Is war coming in The Middle East? (See 1 below.)
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I ain't no detective and/ or a FBI agent but it seems to me these recent killings could be linked to infiltrating terrorists and their ability to train/manipulate those with warped minds and who become/are disgruntled.
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Sent to me by a dear friend and fellow memo reader. I have seen this before but in view of recent events I thought I should re-post if for no reason other than it's pure logic. (See 2 below.)
And:
More logic. (See 2a below.)
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Are you paying for a first class education when you send your child to a prestigious university or simply padding a gross and increasing administrative budget that deals with Political Correctness stupidity?. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Yes, something is rotten in the editorial offices of many mass media organizations ? (See 4 below.)
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More from Ordman. (See 5 edited below.)
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Dick
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1) The Coming Middle Eastern Storm
By Aaron Kliegman
The next war between Israel and Hezbollah will be a region-wide fight, with Iraq playing a key role
Since 2013, Israel has attacked Iranian targets in Syria hundreds of times, killing soldiers and decimating equipment and facilities. Israel's aerial campaign led Iran, which seeks to establish another military front against the Jewish state, to move the bulk of its assets away from the Syrian-Israeli border to Iraq earlier this year. Since then, Iran has entrenched itself militarily in Iraq, where, according to Israel's intelligence assessment for 2019, "the domestic and international situation … created better opportunities for [Tehran] to prepare its regional plans" to dominate the Middle East. Specifically, Iran deployed more members of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Lebanese Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist organization, to bolster the two cornerstones of Iran's military entrenchment in Iraq: missile systems and Shiite militias that obey Tehran.
Media outlets previously reported that Iran set up missile launchers in Iraq and gave ballistic missiles to its Iraqi proxies, while developing the capacity to build more missiles there with the ranges to threaten both Israel and Saudi Arabia. Now Tehran is, according to Israeli intelligence, actually providing the militias with accurate missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel. Such intelligence appears to be why, just this week, the media reported Israeli airstrikes in Iraq for the first time since 1981, when Jerusalem destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor. This ongoing expansion of the conflict between Iran and Israel foreshadows a coming storm in the Middle East, one that could engulf the entire region.
Israel struck Iranian targets in Iraq twice in the last two weeks, according to Asharq al-Awsat, an Arabic newspaper based in London. Citing Western diplomatic sources, the publication reported Tuesday that the first attack occurred on July 19, when an Israeli F-35 fighter jet hit a base in the Saladin province, north of Baghdad. Arab media outlets reported separately that members of the IRGC and Hezbollah were killed, and that, shortly before the attack, Iranian ballistic missiles arrived covertly at the base. A state-run Iranian news agency appeared to corroborate these reports, announcing the death of a senior IRGC commander in an "Israeli-American" attack in Iraq on the same date.
Asharq al-Awsat also reported that Israel attacked another base in Iraq on Sunday, this one northeast of Baghdad and about 80 kilometers from the Iranian border, targeting Iranian advisers and a shipment of ballistic missiles from Iran.
The alleged strikes came after Israeli security officials warned that Iran was building storage sites in Iraq for missiles to be deployed to Syria or Lebanon to attack Israel. And just three days after the first strike, Israel's ruling Likud party reposted a clip of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising to strike Iran anywhere to thwart its ambitions, including in Iraq.
If these reports are true, then Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied the strikes, is signaling it is prepared to do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from achieving its goals in Iraq, as in Syria. Furthermore, the reported strikes are the latest indication that the Israeli-Iranian conflict is far from over, with Iraq emerging as a crucial battleground. But Israel faces complications carrying out strikes in Iraq that it does not face in Syria. First, many of the Iranian-backed militias are part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMUs), an umbrella organization that the Iraqi government is integrating with its security forces. So striking militias risks escalating tensions with Baghdad. Second, while the Trump administration supports Israel’s anti-Iranian efforts in Syria, it may be more hesitant to back Israeli strikes in Iraq. American forces deployed in Iraq work with the Iraqi security forces, and Israeli strikes could lead Shiite militias to retaliate by attacking those forces. Fear of such retaliation should under no circumstances dictate Washington's behavior, but it may nonetheless. President Trump, moreover, wants Iraq to become stable as soon as possible, especially after the collapse of the Islamic State's caliphate. Israeli military action could lead to escalation and spook foreign investors who want to rebuild Iraq.
But the greatest danger is that the Israeli-Iranian conflict spills into Lebanon, triggering another war between Israel and Hezbollah. This outcome is quite possible for several reasons. Iran's imperial expansion should generally be understood as part of its strategy to build a "land bridge" from its borders to the Mediterranean Sea (with Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon in between), a continuous corridor of political and military control from which to exert influence across the Middle East, weaken America's role in the region, and, of course, destroy Israel. Because securing routes between Iraq and Syria is a crucial part of this effort, ongoing Iranian construction on a new border crossing, which may open in the next couple of months, is troubling. Among other purposes, Iran wants to use such crossings and the larger land bridge to traffic weapons to Hezbollah. In fact, ensuring a survivable pathway to Hezbollah is one of Iran's chief reasons for intervening in Syria—an objective that Israel is determined to thwart. Hezbollah also has thousands of fighters deployed in Iraq and Syria to support Iran's expansionism. In this strategic environment, it is all too easy to imagine Lebanon, which Hezbollah dominates both politically and militarily, becoming more directly involved in the fight.
A war between Israel and Hezbollah would be catastrophic, embroiling much of the Middle East and causing unimaginable destr
Critically, such a war would not just include Hezbollah and its Iranian masters. For years, there have been growing signs that Iraq would be involved. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that a future war with Israel could draw thousands of fighters from Iraq. A commander of Iraq's PMUs warned earlier this year that the militias are ready to respond to Israeli acts of "hostility." Last year, the head of a powerful Iraqi Shiite militiapledged to stand alongside Hezbollah if a war breaks out with Israel, saying his group will fight with its Lebanese ally "in a single row, on a single front, just as we stood with them on a single front in Iraq or Syria." One key question is whether and to what extent the Iraqi government would get involved, as many of the Iranian-backed militias are part of Iraq's security apparatus. Regardless of Baghdad's role, however, Iran's recent military emphasis on Iraq, and the Israeli responses that it triggers, only makes it more likely that Iraq will be belligerent in a future conflict.
Beyond Iraq, Iran would bring in Shiite fighters from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and possibly Yemen (not to mention Iran itself) to fight Israel in the event of a third Lebanon war. And Iran could possibly coordinate with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two Palestinian terrorist organizations it supports, to barrage Israel with rockets from Gaza and the West Bank as the Jewish state is focused to the north, where it borders Syria and Lebanon. The regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would also support the Iranian-led axis.
War between Israel and Hezbollah would be a perfect storm, and Israel's reported strikes in Iraq are a reminder of how far-reaching that conflict would be. Israel's clear willingness to use any and all means, including its immense military power, to counter Iran's goals has deterred Tehran, forcing the regime to alter its calculations. And a mutual understanding of how terrible a new war would be has prevented full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. But Israeli deterrence, while essential and potent, is no panacea. Here is where America can help.
If the United States wants to prevent a devastating war in the Middle East and support a critical strategic ally against their mutual enemies, then Washington needs to establish a level of credible military deterrence in Iraq and Syria, working with Israel to signal to the Iranian-led axis that acts of aggression will carry heavy—and perhaps deadly—costs. In other words, the United States needs to strike Iranian targets if necessary. Those who argue such actions are reckless and would trigger a war with Iran should be asked to explain how Israel has been striking these targets for years. The American military would only enhance Israel's deterrence.
There are many additional steps to be taken. One is to continue to impose sanctions on Iran and Hezbollah. Perhaps most important, however, the United States must provide Israel steadfast political and diplomatic support in the event of war and do everything in its power to push Western governments to do so as well. Hezbollah knows it cannot defeat Israel on the battlefield, so it embeds its forces and weapons throughout civilian areas to force Israel to kill innocents. The terrorist group used human shields in 2006 and, according to reports, plans to do so in a future fight. Israel does all it can to avoid killing civilians, but, in the fog of war, it is impossible to ensure zero civilian casualties. Nonetheless, Europe and the United Nations condemn Israel and effectively take the side of Israel's enemies, emboldening Hezbollah to be aggressive. The United States should not only support Israel's right to counter Iran and Hezbollah by any means necessary during a war, but also before one. Only through concerted, consistent action today is it possible to avoid catastrophe tomorrow.
Aaron Kliegman is the news editor of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Free Beacon, Aaron worked as a research associate at the Center for Security Policy, a national security think tank, and as the deputy field director on Micah Edmond's campaign for U.S. Congress. In December 2016, he received his master's degree from Johns Hopkins University’s Global Security Studies Program in Washington, D.C., with a concentration in strategic studies. He graduated from Washington and Lee University in 2014 and lives in Leesburg, Virginia. His Twitter handle is @Aaron_Kliegman. He can be reached atkliegman@freebeacon.com.
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2) Middle Eastern Terrorism Coming to the US through Its Mexican Border
A captured Islamic State fighter recently related how, in an effort to terrorize America on its own soil, the Islamic terror group is committed to exploiting the porous US-Mexico border, including through the aid of ISIS-sympathizers living in the United States.
"Whatever one thinks of President Donald Trump's heightened rhetoric about the US-Mexico border and his many claims that it is vulnerable to terrorists, ISIS apparently also thought so," according to the Government Technology and Services Coalition.
In May, Abu Henricki, a Canadian citizen of Trinidadian origin, told researchers with the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism that ISIS sought to recruit him and others to penetrate the US-Mexican border through routes originating in various Central American locations.
"The plan came from someone from the New Jersey state of America," Henricki confessed.
"I was going to take the boat from Puerto Rico into Mexico. He [N.J. resident] was going to smuggle me in.... They [ISIS] wanted to use these people [sympathizers living in the U.S.] because they were from these areas."
Other Trinidadians, he said, were also approached to "do the same thing."
"Our intent was not to support any political agenda," the nonpartisan International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism said.
"We don't want this to be used for fear mongering... That said, it would be erroneous — and detrimental to our safety and security — to outright downplay the potential terrorist threats emanating from our borders, similar to the Bush administration casting aside initial warnings about al-Qaeda plots with the result of American citizens eventually suffering the 9/11 attacks."
More importantly, the notion that Islamic terrorists might infiltrate by way of the U.S. southern border is not a hypothetical. It has already happened. In 2017, for instance,
Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, originally from Somalia, launched what police in Edmonton, Canada labeled a terrorist attack. Sharif stabbed a police officer and then intentionally, it seemed, rammed his vehicle into four pedestrians. Sharif had an ISIS flag in his vehicle; he entered the United States by illegally crossing the US-Mexican border.
Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, originally from Somalia, launched what police in Edmonton, Canada labeled a terrorist attack. Sharif stabbed a police officer and then intentionally, it seemed, rammed his vehicle into four pedestrians. Sharif had an ISIS flag in his vehicle; he entered the United States by illegally crossing the US-Mexican border.
Furthermore, according to a November, 2018, report from the Center for Immigration Studies:
- "From only public realm reporting, 15 suspected terrorists have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, or en route, since 2001.
- The 15 terrorism-associated migrants who traveled to the U.S. southern border likely represent a significant under-count since most information reflecting such border-crossers resides in classified or protected government archives and intelligence databases.
- Affiliations included al-Shabaab, al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, Hezbollah, the Pakistani Taliban, ISIS, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh, and the Tamil Tigers.
- At least five of the 15 were prosecuted for crimes in North American courts. One migrant is currently under Canadian prosecution for multiple attempted murder counts. Of the four in the United States, one was prosecuted for lying to the FBI about terrorism involvement, one for asylum fraud, one for providing material support to a terrorist organization, and one for illegal entry, false statements, and passport mutilation."
Europe offers a similar account. As the 2018 National Strategy for Counterterrorism of the United States of America report states:
"ISIS has been innovative and determined in its pursuit of attacks in the West. The group has exploited weaknesses in European border security to great effect by capitalizing on the migrant crisis to seed attack operatives into the region. For instance, two of the perpetrators of the 2015 ISIS attacks in Paris, France, [which killed over 130 people] infiltrated the country by posing as migrants."
The US-Mexico border is so alluring that long before ISIS came onto the scene, other Islamic terrorists were eying it—including as a potential gateway to smuggle anthrax into America in order to kill 330,000 Americans—and operating in it.
Examples are many. In 2011, federal officials announced that FBI and DEA agents disrupted a plot to commit a "significant terrorist act in the United States," tied to Iran with roots in Mexico. Months earlier a jihadi cell in Mexico was found to have a weapons cache of 100 M-16 assault rifles, 100 AR-15 rifles, 2,500 hand grenades, C4 explosives and antitank munitions. The weapons, it turned out, had been smuggled by Muslims from Iraq. According to the report, "obvious concerns have arisen concerning Hezbollah's presence in Mexico and possible ties to Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTO's) operating along the U.S.-Mexico border."
Such "concerns" might have been expected, considering that a year earlier it was reported that,
"Mexican authorities have rolled up a Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana, right across the border from Texas and closer to American homes than the terrorist hideouts in the Bekaa Valley are to Israel. Its goal, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper that reported on the investigation: to strike targets in Israel and the West. Over the years, Hezbollah—rich with Iranian oil money and narcocash—has generated revenue by cozying up with Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs and people into the U.S."
As far back as 2006, "Mexican authorities investigated the activities of the Murabitun [a Muslim missionary organization named after a historic jihadi group that terrorized Spain in the eleventh century] due to reports of alleged immigration and visa abuses involving the group's European members and possible radicals, including al-Qaeda."
The idea that Islamic terror groups are operating in Mexico and eyeing—and exploiting—the porous US-Mexico border is not a hypothetical; unfortunately, it appears to be a fact. At least 15—though likely many more—suspected terrorists have already been apprehended crossing the border since 2001. One suspected terrorist who crossed the border, an ISIS supporter, already launched a terrorist attack in Canada that nearly killed five people.
The only question left is how much more evidence, and how many more attacks—and with what greater severity—are needed before this problem is addressed?
Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum
2a) 60 years ago, Venezuela was 4th on the world economic freedom index. Today, they are 179th and their citizens are dying of starvation. In only 10 years, Venezuela was destroyed by democratic socialism.
2a) 60 years ago, Venezuela was 4th on the world economic freedom index. Today, they are 179th and their citizens are dying of starvation. In only 10 years, Venezuela was destroyed by democratic socialism.
Russia donated $0.00 to the Trump campaign. Russia donated $145,600,000 to the Clinton Foundation. But Trump was the one investigated!
Nancy Pelosi invited illegal aliens to the State of the Union. President Trump Invited victims of illegal aliens to the State of the Union. Let that sink in.
A socialist is basically a communist who doesn't have the power to take everything from their citizens at gunpoint ... Yet!
How do you walk 3,000 miles across Mexico without food or support and show up at our border 100 pounds overweight and with a cellphone?
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wants to ban cars, ban planes, give out universal income and thinks socialism works. She calls Donald Trump crazy.
Bill Clinton paid $850,000 to Paula Jones to get her to go away. I don't remember the FBI raiding his lawyer's office.
I wake up every day and I am grateful that Hillary Clinton is not the President of the United States of America.
The same media that told me Hillary Clinton had a 95% chance of winning now tells me Trump's approval ratings are low.
"The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money."— Margaret Thatcher (I thought Winston Churchill said this)
Maxine Waters opposes voter ID laws; She thinks that they are racist. You need to have a photo ID to attend her town hall meetings.
If women are upset at Trump’s naughty words, who in the hell bought 80 million copies of 50 Shades of Gray?
Jim Comey answered, "I don’t know," "I don’t recall," and "I don't remember" 236 times while under oath. But he remembered enough to write a book.
President Trump should nominate Hillary Clinton for the next opening on the supreme court. Then he can finally get her investigated.
Not one feminist has defended Sarah Sanders. It seems women's rights only matter if those women are liberal.
No Border Walls. No voter ID laws. You figured it out yet?
Chelsea Clinton got out of college and got a job at NBC that paid $900,000 per year Her mom flies around the country speaking out about white privilege.
SOCIALISM: An idea that is so good that it has to be mandatory. Bernie Sanders walks into a bar and yells... "Free drinks for everyone!" looks around and says "Who's buying?"
What is the difference between an Illegal immigrant and E.T.?
E.T. learned to speak English and went home.
And just like that they went from being against foreign interference in our elections to allowing non-citizens to vote in our elections.
Watching the left come up with schemes to "catch Trump" is like watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch Road Runner.
President Trump's wall cost less than the Obamacare website alone. Let that sink in, America.
We are one election away from open borders, socialism, gun confiscation, and full term abortion nationally. We are fighting evil.
They sent more troops and armament to arrest Roger Stone than they sent to defend Benghazi
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3)
THE SATURDAY ESSAY
The Downside of Diversity
On campus, identity politics has become a dogma that damages independent thinking and the pursuit of truth.
By Anthony Kronman
“Diversity” is the most powerful word in higher education today. No other has so much authority. Older words, like “excellence” and “originality,” remain in circulation, but even they have been redefined in terms of diversity.
At Yale, where I have taught for 40 years, a large bureaucracy exists to ensure that the university’s commitment to diversity is rigorously enforced—in student admissions, faculty hiring and curricular design. Yale has an Office of Diversity and Inclusion, a Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development, an Office of Gender and Campus Culture and a dizzying array of similar positions and programs. At present, more than 150 full-time staff and student representatives serve in some pro-diversity role.
Yale’s situation is far from exceptional. “Diversity and inclusion” is a dogma repeated with uniform piety in the official pronouncements of nearly every college and university. At Dartmouth, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership “engages students in identity, community and leadership development, advancing Dartmouth’s commitment to academic success, diversity, inclusion and wellness.” The University of Michigan proclaims that “diversity is key to individual flourishing, educational excellence and the advancement of knowledge.” At the University of Oklahoma, students are required to complete a mandatory “Freshman Diversity Experience” by the end of their first semester.
That diversity should be a value seems beyond dispute. The existence on campus of a range of beliefs, values and experiences is essential to the spirit of inquiry and debate that lies at the heart of academic life. Who wants to go to a school where everyone thinks alike?
But diversity, as it is understood today, means something different. It means diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Diversity in this sense is not an academic value. Its origin and aspiration are political. The demand for ever-greater diversity in higher education is a political campaign masquerading as an educational ideal.
The demand for greater academic diversity began its strange career as a pro-democratic idea. Blacks and other minorities have long been underrepresented in higher education. A half-century ago, a number of schools sought to address the problem by giving minority applicants a special boost through what came to be called “affirmative action.” This was a straightforward and responsible strategy.
But in 1978, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court told American colleges and universities that they couldn’t pursue this strategy directly, by using explicit racial categories. It allowed them to achieve the same goal indirectly, however, by arguing that diversity is essential to teaching and learning and requires some attention to race and ethnicity. Schools were able to continue to honor their commitment to social justice but only by converting it into an educational ideal.
The commitment was honorable, but the conversion has been ruinous. The effects of racial prejudice have always been the greatest slur on our commitment to democratic equality. But the transformation of diversity into a pedagogical theory has weakened our democracy by undermining the common ground of reason on which citizens must strive to meet. The crucial confusion is the equation of a diversity of ideas with diversity of race, ethnicity and sexual preference. This has several pernicious effects.
One is that it encourages minority students, and eventually all students, to think that a departure from the beliefs and sentiments associated with their group is a violation of the terms on which they were admitted to the university. If students contribute to the good of diversity by expressing the racially, ethnically or sexually defined views that members of their group are expected to share, then a repudiation or even critical scrutiny of these views threatens to upset the school’s entire educational program. It takes special nerve for an African-American student to defend inner-city policing or a gay student to support the baker who refuses to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
The upshot is that students are lauded for the beliefs and feelings they bring to their school on account of their separate identities, rather than being reminded of what they all stand to gain by being there—the inestimable privilege of joining in a rational inquiry that subjects every one of their sentiments and beliefs to the same rigorous demand for explanation and justification.For this program to work, it is essential that students remain in the corners to which they have been assigned. Indeed, it is not enough merely to recognize that the members of each group contribute some distinctive dimension to their school’s diversity. To reassure those whose groups have been the victims of social prejudice and discrimination, extra deference must be given to their life experience. The members of more privileged groups must be taught to “check their privilege,” and the identity of minority students must be treated as a possession that no one else may “appropriate,” in however well-meaning a way.
In politics, group solidarity is a condition of success. But in college, it is an obstacle to the pursuit of what Walt Whitman colorfully called the “idiocracy” of individual temperament and expression that sets each of us apart from every other. The politically motivated and group-based form of diversity that dominates campus life today discourages students from breaking away, in thought or action, from the groups to which they belong. It invites them to think of themselves as representatives first and free agents second. And it makes heroes of those who put their individual interests aside for the sake of a larger cause. That is admirable in politics. It is antithetical to one of the signal goods of higher education.
This is one of the things people mean when they say that campus life has become “politicized.” It also helps to explain the culture of grievance that is so prominent there. Examples are legion. At Yale, where the heads of the undergraduate residences used to be called “masters,” students successfully campaigned to have the title changed because it reminded them of an antebellum plantation. Last year, a yoga club at American University was disbanded after complaints that it invited a non-Indian group to perform a dance based on the Ramayana, a classical Hindu epic. At Oberlin, all classes were canceled and a communitywide gathering called when someone dressed in what appeared to be a KKK costume was spied on campus. It proved to be a woman in a blanket.
Grievance is the stuff of political life. In politics, it is normal for one group to highlight its suffering and to demand reparations from another group or a greater share of its power. This is especially true where questions of racial justice are concerned. Here, the temperature is
Academic disagreements are different. Important ones are often inflamed by passion too. sometimes high enough to melt decorum and goodwill.But the goal of those involved is to persuade their adversaries with better facts and arguments—not to bludgeon them into submission with complaints of abuse, injustice and disrespect to increase their share of power. Today, the spirit of grievance has been imported into the academy, where it undermines the common search for truth by permeating it with a sense of hurt and wrong on the part of minority students, and guilt on the part of those who are blamed for their suffering.
The life of the classroom is transformed as a result. It is common to hear complaints that an assigned text is disrespectful of women, blacks, the gender-fluid or some other oppressed or marginalized group. White, male, heterosexual students are often attacked on the grounds that their comments reflect a smug and privileged view of the world. Such complaints are hardly new. I have heard versions of them at Yale for the past 40 years.
Whatever else it may be, the truth is not democratic. We don’t decide what is true by a show of hands.
What is new and discouraging about today’s academic culture is the unprecedented weight that these grievances are given by teachers, students and administrators alike. Even to raise them puts one on a high moral ground that requires all other considerations to be put aside until the grievance has been assuaged by an appropriate act of apology or reform. Raising it amounts to a demand. It brings the conversation to a halt. It converts the classroom from an open space for the free exchange of ideas into a political battleground.
Yet even this does not fully capture the harm that the contemporary understanding of diversity has done to our colleges and universities. The greatest casualty is the idea of truth itself, on which the whole of academic life depends.
Whatever else it may be, the truth is not democratic. We don’t decide what is true in mathematics or history or philosophy by a show of hands. The idea of truth assumes a distinction between what people believe it is and the truth itself. Socrates drove this point home in every conversation he had. It might be called the Socratic premise of all intellectual inquiry.
A corollary is that I am not entitled to call something true merely because I believe or feel it to be true. My beliefs and feelings are not trumps that I can play in a debate about the truth of any claim. It wrecks the Socratic adventure to say that as a (female, black, Jewish, Muslim, gay or trans person—fill in the blank) I see things from a point of view to which others have no access and that my perspective is authoritative because I have been the victim of hatred and mistreatment.
In a genuine search for the truth, my feelings and beliefs must be subjected to the same review as everything else. They may be a source of information and an indication of how strongly I hold the view I do. But they can never, by themselves, validate my position.
The demand for diversity has steadily weakened the norms of objectivity and truth and substituted for them a culture of grievance and group loyalty.
For college students, the search for truth is important not because reaching it is guaranteed—there are no such guarantees—but as a discipline of character. It instills habits of self-criticism, modesty and objectivity. It strengthens their ability to subject their own opinions and feelings to higher and more durable measures of worth. It increases their self-reliance and their respect for the values and ideas of those far removed in time and circumstance. In all these ways, the search for truth promotes the habit of independent-mindedness that is a vital antidote to what Tocqueville called the “tyranny of majority opinion.”
The relentless campaign for diversity and inclusion on campus pulls in the opposite direction. Motivated by politics but forced to disguise itself as an academic value, the demand for diversity has steadily weakened the norms of objectivity and truth and substituted for them a culture of grievance and group loyalty. Rather than bringing faculty and students together on the common ground of reason, it has pushed them farther apart into separate silos of guilt and complaint.
The damage to the academy is obvious. But even greater is the damage to our democratic way of life, which needs all the independent-mindedness its citizens and leaders can summon—especially at a moment when our basic norms of truthfulness and honesty are mocked every day by a president who respects neither.
Tocqueville was an enthusiastic admirer of America’s democracy. He thought it the most just system of government the world had ever known. But he was also sensitive to its pathologies. Among these he identified the instinct to believe what others do in order to avoid the labor and risk of thinking for oneself. He worried that such conformism would itself become a breeding ground for despots.
As a partial antidote, Tocqueville stressed the importance of preserving, within the larger democratic order, islands of culture devoted to the undemocratic values of excellence and truth. These could be, he thought, enclaves for protecting the independence of mind that a democracy like ours especially needs.
Today our colleges and universities are doing a poor job of meeting this need, and the idea of diversity is at least partly to blame. It has become the basis of an illiberal and antirational academic cult—one that undermines the spirit of self-reliance and the commitment to truth on which not only higher education, but the whole of our democracy, depends.
Mr. Kronman is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale University and a former dean of Yale Law School. This essay is adapted from his new book, “The Assault on American Excellence,” which will be published by Free Press on Aug. 20
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3a)
Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Excellence
Anyone who has followed the news from college campuses over the past few years knows they are experiencing forms of unrest unseen since the late 1960s.
Now, as then, campuses have become an arena for political combat. Now, as then, race is a central issue. Now, as then, students rail against an unpopular president and an ostensibly rigged system. Now, as then, liberal professors are being bullied, denounced, demoted, threatened, sued and sometimes even assaulted by radical students.
But there are some important differences, too. None of today’s students risk being drafted into an unpopular, distant war. Unlike the campus rebels of the ’60s, today’s student activists don’t want more freedom to act, speak, and think as they please. Usually they want less.
Most strange: Today’s students are not chafing under some bow-tied patriarchal WASP dispensation. Instead, they are the beneficiaries of a system put in place by professors and administrators whose political views are almost uniformly left-wing and whose campus policies indulge nearly every progressive orthodoxy.
So why all the rage?
The answer lies in the title of Anthony Kronman’s necessary, humane and brave new book: “The Assault on American Excellence.” Kronman’s academic credentials are impeccable — he has taught at Yale for 40 years and spent a decade as dean of its law school — and his politics, so far as I can tell, are to the left of mine.
But Yale has been ground zero for recent campus unrest, including a Maoist-style struggle session against a distinguished professor, fights about “cultural appropriation,” the renaming of Calhoun (as in, John C.) College, and the decision to drop the term “master” because, to some, it carried “a painful and unwelcome connotation.”
It’s this last decision that seems to have triggered Kronman’s alarm. The word “master” may remind some students of slavery. What it really means is a person who embodies achievement, refinement, distinction — masterliness — and whose spirit is fundamentally aristocratic. Great universities are meant to nurture that spirit, not only for its own sake, but also as an essential counterweight to the leveling and conformist tendencies of democratic politics that Alexis de Tocqueville diagnosed as the most insidious threats to American civilization.
What’s happening on campuses today isn’t a reaction to Trump or some alleged systemic injustice, at least not really. Fundamentally, Kronman argues, it’s a reaction against this aristocratic spirit — of being, as H.L. Mencken wrote, “beyond responsibility to the general masses of men, and hence superior to both their degraded longings and their no less degraded aversions.” It’s a revolt of the mediocre many against the excellent few. And it is being undertaken for the sake of a radical egalitarianism in which all are included, all are equal, all are special.
“In endless pronouncements of tiresome sweetness, the faculty and administrators of America’s colleges and universities today insist on the overriding importance of creating a culture of inclusion on campus,” Kronman writes.
“They stress the need to respect and honor the feelings of others, especially those belonging to traditionally disadvantaged groups, as an essential means to this end. In this way they give credence to the idea that feelings are trumps with a decisive authority of their own. That in turn emboldens their students to argue that their feelings are reason enough to keep certain speakers away. But this dissolves the community of conversation that the grown-ups on campus are charged to protect.”
This is a bracing, even brutal, assessment. But it’s true. And it explains why every successive capitulation by universities to the shibboleths of diversity and inclusion has not had the desired effect of mollifying campus radicals. On the contrary, it has tended to generate new grievances while debasing the quality of intellectual engagement.
Hence the new campus mores. Before an idea can be evaluated on its intrinsic merits, it must first be considered in light of its political ramifications. Before a speaker can be invited to campus for the potential interest of what he might have to say, he must first pass the test of inoffensiveness. Before a student can think and talk for himself, he must first announce and represent his purported identity. Before a historical figure can be judged by the standards of his time, he must first be judged by the standards of our time.
All this is meant to make students “safe.” In fact, it leaves them fatally exposed. It emboldens offense-takers, promotes doublethink, coddles ignorance. It gets in the way of the muscular exchange of honest views in the service of seeking truth. Above all, it deprives the young of the training for independent mindedness that schools like Yale are supposed to provide.
I said earlier that Kronman’s book is brave, but in that respect I may be giving him too much credit. Much of his illustrious career is now safely behind him; he can write as he pleases. Would an untenured professor have the guts to say what he does? The answer to the question underscores the urgency of his warning.
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4) What Ails the U.S. Press?
The media’s lack of interest in the Steele dossier amounts to collusion in a cover-By Holman Jenkins
A timeworn TV commentator and professor of politics, in the moments before Robert Mueller’s testimony began last week on MSNBC, told the audience that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election was an “act of war” by a “sworn enemy of the United States.”
Notice how each word is the sheerest nonsense. There is no forum in which countries “swear” their enemy-hood. Congress has not declared war on Russia. Our $27 billion in annual trade with Russia does not implicate thousands of Americans in trading with the enemy. If Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic emails, this is a crime, not an act of war, and has been treated as such by the special counsel. And heaven help us if Facebookads are an act of war. The U.S. conducts, and has for decades, espionage, disinformation, propaganda and other kinds of influence campaigns in numerous countries around the world. Thankfully we do not consider ourselves at war with them.
Don’t get me wrong. The Russian actions during the election, and especially their flagrancy, were an insult to U.S. power, and likely offered as such. I doubt the Kremlin is much pleased with the result, but a response is still required to deter such actions in the future. But what can it mean when grey-haired commentators are employed to speak childishly of these matters to the public?
Or take a sentence in the New Yorker magazine, known for its care with writing. A staff writer positively disdains any interest in who promoted the Steele dossier or why. “There are questions worth exploring about the Steele dossier, having to do with, say, the transparency of campaign spending. But they are not the questions congressional Republicans are asking,” she sneers.
This evasion is so trite as to have a name: the red-herring fallacy, or pretending to refute an argument by changing the subject. That such a sentence passed muster with an editor is an embarrassment (and no favor to the writer). At least be the truth teller you presumably got into journalism to be, and say you don’t wish to know any truths that might tend to incriminate anyone other than Donald Trump.Ditto the several cable hosts who shrilly promoted the theory that President Trump was an actual traitor and now, with equal shrillness, insist he’s a traitor for not echoing their partisan exaggerations about Russian meddling. In any other time, this dodge would not be enough to keep them in their jobs.
The U.S. is not in a position to get in a moral snit about such meddling, but we are certainly in a position to exact a price for it, and should. At the same time, let us stop lying to ourselves: 99.99% of the consequential effect of Russia’s low-budget actions arose from the panting eagerness of U.S. partisans to weaponize those actions against their domestic opponents. Indeed, if we were to parse the meanings of the word “collusion,” it would not reflect well on Rep. Adam Schiff, who objectively has been invaluable to any supposed Russian desire to confound and embitter U.S. politics (though my real guess is that Russia wants nothing so much as sanctions lifted, and has only shot its foot off).
It needs to be understood whether the Mueller report, and the Mueller investigation itself, was essentially a product of disinformation (and whose disinformation). Did the Steele dossier’s lies really originate with Russian sources, and to what purpose? Was the dossier embraced by members of the U.S. government because they believed it or because it was useful against a presidential candidate they disapproved of? (Pretending to believe false intelligence may not be an actionable dereliction, but the question needs to be asked.)
We need to know whether the secret Russian intelligence that James Comey used as justification for his improper, protocol-violating actions in the Hillary Clinton case was, in any sense, real intelligence. Did it bear any intelligible, logical relation to his actions, or was it a cipher, a piece of digital flotsam, that he seized upon disingenuously as an excuse to clear Mrs. Clinton’s path to the nomination?
These questions are not just necessary for historical accuracy. They are of scintillating journalistic interest. If you’re a reporter who can’t simultaneously disapprove of Mr. Trump (as many journalists do) and see their urgency, you should rethink your career choice. (I believe it was the psychoanalyst Karen Horney who said the professions function partly to attract those least capable of exemplifying their values.) News consumers might marvel that so many journalists at least are so devoted to their partisan allegiances, but devotion has nothing to do with it. It’s just dumb conformism and lack of imagination. As in any field, one learns not to be surprised that so many unprepossessing persons are in positions of authority.
Happily, we don’t need to worry about one thing. The hysterical rhetoric on Russia will disappear instantly when it’s no longer useful against Donald Trump
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