of all things, race relations: As Politico magazine reported:
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
1a)Dear Democrats: Just Keep It Up
By Judah Friedman
And see what happens.
The Democratic Party is broken, beaten down, shell-shocked, and scratching its heads wondering what went wrong. So, I have decided, being the noble American that I am, to offer some aid and comfort, not to the enemy, but to my fellow Americans as well as some friendly suggestions on how they can rebuild their party and image to compete in four years.
President Obama should keep going around the world making incendiary comments about President (elect) Trump. There is nothing Americans like more than hearing negative comments about the person for whom they voted, and themselves, even more so when those comments are made abroad. Mr. Obama’s presidency started out with an apology tour, and to quote Yogi Berra “it’s like déjà vu all over again.” Maybe when he returns from his last world tour as President he can have a beer summit.
Next on the agenda is making sure protesters remain on the street, blocking highways and businesses. There is no better message to those out of work than people who don’t want to work. College, elementary, and high school kids should continue to stage walkouts. Who doesn’t enjoy watching their tax dollars at work? Furthermore, I implore all Democrats to pass legislation that all Americans should be required to have service animals. I would have suggested dogs, but I want to be inclusive of all animals.
Getting more celebrity endorsements is also a key factor for the next presidential election. Whoever is the next Democrat nominee must ensure that he or she or they acquire endorsements, not just from every entertainer in America, but every entertainer in the world.
Have them create YouTube videos, constantly tweet, Facebook, threaten not only to leave the country but to burn themselves at the stake, maybe quit the profession altogether, because we know they will follow through. But of paramount importance is to call anyone that disagrees with you a racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, white nationalist. I know that might sway the middle-of-the-road voter, like it just did.
Continue to berate, unfriend, and threaten to fire all those who supported the president-elect. Nothing is more charming to most Americans than inclusion and tolerance.
Get the fringe voters. Keep kneeling during the national anthem. Continue to call out our police departments for being racist. Reinforce what must be the biggest issue that people fear as they go to bed at night, climate change. I’m not really sure you guys have spoken about this issue enough. Go to Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and drive there in your hybrids. Talk to the Americans with no work, and tell them it’s not that they don’t have a job that is the problem; explain to them how they are replaceable but the earth is not.
Never ever call it radical Islam. In fact, every time there is an attack abroad, and God forbid domestically, keep insisting Islam is a religion of peace, while knocking intolerant Christians. Instead of destroying ISIS, insist that they need therapy; maybe even offer them your service animals. We know that, while ISIS hates all humans, they do love children and pets. Next, absolutely have Keith Ellison as the next head of the DNC. I’m sure many Americans would be okay with his ties to Louis Farrakhan and organizations like CAIR. What Republican or mainstream American voter didn’t like hearing him compare George W. Bush to Hitler? In fact, maybe make Bernie and Ellison co-chairs, a socialist self-loathing Jew and a Muslim tied to extremism. I can hear you winning in four years with this selection.
Create your own communities of thoughts and ideas. The college campuses and the social and mainstream media were obviously not enough to get you over the Trump in this election. So my idea for you is safe zones or sanctuary states. Oh wait, you already have that in New York and California, and that didn’t work. Hmm, I’m running out of ideas. However, I truly believe if the Democrat party has any chance of moving forward and winning in four years, it just might want to adopt some of my suggestions and principles. Oh yes, and continue crying and whining. Keep saying “not my president”; there is nothing a Middle American likes more than a person who whines and cries. Explain to them, it’s not crying. It’s just being in touch with your emotions and the human condition; of course, do this while holding your service animal.
I’m only trying to help. I feel terrible for the people suffering in America right now. I know Inauguration Day will not be easy for them. I know the sight of Donald Trump standing there with his family getting sworn in will send a bad chill up people’s legs. I’m just trying to offer you the message of hope and the things that you need to change so that you don’t ever have to feel this horrific pain and discomfort again. So I get that you are shell-shocked, dazed, and confused and hurting terribly, but I promise, if you keep protesting, and listen to a few of my suggestions, there is no way Mr. Trump will be a two-term president.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++2) Dems Done In by the Politics of Hate
Today’s Democrat Party spends an exorbitant amount of time preaching against “hate” and “the politics and policies of hate.” It has seemingly become the central theme of all the party touches. What the Democrats don’t realize is that they have so perfected the repeating of “hate, hate, hate” that their own message is what has done them in.
Since Barack Obama’s election in 2008 the Democrat Party has steadily drifted into this “label them all haters” territory and since that time the party has been absolutely obliterated at the polls. Democrats have lost the White House, Senate, and House. They now control just 13 state legislatures and Republicans now sleep in 33 governor’s mansions.
Yet even after the election of Donald Trump last week, Democrats continue to dutifully stick to the playbook of calling everyone (but themselves) “filled with hate.” They are name-calling the very people they want to vote for them! How’s that a good strategy?
Hillary Clinton spent the majority of the past year speaking about, running ads about, giving campaign speeches about, and focusing during debates on “Donald Trump and the Republican’s hateful rhetoric.” What Hillary and the Democrats cannot seem to figure out is that they are insulting massive portions of the American electorate by confusing common sense with hate and a rejection of their own dogma.
The vast majority of us Americans can differentiate between the two (common sense and hate). Today’s Democrats seemingly cannot.
Whom did Hillary Clinton choose to share the stage with at the 2016 Democrat National Convention? The mothers of people (most of whom were criminals) killed by cops, thus continuing the “guilty until proven innocent” narrative many Dems have branded cops with.
This was not a populist move. This was Hillary and the Democrats pandering to a tiny, tiny fraction of the electorate, the cop-hate crowd, of whom there’s nowhere near enough to win an election. The rest of us? The common sense of the overwhelming majority of Americans causes us to believe that, with the exception of a few bad apples, our law enforcement officers are decent, hard-working men and women doing a difficult job with honor, integrity, and a sense of duty to public service.
Americans have seen the effects of massive refugee flows into the nations of Europe from the Middle East and the problems it’s causing there. Common sense tells us that bringing tens if not hundreds of thousands of these refugees into our nation without knowing exactly who they are carries with it some risks to national security.
To Hillary and the Democrats this level of common sense makes you an Islamophobia and means you are filled with hate toward Muslims!
Having a secure southern border is in our better national interests. We all know there are people entering our country -- by just walking in -- who are involved in various criminal activities, drug-trafficking, gang-bangers, rapists, etc. Its just common sense for a nation to have control over its own borders.
To Hillary and the Democrats this level of common sense means you hate brown people!
Democrats believe most Americans are in favor of gay marriage but fail they recognize that it’s now the law of the land thanks to five people (Justices Kennedy, Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) not hundreds of millions of people. To this day the majority of Americans believe marriage ought to be between one man and one woman. No poll has ever shown anything else. But if you are such a person, in the eyes of Democrats, it means you hate gay people!
Other examples abound.
The majority of Americans are white. Also, the vast and overwhelming majority of Americans are not haters, bigots, racists, Islamaphobes, xenophobes, homophobes, or cop-haters. Telling them that they are does not endear you to them.
Democrats don’t seem to understand that calling someone “a racist” or “a xenophobe”, who is not a racist or a xenophobe doesn’t drive them toward you -- it drives them away. Through their constant name-calling of the American people, Democrats have driven all but their hyper-loyal, hyper-left base, the Black Lives Matter members of the world, farther away.
Prior to the election, Hillary made headlines by insulting tens of millions of Americans by saying, “…you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables'. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it." She then managed to pour lemon juice in that cut by adding that not only are those voters “deplorable” they’re “irredeemable”, and not a part of America. This is no way to win votes.
Following the comment a Washington Post-ABC News poll asked registered voters “Do you think its fair or unfair to describe a large portion of Trump’s supporters as prejudiced against women and minorities? 47 percent of Democrats and even 45 percent of Clinton backers said the description was unfair. 84 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Trump backers said the same.
Since Trump’s election last week the theme has rolled on.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has said Donald Trump has appointed a “white nationalist” to his staff. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid chimed in with, “White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear especially African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Muslim-Americans, LGBT-Americans and Asian-Americans.”
Wow, Senator, generalize much? Divide America much? Here’s a flash for you: I am an African-American and I’m not fearful of anything other than your supporters, who are out tearing our cities apart.
For all their talk about ‘ending hate”, an undivided America, peace, love and granola -- it’s the Democrat base who are the ones out looting, fighting, burning, shooting, and being out-of-control hooligans. And the majority of Americans, regardless of party affiliation, don’t want to have anything to do with it, them and increasingly -- you, Democrats.
You’d better sort this out. Labeling voters, calling them names and placing your blatant disdain for them right out front for all to see is not the way to win elections. Democrats, you have done this to yourselves. You are both the purveyors and the victims of your own “politics of hate.”
2a)
2b)American People Against Political Correctness
The Trump campaign will be remembered for bringing together Americans of all kinds.
Here is what eight years of President Obama’s “post-racial” reign have wrought.
The weekend before Election Day, Hillary Clinton grinned from ear to ear at a Cleveland rally while reciting a verse from Jay-Z’s remix of Young Jeezy’s “My President Is Black.” As the rapper and his Black Lives Matter–promoting wife, Beyoncé, beamed on stage nearby, pandersuit-clad Clinton twanged with a stilted accent:Remember, Jay memorably said: “Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk, and Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run, and Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly.”This would be comical if not for the noxious cynicism of it all. Clinton may not remember (if she was ever aware in the first place), but the original version of “My President Is Black” is a brazen middle finger to non-black America. Just a few lines after the verse Hillary quoted, the song taunts:
Hello Miss America, hey pretty ladySo the poster granny for liberal white privilege, groveling for black votes, kissed the rings of celebrity Obama BFFs Jay-Z and Beyoncé by parroting an inflammatory anthem laced with profanities and radical racialized gloating.
Red, white, and blue flag, wave for me baby
Never thought I’d say this s***, baby I’m good
You can keep your p****, I don’t want no more Bush
No more war, no more Iraq
No more white lies, the President is black
Could there have been a more perfect beclownment to cap Clinton’s phony-baloney “Stronger Together” campaign?
After denigrating millions of Trump supporters as “deplorable” and “irredeemable” earlier this year, Clinton then unctuously confessed on Election Eve: “I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became.”
Note the classic textbook employment of the passive voice to evade personal responsibility.
The good news is that after being blasted as haters by Clinton’s hate-filled minions, after being slapped down as racial “cowards” by Clintonite holdover Eric Holder, after being lambasted as “xenophobes” and “nativists” by immigration expansionists in both parties, after enduring a string of faked hate crimes blamed on conservatives, after ceaseless accusations of “Islamophobia” in the wake of jihad attacks on American soil, after baseless accusations of “homophobia” for protesting the government’s gay-wedding-cake coercion, and after mourning a growing list of police officers ambushed and targeted by violent thugs seeking racial vengeance, an undeniable movement of citizens in the 2016 election cycle decided to push back.
When all is said and done, one of the most important cultural accomplishments of Donald Trump’s bid will be the platform he created for Americans of all colors, ethnicities, political affiliations, and socioeconomic backgrounds to defy soul-draining identity politics.
Beltway chin-pullers expediently focused on Trump’s white and conservative supporters, who are rightly sick and tired of social-justice double standards. But they ignored the increasingly vocal constituency of hyphen-free, label-rejecting American people against political correctness who don’t fit old narratives and boxes.
And the same “Never Trump” pundits and establishment political strategists who gabbed endlessly about the need for “minority outreach” after 2012 were flummoxed by the blacks, gays, Latinos, women, and Democrats who rallied behind the GOP candidate.
The most important speech of the 2016 election cycle wasn’t delivered by one of the presidential candidates. It came from iconoclastic Silicon Valley entrepreneur/investor and Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who best explained the historically significant backlash against the intolerant tolerance mob and phony diversity-mongers.
“Louder voices have sent a message that they do not intend to tolerate the views of one half of the country,” he observed at the National Press Club last week. He recounted how the gay magazine The Advocate, which had once praised him as a “gay innovator,” declared he was “not a gay man” anymore because of his libertarian, limited-government politics.
“The lie behind the buzzword of diversity could not be made more clear,” Thiel noted. “If you don’t conform, then you don’t count as diverse, no matter what your personal background.”
Trump’s eclectic coalition was bound by that common thread: disaffected individuals tired of being told they don’t count and discounted because their views do not properly “match” their gender, chromosomes, skin color, or ethnicity. That is exactly why the more they and their nominee were demonized, the stronger their support grew.
“No matter what happens in this election,” Thiel concluded last week, “what Trump represents isn’t crazy and it’s not going away.”
He’s right. I too often take for granted my own personal awakening about the entrenched tribalism of identity politics at a crazy liberal-arts college in the early 1990s. The liberation from collectivist ideology is profound and lasting. Witnessing so many outspoken newcomers arrive at this enlightenment, however circuitous the route, has been the most encouraging and underappreciated phenomenon of the 2016 campaign.
— Michelle Malkin is a senior editor at Conservative Review
2c) Universities Strive for Diversity in Everything but Opinion
by Philip Carl Salzman
Originally published under the title "How Cultural Relativism on Campus Has Chilled Freedom of Expression."
My seminar students at McGill University told me that you can't say anything at this university without being accused of being sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, fascist, or racist, and then being threatened with punitive measures. They felt silenced by the oppressive atmosphere of political correctness. Nothing significant — sex, religion, relationships, public policy, race, immigration, or multiculturalism — could be discussed. Only the acceptable opinions could be expressed without nasty repercussions.
It is generally held today in the West, if not elsewhere, that diversity is a good thing. Diversity in origin, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexual preference is now regarded as not only desirable, but mandatory. Universities strive to increase their physical diversity. The currently accepted theory in Western academia is that physical diversity reflects diversity of experience and thus an enriching diversity of viewpoint.
McGill's committee on diversity proposed that we no longer define excellence as intellectual achievement, but as diversity. Their view is that a university populated by folks of different colours or having different sexual preferences is by virtue of this diversity "excellent."
However, among this excellent diversity, what is not encouraged or accepted is diversity of opinion. Only politically correct views are welcome. On the very first day in last year's seminar, students challenged my assignment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel on the grounds that "she is a controversial figure." These students felt that university was not a place to explore controversial issues, but only to repeat what everyone agrees with. Several students dropped out of the seminar saying that they disagreed with Ali's politics. They were apparently unable to tolerate ideas with which they disagreed.
Ali is a critic of Islam. To my students that is a violation of strict cultural and ethical relativism, which dictates that criticism of other cultures and religions is unacceptable. That Ali was an insider who had grown up in a Somali Muslim family, gone to Islamic schools, lived in Islamic communities and countries, and had at one time been rigorously observant, cut no ice with my students. Although they themselves were largely ignorant about Islam, they insisted they would not accept Ali's account as authoritative. Many of the students, notwithstanding their unfamiliarity with Islam, made an effort to defend it. What they were really defending, of course, was political correctness — in this case, upholding relativism by rejecting criticism of a foreign culture.
Blocking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from visiting Concordia University in 2002, shouting down Ishmael Khaldi, Israel's first Bedouin diplomat who spoke last year at the University of Windsor, the abuse of pro-Israel students at York University — these are par for the course at institutions infamous for Israel Apartheid Week. Canadian departments of Middle Eastern Studies and university speaker panels on the Middle East commonly represent only the Arab and Palestinian narratives, excluding any neutral or pro-Israel speakers.Ali's criticism of Islam focuses on the treatment of women, their second-class status (receiving one-half of a male share of inheritance, and their court testimony worth half that of a male), the forced marriages, polygamy, the requirement of obedience to men, doctrine-justified beatings of wives, and so on. One might have thought that these concerns would be of interest to women — and cultural anthropology these days is dominated by women. The sex ratio in my classes is usually around seven females for every male; in last year's seminar, there were 21 women and four men. The ratio of female to male professors also increases from year to year. Almost all would identify as feminists. My female colleagues are militant feminists who prefer to hire other female feminists. But their feminism stops at our borders. They, like the stalwarts who man the national feminist organizations, would never criticize other cultures for their treatment of women, and certainly not Islam. Cultural and ethical relativism trumps even feminism.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is considered out of bounds on campus today.
|
No less than Infidel did, I shocked my students with my views of anthropology and of the world. My students repeatedly told me that they had never heard opinions such as mine at university. I was told that I was "out of the mainstream." This did not surprise or frighten me; I have been an anthropologist for over 50 years, have long been a tenured full professor, and have observed closely the development of my field. Classic liberal political views such as mine are unusual among the many Marxists and fellow travellers in the social sciences and humanities.
Anthropologists have always tended to be left-leaning in their politics; some of the early founders identified as communists, as do some contemporary Canadian anthropologists. In the 1970s, Marxist anthropology became the hot new trend, camouflaged after the fall of the USSR by labels such as critical anthropology, political economy, political ecology, and post colonialism. University students in anthropology in Canada, the US, and in Europe have been consistently taught, and take for granted, that the West, capitalism, and globalization are evil, and that purity and goodness lie only in other cultures. Students from my seminar independently told me that capitalism needs to be replaced, seemingly unaware of the hundreds of millions murdered in the last attempt to do so.
The dominant leftist political stance in anthropology and beyond has been facilitated by the turn away from scientific methods and goals in favour of subjectivity, on the one hand, and political engagement, on the other. As there can be no objective truth, but only many subjective truths, postmodernists argue, there can be no authoritative knowledge; thus the only worthwhile activity is political engagement on behalf of the oppressed and exploited. The question is no longer whether some understanding is true or false, but whether you are on the right or wrong side. One "right side" for my students was multiculturalism; people should no longer be considered as individuals, but as members of categories, and treated as such. Any disagreement about treating individuals as members of categories made you "sexist" or "racist."
In the minds of my students and colleagues, none of these matters could be legitimately debated. They weren't matters of logic or fact, but of whose side you were on. They had never heard John Stuart Mill's argument that a position that has never been defended against others is untested and feeble. They know what is correct, and any other view is heresy.
Philip Carl Salzman is a professor of anthropology at McGill University and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) The Media Go Insane Over Trump In Every Way. That’s Why We Don’t Trust Them.
A New poll from Rasmussen Reports showed that 69 percent of Americans don’t trust the media at all or very much. Just 9 percent said they trusted the media “a lot.” Another poll from Media Research Center matched those numbers precisely – 69 percent of those polled said they didn’t think the media were truthful or honest.
The media keep showing us why.
This week, the media have gone nuts over the appointment of Breitbart News’ Steve Bannon for White House Chief Strategist. I share their disapproval, but the allegations they’ve made about Bannon are unsupported by evidence. It’s not enough to say that Steve is a nasty human being (he is), that he’s interested in burning down Republican leadership for his own political gain (he is), that he wants to hollow out the traditional constitutional conservative movement in favor of a European-style far-right nationalist populism (he does), or that he pandered to the despicable alt-right at Breitbart News and mainstreamed them by doing so (he did). No, they have to claim that he’s Goebbels. They claim that he’s personally anti-Semitic and racist and a white nationalist and anti-Israel, without evidence.
This is ridiculous. And all it does is provoke defense from the right. For God's sake, I'm now defending Steve Bannon! The media can’t stop their overreach, because everybody on the right is Hitler to the media, which means that Bannon must be Super-Duper-Hitler.
But that’s not the end of the media insanity.
They're suggesting over and over that Trump is responsible for violence -- even as anti-Trump protesters riot. Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes asks Trump to condemn violence by his supporters, even while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama say nothing about the actual violence taking place around the country.
They’re also claiming repeatedly that the Trump transition team is in chaos. That may be true, but they’re going further and pointing to this as a sign that Trump will be a dud as a president. Trump’s campaign flew by the seat of its pants. But he won. Nobody cares how the sausage gets made with regard to Trump’s cabinet picks – as Trump tweeted last night, “I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!” Americans are fine with that. We don’t even care if Trump turns this into a rose ceremony from The Bachelor. Let’s find out who he picks, then worry about it.
Then, finally, the media has lost its mind over the stupidest story of all: Trump ditching the press pool to have a steak dinner somewhere. They say that this is precedent for Trump being anti-press. Wasn’t there enough precedent for this during his campaign, when he led chants against individual members of the press? Besides, does anyone think that something vital happened over the A-1 sauce? Did he call to concede to Hillary? Offer half of Western Europe to Putin?
The media simply can’t stop themselves from turning every situation into a crisis, every Trump pick into an incipient genocidal dictator, every Trump supporter into a vicious racist. And they’re going to continue to destroy their credibility if they don’t stop.
3a) Just because a person is well educated it does not make them logical, it does not mean they are practical, nor does it mean they have the ability to reason.
Far too many liberals are simply incapable of admitting their precious ideas have failed, their thinking is misplaced. Because they say it and believe it, does not make it so. Haughtiness is not always a substitute for facts.
Far too many liberals think with their heart and have blood in their pencils rather than lead. They take themselves too seriously and lack a sense of humor and ability to laugh at themselves.
Worst of all they, all too often, are hypocrites. They talk the talk but fail to walk the walk.
I understand there is too great a disparity between haves and have not's but so much of that, of which they complain, occurred on their watch, during their control of government. The plight of the underclass grew while they were in charge, while they expanded government entitlements yet, the family structure declined, social behaviour deteriorated and education went to hell.
Finally, all too often far too many liberals have engaged in acts of personal destruction and seeking the criminalizing of basic behaviour.
Whatever criticism I level at many liberals does not, in any way, excuse Conservatives of their own misdeeds, wrong headed thinking and political flirtations that are off the charts.
Both extremes carry destructive viruses. America, by and large, is a centrist nation and when it remains centrist leaning right I believe it is better off than when the tilt is left leaning.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment