Tag: bankruptcy

Toxic and incompetent academia

2:21 pm

Coca-Cola's bigoted company policy
Examples of the DEI materials from Coca-Cola,
developed in academia and now used in corporate America

The effort nationwide in many legislatures to end the very racist “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) departments that now poison universities everywhere are not only failing, they are illustrating the emptiness of most of that effort.

In Georgia, for example, political pressure on the state’s university system forced it last year to ban DEI statements from any applicants for teaching positions. The university system was also required to “…eliminate references to ‘diversity’ and ‘diverse’ from the standards and replace them with the terms that are allegedly easier to understand.”

These mere semantic demands were quickly warped by the universities, which instead of eliminating such bigoted programs, which create quota systems that favor the hiring of some races over others, the universities simply renamed the statements and the DEI programs to meet the letter of the ban, but not its spirit.
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Can the shift in black vote to Trump overcome the Democratic Party’s vote tampering?

12:50 pm

The Democratic Party: Fostering election tampering everywhere
The Democratic Party

Today JJ Sefton in his daily morning report (also available here) included some excellent commentary about the growing polling evidence showing the black vote shifting rightward to Trump, in numbers that are unprecedented in more than a half century.

Whatever one thinks of polling especially this far out (or near, since elections are either light years away or right around the corner depending upon one’s perspective!) is an eye-opener. In normal, non-rigged elections, if Dem support from blacks drops below 93%, that is a major alarm bell for the former. What this aggregate poll [21.9% of blacks for Trump] shows is a potential disaster. Even if as we can all assume the key swing states which have large urban areas that will be rigged for Biden, the amount of cheating will have to be so massive that it would be even more obvious than what we witnessed four years ago. [emphasis mine]

I want to focus on the highlighted sentence, and try to bring some reality to it. Only by doing so will the Republican Party and Donald Trump have any chance of winning.
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Elon Musk’s employee update released January 12th

10:19 am

I have embedded below an employee update of the status of all of SpaceX’s projects, given by Elon Musk and released publicly on January 12, 2023. The video has been edited only to remove the many enthusiastic applauses by Musk’s audience of co-workers in order to shorten it.

Though Musk provided a lot of general information about the company’s long term goals with Starlink, Starship, Mars, the Moon, and other topics, these are the most important take-aways relating to its ongoing efforts now:

  • Falcon 9: The company is now upgrading its first stage so that it will be able to fly reused forty times, not twenty. Musk also noted that they have now reused the rocket’s fairings more than 300 times.
  • They are now aiming for about 150 launches in 2024. (It appears now that the biggest obstacle to this goal will be weather, as seen by the weather delays that have stalled Falcon 9 launches this very week.)
  • The Dragon fleet has now spent more days at and flights to ISS than the NASA’s entire shuttle fleet.
  • Starlink: It is a supplement to present phone and internet service, not a replacement, serving remote areas. Its biggest obstacle now however to providing that service is government approvals. The company is blocked by regulators in many places where the service is operational.

On Starship/Superheavy, he revealed these facts:

  • They are planning to double its payload capacity to 200 tons to orbit, twice the Saturn-5.
  • Starship would have made orbit on the second orbital test if it had had a payload. To simulate the weight of payload it had carried extraoxidizer, and when it vented these as it approached orbit it caused problems that activated the self-destruct system.
  • The third orbital test flight will thus almost certainly reach orbit, and will then test engine burns, some refueling technology, payload deployment, and de-orbit procedures.

Musk emphasized that they must be able to fly these tests frequently to get Starship/Superheavy functioning, not just for SpaceX but for NASA’s Artemis program. As he said, “Time is the one true currency.” With each launch they refine the system to make it more reliable and operational. Without those launches they can’t.

He did not mention why launches might not happen frequently, probably because the last thing he needs to do is antagonize the regulators who are slowing him down. I (and other journalists) however are not under that restriction. The biggest obstacle to SpaceX’s success is the red-tape being wound around it by the Biden administration and its love of strict regulation, possibly instigated by its political hostility to Elon Musk as a person.

This government action to stymie freedom must end, and the sooner the better.
» Read more

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Fauci: Now an admitted liar as well as incompetent scientist

12:47 pm

Fauci: Washington's top liar
Anthony Fauci: the liar-in-chief during
the Wuhan panic

This week Anthony Fauci was brought before a committee in the House of Representatives for closed-door hearings on his actions during the COVID epidemic in 2020-2021. Though supposedly private, the committee has been providing detailed recaps of Fauci’s testimony.

What it has learned is that Fauci was not only a chronic liar during his time as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), he was also utterly incompetent as both a scientist as well as an administrator.

None of this really is news. As early as December 2020 Fauci admitted publicly that he had purposely misstated facts and scientific data for political reasons. Repeatedly I have reported many other examples of his dishonesty and incompetence (see for example these posts from June ’21, April ’22, September ’22, November ’22, and September ’23).

Nonetheless, Fauci’s testimony now is worth reviewing, because it underlines starkly how he misled and misinformed the public, causing great harm for no gain.

First, he admitted in testimony that the demands by him and the government that everyone maintain a six-foot distance during the epidemic was utter garbage, based on no scientific data at all.

In Tuesday’s session, Fauci admitted that the six-foot social distancing recommendation “was likely not based on any data,” according to the committee. “It just sort of appeared,” it wrote, quoting Fauci.

In August 2020 I found evidence suggesting the only source for this absurd rule came from a high school science project. Fauci has now essentially confirmed this, admitting that there is no legitimate science behind the six-foot rule.
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Democrats get a taste their own vicious swatting tactics

2:43 pm

The first amendment: no longer honored
No longer honored.

For more than a decade anonymous leftists have used the ugly tactic of swatting to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who opposes them, with the hope that in some cases it might even cause the attacked person or someone in his or her family to be killed.

For those still unaware of what swatting is, let me explain. The attacker simply calls the police and reports falsely a dangerous gun-related crime in progress at the victim’s home, often suggesting there are hostages involved. The police then respond in full force, guns drawn and in large numbers. The victims, who are often asleep at the time, are suddenly faced with a military style attack by SWAT teams, at their home with their family (including children) present, with the real chance that someone will make a mistake, overreact, and begin firing.

The left has been doing this to conservatives both in and out of the political world for years (for a few specific examples going back to 2012, go here, here, and here). In some cases the perpertrators have been caught (with many being teenage boys reacting to the leftist press and thus acting out stupidly), but usually the evil-doer is not identified or punished.

Without question however this tactic has become increasingly popular on the left, which in itself has become increasingly radicalized and intolerant of any opposition.

It now appears the left is beginning to reap what it has sown. In the past few weeks a number of very prominent Democrats have been swatted themselves.
» Read more

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SpaceX: Ready to launch Starship/Superheavy by end of January but it won’t

9:28 am

Surprise! During the NASA press update yesterday making official the new delays in its entire Artemis lunar program, a SpaceX official revealed that the company will be ready to launch the third orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket by end of January, but it also does not expect to get a launch approval from the FAA for at least another month.

Speaking during the press conference, SpaceX Vice President of Customer Operations & Integration Jensen said Starship hopes to be ready to test Starship once more by the end of January and to receive the necessary license from federal authorities to do so by the end of February.

During the conference Jensen made it repeatedly clear that it will require numerous further launch tests to get ready ready for its lunar landing mission for NASA — about ten — and that the company hopes to have this task completed by 2025 so that the agency’s new delayed schedule can go forward as now planned.

Yet how will SpaceX do this if the FAA is going to delay each launch because of red-tape by at least one month? SpaceX might be confident the FAA will give the okay for a launch in late February, but no one should be sanguine about this belief. Bureaucrats when required to dot every “i” and cross every “t”, as it appears the Biden administration is demanding, can be infuriatingly slow in doing so, even if they wish to hurry.

This news confirms my prediction from November that the launch will happen in the February to April time frame. It also leaves me entirely confident that my refined December prediction of a launch no earlier than March will be right.

SpaceX wants to do about six test launches per year. I don’t know how it can do so with the FAA holding it back.

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NASA makes it official: The entire Artemis schedule is delayed

9:17 am

Surprise! NASA yesterday officially confirmed the rumors reported earlier about delays in its Artemis Moon program, outlining a new schedule that pushes all the launches back from months to more than a year.

NASA will now target September 2025 for Artemis II, the first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon, and September 2026 for Artemis III, which is planned to land the first astronauts near the lunar South Pole. Artemis IV, the first mission to the Gateway lunar space station, remains on track for 2028.

The agency cited issues with its Orion capsule that need fixing, including unexpected damage to its heat shield during the first test flight in 2022, battery problems found during ground testing, and new issues discovered with the as-yet unflown environmental systems designed to keep the astronauts alive.

One rumor that did not turn out to be true was the suggestion that first manned lunar landing would be shifted from Artemis 3 to Artemis 4, to give NASA more time to test things.

More details about the press briefing can be found here.

No one should take any of these dates seriously. NASA technique for announcing delays in this moon program have consistently been wrong. It announces small delays incrementally, to hide the fact that it knows the actual launch will be delayed far more that politics allows. The program was first proposed in 2004 with a planned landing in 2015. Since then NASA has announced numerous delays numerous times, always in small amounts. Yet by 2015 it was clear the first landing wouldn’t happen for at least a decade (after a decade of work), because of Obama’s unilateral cancellation of the initial program and Congress’s demand that it be re-established in a different form. By 2022 it was clear that the first manned landing mission was at least five years away.

Thus these new dates will certainly slip. You can bet on it. As I noted yesterday, NASA will be lucky to make that first manned lunar landing by 2030.

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Proposed removal of William Penn statue proves the Democrats really are anti-American

12:33 pm

The William Penn statue in Welcome Park
The William Penn statue in the center of
Welcome Park. Note the panels on the wall
behind, describing the achievements of his life.
The park service was also planning to “rehabilitate”
this as well.

Though the Biden administration and the National Park Service immediately backed down from its proposal to remove the statue of William Penn from the Pennsylvania park dedicated in 1982 to honor his memory, the very proposal proved without doubt how much the Democrats who dominate our government truly hate America, its founding, and everything it stands for.

First, let’s review the proposal that has now been dumped. According to the National Park Service press release issued on January 5th,

The proposed rehabilitation of Welcome Park includes expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia and was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. The reimagined Welcome Park maintains certain aspects of the original design such as the street grid, the rivers and the east wall while adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches. The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. [emphasis mine]

In other words, a park built at the site of William Penn’s pioneer home and designed expressly to honor his achievements as the founder of Pennsylvania as a religious haven for all people was to be redesigned instead as a memorial to the primitive stone-age Indian tribes that once lived there, focusing instead on how Penn and the Quakers oppressed them by coming to America. And to rub salt in the wound, this change was to be done in connection with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.

As I said, the Democrats who dominate our federal bureaucracy as well as academia are our enemies. They truly intend to wipe any positive mention of America from every history book or place, and replace it with Marxist icons and false anti-American propaganda.

Very quickly there was an uproar against this plan. » Read more

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UK spaceports to UK government: There’s too much red-tape!

9:58 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

At a hearing this week before the Scottish Affairs Committee of the United Kingdom’s parliement, the heads of the two spaceports being built in Scotland demanded that a single senior minister be assigned to handle all regulation for space launches, because the present system involves too many different agencies from too many different UK governments.

The result has been endless delays, and no launches.

“For me, there’s almost too many cooks involved,” [according to Scott Hammond, deputy CEO of SaxaVord Spaceport.] “I think what we need to look at is having a senior politician directly responsible for space and space launch and I would suggest that at cabinet level.” Despite the UK Government space portfolio, he said it is still “difficult to know who’s actually running launch in the UK”.

He gave the example of seeking permissions from Scottish Government’s marine directorate, something he said was taking six months rather than 14 weeks as promised.

The CEO of the company Orbex, which has a fifty-year lease to launch from the other spaceport in Sutherland, admitted that the spaceport “had appeared to be in a ‘better place’ in 2018 but acknowledged circumstances had changed since then.” In other words, regulation was now threatening the company’s operations at Sutherland, and it is beginning to look elsewhere for future launches.

Saxavord had hoped to do its first launch this year, but now is looking to the summer, all because of the long delays experienced in getting government approvals.

The map shows other space ports being developed in Europe. These, as well as new spaceports elsewhere, might end up getting all of this UK business because of the continuing red tape issues in Great Britain.

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JPL lays off 100 contractors due to expected budget cuts

9:45 am

JPL last week laid off 100 contractors due to expected budget cuts in its troubled Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission.

A JPL spokesperson confirmed Jan. 7 that the center laid off the contractors and took other measures, such as across-the-board spending cuts and pausing work on one aspect of MSR, because of the “uncertain federal budget” in fiscal year 2024. The Los Angeles Times first reported the layoffs.

NASA announced in November that it would slow down work on MSR because of sharp differences in proposed funding for the effort in separate House and Senate bills. A House appropriations bill would provide the agency’s full request of $949.3 million while the Senate version allocated only $300 million.

Since the final budget has not been determined, nor has NASA made any decisions on what will happen to the sample return mission, these cuts (as well as NASA’s slowdown in November) are as much a political act as anything. JPL and NASA are trying to pressure Congress to fully fund everything, and by imposing cuts now the agencies generate news that elected officials don’t like. Routinely the legislators then back off of any budget cuts.

We shall see. Congress remains bankrupt, treating its budget as a blank check with money that grows on trees. Yet the sample return mission as presently designed is a mess. It needs a major reshaping in every way.

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Americans push back against government overreach with some real defiance

11:54 am

Are Americans finally waking up and emulating their country's founders?

Bring a gun to a knife fight: For the first time since 2020, when state and federal governments nationwide decided the Constitution and Bill of Rights no longer applied to them and began imposing a whole range of abusive illegal regulations and lockdowns and mandates and blacklisting on Americans everywhere, we are now finally beginning to see some real push back from ordinary people, in ways that leave these tinpot dictators no choice but to back down.

Two examples in the past week. First in St. Louis the city government (controlled by radical leftist Democrats) decided it was time to institute a new panic over COVID, likely to give them the ability to once again easily manipulate voting in 2024, by instituting a new city mask mandate. Though it only recommended strongly that everyone wear masks everywhere, its director of health Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis said that masks were required of government employees if they were indoors or in a car with another person.

Davis’s problem was that, unlike 2020, almost no one obeyed her demands.
» Read more

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SpaceX sues to have NLRB complaint dismissed

10:31 am

SpaceX yesterday filed a lawsuit in the federal courts to have the employee complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dismissed as a violation of the company’s fifth and seventh amendment rights as well as article II of the Constitution.

You can read SpaceX’s lawsuit here [pdf]. It specifically lists as defendants the board members of the NLRB, as well as the unnamed administrative judge who will run the NLRB’s case, once it begins.

The SpaceX lawsuit is interesting in that it challenges the very legal structure that has established the NLRB, stating that its actions are illegal because that structure forbids the President from having full control over its actions, as required by article II of the Constitution.

Whether this lawsuit succeeds is of course unknown, but its quick filing tells us that SpaceX was prepared for this NLRB action, even before it was filed. It also tells us that the company now recognizes the overall threat to it by the Biden administration, which appears to be trying to weaponize every agency in the federal government to destroy the company, and is prepared to fight long and hard against this abuse of power.

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NASA and one private company respond to Navaho nation’s demand to cancel lunar mission

9:32 am

Both NASA and one of the private companies involved in ULA’s first Vulcan rocket launch on January 8, 2023 that will carry the Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander to the Moon have now responded to the Navaho nation, which has stated its religion gives it the unlimited right to decide what can go there.

Navaho President Buu Nygren had claimed earlier this week that the “Moon is sacred to numerous Indigenous cultures” and the payloads of human ashes being sent to the Moon was “tantamount to desecration.” He demanded the mission be delayed or canceled.
» Read more

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Can the Democrats offend enough people to make even their aggressive election tampering impossible?

3:24 pm

Are Americans finally waking up and emulating their country's founders?

I normally pay little attention to polls, since for the last two decades they have not only been unreliable but generally weighted unfairly against Republicans. More often than not they have been used not to give us a sense of the state of the political campaign but to make us all believe a Democratic Party victory was inevitable.

However, a poll this week was so astonishing that I think it deserves some discussion. According to a national USA Today-Suffolk University poll published on January 2, 2023 by USA Today, large numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and young voters are now willing to abandon the Democratic Party, and do so in numbers that are shocking and unprecedented. As noted in this article about the poll,
» Read more

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National Labor Relations Board files complaint against SpaceX

9:51 am

Elon Musk, a target for destruction by Joe Biden
Elon Musk, a target for destruction
by Joe Biden

The Biden administration’s continuing legal harassment of SpaceX and Elon Musk was escalated yesterday when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a new complaint against the company, accusing it of firing eight employees illegally for writing a public letter criticizing the company in 2022.

The letter, circulated in 2022, criticized Musk’s actions and the allegations of sexual harassment against him, claiming they were negatively contributing to the company’s reputation. The letter also said the company was failing to live up to its “No Asshole” policy and its policy against sexual harassment.

The letter, whose authorship was not known at the time it was first reported, called on SpaceX to “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior,” to “hold all leadership equally accountable” for bad behavior, and to “clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s ‘no-asshole’ and ‘zero tolerance’ policies and enforce them consistently.”

According to the NLRB, one SpaceX employer held interviews to determine the writers of the letter, after which they were fired. The case will go before the NLRB in March.

Is this another case of blacklisting, similar to the numerous stories I’ve reported for the last four years where someone was fired for having political opinions? I don’t think so, though some could argue otherwise. In those many other cases, the opinions expressed were generally political in nature and unrelated to the work environment itself. If a company is demanding you bow to critical race theory and admit you are racist simply because you are white and fires you when you refuse, that is not the same as writing a letter accusing your employer of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, and then soliciting signatures from the entire workforce before releasing it publicly. The first case is a direct slander against the employee and is an unreasonable demand. The second is a concerted effort to foster a workplace mutiny, something unacceptable to all employers. It seems the company would have the right to remove such malcontents from its place of business.

Gywnne Shotwell, SpaceX’s CEO, made these facts very clear at the time the letter was published.
» Read more

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SpaceX successfully completes static fire tests of both Superheavy and Starship

12:37 pm

SpaceX today successfully completed static fire tests on both Superheavy and Starship prototypes intended to fly on its next orbital test flight.

The video at the link is four hours long. The Starship engine burn occurs at 1 hour 15 minutes and lasts about five seconds. The Superheavy burn takes place at 2 hours 42 minutes, and lasts about ten seconds. Both burns appeared to operate exactly as planned, though obviously an inspection of the launchpad under Superheavy will have to take place to see if its deluge system operated as intended.

Once again, SpaceX is demonstrating that it will be ready to go for the third orbital test launch of this rocket in mere weeks. Based on these tests today as well as past operations, it seems that all the company needs to do now is stack Starship on top of Superheavy, do another dress rehearsal countdown, and then go.

It won’t however. There is no word from the FAA on when it will issue a launch permit. Based on the previous launch, it will likely not issue the permit when SpaceX says it has completed its investigation of the last launch and is ready to fly again. Instead it will take another month or two writing up its own report (which will essentially reword what SpaceX has told it). Then, once the FAA is finished only then will the Fish and Wildlife Service begin to write up its report (as happened in the fall), causing further delays.

I repeat my prediction from November: No launch until March, at the earliest. The federal government continues to stand in the way of progress, and freedom.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

3 comments

Republicans propose another deep state bureaucracy to enforce civil rights laws

12:10 pm

Failure Theater!

Failure theater: In their typically impotent attempt to fight the leftist movement that is imposing a new racial bigotry across America, several Republicans in Congress have proposed a new special government office in Washington that will be specifically assigned the job of preventing racial discrimination at universities.

The College Admissions Accountability Act, introduced by Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio) and Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), would establish a special inspector general within the Education Department—separate from the Office of Civil Rights—to probe potential violations of the colorblind standard set forth in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that race-conscious admissions programs violate the 14th Amendment. The bill would also bar schools that flout the decision from receiving any form of federal aid.

…The bill, which appropriates $25 million for the new role and is cosponsored by Sens. Ted Budd (R., N.C.), Mike Braun (R, Ind.), Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.), and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), does include a sunset clause that would terminate the office after 12 years. Republicans seem to be betting that recalcitrant universities will, after a decade of robust enforcement, throw in the towel and evolve colorblind norms.

These senators and congressmen, along with several conservative think tanks, think naively that this office will the place for anyone of any race to go to get justice should a university receiving federal funds create a program that specifically excludes them solely because of their race. The aim will supposedly be to target specifically the new Diversity-Inclusion-Equity programs at universities and in governments that are imposing this new discrimination against whites, Asians, and Jews.

The foolishness of this plan is hard to measure. » Read more

10 comments

Navaho Indians attempt to claim ownership of the Moon, delay Vulcan launch

8:47 am

The president of the Navaho Nation has asked NASA to delay the first launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket because it carries ashes from a number of people (none who were members of its tribe) that Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander will place on the Moon.

The remains are a payload purchased by the company Celestis, which offers this burial option to anyone who wishes it. On this flight that payload includes a wide range of ashes, including many actors and creators from the original Star Trek series.

Navaho President Buu Nygren claims that the “Moon is sacred to numerous Indigenous cultures and that depositing human remains on it is ‘tantamount to desecration.'”

Nygren highlighted this commitment in his letter, as well as a 2021 memo signed by the Biden administration that pledged to consult the tribe on matters that impact them. “This memorandum reinforced the commitment to Executive Order 13175 of November 6, 2000,” President Nygren wrote. “Additionally, the Memorandum of Understanding Regarding Interagency Coordination and Collaboration for the Protection of Indigenous Sacred Sites, which you and several other members of the Administration signed in November 2021, further underscores the requirement for such consultation.”

In other words, though the Navaho have no plans to ever go there, have done nothing to try to explore it, and have no remains of any tribal members on the flight, he wants to claim the Moon as controlled entirely and forever by the Indian tribes of North America because of a law designed solely to protect specific archeological sites on Earth, where Indian remains are discovered.
» Read more

19 comments

Today’s blacklisted American wins $185K settlement from college that fired him

1:45 pm

St. Philip's College, home to blacklisting and censorship
St. Philip’s College, the poster child of academic
blacklisting and censorship

They’re coming for you next: Today’s blacklist story is a follow-up on a July 2023 essay about the oppressive atmosphere at St. Philip’s College in Texas, where two different professors were fired in 2023 for political reasons.

First, Dr. Johnson Varkey, was fired because in teaching human anatomy he had the audacity to mention that sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, a very basic fact of biology that any medical student has to know to become a competent doctor. Four students walked out on him for saying so, and when they complained to the administration it fired him without due process. He is presently suing the college.

Then, college officials fired professor Will Moravits because he insisted on allowing free and open debate in his classroom and one anonymous student complained, and while doing so made false accusations against Moravits. The school felt so threatened by the idea of freedom of speech that it had Moravits escorted off campus by police, never to return.

Moravits has now won a $185K settlement with St. Philip’s College.
» Read more

4 comments

All I feel is fury at the bankruptcy of academia decades ago

1:55 pm


A modern Ivy League education: “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.
It’s got electrolytes!”

Recently Bari Weiss, former New York Times journalist who it blacklisted because she refused to follow the leftist narrative when the facts said otherwise, wrote a heart-wrenching column about the fall of American academia. She began as follows:

Twenty years ago, when I was a college student, I started writing about a then-nameless, niche ideology that seemed to contradict everything I had been taught since I was a child.

…What I saw was a worldview that replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Color blindness with race obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.

People were to be given authority in this new order not in recognition of their gifts, hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues. According to them, as James Kirchick concisely put it: “Muslim > gay, black > female, and everybody > the Jews.”

I was an undergraduate back then, but you didn’t need a PhD to see where this could go. And so I watched, in horror, sounding alarms as loudly as I could.

I was told by most Jewish leaders that, yes, it wasn’t great, but not to be so hysterical. Campuses were always hotbeds of radicalism, they said. This ideology, they promised, would surely dissipate as young people made their way in the world.

It is essential to repeat her second paragraph again to understand the utter bankruptcy of this new “philosophy.” It was…

… a worldview that replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Color blindness with race obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.

» Read more

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