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Today’s blacklisted American: Fired from a school for having a “Keep America Great” bumper sticker

Cancelled Bill of Rights
Doesn’t exist at the University of San Diego.

The new dark age of silencing: Nicholas Ratekin, a masters student at the University of San Diego (USD), was fired from a teaching position, and then booted from the school’s masters program, because he apparently had a “Keep America Great” bumper sticker on his car.

Ratekin is now suing the university for kicking him out without cause. More information here.

As part of the requirements for Ratekin to earn his masters at USD, he needed to also do some student teaching. To do so he got a job a local high school, Canyon Crest Academy. He also worked there as the head coach of the high school’s water polo team, leading the team to back-to-back championships in his first two years of coaching.

Apparently, Ratekin made it a point to avoid discussing politics, both at USD and at the high school. However, because of his bumper stick, his colleagues at both assumed he was a Republican and Trump supporter and began harassing him. They could not tolerate having anyone from a different political party working with them. It was be a Democrat or be nothing.

When Ratekin complained to his superiors at USD about the harassment, the university immediately used its clout to get him removed from his teaching position at the high school, even though his class evaluations there were positive. It also apparently got the high school to fire him as the polo team’s head coach. Then USD followed up by having him dismissed from the master’s program, also entirely without cause.

Ratekin has since gotten his masters degree from another university. He however is suing USD for its actions to blackball him.

The complaint argues USD had a contractual obligation to allow him to continue his education and that it was a breach of contract and discriminatory to fire him for his political views.

The lawsuit against the University of San Diego lodges eight causes of action, including breach of contract and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Ratekin also alleges untrue and misleading advertising from the university, referring to its policy to create “an atmosphere of trust, safety and respect in a community characterized by a rich diversity of people and ideas.”

I hope he wins, but I do not have much hope. Documenting such harassment is difficult. Linking the harassment to the actions of a college administration is even tougher, since the harassers and the administrations work together to hide their partnership.

More to the point, we need to underline the level of intolerance that now exists at this university. Its faculty can no longer stand the presence of anyone who belongs to the Republican Party. To them, the U.S. must now become a one-party state, with that party being the Democratic Party.

Would you want your children educated by these close-minded petty dictators?

Nor is this incident the only example of such intolerance at the University of San Diego. In April I reported how a law professor was under investigation and threatened with firing for daring to criticize China for its role in the start of the COVID-19 epidemic. The students at the school apparently put together a petition, claiming his comments left them “feeling vulnerable and helpless so that students cannot balance their studies.”

Would you as a student want to attend such an institution, with such a narrow-minded student body?

Academia in America is no longer a place of learning and open-mindedness. It has become instead a propaganda house for leftist politics and a vehicle for attacking and destroying anyone who opposes those ideas.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • wayne

    Polo Team, Really?

    That aside, let’s take a look at some of the students

    Canyon Crest Academy TV
    October 14, 2021
    https://youtu.be/0lo2GdxcjhA
    8:45

  • Cotour

    Yes, how do we fight political warfare in America?

    LAWYERS, COURTS AND MONEY!

  • wayne: I forgot to add the important word “water” before “polo.” I have added it now.

  • madrocketsci

    The other thing about graduate level education is: How exactly are you supposed to finish a PhD without the active mentorship and cooperation of your advisors and the thesis committee? (Masters is a little easier – do the coursework and a yearlong project and you can skate by under the rules, provided that rules still exist.) You can win all the court cases in the world, but you don’t graduate until your committee approves your doctoral work. And that’s years of precarious effort even when relationships are professional and everyone’s friendly. Sure, try to make them pay with our unreliable and hostile court system – but getting the degree/experience seems like a lost cause.

    The over-the-top Jacobin nonsense is almost unnecessary and blows cover: All a close-minded and hostile department has to do is be a jerk to your candidate and refuse to acknowledge their efforts. Some sociopaths do it without any political animus at all: just to string along a student in a doomed project so they can meet their publication numbers. (I’ve heard horror stories of people who have been in grad-school for 11 years!)

    Why “retaking academia” seems like a forlorn hope: It’s a “self-regulating” profession taken over by fanatics. Like law and medicine. And it’s the gatekeeper to the latter, and all credentialed positions of power and authority in this country. A collapse of credibility would be nice, but that would require people to be willing to hire non-credentialed engineers or accountants. And you *can’t* hire non-credentialed doctors or lawyers – legal capture.

    What can grow in the shadow of the canopy of our old dead institutions? How do we “route around the damage”, in the language of the older fanatically libertarian generation of internet “hackers” from the 90s? (That’s another profession that’s taken a nose-dive: People who were once brilliant, nonconformist free speech absolutists replaced by offensively arrogant pod-people around 2005-2010 or so… No gatekeeping excuses there. Just sociopaths flooding in to where money and power seemed to be concentrating.)

  • wayne

    “Water Polo,” ok…. that only requires a swimming pool and not a stable for the Pony’s.

  • madrocketsci posited: “A collapse of credibility would be nice, but that would require people to be willing to hire non-credentialed engineers or accountants”

    Already happening in Oregon: apologies; it’s a long URL.

    https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/06/29/the-oregon-supreme-court-agrees-to-waive-july-bar-exam-for-2020-oregon-law-school-grads/#:~:text=The%20court%20will%20allow%20new,must%20still%20take%20the%20exam.&text=In%20a%20narrowly%20split%20decision,of%20Oregon's%20three%20law%20schools.

  • Zola Holt

    Make the oppressors pay for their civil rights violations! Ka-ching!

  • Cotour

    WHY AMERICA MUST BE DESTROYED (Its all related)

    Why America and its Constitution must be destroyed as per the World Economic Forum and Globalist, Klaus Schwab, and the now Leftist Democrat party as well as the RINO’s in America? Is this what you want and intend?

    Listen carefully to Klaus Schwab, leader of the World Economic Forum, a good friend and ally of George Soros, and hear what he describes.

    https://youtu.be/7xUk1F7dyvI

    He tells you unequivocally of what must be. And America as formulated is NOT in that “New” model. They tell you exactly what they intend for you and your children.

    Mr. Schwab describes a literal Fascistic model for the world where government works “Very closely” with business in a fully connected and integrated digital controlled world.

    The more correct “NEW AND IMPROVED” definition of Fascism, Global Fascism: Global Fascism is a form of far Left, authoritarian ultra-globalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy through fully integrated digital technological control over every aspect of the individuals life. Which came to prominence in the early 21st century Europe and America.

    In this model their is no need for a First Amendment nor a Second Amendment nor a Constitution, it will not be allowed. Nor will there be a need for any individuals giving their feedback to their representatives in government by having a vote in the direction that our country / world goes. The elections will all be symbolic. And I think you can see that now in how no one wants to allow any examination of any questionable ballots in the 2020 election.

    Think about what is currently ongoing in America: Forced / mandated injection of an unarguably experimental “Vaccine”, no choice, or you will be forced to lose your job and unable to support your family. Mandates that have caused product shortages and inflation. Sky rocketing gas / fuel costs as a result of direct negative government actions. Oppressive healthcare rules that deny care if you do not comply and have the “Vaccine”. Government incentivizing the over running of the borders with illegals during a pandemic and no mask or “Vaccine” mandates related to Covid for them. But there are for you. Proposed insane massive Social spending creating modern day slavery to that debt. Parents are now defined as “domestic terrorists” by the DOJ. And of course the essential go to Democrat cause, the constant promotion of Racism and “Equality” in America. They can not exist without it.

    Its a long list of clearly visible and ongoing oppression of your Rights by government and its being executed in your local government and national government that has been installed by the $orosian / Globalists in America. All a Leftist political agenda forced and without a mandate from the American people.

    Overt, anti American anti Constitutional counter intuitive actions by the American government causing it all.

    For a reason, America and its Constitution is the one thing that stands in the way of the Globalist agenda and so it must be destroyed in order that Globalism be fully installed. What do you think the “Great Reset” and “Build Back Better” means? First you must raze what exists in order to install what must be.

    None of this is by mistake, it is all by agenda and its all being attempted to be cemented in place by the Democrat party machine by any means necessary in order to get the American people under control before the midterm elections.

    You define yourself as a Democrat or RINO Republican? If so you are by default now a supporter of Global fascism, you are a default Socialist and promote the elimination of the Constitution. Is that what you really intend?

  • Cotour

    My point boiled down?

    None of what is underway being executed by our now Leftist controlled Democrat party machine Federal government is not as a result of incompetence or by mistake, it is executing a necessary agenda in order to deliver the Globalist / Socialist model to the world..

  • Cotour

    Now this is a statement that could not be truer:

    “Devin Nunes warns ‘future of this country’ hinges on Durham indictments”

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/devin-nunes-warns-future-of-this-country-hinges-on-durham-indictments

    Like many instances in history, particularly related to America and all things of consequence, sometimes it all comes down to the actions of one man that refuses to bend and does his job and fulfills his fiduciary responsibilities.

    George Washington comes to mind. Is Mr. Durham up to the job? Is he a big enough man and does he realize the importance of his fidelity to his oath and to take care of the essential business at hand?

    Hillary and company in the Deep state have fashioned a truly two leveled justice system. Good for thee, but not for me. Hillary was to deliver what Biden is delivering now. And Trump stopped most of it.

    Stay tuned because, Mr. Nunes is 100 percent correct.

  • Milt

    As Cotour suggests in his summary, “None of what is underway being executed by our now Leftist controlled Democrat party machine Federal government is not as a result of incompetence or by mistake, it is executing a necessary agenda in order to deliver the Globalist / Socialist model to the world..”

    Exactly.

    The problem is, many / most Republicans still don’t “get” any of this, and they plan their electoral strategies as though they were still working within the conventional politics of the 1980s. Worse, some of them — fill in the blanks — would seem to be perfectly comfortable working within the new global system that Cotour describes, playing their roles as symbolic (and powerless) minority opponents to the new permanent majority while retaining all of their personal perks and privileges as part of the legislative elite. (Which on a moment’s reflection sounds remarkably like what many of them are already doing in terms of living high on the hog while ignoring the actual needs and wants of their constituents.)

    Aside from what might be “done” about any of this, the question that most piques my curiosity is just how many Americans, once all of this becomes more transparent and better understood, would be in favor of this new system as opposed to retaining our old one? That is, do we explicitly wish to keep something like our current constitutional republic, or do we opt for this new form of global fascism, give up the idea of living in an independent country, and discard all of our current national institutions and customs? I have a friend who surmises, based on polling data and the like, that perhaps about 16% of our population* would actively support such a transition, and a considerably larger number would probably go along out of fear or personal advantage.

    *In states like Oregon, Washington, and California — and in blue urban areas throughout the country such as Minneapolis, Washington DC, or even in places like Tallahassee or Gainesville, Florida — the percentage of people who actively support such a transition to global fascism is far higher than the national average, and already constitutes a voting majority in some cases. Likewise, what percentage of the military has drunk the woke Kool-Aid and will “follow orders” to fire on fellow Americans when they are ordered to?

    The problem is compounded by the fact that most of the “early adopters” of this new fascist ideology occupy either positions of power within government or they constitute the upper sectors of the influential Creative Class** who serve as the gatekeepers of the media and define what constitutes allowable discourse through the Overton window of politics and the Internet. In short, this 16% doesn’t represent that many Americans, but they are a very powerful and influential group of people, and they — unlike many Republicans — are acting in full knowledge that they are in a literal war to destroy our present system and replace it with a “better” one.

    **Through the slow, drip, drip, drip process of installing reliably committed leftists in these positions; the Gramscian approach in practice.

    The most salient question, or so it seems to me, is what are our chances of fighting and overcoming the 16% — or whatever the actual number might be — who genuinely no longer wish to reside in what used to be known as the United States and truly *want* to live in the new global fascist state? The midterm elections of 2022 — and the education of the electorate that must proceed them — are probably our last best hope for retaining some semblance of the American Republic, but what happens if these people either manage to “win” these elections (as they did in Georgia in 2020) or do not leave office quietly should they be defeated?

    And, what is to be done with States like Washington or California — or Cities like Seattle, San Francisco, or Minneapolis — who have already effectively seceded from the rest of the country that still embraces traditional republican norms and values? As Victor Davis Hanson asks, can we reconstitute something like a functional, inclusive national identity at this point, or is it already too late?

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