Tag Archives: ethics

Steve Bannon and the Progressive-Democratic Party

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Steve Bannon is acting more and more (and more openly) like a stooge of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Is Steve Bannon working for my agenda—or his?

That’s the question Donald Trump might ask himself….

Indeed, since Bannon’s targets are Republicans of whom he disapproves—which is to say nearly all of them—all of us must ask for whose agenda is Bannon working so hard.  Bannon did, though, give his game away:

The only question on Capitol Hill, he warned Mr [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell, is “who’s going to be Brutus to your Julius Caesar[?]”

Indeed.  Who’s going to play the role of assassin/traitor to the Senate?

Bannon intends to subject every Republican Senator who is rude enough to support McConnell to a primary contest with a view to removing that Senator from office and replacing him with a more malleable candidate in the general election.

I’ve written elsewhere of the likely outcome of Bannon’s campaign.  William McGurn, the author of the piece at the first link, has one take on Bannon’s motive for that outcome.  I have another.

If Bannon were truly interested in a Conservative victory in the coming series of elections, he’d be going after the Progressive-Democratic Party candidates instead of targeting Republicans, even those who aren’t conservative enough to suit him.  Instead, he’s carefully ignoring the Democrats.

“Fear of Violent Protests Raises Cost of Free Speech on Campus”

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That’s the title of Douglas Belkin’s piece in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal.  However, it’s inaccurate.  What is feared by college/university management is the thugs who protest free speech with violence and others who protest free speech with noise and interruptions and venue entrance blockings that prevent the speaker from speaking.

Schools have struggled to come up with a consistent answer to requests to speak, pitting their free-speech ideals against security concerns.

Schools are being disingenuous when they pretend to these concerns, and the WSJ is misunderstanding the problem when it characterizes the schools as having free-speech ideals. The existence of the schools’ trading off security for free-speech demonstrates the lack of ideals regarding free-speech.

Were the schools’ managers truly concerned, they would understand the greatest violence is done to liberty when they cravenly trade free-speech for security, when they cravenly force disfavored speech into school-mandated “free speech” zones, when they cravenly allow “protestors” to prevent disfavored speakers from speaking, when they cravenly, despicably, allow “protestors” to dictate to others what speech those others will be allowed to hear.

“We have a non-negotiable commitment to provide safety and security for our guests and the public at large and we have an equally unwavering commitment to free speech,” said Mr [UC Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor, Dan] Mogulof. “That puts us between a rock and a hard place; we can’t step back from either one.”

Mogulof is being disingenuous. There’s no need to step back from either—allow the one, and provide the other. Worried about cost? Get serious about dealing with thugs who masquerade as protestors blocking speech of which the thugs disapprove. Get serious about snowflakes who pretend to being “triggered” when they hear speech they claim frightens them.

What’s plainly of distant secondary importance to these managers is actual free speech.  With their timidity, these managers fail to seriously defend the free speech rights of the speaker and, worse, fail to defend the free speech rights of others to make their own choice of what speech they will hear.

Rajoy vs Catalonia

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Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had and has an obligation to uphold the Spanish Constitution which, among other things, made the recent Catalan independence referendum illegal even to hold.  I’ve written elsewhere about what I think of his tactics in his enforcement campaign.

Whether Rajoy ordered his Policia Nacional and his Guardia Civil to engage in the violence they inflicted in Catalonia (nearly 900 Catalan casualties) or they acted on their own initiative, it’s hard to believe Rajoy was so stupid as to not know the violence would ensue when he ordered them in.

Now Rajoy has moved to invoke Article 155, which would allow him to seize control of the autonomous province from Madrid and among other things force new elections in Catalonia to get a new government, hopefully more…respectful…of Madrid imperatives.  The question is before the Spanish Senate as I write this piece on Saturday.

Two questions arise from Rajoy’s tactics (I hesitate to call the performance a strategy, anymore) so far:

1) What will Rajoy do if, as a result of his forced elections, Catalan separatist supporters are again elected to majorities in the Catalan government?

2) Is Rajoy prepared to send Spanish divisions into Catalonia to enforce Madrid’s rule there? Given the tactics he’s already chosen to enforce his will, that’s the choice this affair of his is coming down to.

Whichever way he chooses on the second question will end very badly for both Spain and Catalonia.  Choosing not to send his military across the frontier will amount to abject Spanish surrender to the separatists’ movement, however the latter might choose to play that out (perhaps negotiations would still be possible after Art 155 is officially invoked; the Catalans have been asking for talks all along, even though Rajoy has rejected them out of hand all along).  Choosing to send the military in will both magnify and solidify a political, cultural, and emotional split between Catalonia and Spain, regardless of how militarily successful Rajoy might be.

A Blow for Standards

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And it’s struck by California’s state Supreme Court, yet, which is the controlling factor in setting the passing score, the cut score, on the State’s bar exam which prospective lawyers must pass in order to practice in California.

The Court has decided to keep the cut score at its current level, which is the second highest in the US.  The State’s law school deans are in an uproar over that; they wanted the cut score significantly lowered.  They’re complaining that

many competent graduates will continue to suffer the consequences of not being able to become certified to practice….

The deans decline to explain how are “graduates” can be considered competent if they can’t pass the test that assesses their competency.

Their excuse for wanting the standard lowered is risible.

Bar-exam-passage rates for incoming lawyers have plummeted in California in recent years, in parallel with similar drops in other states….

Of course, this couldn’t be a degradation in the quality of teaching through lowered standards of expertise credentialing, or of students through lowered admission standards, or both.

Never mind that UCLA’s first-time pass rate of 82% proves that the current cut score is not too high.  Gotta lower standards, the deans say, to meet declining performance rather than requiring the hard work of elevating performance to meet standards.

Here’re a couple of thoughts: do a better job of teaching. It looks like an old jibe that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach, is thriving in California.

Also: do a better job of selecting students for admittance. Not every snowflake who takes a notion to be a lawyer should be one.

Media Bias

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Media “critic” Howard Kurtz says he decries it.  In a recent piece about media credibility he noted that, according to a Morning Consult/Politico survey, 46% of voters think the media makes up stories about President Donald Trump.  Even 20% of self-identified Democrats think that.

Then he wrote this.

In short, the president’s constant “fake news” attacks are working.

It couldn’t possibly be that the “media” really do make stuff up about Trump.  They don’t ever publish stories containing only rumors claimed by carefully unidentified sources, with nary an on-the-record bit of corroboration, like journalism standards used to require.  Nossir.

He also noted this outcome from the poll:

[I]n light of Trump suggesting scrutiny of TV licenses, the poll says 51% think the federal government shouldn’t have the power to revoke broadcast licenses of fabricating networks—not exactly a ringing endorsement.

It’s true enough that communications licenses shouldn’t be based on content.  But Kurtz wrote that in the context of his larger piece that while the media often are unfair (the token nod to another side of his argument), they don’t as a matter of routine fake the news.  It couldn’t possibly be that faint-praise damnation is because the media do, in fact, routinely make stuff up.  Uh, uh.

Talk about media bias.  Jeez.