Tag Archives: culture

Diversity

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A brief thought. Joseph Epstein wrote about true diversity, as opposed to the Left’s and their Progressive-Democratic Party’s ideology of race, sex, et al., diversity before merit in his Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

In the main, he’s right. I want to add a little, though, to his concluding sentence.

The best way to celebrate diversity, perhaps, is to begin by celebrating diversity of thought.

Number one.

Number two is overtly recognizing the inequality of individual talent, interest, work ethic, plain luck, and a host of other inequalities intrinsic in every man that culminate in unequal outcomes flowing from the utterly necessary equality of opportunity.

That equality of opportunity is at the center of individual liberty, which includes the freedom to speak diversely—out loud and publicly—from that diversity of thought.

That ability to speak freely is a critical part of every man’s right to show the best that there is in him, a right that is truncated by demanding equality of position or of outcome.

Additionally, that demand for equality of position or of outcome insults every one of us by insisting that our best isn’t worthy of consideration or that we cannot achieve that best without Know Betters in government doing for us.

In Which the Supreme Court Gets One Right, Sort Of

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The Supreme Court has ruled, for now, that the Trump administration’s policy of not allowing census-counted illegal aliens to be included in States’ post-census Federal Congressional reapportionment decisions can stand.

Following its ruling earlier this month that allowed the Trump administration to remove illegal aliens from the 2020 Census count, the Supreme Court on December 28 threw out two lower court decisions that went the other way, that barred the government from eliminating that population from the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes that officially determine the presidency.

The two tossed cases were Trump v Useche and Trump v City of San Jose. Notice that these address two separate, albeit related, matters. One is counting illegal aliens during the census itself; the other is whether State populations of illegal aliens can be used in setting the seats each State is allocated in the Federal House of Representatives and from that each State’s Electoral College representation.

California Attorney General and Joe Biden’s wish for HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra (D) insists,

[a] complete, accurate census is about ensuring all our voices are heard and that our states get their share of resources to protect the health and well-being of all of our communities. We remain committed to the core principle that everyone counts.

This, too, addresses two separate matters. Becerra is right, of course, about one of those matters, just not in the way he thinks. All of our voices—the voices of all of us who are citizens of the United States and of the particular State in which we reside—should be heard. Our voices should not be drowned out, or even diluted, by the voices of illegal aliens. Illegal aliens are not citizens; they’re not entitled to Federal government representation, and they shouldn’t be allowed to water down the representation of us citizens.

The other matter is this. Illegal aliens not being excludable from the census itself has perhaps legitimate implications for Federal transfers to the States for Medicare and other welfare fundings. It may be that taxpayers shouldn’t be held liable for the upkeep of those who announce from the jump their disrespect for our laws by breaking into our nation. On the other hand, we have our Judeo-Christian obligation to help those less well off—including those illegal aliens who have come from far direr straits: the difference between stealing a loaf of bread because the thief can, and stealing the loaf to feed his family.

Of course, the liberal, Living Constitution Says What We Say It Says wing dissented. Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent in Useche, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, and carried forward into this dismissal centered here:

The plain meaning of the governing statutes, decades of historical practice, and uniform interpretations from all three branches of Government demonstrate that aliens without lawful status cannot be excluded from the decennial census solely on account of that status.

That dissent does not address the use of populations of illegal aliens in apportioning State representation, only whether the illegal aliens can be counted in the first place. The dissenters will get their chance to argue again, though: the Supremes rejected the lower courts’ rulings on technical grounds, not on the merits of the issue.

Be heads up.

The Supremes’ order can be read here.

Another Reason

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…to toss the elites and reassert the sovereignty of We the People.

In a Christmas Eve interview with the New York Times, [Dr Anthony, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] Fauci acknowledged he had offered a lower estimate of the level of herd immunity necessary to stop the COVID-19 pandemic because he thought Americans would be discouraged by hearing his true thoughts on the issue.

And

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75%,” he told reporter Donald McNeil. “Then, when newer surveys said 60% or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

And this:

At the outset of the pandemic, Fauci…advised against wearing face masks, telling the public that doing so was unnecessary unless an individual was showing symptoms of COVID-19.
…
When pressed in June on why he had initially argued against masks, Fauci said that the public health community was “concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply.”

Lying to us “for our own good.”

It’s time to remove these…persons…from office and from other positions of influence.

Campus Speech

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Under some pressure and an appellate court ruling in a Speech First suit, the University of Texas has agreed to stop limiting freedom of speech on campus.

…administrators agree to dismantle the bias-response team and amend policies that chill speech. Gone is a ban on “uncivil behaviors and language that interfere” with the “welfare, individuality or safety of other persons.” Also stricken is a definition of “verbal harassment” that prohibited “ridicule” or “personal attacks.”
Under the settlement, UT reserves the right “to devise an alternative” to its bias-response team, but “Speech First is free to challenge that alternative.”

It’s a step, but only a small one, and it’s unfortunate that Speech First agreed to settle. A court ruling would have been much more binding and over a much broader reach of jurisdiction.

Any settlement is only as good as the integrity of the parties to the settlement, and UT (and ISU and UM, two other institutions that have settled speech matters with Speech First) have already demonstrated their level of integrity by having attempted to ban free speech in the first place. The same personnel who assaulted speech, after all, are the signatories to the settlement and are still in place at those institutions. And this settlement promises more UT-provoked expensive litigation as those personnel dream up other ways to try to limit speech.

Along with this, UT’s band continues to refuse to play The Eyes of Texas over what those associated with the band are pleased to call “politically correct” reasons. Those same UT administrators are pretending to review that position.

Apologies

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Daniel Henninger had a thought in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal on the relationship between the Wuhan Virus situation (my term, not his) and apologies.

I have my own thought on the broader matter of apologies themselves.

…difficult this year to tell which is greater—the number of people infected with Covid-19 or the number of politicians issuing apologies….

Other than Operation Warp Speed’s chief, General Gustave Perna, I’ve heard almost no politician apologize for anything. In truth, though, the apology was killed long ago.

What is issued in lieu of apology, and not only by politicians, has long been an expression of “regret” for “any offense that might have occurred.” Never mind that offense plainly was taken, or there’d have been no objection. Doubting that is dishonest.

On top of that, the utterer piously announces his regret—for an offense that he’s not convinced even occurred—but he has not a syllable of actual apology for his misbehavior that led to the offense. Masquerading his utterance as an apology is a very large lie.

Aside from that, “accepting responsibility,” “owning the matter,” and similar self-serving claims are cynically meaningless phrases, uttered only to distract from the fact that the speaker does nothing to change his behavior or otherwise to correct his error.