A Party’s True Character

A Party’s True Character

The Progressive-Democratic Party leader of the time, President Woodrow Wilson, said of segregation, “segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.”  The Progressive-Democratic Party also is the party of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is the party that made national minimum wage laws for the explicit purpose of keeping blacks on the plantation—literally—instead of migrating north and competing for jobs by being willing to work for less than white union members were.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is the party of racist and sexist affirmative action programs.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is the party of the welfare cage that keeps our poor, of any stripe, trapped in poverty and dependent on government handouts.

Jason Riley in The Wall Street Journal has some insights on the current nature of the matter.

[Now] race-consciousness is once again ascendant, not only among “alt-right” types, but more tellingly among self-styled progressives and left-wing institutions that once worked so hard to combat Jim Crow policies. The liberals who are cheering the recent removal of Confederate monuments to racial separatism also indulge the separatist rhetoric of groups like Black Lives Matter. Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s calls for colorblind policies seem as dated as concerns about interracial hookups.

And

College campuses offer near-daily examples of this liberal devolution on racial matters. The most prominent recent episode involves Bret Weinstein, a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, who has come under fire from students and fellow faculty members for criticizing the school’s “Day of Absence” protest, which involved whites quitting campus for the day.

And

Sadly, these antics have become commonplace in recent years. Students at the University of Wisconsin have demanded free tuition and housing for blacks. At the University of Michigan, a student group that previously complained about the lack of racial “diversity” and “inclusion” at the school has since requested a safe space on campus reserved for students of color to gather. At the University of Missouri, only students of color were invited to participate in a “die-in” protesting the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

And

Last year, at the urging of the school’s black student union, California State University, Los Angeles began offering segregated housing for black students. The University of Connecticut, the University of California, Davis and the University of California, Berkeley are among the colleges that have similar arrangements in place.

And

This year, Harvard held its first-ever commencement ceremony for black graduate students. The New York Times reported that racially segregated end-of-year ceremonies like the one held at Harvard have become more mainstream, more openly embraced by universities and more common than ever before.

The Progressive students of the campuses and those institutions’ management are demanding exactly what that Progressive icon, Woodrow Wilson, promised them: the “protection” of segregation.  This is what the Party’s Big Government-mandated dependency has wrought.

Hollywood, Too

A month into the summer movie season and the box office is already suffering from poor performances by a number of widely panned films.

Box office gross receipts are off nearly 5% through the summer compared to the same period last year and its this-year Memorial Day weekend wasn’t this bad since 1999.

Megan Colligan, Paramount’s President of Worldwide Marketing and Distribution on her studio’s Baywatch:

The cast could not have done more work in aggressively promoting “Baywatch.” Dwayne [Johnson] gave this 150%[.]

It is to weep.  They tried so hard—where’s their participation ribbon?

It couldn’t possibly be that they’re making bad movies, or movies on a theme that’s already played out, or….  Mm, mm.  Couldn’t be.  Gotta be somebody else’s fault.

But it’s expectable.  They’re of a piece.

This is Why We Can’t Have Qualified Non-STEM Graduates

Joyce Chaplin, Professor of Early American History and Chair, American Studies at Harvard—Harvard American history!—illustrated why that is with this tweet of hers:

Joyce E. Chaplin @JoyceChaplin1

The USA, created by int’l community in Treaty of Paris in 1783, betrays int’l community by withdrawing from #parisclimateagreement today

Think about that.  Don’t be distracted by her foolishness on things climate, just think about what the simulated expert on American history tweeted.

Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX) did, also, and he had a couple of tweets.

Ted Cruz @tedcruz

Just sad. Tenured chair at Harvard, doesn’t seem to know how USA was created. Not a treaty. Declaration+Revolutionary War+Constitution=USA.

And

Ted Cruz @tedcruz

Lefty academics @ my alma mater think USA was “created by int’l community.” No–USA created by force, the blood of patriots & We the People.

And

Ted Cruz @tedcruz

Treaty of Paris simply memorialized that fact, of our total victory at Yorktown. Her claim is like saying a plastic globe created the earth.

Not willing to accept the correction of her error, Chaplin expanded on it.

Joyce E. Chaplin @JoyceChaplin1

Sad. US Senator, Harvard Law degree. Doesn’t know that national statehood requires international recognition.

No, Madam (hard to address you as professor), international recognition only that—acknowledgment of a fait accompli.  Recognition creates nothing.

Holy cats.

“Full Responsibility”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said, regarding leaks to the New York Times tabloid and others,

We take full responsibility for that and we obviously regret that that happened.  With respect to the release of information inappropriately…certainly we condemn that.

The same sort of questions I’ve put to Hillary Clinton applies here: what are you going to do with that “responsibility” you’ve taken?  What concrete actions will you take?

How’re the criminal and civil investigations into the leaks going; what progress are you making in identifying the criminals and the miscreants?

Assuming you find any, what will you do with them?

The Rise of the PRC

Graham Allison, Director of the Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, had some thoughts in The Boston Globe.  Here’s one that’s not in the usual political or military race discussion.

In STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)…[the PRC] annually graduates four times as many students as the United States (1.3 million vs 300,000).

A better measure would compare the quality of those graduates and their programs so as to arrive at similarly qualified graduates.

Still, numbers have a quality all their own.  Let’s play a bit with these two.  Suppose, for instance, that 80% or American STEM graduates actually know their material, i.e., the graduates didn’t just sleep-walk their way through a mediocre program; they actually got and understood a good, solid STEM education.  That works out to 240k solid STEM grads.

Suppose that of the PRC’s graduates only 50% measure up to that standard.  That still works out to 650k solid STEM grads, or for you non-STEM folks, 2.7 times more quality grads than we’re producing.  That’s something to take seriously.

This is a long-term, generational, race that we can’t afford to lose.