Category Archives: culture

A Latino Migration?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s a distinct possibility, and it would be IMNSHO a good thing. William McGurn had some thoughts on this, citing a recent mayoral election in McAllen, TX, in which a Republican was elected for the first time ever. McGurn also noted that, in the 2020 Presidential election, nearby Zapata County voted Republican for the first time in 100 years when the county picked Warren G Harding. McGurn suggested that these might be the harbinger of a Latino migration from the (Progressive-)Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

Then McGurn offered some statistics from a National Republican Senatorial Committee survey of Latino likely voters in battleground states. Even accounting for the obvious potential of bias in the survey, the numbers are suggestive.

Asked to choose between two possibilities—Some people say free-market capitalism is the best form of government because it gives people the freedom to work and achieve and Other people say that socialism is the best form of government because it is more fair and equitable to working class people, 63% of respondents opted for the former, and only 17% went for the latter.

Other outcomes of the survey:

  • 67% are “very concerned” their kids “won’t have the same opportunities me and my family came here to find”
  • 58% said too many people in America are happy not to work and “just live off government assistance”
  • 80% percent agree that “public schools are failing”
  • 67% agree that too many Americans “are losing our traditional values centered on faith, family and freedom”
  • 57% “oppose Democrat efforts to pack the Supreme Court with liberal judges”
  • 72% agree “we should do what is necessary to control our southern border”
  • 65% oppose the Democrats’ “bill that would make voter ID illegal”
  • 50% agree that “many of the policies that Democrats say help all minorities actually end up hurting Hispanic families”

Even given the strong potential for bias in the survey, one aspect of its importance, McGurn noted, is that it was conducted during campaign season when then-candidate Biden was overtly pretending to be politically moderate.

Talking

Posted on by
Reply

James Baker III had a very good op-ed in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal. Most of what he wrote was very sound.

However, there’s this:

many Americans had grown weary of being “talked at” rather than “talked to.”

Not exactly. “Talked at” and “talked to” are much more closely allied with each other—making plain, as they do, that the talk is purely one-way, with input from us Americans being undesired—than with the talk that most (not merely many) Americans actually prefer—being talked with.

Some Words on Timidity

Posted on by
Reply

RR Reno, editor of First Things, had an interesting op-ed about why he isn’t interested in hiring graduates of our Ivy League schools. His disdain wasn’t so much for the woke activists effectively running those schools as it was for the rest of the pupils (my term; his more generous one was “students”) there [emphasis added].

Student activists don’t represent the majority of students. But I find myself wondering about the silent acquiescence of most students. They allow themselves to be cowed by charges of racism and other sins. I sympathize. The atmosphere of intimidation in elite higher education is intense. But I don’t want to hire a person well-practiced in remaining silent when it costs something to speak up.

The same applies to existing CxOs of our businesses who show themselves too timid to speak against the woke, or against anything else in which they do not believe. If they’re that timid, how can the companies they run be expected to compete—domestically or globally?

Those meek, acquiescent pupils? Look at the example set for them at those schools: the meek, acquiescent persons of the schools’ administrations, who have spent the last several years, if not their professional lives well-practiced in remaining silent when it costs something to speak up against their woke activist pupils. That studied [sic] timidity doesn’t excuse the silent pupils’ own timidity (their peers provide a different example), but those…administrators…with their example make their timid charges’ paths that much harder.

Disingenuosity in Wisconsin’s Legislature

Posted on by
Reply

A bill that would prevent election workers from correcting mistakes a voter makes on his absentee ballot is making its way through the State’s legislature. The bill would

would clarify that only voters or their witnesses can correct a mistake on an absentee ballot.

After all, as Congresswoman Donna Rozar (R-Marshfield) put it:

Because [absentee voting] is a privilege, there’s got to be some responsibility that the voter has to exercise that privilege. And I think that responsibility is to do it right and legally.

The disingenuosity is illustrated by Congresswoman Lisa Subek (D-Madison):

I don’t care if absentee voting is a privilege. That doesn’t mean you should have to pass a test, or make sure that you dot every I and cross every T. If someone makes an innocent, honest mistake, it is appalling that we’re not going to then let their ballot count.

Subek cynically exaggerates what the bill does. There’s no test (other than the implied one of being able to read well enough to read the ballot—but witnesses and others approved by the voter can help with that—and every uncrossed i or undotted t do not disqualify the ballot.

The biggest bit of dishonesty (here, not mere disingenuousness) is her claim of not letting the ballot count. The bill explicitly allows the voter in question, or his witness, to correct the error, thereby making the ballot count.

It’s only invalid ballots that wouldn’t count, especially were the bill to pass.

College Entrance Discrimination

Posted on by
Reply

A letter writer in Monday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wants the Supreme Court to rule in favor of racial discrimination, at least as practiced by Harvard, in the Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard case.

If the plaintiffs…win, you can bet that elite college- and graduate-admissions offices around the country will establish workarounds to assure that opportunities remain for admittance of significant numbers of underrepresented minorities.

Therefore, he asserts,

The justices would be wise to take a pass on the Harvard case, or to affirm the lower courts’ decisions.

Which decisions upheld Harvard’s practice of racial discrimination for admission to its ivy-coated halls.

Harvard, to the letter writer’s first plaint, already uses “workarounds”—opaque and obscure criteria for assessing admissions “essays” and “descriptions of what this means to me” for starters—in selecting entrants on the basis of race while nonselecting other entrants on the basis of race.

Were the letter writer serious, he’d stop demanding free passes for the “underrepresented minorities” solely on the basis of their under-representation; that’s just racism under another guise. They’re underrepresented because they’re not qualified.

The solution is not free passes at the late date of college admissions applications, it’s getting these high school “graduates” actually educated and qualified.

More importantly, the solution is working to correct the K-12 systems and broken families that are the cause of unqualified-ness. But that takes actual work, and it’ll be a generational struggle to correct the ills so deeply embedded in what we’re pleased to call our education system. That solution is not the feel-good quick fix of which the Left is so enamored.

Another letter writer, however, takes a markedly differ view of the matter.

It [The Supreme Court] ought to take this case and apply strict scrutiny to the rationales advanced to justify treating some students more favorably than others merely on account of their ancestry.

But that doesn’t go far enough. As Chief Justice John Roberts already has said, [t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. On this, he’s right.

There is no justification for discriminating on “account of ancestry.” No more strict scrutiny; end the use of race as a discriminant, no matter how far down the list of selection criteria. Any—any—use of race as a selection criterion is rank racism.

Full stop.