Category Archives: culture

Patriotism Inappropriate in School?

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The Institutional Advisory Council at Hillsborough Community College has recommended the school stop saying the Pledge of Allegiance at its meetings. The IAC claims they did it to save time at their meetings, and they were concerned about the Pledge’s

appropriateness in an institution of higher learning which fosters academic freedom and structured dissent against authority.

How dishonest is this? If we stretch the 15, or so, seconds it actually takes to recite the Pledge of Allegiance into a minute to get everyone on their feet and facing the flag (they do have one in their meeting room, do they not?) and then sat back down after the recitation, we’re still not taking any time away from the meeting. Plainly Hillsborough’s IAC doesn’t consider patriotism to our nation—the nation that nurtures its members and provides them the environment within which they can pull…foolishness…like this, the nation whose other citizens have been killed or maimed defending their right to pull…foolishness…like this—worth the time.

The IAC’s claim is disingenuous in another way, too. “Structured dissent?” Why does dissent need to be “structured?” Oh, yeah, that Progressive notion that every human activity has to be regulated by the individual’s Betters.

Beyond that, though, is the outright logical dishonesty in their claim. How is it possible to dissent (structured or not) against the Pledge, for instance, when by not being allowed to recite it, the ability to refuse to do so, to dissent against it, is denied? Of course, those well-educated and highly intelligent members of the IAC know this full well.

Sadly though, Hillsborough ‘s President, Dr Ken Atwater, is another aficionado of leading from behind. He asked the IAC to reconsider their decision. Nonsense. The IAC is an advisory body. He’s the President. He can, and should, overrule the IAC and cancel its decision on his own initiative.

If Obama Had an Uncle

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University of Pennsylvania Religious Studies Professor Anthea Butler (Religious Studies, yet) says Republican Presidential candidate Dr Ben Carson is a coon.

Carson committed the crime of saying some things should be left to the people involved with the things to decide. On the recent controversy over the Confederate flag, he said,

Swastikas are a symbol of hate for some people too…and yet they still exist in our museums and places like that,” Carson said during an event with Richard Petty in North Carolina last Monday. “If it’s a majority of people in that area who want it to fly, I certainly wouldn’t take it down.

In response to which Butler tweeted

If only there was a “coon of the year” award…

Her boss and the University condone Butler’s racist behavior. UPenn’s Religious Studies Chairman, Professor Justin McDaniel, defended her:

She is a valued colleague and faculty member

If President Barack Obama had an uncle, would he look like Carson?  Oh, wait–this is the Left.  Obama is carefully silent on this one.

Black Lives Matter

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Plainly, though, as this image (via the StarTribune) from the Black Lives Matter Die-In which the BLM movement staged at Minneapolis, MN’s Twin Cities Marathon clearly demonstrate, only black lives matter. Notice: in this BLM demonstration, white guys are dead. Black lives are thriving and enjoying the scenery.BlackLivesMatter

Or it’s a satire on the whole BLM bigotry foolishness, and BLM got punked.

 

h/t Power Line

Mass Shooting and Gun “Control”

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President Barack Obama, in his crocodile tears speech after the Oregon shooting, called for some statistics on gun control and gun deaths. Here’s one under a surprisingly misleading headline by The Wall Street Journal.

The researchers counted 23 mass shootings in 13 European nations plus Russia from 2000 to 2014, with a total of 203 deaths. During that time, the US saw 133 shootings and 487 dead….

Twenty-three mass shootings averaged almost nine deaths per mass shooting. In the US, the 133 mass shootings averaged a bit over three and a half.

When a gun is hard to get, you have to make it count. Or, just maybe, good guys, who are able to have guns, are able to cut short the mass shooting events.

Can’t Prepare?

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Joe Olson, who retired in June as president of the Umpqua Community College told the Associated Press the school had three training exercises with local law agencies in the past two years, “but you can never be prepared for something like this.”

I won’t comment on the “training exercise” rate. This sort of preemptive giving up, though, ranks right up there with gun free zones as a major contributor to mass killings. Of course it’s possible to prepare for “something like this.” It just takes a willingness to conceive the possibilities from not waiting for the police who are only minutes away. Interminable minutes, during which the killing proceeds apace. Unless the true first responders—those who are already on scene—are allowed to defend themselves and allowed to exercise initiative.

We need, too, a society that knows better than to wait for government to do for them rather than the meek, professional victim, Big Daddy Government society Progressives are pushing.

As President Barack Obama said in all his crocodile tear fulsomeness the day of Umpqua’s mass killing, we do need sensible gun laws. The gun control foolishness needs to get out of the way so we can have them.