Category Archives: culture

UCSB’s “Apology”

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Recall a week, or so, ago when UCSB Women’s Studies Professor (her class: “Black Woman in Pornography”) Mireille Miller-Young objected to a pro-life demonstration that a 16-year-old girl and her 21-year-old sister were holding in the “free speech” (!) zone on the UCSB campus.  Miller-Young progressed from berating the girls for their demonstration, through stealing a sign they were using as part of their demonstration, to assaulting the younger girl, pushing her a number of times.

After considerable delay, UCSB’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Michael Young, has issued a memo.  The meat of that memo comes near the end:

While urging you to engage with differing ideas and opinions in a civil manner, I also want to remind you that you have the option not to engage at all.  You do not have to listen to, look at, or even acknowledge speech or expression that you find provocative or offensive.  …  If you do not want to be confronted by certain materials or expressions, you should avoid the free-speech areas when you expect that you might encounter them, or simply ignore them.

And

If you feel that you must respond, hold a peaceful, thoughtful, civil, and dignified counter-demonstration, and show how students engage intellectually and politically at UCSB.

The “you” to whom Young is speaking are the UCSB students.  There’s not a word directed to his misbehaving professor.  There’s not a word of apology for his professor’s misbehavior.  Not a syllable.  The rest of the memo is given over simply to a sermon on the trials of tolerating the disagreeable speech of those with whom a UCSB student might disagree.

To date, there’s no indication that UCSB intends to discipline Miller-Young in any way for her misbehavior.

As an aside, Young also wrote this in his memo:

You also know that I hold equally strong views on the sanctity of free speech.

Yeah.  As long as it’s done in your carefully restricted pair of squares of the campus grounds and confines itself to the limits of your comfort zone.  “Free speech” zone, indeed.  You seem to have lost sight of the fact that every square inch of public ground in our great nation is a free speech zone.

Talk About Paranoia

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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) has committed the dastardly deed of posting on his Facebook and Twitter feeds, references to a Biblical verse: Philippians 4:13.  The meaning of this verse, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” is less important than Scott’s purpose in posting it and the hue and cry raised over it by the atheists of the Left.  Walker’s Press Secretary Laurel Patrick, had this to say of that purpose:

While [Governor Walker] frequently uses his social media to engage with Wisconsinites on matters of public policy, he also uses it to give them a sense of who he is.  This does just that—it was a reflection of his thoughts for the day.

On the other hand, Freedom From Religion Foundation really has its collective knickers in a twist.

This braggadocio verse coming from a public official is rather disturbing.  To say, “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me,” seems more like a threat, or the utterance of a theocratic dictator, than a duly elected civil servant.

A threat?  Really!?  And where is the diktat involved here?  In what way is Walker ordering anyone else to do anything?

In what way is a man required to check his ethos—or his religion—at the door when he goes to work?  Should Walker also check his Judeo-Christian requirement to help the least among us at the door, too?

Come to that, where is the FFRF on government welfare—that use of taxpayer dollars, that use of FFRF members’ tax dollars—to support this Christian effort by government?

This would be bad parody, except that the FFRF and other If-It-Offends-Me-It-Must-Be-Unconstitutional crowd are deadly serious.  Instead, it’s just a disturbing level of paranoia.

What is it

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…with Liberals and uniformity?  I mentioned here a Liberal Justice’s fear of “the noisiness of republican democracy.”  Following is an example from near the other end of the jurisdictional spectrum.

It seems a grade schooler at the Caprock Academy in Grand Junction, CO, shaved her head in solidarity for a classmate and friend who was undergoing cancer treatment and in the process losing her own hair.  This got the grade schooler expelled from Caprock: such a thing violated the school’s precious dress code.

Never mind that shaving heads is a widespread and well-known act for the purpose: solidarity and emotional support for someone who is losing their own hair from a cancer treatment régime.  Never mind that the Caprock administrators knew the purpose of this girl’s head-shaving.  No: Get outta here.

The school’s excuse?  Unbelievably, it’s this.  Caprock’s President and Board of Directors Chairman, Catherine Norton Breman, said the school’s dress code

was created to promote safety, uniformity, and a non-distracting environment for the school’s students.  Under this policy, shaved heads are not permitted.

Uniformity.  No exceptions.  In what way, exactly, is supporting a friend in her extended hour of need in any way unsafe or distracting to other students?

In what way, exactly, is non-uniformity such a fearful thing?  Especially in an environment where students are supposed to be learning to think—and to think for themselves—is non-uniformity such a terrifying thing?

Of whom, or of what philosophy, are Liberals trying to make all of us—all of our children—unthinking, carbon copy acolytes?

I should note that, in the end, the girl’s expulsion from school only lasted one day, and she was allowed back to school the following Tuesday.  The school’s directors also were to meet—behind closed doors, of course—to “discuss” this thing.  The questions above remain though: of what is this bunch of Liberals, and all Liberals, apparently—so terrified of people, or children, not being all alike?

Welcome to the Republic

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Isn’t this part of what the 10th Amendment is about, guys?

Maybe some States finally are figuring that out.

Governors…have a blunt message for Congress and the White House: They’re moving ahead on job-creation, infrastructure and other matters in the face of federal inaction.

Democratic and Republican governors gathering for National Governors Association meetings say they’ve been forced to fill a vacuum created by the partisan battles in Washington that have blocked agreement on a long-term fiscal plan.

“We’re not waiting.  It would really be great for them to solve the mess here, but in the meantime we’re going to do what we can,” said Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican.

It’s not their mess to solve, albeit they’ve certainly been actively enthusiastic contributors to it.  Your States’ citizens are your responsibility.  The voters elected you to deal with the problems not to foist them off on relay them to the Federal government.

And this:

“There’s no long-term infrastructure plan coming out of DC—none,” said North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican.

Mr McCrory last year pushed through legislation changing the way North Carolina spends scarce transportation dollars.  Under the plan, projects that boost the economy, such as highways that link urban centers and relieve congestion, get priority.

In an interview Friday, Mr McCrory said the measure was partially a response to the failure of federal lawmakers to rework transportation funding.

You guys shouldn’t need one Federal action first; you should be acting on your own initiative.  When that happens, you get McCrory’s outcome: you finally stop feeding your addiction to Federal dollars, you start getting more efficiency and better prioritization, and you stop spending OPM willy nilly.

And this:

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said the “cycle of partisanship and dysfunction” in Washington could ultimately benefit state and local governments by forcing them to rethink how they relate to the federal government.

Well, NSS.  Welcome to the world of independence and responsibility.

States’ rights come with States’ responsibilities.  Where you guys been?

Sovereignty and Sovereign Debt

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Josef Joffe, editor of Die Zeit, is upset with Germany’s high court.  It seems that this court has ruled, again, against the European Central Bank’s President, Mario Draghi, and the ECB itself in continuing to note that ECB moves to buy member nations’ sovereign debt not only is a violation of EU foundational law, it violates the sovereignty of those nations expected to put up their peoples’ money to buy that debt.  Germany’s highest court also committed the dastardly deed of kicking the latest matter to the European Court of Justice.  All in the name of protecting German national sovereignty.

So the docket of the German high court in Karlsruhe never clears, and the battle cry never stops: “It’s our sovereignty, stupid!”

And

The German plaintiffs’ key complaint against the ECB comes in Latin—ultra vires. They argue that it would go “beyond the power” of the ECB to buy sovereign debt.

The horror.  The horror.

While cynically ridiculing the idea of national sovereignty throughout his article, though, Joffe missed another point, perhaps caused by his evident lack of understanding of the nature and importance of national sovereignty.

The larger story proclaims: Europe is still far from the United States, a real union.  The EU has neither a real Federal Reserve, nor a common fiscal policy, nor commonly elected leaders to define the common good.  The logic of a “more perfect union” demands these commonalities, but it collides with the logic of nation-states rooted in 2,000 years of history.

Leaving aside the EU’s demonstrated contempt for the common man (recall its formation: some countries rejected the union in national referenda, so the governments involved told those impudent populations to shove it and signed the Maastricht Treaty, which dragged those populations into the EU against their will), Joffe’s remark misses the fact that the EU also has no common culture, nor does it even have a common view of the purpose of money.

Even in the EU—especially in the EU—national sovereignty matters.  A very great deal.