Category Archives: culture

The New Left

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The modern Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party are showing their true heart, and there’s no room for freedom in it; there’s not even room for disagreement.

The Progressive-Democrat movement already has attempted to mass murder Republican Congressmen gathered for a baseball practice, nearly succeeding in the case of Steve Scalise (R, LA).

Now we have two Republican candidates for Minnesota state office being assaulted.

One suffered a concussion from his assault; the other was assaulted as she (!) tried to prevent the theft of campaign yard signs already erected in yards.

The campaign manager—another woman—for the Republican candidate for Nevada Governor was physically assaulted and held against a wall by a George Soros (a Party-approved 1%-er)-backed PAC employee after the thug had forced his way into a private room where a conference was in progress.  This same person had previously physically assaulted the Interior Secretary’s press secretary—still another woman (is there a pattern here?), and she filed criminal charges right after—so the Progressive-Democrat-supporting PAC knew who they were hiring.

Any one of these could easily have been written off as the isolated attacks of Left-wing loons.  But together they aggregate into the Party’s true attitude: they all come on the heels of attempts to intimidate Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX); Senator Mitch McConnell (R, KY); Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao; and many other Republicans with loud, deliberately disruptive protests designed to completely prevent them from going about their personal business in restaurants, even walking to their cars, milder intimidation attempts that failed.

This all comes, also, against the backdrop of Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) and Senator Spartacus (D, NJ) calling for people to harass Republicans wherever encountered or to come up in their faces, Party queen Hillary Clinton saying civility with Republicans is impossible and ex-Attorney General Eric Holder (D) calling for Republicans to be kicked when they “go low.”

This all comes, also, with the Left’s Antifa taking over the streets of Portland or assaulting those whom they simply don’t like.

This all comes with Progressive-Democrat billionaire Tom Steyer (another of the Party-approved 1%-ers) looking to buy a House impeachment claque.

This all comes with some members of the Progressive-Democratic Party leadership mildly calling for (their version of) civility but doing nothing to back their empty rhetoric, or others of that leadership remaining altogether silent.

Keep this in mind as you decide for whom to vote.  And do go vote.

The EU and National Sovereignty

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Poland enacted a law at the start of the year that lowered the mandatory retirement age of all of its judges from 70 to 65.  This resulted, among other things, in the required retirement for 27 of the nation’s 72 Supreme Court judges (a too-big Court, anyway IMNSHO, and they ought not be replaced, but that’s a separate story).

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS [Prawo i Sprawiedliwość]) party says the changes are necessary to a justice system they say is controlled by an untouchable “caste” of judges steeped in communist-era mentality.

The European Union has demurred.

The Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice said Friday that Poland must delay implementation of a law that came into force earlier this year requiring early retirement for nearly 40% of the court’s judges. Poland could face fines if it doesn’t comply, but more significantly such a move would represent an unprecedented threat to the authority of the bloc’s top court.
The Polish judges sent into retirement must be allowed to return to work, the ruling said.

That supposed threat to the ECJ may, in fact, be the crux of the matter: the EU must reign supreme over the member nations.

Whether retiring the judges is a good idea or not is a good idea or not, it’s an internal, domestic affair for Poland to decide.

Joining the EU plainly requires the surrender of a potful of national sovereignty far beyond such outward looking matters as national borders, trade rules, and the like.

Decisions

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In a Wall Street Journal article Monday, Google’s MFWIC, Sundar Pichai, defended his decision to support the People’s Republic of China with a Google “search” engine that’s carefully compliant with PRC censorship requirements.

What interests me this time, though, is this bit:

Mr Pichai…played down the idea that the Project Maven decision was made only based on employee feedback. He said Google has also listened to experts in ethics and artificial intelligence.

Project Maven is a DoD program intended to develop artificial intelligence for American national defense purposes—including, yes, an improved ability to kill our enemies when they attack us.

Pichai’s rationalization of his decision to turn his back on our national defense doesn’t matter. Our enemies are developing AI and will use it against us. Pichai’s decision only potentiates those enemies’ relative capabilities.

Don’t be evil.  That used to be Google’s motto.  How is it evil to help our country defend itself?  How is it not evil to help our enemies, even if without AI support (other than “search” AIs)?

Now the corporate motto, handed down from parent Alphabet, is Do the right thing.  How is refusing to help our nation defend itself a right thing?  How is helping our enemies a right thing?

Sundar Pichai knows the answers to these questions full well.

Discrimination

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The discrimination suit against Harvard is underway, and the first day produced some interesting claims.

William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s admissions dean since 1986, defended the policy [of favoring some applicants over others on the basis of race] by saying the letters to white students in more rural states help the school recruit from areas where students may be less aware of Harvard.

This is nonsense. If student awareness were the goal, instead of sending letters to favored individuals, Harvard would advertise, would communicate with the junior high schools and high schools of those rural areas.

Race is never the reason a student is admitted or rejected from Harvard, he [William Lee, a WilmerHale partner representing Harvard] said, adding the school considers race as one of many factors, in line with Supreme Court precedents.

This is disingenuous at best. If race is never a reason, it wouldn’t be missed if it were eliminated from consideration.

In addition, there is a clear designed-in disparate impact at work here, but since it’s not an impact against a favored group of Americans, it’s not discussed.

A Quality of Education

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A Harvard junior has had the effrontery to write an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that’s critical of Harvard and its admission practice.  In the piece, he cited a criticism he gets when he’s rude enough to comment on campus.

How can you be against affirmative action? That’s racist[.]

What a sad commentary this is on the quality of education available at our colleges and universities, especially one that pretends to superiority. Plainly, Harvard, et al., are teaching nothing of logic or history, only bald ideology. Any program that carries race (and gender, as affirmative action programs do) as criteria for admission, or any other gain, is by design racist (and sexist). And, this racist and sexist design was built in at the origin of affirmative action programs, including Harvard’s.