Discrimination

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

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.

A Thought on Reason

Peggy Noonan had some thoughts on reason, centered on the just concluded confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Senator Susan Collins’ (R, ME) analysis of her reasons for voting for his confirmation.

I have a couple of thoughts on a couple of Noonan’s thoughts.

Susan Collins put on a clinic in thoroughness and justice. Democrats need to stand up to the screamers.

Noonan needs to understand: the Progressive-Democrats are the screamers.

A word on the destructive theatrics we now see gripping parts of the Democratic Party. … Do you know how that sounded to normal people, Republican and Democratic and unaffiliated?

It sounded perfectly normal to those of the Progressive-Democratic Party. First, hear the deafening silence of the remainder of Noonan’s parts of the Democratic Party: not a word in demurral of that behavior. Second, hear Hillary Clinton’s rejection of civility and Eric Holder’s threats of violence. Third, recall Spartacus Booker’s “come up in Congressmen’s face;” Clinton’s statement that millions of Americans are irredeemably deplorable racists, homophobes, and misogynists; Barack Obama’s dismissal of millions of Americans as nothing more than bitter Bible-clinging, gun-toting denizens of flyover country; Maxine Waters’ incitement to harass Republicans wherever they are; the NLMSM’s dismissal of Kanye West as just a token negro and a negro who doesn’t read.

That’s the danger we face this fall.

Mao Lives

The People’s Republic of China, the home of rule by law (not rule of law), has retroactively legalized its “internment” camps, which the government is using to jail reeducate recalcitrant Muslims in its western province of Xinjiang.

Chinese authorities in the far-northwestern region of Xinjiang on Wednesday revised legislation to permit the use of “education and training centers” to combat religious extremism.

So far—so far, mind you—a million Muslims are…housed…in those camps.

The camps are strongly reminiscent of those of President Xi Jinping’s early predecessor, Mao Tse-tung.  Mao sent 16-18 million children and millions more adults to his “reeducation” camps.

Xi is off to a good start.

The New Left

There can be no reasoning, no rational debate anymore with the Progressive-Democratic Party and the Left in general.  This is made clear by the statements luminaries of that collection have made in recent days—confirming their behavior during the Kavanaugh confirmation process just concluded, during which they actively rejected a foundation of liberty: innocent until proven guilty.  Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) was the loudest on this, saying outright that then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh had to personally authorize an investigation into himself or he would show himself guilty.

It began earlier.  Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) called for Republicans to be physically confronted wherever they are.  Senator Corey Spartacus Booker (D, NJ) called on the Left to get up in the face of congresspeople.

Now the Progressive-Democrats and their Left are expanding on the thesis that there can be no rationality in discourse—if, indeed, there can be discourse at all—with those of us to the right of center.  Here’s Hillary Clinton, in an interview with CNN:

You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about….  That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.

That destruction is exactly what the Progressive-Democrats are attempting.  Yet, only when that Party is in control can there be any pretense of civility.  Only when the Party can require debate to be on their terms, within their parameters, can there be anything like peaceful disagreement.

The threats from the Left are palpable:

  • Senator Cory Gardner’s (R, CO) wife received a graphic text message with a video depicting a beheading
  • Progressive-Democrat intern Jackson Cosko has been arrested for posting the personal information, including home addresses, of Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC), Mike Lee (R, UT), and Orrin Hatch (R, UT) on Wikipedia
  • Senator Jeff Flake (R, AZ) was trapped in an elevator with two screaming women “activists”

Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) worries about assassination attempts—a concern made concrete by last year’s mass assassination attempt of Republican Congressmen at a baseball practice.

Minnesota Special Education teacher, Samantha Ness, has actively called for the assassination of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

This is just a taste of what we can expect if the Progressive-Democrats are successful in this fall’s elections.  This is a taste of Progressive-Democrat “civility.”  It isn’t republican democracy that these folks want for our nation.  Not anymore.