Tag Archives: ethics

College Pupils and Administrators

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Jean Twenge, a Psychology Professor at San Diego State University, theorizes that the problems the current generation of college pupils has with free speech stems from their having spent “their entire adolescence with smartphones in their hands,” thereby avoiding missing the rough and tumble of face to face interactions with other children, and from their having led an otherwise dismayingly soft life:

iGen’ers grew up in an era of smaller families and protective parenting. They rode in car seats until they were in middle school, bounced on soft-surface playgrounds and rarely walked home from school. For them, unsurprisingly, safety remains a priority, even into early adulthood.

And

Nor are they just concerned about physical safety. The iGen teens I have interviewed also speak of their need for “emotional safety”—which, they say, can be more difficult to protect.  …  This is a distinctively iGen idea: that the world is an inherently dangerous place because every social interaction carries the risk of being hurt. You never know what someone is going to say, and there’s no way to protect yourself from it.

Twenge’s thesis certainly is a major component.  However, she has missed another major component.

School pupil populations always have had a significant fraction of crybabies and snowflakes. What’s also changed is the onset of cowardice by college/university faculty and administrators. When pupils look to college administrators to settle disputes, for instance, those administrators need to have the courage to say, “No, settle your own dispute” instead of taking the easy way and intervening in order to quiet the squawling toddlers.

When pupils cry that it’s administrators’ jobs to create homes and not an intellectually challenging environments, those administrators need to have the courage—here the integrity—to say, “No, go back home; this isn’t the place for you.”

When pupils riot over their manufactured hurt-feelings re speakers of whose speech they style themselves afraid or disapproving, those pupils need to be arrested and brought to trial for their crimes; administrators must encourage police in this rather than build their administrator escape hatches through which to scuttle away from a problem that, in large part, is of their creation.

Related—closely—is a Letter to the Editor by Oriel College, Oxford, albeit of uncertain provenance, addressing a pupil who decided to be offended by a statue to Cecil Rhodes.  Here’s the money quote, via WillowSpring, writing for Ricochet:

Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort and well being of many generations of Oxford students—a good many of them, dare we say it, better, brighter, and more deserving than you.

This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don’t understand what this means—and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case—then we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?”

And

And then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent, more deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of those 22,000 students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they clearly don’t merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to ruin the life and fabric of our beloved university.

Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.

I might have added words with the effect of further calling out this precious snowflake: “This school exists in large part because of that Evil Man’s evil money, and so you’re able to present yourself with your whine in large part because of that Evil Man’s evil money.  Of course, you knew of Cecil Rhodes and his donation well in advance because Mumsy told you before you applied.  So, indeed: why are you here?”

Another Cynical Mueller Leak

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Special counsel Robert Mueller is examining what role, if any, former national security adviser Mike Flynn may have played in a private effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers, according to people familiar with the matter.

It’s becoming increasingly crystalline that, whatever purpose Special Counsel Robert Mueller has in his “investigation,” it’s a dishonest one.  That’s the only reason that occurs to me for his careful string of “leaks” to the public, of which this is only the latest.

Investigators working for Mr Mueller have been conducting interviews and collecting information as they seek to determine whether Mr Flynn was involved in Mr Smith’s effort, and if his son, Michael G Flynn, and the consulting firm Flynn Intel Group had a role, the people said.

There’s just no reason for these leaks to be occurring, and they could not be, in their number or in the length of the ongoing stream of them, without Mueller’s active approval.

And this especially potentially damaging leak:

US officials with knowledge of the intelligence said investigators also have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr Flynn via an intermediary.

While it’s easy enough for thinking persons to speculate that such intelligence agency reports exist, the fact of their existence is likely classified.  While it’s easy enough, also, for thinking persons to draw conclusions of their own consistent with what these leaked intel reports appear to claim, the reports’ contents and conclusions, even in general terms, likely are classified, also.  How is this sort of information being leaked?  Why is Mueller allowing it?

Peter Carr, a spokesperson for the special counsel, declined to comment.

Of course he did.  If Mueller or any of his team spoke on the record, they’d be unable to release as much “information” regarding this ongoing investigation.

Way to Go, Google

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Recall the now ex-employee who wrote a lengthy and thought-out memo for internal distribution via one of what Google is pleased to call its open communication channels. A summary of the ex-employee’s case is in the Sunday Wall Street Journal; my comments on the situation, based on that summary, are below.

…critics saying the company squelched free speech by firing a male employee who wrote a divisive memo denouncing its diversity push, while others said his views showed that the company’s diversity policies were needed.

Both the critics and “others” are right: the incident clearly demonstrates need for open debate and discussion, not the need to suppress discussion and debate by firing the one who raised the question.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said…to suggest “colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”

Commenters here, in the WSJ comment thread, and elsewhere can offer data on either side of that claim. Pichai’s decision to provide none is beyond arrogant; it’s dishonest.  As is Danielle Brown’s decision to speak solely ex Cathedra ab umbilico in her responding memo, similarly without the first minim of actual data.  We’re just supposed to accept the bald statements of these august personages.

Indeed, here’s a Google spokesman responding to a WSJ request for comment/elaboration:

He violated our Code of Conduct, period.

Not gonna discuss it. Sit down, and shut up.

As an aside, there is this much in the WSJ piece [emphasis added]:

…[the ex-employee] wrote that biological differences explain some of the gap between male and female tech workers….

Indeed. The more mendacious NLMSM is carefully omitting that qualifier.

The memo can be seen on Gizmodo here, along with Google’s vapid response.

What a way to go, indeed.

“Mueller Can Avoid an Iran-Contra Repeat”

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That’s the title of a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, and it indicates an unwarranted optimism about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “investigation.”

The problem is that Mueller’s investigation is expected to run at least into the end of 2018—packing a 6-month investigation (which already has run for nearly a year under other auspices) into 18 months, or seven years, like the Iran-Contra investigation, depending on the election cycle. And that’s the point—to poison election cycles that might go the wrong way.

This is substantiated by the appalling leak rate Mueller is allowing his team to have.  He has no intention of running this thing quickly and efficiently.

Lawyer Gray can hope for a more prompt outcome than Iran-Contra, but he’s whistling in the dark.

Gun Control

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A bill is making progress in Congress that would allow concealed carry license holders, whose license was issued in one State (their State of residence) to concealed carry their weapons in all States: the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017.  The bill also would require such a carrier to abide by the laws of the State they’re visiting, including all of that State’s gun-free zone designations.  In this way, the reciprocity law is similar to drivers license reciprocity, under which it’s legal to drive in any State so long as the driver both is licensed in his home State and obeys the driving laws of the State he’s visiting.

Naturally, the bill has lots of resistance in the coastal States and cities—jurisdictions run by Progressive-Democrats.  The California Police Chiefs Association President Edward Medrano, for instance, has these objections:

The bill would erode local control of issuing concealed carry permits, as the arbitrariness of the issuing authority rules would reduce the requirements for concealed carry to the lowest common denominator.  Further, the lack of a national database for concealed carry permits makes it functionally impossible for a law enforcement officer in the field to determine the legal compliance of an individual carrying a concealed firearm.

Both of these objections are disingenuous.  The requirement for concealed carry is quite simple, and it’s laid out clearly in the 2nd Amendment [emphasis added]:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The “lowest common denominator” objection also illustrates the utter illogic of Medrano’s objection.  It is the multiply varied local jurisdiction rules that are arbitrary.  The lowest common denominator standard, accepting that characterization arguendo, would be easily understood and widely so, since it would not at all be arbitrarily varying.  Too, a required reciprocity like that in the Act, would put the onus for keeping up with local jurisdiction variability and arbitrariness where it belongs: on the individual and not on the government’s men.

Beyond that, no national database of concealed carry permits is needed.  Most States issue concealed carry licenses and require the license holder to have that license in his possession at all times—just like his drivers license.  A few States don’t require licenses to carry concealed, but those States are easily identified—by the drivers license the holder still must have with him at all times.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (OK, an interior mayor, but a Progressive-Democratic Party one nonetheless) argue that the reciprocity act would

essentially force the localities to give full faith and credit to permits that are issued on less rigorous grounds [and] remove local governments’ ability to maintain sensible gun standards.

Because full faith and credit is a terrible thing.  We’ve also seen what Progressive-Democrat “sensible gun standards” amount to: a citizen having to show to a government official’s satisfaction that a need to carry exists.  The Supreme Court has already ruled on the illegality of that arrogant nonsense.

Progressive-Democrats like New York’s District Attorney Cy Vance is even arguing that reciprocity would give Daesh terrorists (and other terrorists, presumably) a leg up.  This is just a cynically offered red herring of a scare tactic.  Guys like Vance carefully ignore the fact that the leg up is that of an armed citizen or group of us confronted with an already armed terrorist.

The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act needs to go through without any delay.