The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

White Guilt Passes Its Expiration Date

Posted on | May 1, 2014 | 115 Comments

Some things are predictable to observant students of human nature. There is a Newtonian principle of equal and opposite reactions in social, political and cultural trends. After the radical anti-war protests and bohemian lifestyle experimentation of the 1960s — LSD, campus sit-in demonstrations, psychedelic rock, hippie communes and meditation gurus — a discernible backlash took hold. This was first manifested in politics: Ronald Reagan’s election as governor of California was perhaps the first omen, as his campaign made a clear issue of opposition to student radicalism at the University of California Berkeley. The 1968 election of Richard Nixon, when Democrat Hubert Humphrey was handicapped both by left-wing opposition to the Vietnam War and blue-collar support for the third-party candidacy of George Wallace, was another harbinger of the emerging backlash.

Nixon was re-elected by a landslide in 1972 and, although the subsequent Watergate scandal temporarily derailed the political manifestation of backlash, it was still evident in social and cultural trends. By the mid-1970s, an increased visibility of fundamentalist Christianity — it was Jimmy Carter who made “born again” a universally recognized synonym for evangelical faith — further manifested the rightward shift in culture. Even the disco music trend could be seen as symptomatic of this shift: If it was a hedonistic expression of urban culture, disco also emphasized stylish fashions and a commercial show-biz ethic that was diametrically opposed to the politicized themes of anti-establishment protest that suffused much of the rock scene from the mid-1960s onward. The look made famous by John Travolta in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever — short, carefully styled hair and a flashy white suit — was a stark contrast to the grungy look of mud-covered naked hippies at Woodstock in 1969.

By 1977, kids didn’t want to change the world. They just wanted to boogie down. A couple years later, partly inspired by the nostalgic frat-boy movie Animal House, the “preppy” fashion trend swept college campuses, and suddenly Izod shirts, madras shorts, khaki slacks and Bass Weejuns were all the rage. (Does anybody else remember preppy girls with gold “add-a-bead” necklaces?)

To anyone who had been paying attention to cultural trends during the 1970s, the landslide election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was not really surprising. The average American who pulled the lever for Reagan might have had difficulty articulating what it was they were voting for, by they damned sure knew what they were voting against. It wasn’t just the manifest incompetence of Jimmy Carter’s administration and the political/economic “malaise” that they opposed. From the mid-1960s onward, Americans had felt a growing sense of helpless anger toward the youth counterculture that manifested itself in rock music, drug use, radical protests, and orgiastic sexuality. That counterculture had never really represented the mainstream majority of American youth, but by 1980, young people themselves were as fed up with the counterculture as their parents had been for the past 15 years.

It is too early to say we are witnessing a new youth backlash against the dominant progressivism of the Obama years, but why else would Princeton University freshman Tal Fortgang unload a powerful denunciation of the regnant left-wing campus orthodoxy?

There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. “Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung. “Check your privilege,” they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.
I do not accuse those who “check” me and my perspective of overt racism, although the phrase, which assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it, toes that line. But I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive. . . .

You should read the whole thing, if you haven’t read it already. Fortgang’s resentment of endless lectures about his alleged “privilege” is almost certainly shared by millions of students on today’s hyper-politicized campuses, where critical skepticism toward progressive ideas is streng verboten. Liberal hegemony in academia — Democrats outnumber Republicans on liberal arts faculties by a ratio of at least 4-to-1, and at elite campuses, by far more — means not only that progressive ideas are taken for granted, but that those who challenge such ideas are condemned as hateful extremists.

Empty accusations of “privilege” stem from a progressive worldview that Shelby Steele examined in his 2007 book White Guilt,. Further examination of this worldview can be found in Thomas Sowell’s 1996 book, The Vision of the Anointed. There is already a well-developed intellectual critique of progressivism and identity politics, if only young people were made aware of it. Unfortunately, there are so few conservatives on university faculty now that students are ill-equipped to interrogate the dominant campus culture. Yet there is evidence that many students want access to alternative ideas.

You can follow Tal Fortgang on Twitter.

 

Category: Culture, Education

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.01.14

Posted on | May 1, 2014 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Charges Filed Against Narendra Modi For Poll Code Violation

Modi displays his party’s lotus symbol after casting his vote

Ahmehdabad cops file First Imformation Reports

Oklahoma Orders Review Of “Botched” Execution
Governor agrees to delay second scheduled execution

Tensions High As Iraqis Vote In First Election After US Withdrawal
PM Maliki leads vote, is favored to form new ruling coalition



POLITICS
Lynchburg Derailment Highlights Concern Over Oil Shipments

Three tank cars full of oil caught fire after yesterday’s derailment

No injuries, but NTSB is investigating; much unhappiness over rail, barge shipments of oil through Virginia


White House Playing Defense Over Benghazi E-mails Tying Top Aide To Susan Rice’s Lies

Black Democrat Congressman Won’t Back Down From Calling Justice Thomas “Uncle Tom”


Obamanomics Under Fire From GOP As Economy Slows To 0.1% Growth

Paul Ryan Discusses Poverty With The CBC

DIA Chief To Retire

House Panel: Only 2/3 Of Obamacare Premiums Have Been Paid

Wyoming Slams Administration Over EPA Rules: “War On Coal,” Governor Says

SEIU Membership, Revenues Plummet After Michigan Ends “Underhanded Scheme”



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Brent Slips, WTI Falls Below $100 As PRC, Supplies Weigh: NYMEX $99.67, Brent $108.04
Asian Stocks Mixed After US Growth Slowdown
Fed Continues Taper Despite US Economy’s First-Quarter Stall
Reports Push Dow To Record
Latest TARP Report Says US Lost $11.2 Billion On GM Bailout
“Lego Movie”, HBO Shows Boost Time Warner Results
ADP Says Private Sector Added 220K Jobs In April; Other Data Suggests Uneven Regional Hiring
Facebook To Let Users Limit Data Revealed By Logins
Google To Stop Mining Kids’ E-Mails For Ad Ideas
FCC’s Wheeler Defends Net Neutrality Proposals
WSJ: AT&T Approaching DirecTV About Acquisition?
After 13-Year Console Ban, XBoxOne Set For Launch In PRC



SPORTS
Rangers Beat Flyers 2-1 In Game 7

Daniel Carcillo celebrates after scoring his winning goal in the second period

Will face Pittsburgh in second round

D’Antoni Resigns As Lakers Coach; Who’ll Be The Fall Guy Now?

Kings Finish Comeback From 3-0, Eliminate Sharks

Oprah Interested In Buying Clippers; Sterling, NBA Set For Epic Legal Battle Over Team

Niederreiter Scores In OT To Lift Wild Past Avs

Rockets Ride Howard, Lin Past Blazers To Stay Alive

Raptors Edge Nyets In Game 5 After Blowing 26-point Lead

A’s Finish Off Texas Sweep With 12-1 Laugher

LaRoche Lifts Nats Past Astros With Clutch Late Hits



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Bob Hoskins Dies Of Pneumonia, 71

From Facebook via Claudia Christian.
Picture by James Hance.

Perhaps best remembered for his role in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

Miranda Kerr Talks About Coping With Breakdown Of Marriage To Orlando Bloom

Former “Teen Mom” Amber Portman Slams Justin Bieber

Zac Efron On Career Reinvention, Substance Abuse, And That Fight On Skid Row


Spanish Artist Domingo Zapata – Lindsay Lohan’s Married Lover?

Jennifer Lawrence Recalls Getting Wasted At The Oscars, Puking In Front Of Miley Cyrus

Hailee Steinfeld To Join “Pitch Perfect 2”

Demi Lovato: There’s More To Life Than Getting Sh*t-Faced

Kate Upton Heralds Summer On Vogue’s June Cover

Report: Peaches Geldof Died Of Heroin OD

The Onion Sets Its Sights On Buzzfeed, Upworthy

Hilary Duff On The Rebound…With Xenu?

“Jem And The Holograms” Finds Its Rio



FOREIGNERS
Sinn Fein Leader Gerry Adams Arrested Over 1972 IRA Killing
Rob Ford Takes Time Off From Campaign For Substance Abuse Treatment
Ukraine Readies Troops, Warns Of Russian Invasion
PRC’s Xi Vows “Decisive Action” After Deadly Xinjiang Train Station Attack
Shinawatra Agress To July Election In Bid To Appease Protesters
International Outcry As Brunei Embraces Sharia Law
IMF Approves $17 Billion Bailout For Ukraine
Brazil’s Poor Get Welfare Bump, Tax Cuts



BLOGS & STUFF
Proof Positive: All That’s Sterling Isn’t Golden
First Street Journal: Economics 101 – We Told You So! Minimum Wage Hike Has Already Cost Jobs
Michelle Malkin: Big Government GOP’s Common Core Rebrand Hustle
Twitchy: James Woods Remembers The Victim Amid Controversy Over “Botched” Oklahoma Execution
American Power: Only CBS Covers Benghazi E-Mails Suggesting White House Coverup; ABC, NBC Ignore
American Thinker: Obamacare And Common Core – Two Fronts Of The Same Coup
Blackfive: The Military As Socialist Paradise?
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Pulling A Reverse Alinsky
Conservatives4Palin: Tim Carney – K Street Battles Tea Party In GOP Primaries
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, April 30
Jammie Wearing Fools: In An Administration Full Of Lying Incompetents, Jay Carney Manages To Distinguish Himself Yet Again
Joe For America: Folks, You’re Missing The Point About Donald Sterling
JustOneMinute: Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Pat Dollard: Iran’s Ayatollah Urges President Rouhani To “Punch Obama In The Mouth” Whenever He “Speaks Nonsense”
Protein Wisdom: Federal Judge Strikes Down Wisconsin Voter ID Law
Shot In The Dark: Kill National Popular Vote With Greasy Fire
The Jawa Report: Bombshell – Emails Prove Obama Administration Orchestrated Benghazi Attack Lies
The Lonely Conservative: FEC Lawyer Admits He Campaigned For Obama
This Ain’t Hell: Jim Gourley – 10 Reasons Not To Vote For A Veteran
Megan McArdle: Recovery? What Recovery?


Category: Live at Five

In The Mailbox: 04.30.14

Posted on | April 30, 2014 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: The Cowboy and his Therapist
First Street Journal: John Kerry Was Right
Doug Powers: Obama’s National Security Adviser Prepped Susan Rice To Blame The Video For Benghazi Attack
Twitchy: “A Sermon From A Bigot Who Hates Interracial Couples?” Larry Elder Smacks Spike Lee & The NAACP
The Peoples’ Cube: Racist Offsets Now Accepted By NAACP


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Americans Grow Weary Of World Stage
American Thinker: Sonia Quotamayor, Product Of Affirmative Action
Blackfive: Book Review – AMERICAN SPARTAN
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Joining The New Elite, A How-To Guide (Part Two)
Conservatives4Palin: Mark Levin Rips National Review For Cheap Shot At Governor Palin
Jammie Wearing Fools: NJ Democrat Caught On Tape, Fears Her Town May Become A “F***ing N***** Town”
Joe For America: Breaking – White House Benghazi Coverup
JustOneMinute: Let’s Drop “Mansplaining” In Favor Of “Voxsplaining”
Pat Dollard: Subway Bans Pork From Over 200 Stores Due To Muslim Whining
Protein Wisdom: Clinton Library Doc Dump Reveals CRA Fueled Subprime Bubble
Shot In The Dark: Irony Is…
STUMP: Public Pensions Watch – “It’s Not Our Fault!” Oh, Really?
The Jawa Report: Liberty GB Leader Arrested For Quoting Winston Churchill
The Lonely Conservative: EPA Delayed Rule To Help Democrats Avoid Tough Vote
This Ain’t Hell: Yeah, Those “Good Times” Are Really Rolling
Megan McArdle: Student Loan Forgiveness Isn’t Free


Back from Portland. Going to celebrate May Day by wearing my blue shirt, posting Live at Five, maybe a book post and FMJRA too if the energy holds out.


Category: Linkagery

Thank God for the ‘Pay Gap’!

Posted on | April 30, 2014 | 9 Comments

Ladies, if you think inequality is bad, guess what happens when women make more than their husbands?

When she makes more, marriage difficulties jump and divorce rates rise by 50%. Economists at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the National University of Singapore found that traditional views of gender identity, particularly the perception that it’s a man’s job to make more money than his wife, affect whether or not women marry, whom they marry, how much they decide to work, and even whether couples choose to stay married.
Cheating, too, becomes a greater problem. A 2010 Cornell University study examined 18- to 28-year-old married couples and couples living together for more than a year. Men who were completely dependent on their female partner’s salary were five times more likely to cheat than men who made an equal amount of money. . . .
A study from the University of Florida and the University of Virginia discovered that a man’s self-esteem and ego take a hit when his female partner prospers, and it can negatively impact his outlook on their relationship. . . .
The study suggests that “having a partner who experiences a success might hurt men’s implicit self-esteem because ambition and success are qualities that are generally important to women when selecting a mate.”
A separate body of research by Lamar Pierce, professor of strategy at Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis, found that many men still believe it’s important for them to earn more than their wives.
In his study, published in early 2013, Pierce found that in relationships where women make a little bit more than their partners, men are about 10% more likely to require prescription pills to combat erectile dysfunction (ED), insomnia, and anxiety.

Read the whole thing. Congratulations on your success, ladies. Enjoy life after you divorce your cheating, demoralized, impotent husband.

 

Category: Economics, Marriage

Barrett Brown Pleads Guilty

Posted on | April 30, 2014 | 15 Comments

September 2012: Barrett Brown vows to ‘destroy’ an FBI agent

News from Dallas today:

A writer and activist linked to the hacking collective Anonymous pleaded guilty to federal charges on Tuesday alleging that he shared stolen data and posted an online threat saying he would try to harm a federal agent who was investigating him.
Barrett Lancaster Brown, 32, pleaded guilty in Dallas federal court to obstructing the execution of a search warrant, making Internet threats and being an accessory to an unauthorized access of a protected computer.
While Brown’s attorneys got prosecutors to drop nearly a dozen other counts, he still faces up to 8½ years in prison. He will be sentenced in August.
Brown was a writer and one-time spokesman of sorts for Anonymous, a worldwide hacking collective that has staged attacks on governments, businesses and organizations. Brown acted as a self-appointed spokesman for the group and has been quoted by several news outlets, including The Associated Press, even if some within the movement dismissed him as a fabulist who craved attention.

Yes, “a fabulist who craved attention,” not to mention that he was an egomaniacal heroin-addicted paranoid nutjob who, just days before his final meltdown, threatened to sue me for defamation.

He was all that and more: “The Kook Who Knew Too Much.”

 

Category: Barrett Brown, Crime

She Was Buried Alive

Posted on | April 30, 2014 | 52 Comments

Oklahoma teenager Stephanie Neiman had just graduated from Perry High School that night in June 1999 when she and another girl went to visit their friend Bobby Boynt. Neiman, 19, was driving her blue Chevy pickup with a personalized license plate, “TAZZZ,” for the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character. Neiman and her 18-year-old friend’s trip to the Boynt residence was one of those “wrong place, wrong time” disasters. They arrived just as Boynt, the 23-year-old father of a 9-month-old infant, was being assaulted by three men:

Clayton Lockett, 23, his cousin, Alfonzo Lockett, 17 and Shawn Mathis, 26, were already there. While Boynt’s baby son slept in another room, they had tied up and were beating Boynt because he owed money to Clayton Lockett.
When Neiman’s friend went inside the home they hit her with a shotgun then forced her to call Neiman into the home.
They repeatedly raped Neiman’s 18-year-old friend, tied up the two women then used Neiman’s truck to take the adults and the baby to a rural part of Kay County. When Neiman refused to give Clayton Lockett the keys to her truck or provide him the alarm code, he ordered Stephanie to kneel while Mathis dug a grave.
Lockett shot her and the gun jammed. While Neiman lay there screaming, the attackers cleared the jam and Lockett shot her a second time. Even though she was still breathing, he ordered the other two attackers to drag her into the grave and bury her.

Kidnapping, assault, rape, murder — these brutal monsters committed multiple crimes that night. The cruel murder of Stephanie Neiman served no purpose. The killers left two witnesses alive:

They threatened to kill Bobby Boynt and Neiman’s friend if they went to police, but they did anyway. Perry police arrested the three attackers just three days later.
Alfonzo Lockett and Shawn Mathis are each serving life terms for their parts in the crime.

This brings us to Clayton Lockett:

You can read the victim statement by Stephanie’s mother, Susie Neiman, which mentions — as an incident in passing — that Stephanie was “made to do unspeakable things” by these criminals. The Washington Post says only that Stephanie was “sexually assaulted,” pointing out that Lockett already had previous felony convictions and had only been released from prison in 1998:

After the trial was completed in August 2000, the Associated Press reported that “Lockett was found guilty of conspiracy, first-degree burglary, three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, three counts of forcible oral sodomy, four counts of first-degree rape, four counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery by force and fear. The charges were after former convictions of two or more felonies, according to the court clerk’s office.”
Clayton Lockett was sentenced to death for first-degree murder, and more than 2,285 years in prison for his other convictions from that night. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the death sentence in April 2013 . . .

All this is necessary prelude to what happened Tuesday night:

A death row inmate spent forty minutes writhing in agony before dying of a heart attack following a new cocktail of drugs administered in a lethal injection on Tuesday night.
Oklahoma prison officials halted Clayton Lockett’s execution after the experimental drug left the man writhing and clenching his teeth on the gurney.
The 38-year-old, who was found guilty of shooting a woman and watching his friends bury her alive, was declared unconscious ten minutes after the first of the state’s new three-drug lethal injection combination was administered.
Three minutes later, though, he began breathing heavily, writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.
It later emerged his vein had ruptured.
The blinds were eventually lowered to prevent those in the viewing gallery from watching what was happening in the death chamber, and the state’s top prison official eventually called a halt to the proceedings.
Lockett died of a heart attack a short time later, the Department of Corrections said.
Local media present said Mr Lockett sat up and said ‘something’s wrong’ 13 minutes into the procedure.
‘It was a horrible thing to witness. This was totally botched,’ said Lockett’s attorney, David Autry.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said “we have a fundamental standard in this country that even when the death penalty is justified, it must be carried out humanely. And I think everyone would recognize that this case fell short of that standard.”

Indeed. Clayton Lockett’s execution was not “carried out humanely,” but Stephanie Neiman was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, shot twice and buried alive. And in the immortal words of Inspector Harry Callahan, “Well, I’m all broken up about that man’s rights.”

 

 

Category: Crime

What Kind of ‘Militants’ Are They?

Posted on | April 30, 2014 | 21 Comments

Probably radical Lutherans, I’d guess:

For two weeks, retired teacher Samson Dawah prayed for news of his niece Saratu, who was among more than 230 schoolgirls snatched by Boko Haram militants in the north-eastern Nigerian village of Chibok. Then on Monday the agonising silence was broken.
When Dawah called together his extended family members to give an update, he asked that the most elderly not attend, fearing they would not be able to cope with what he had to say. “We have heard from members of the forest community where they took the girls. They said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants,” Dawah told his relatives.
Saratu’s father fainted; he has since been in hospital. The women of the family have barely eaten. “My wife keeps asking me, why isn’t the government deploying every means to find our children,” Dawah said. The marriage reports have not been confirmed officially, and rely on eyewitnesses.
The 14 April abduction of the girls — students aged between 16 and 18 who were sitting a physics paper at their school, one of a handful in troubled Borno state that had opened specially for final exams — shocked a nation inured to violence during a five year-insurgency. . . .

You see we’re now four paragraphs into a story about these girl-raping “militants” who have fought a “five-year insurgency” in Nigeria, and yet there is not a word to indicate what the “Boko Harm militants” are all about. Spoiler alert: You can read all the way through the Guardian article and never get even a clue that Boko Haram is also known as “The Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad” (Jama’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-da’wa wal-Jihad), a terrorist organization founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002, which “seeks to establish a ‘pure’ Islamic state ruled by sharia law.”

So, 250 teenage schoolgirls are kidnapped and reportedly forced into Islamic “marriage” to their terrorist captors — a practice justified by reference to the Koran and other Muslim teachings —  and these violent girl-rapers are just “militants,” you see.

“It’s unbearable. . . . The abduction of our
children and the news of them being married off is
like hearing of the return of the slave trade,” said
Yakubu Ubalala, whose 17- and 18-year-old daughters
Kulu and Maimuna are among the disappeared.

Thanks, Militants of the Religion No Liberal Dares to Name!

 

Category: Islam, Nigeria, Terrorism

Pedophile ‘Schemed to Elude Justice’

Posted on | April 30, 2014 | 27 Comments

Allegedly, I hasten to add. However, the phrase quoted in the headline doesn’t appear in this San Francisco Chronicle article:

A well-known Livermore [California] golf coach charged with 75 felony counts alleging that he molested children is now facing accusations that he tried from jail to hire a hit man to kill three alleged victims, authorities said Tuesday.
Andrew Michael Nisbet, 32, wrote letters from Santa Rita Jail in Dublin expressing his interest in having them “taken care of,” Alameda County district attorney’s Inspector Jeff McCort wrote in a court affidavit. . . .
A search of Nisbet’s jail cell uncovered driving directions to the home of the alleged victim in Pleasanton and “many other letters” from Nisbet to the informant discussing the murder-for-hire plot, according to McCort. . . .
Nisbet was arrested in December and had originally been charged with 65 felonies, including lewd acts with a child, oral copulation of a child, sending harmful matter and arranging a sexual meeting with a minor. Authorities said Nisbet sexually assaulted several boys between the ages of 12 and 17 between 2009 and 2012.
Prosecutors later added 10 more felony charges, including allegations that he possessed child pornography.
He now faces three felony counts of solicitation of murder.

Hat-tip to Stephen Sheiko on Twitter, who seems to think this story should remind us of someone we know. Allegedly.

 

Category: Crime, Gays
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