All is proceeding as dreaded
A follow up to my DREAD-ful 9th Blog Anniversary post.
My recent DREAD-ful blog anniversary post had a good response in the comment section, and also generated numerous emails. I appreciate the feedback and support, it truly lifted my spirits.
So let me clarify that, to the extent some people read into my post an intent to close down Legal Insurrection, that is not in the cards.
There are some struggles and challenges, but we’re not turning off the lights. There even is the possibility, which is premature to announce but which I’m happy to tease, of some exciting new developments.
Also, I don’t underestimate how Trump has the potential to make some difference.
But the rot is so deep in so many institutions, it will be a generational project, not something that can be fixed in 4 or 8 years. Higher Ed is a perfect example. Many departments are hanging onto sanity by the slender thread that many “old school” professors have not yet retired so the younger radicalized tenured faculty are not yet fully in control. In 5-10 years that will change, and those younger radical faculty have spent the past 20 years only hiring their own.
I offer these anecdotes from the past couple of days as examples of how the topics highlighted in my post are happening:
1. There goes STEM
On the issue of how, “[i]n 3-5 years, if we’re still here, we’ll be writing about how the social justice warriors have corrupted the STEM fields,” I give you Scientific American, How Men Can Help Women in STEM: Shut Up, Sit Back and Listen
Why is it that I, a man in STEM, am writing about this? Because to me these statistics also show another thing: men, who are dominating these fields, have an obligation to support women in STEM and help level the playing field. But how can men help to facilitate change and support women in STEM? All the things I try to implement are the result of listening to women—who sacrificed their spare time to educate me—and taking their advice. Thus, maybe the single best, most actionable thing is this: step back, shut up, give women space, and listen to them.
2. He who controls the language …
On the manipulation of language for political purposes, I give you the an article by Sohrab Ahmari in Commentary, The Associated Press and the Pronoun Wars:
The transgender movement is at war with the English language. With a new set of style guidelines, the Associated Press has joined the trenches—on the transgender side….
Now comes the AP’s gender rewrite. In a series of tweets on Tuesday explaining the changes first promulgated earlier this year, the AP’s editors contended that “gender refers to a person’s social identity, while sex refers to biological characteristics” and admonished writers to “avoid references to being born a boy or girl.” The venerable news agency also endorsed the language- and
prose-disfiguring use of “they/them” as a singular pronoun. It even left open the door to more exotic made-up pronouns such as “ze” and “zir.”Tuesday also saw the AP introduce a new rule: Instead of the expressions “sex change” or “transition,” writers are to use “gender
confirmation.” This was a deep kowtow to the transgender movement, which believes that physicians don’t alter anything essential or fundamental when they perform a sex-change operation: Caitlyn Jenner was always Caitlyn Jenner. The operation merely confirmed this ontological fact.You needn’t agree with social conservatives on transgender ideology to see that this is wrongheaded. The editors are using the AP’s style authority to declare the transgender debate over….
3. Nice social media account you have there, shame if something happened to it
On the “concentration of power in a small number of social media and internet companies who have been weaponized to shut down speech and expression,” Twitter is about to roll out new guidelines in response to the #womenboycotttwitter day protesting Harvey Weinstein:
We know from experience that these rules will not be evenly applied. What are “hate symbols”? Will they use the politically-biased SPLC hate lists? “Violent groups”? What’s the chance Antifa or that Black Lives Matter groups that advocate physical attacks on speakers will be kicked off Twitter? Glorifying violence? The left claims the NRA glorifies violence.
4. Salon-approved conservatives
On the “cottage industry of self-appointed guardians of conservatism whose main job is to delegitimize the vote, and to encourage a soft coup because they didn’t get their way in the primaries,” I give you Salon, The 25 conservatives actually worth following on Twitter. There are many on this list I like and probably shouldn’t be on it, but there also is a core group of people whose career is being the Conservative who hates Trump and who liberals love for it:
5. Was nice knowing ya, ACLU defenders of free speech
On the “rising tide of absolutism in ideas and enforcement of ideological uniformity that is palpable,” I give you the shrinking commitment of ACLU staff to freedom of speech:
What will it do the next time the alt-right seeks the A.C.L.U.’s help?
That question that has cut fault lines though the A.C.L.U., with a group of staff members sending an open letter taking issue with the organization’s longstanding work of defending white supremacists in free speech cases. “Our broader mission — which includes advancing the racial justice guarantees in the Constitution and elsewhere, not just the First Amendment — continues to be undermined by our rigid stance,” says the letter, which a former member of the A.C.L.U.’s board, Michael Meyers, provided to The Times. About 200 staff members — the A.C.L.U. has about 1,300 full-time employees — signed onto the letter, according to a spokeswoman.
“This letter has to be seen for what it is — a repudiation of free-speech principles,” Mr. Meyers said.
The A.C.L.U.’s executive director, Anthony Romero, said in an interview that the organization was not, after Charlottesville, retreating from its longstanding defense of free speech, even hate speech — a tradition that goes back to the organization’s earliest years.
It is in the A.C.L.U.’s “DNA to defend speech from government censorship including, and especially, hateful speech in times when it is being shut down,” he said.
Still, after Charlottesville, the organization has been evaluating its criteria for accepting new free speech cases, Mr. Romero said.
6. The End
All is proceeding as planned.
Or should I say, as dreaded.
[Featured Image: Me at Cornell faculty “Take a Knee” protest]
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Twitter will die a quite death as one smart conservative will start a new Twitter that the majority of the Nation will now use
We will have our own ACLU and the first ACLU will become marginal
The Universities are dying that atone to the SJW beat, there will be a huge uptick at Conservative Universities
No one outside of SJW are going to learn new pronouns, even when forced to like the medical community in CA…
Stick a feather in it…
Have faith, this too shall pass
And readers of “Watts up with That” and other blogs specializing in the Climate Wars will know that SA has in fact been the UnScientific Anti-American Journal for several years now.
I, like many people, put great stock in that magazine back in the 80’s and even 90’s. Now everyone who remembers what it used to be longs to hear that it has finally shut down publication for good, and stopped shaming the good name it used to have.
GAB looks promising https://gab.ai I haven’t GABed yet; but intend to.
Gab is under attack. Even its domain provider is repudiating them. I hope they make it, but I think they underestimate the coordinated attack that they face.
Gab.ai
Reminds me of my favorite movie, The Searchers. One point John Wayne character says: “Well Reverend, looks like you’ve got yourself surrounded.”
Rev. says: “Yeah and I figure on getting myself unsurrounded.”
Too many on the right do not understand how serious this political/cultural fight is or don’t care. This has baffled me for years. The left is very beatable. Very. Just takes stubborn effort.
Part of the problem is the regressive Left has deep pockets and a lot of clout behind them. Conservatives, on the other hand, have no one bankrolling their efforts and thus must work not only to keep the home fires burning but to help those in the trenches of the culture war. It ain’t fair, but then who said life would be fair?
There’s a lot of conservative money. The problem is not money (as we’ve seen in the last presidential election) – it’s leadership (as we’ve seen after the last presidential election.)
The left has taken over education and the media be being bratty children. The GOPe has let them, just like a wimpy, clueless parent. Hence, the current consequences.
However, the left has lost a tremendous amount of power since Trump has been elected.
Controlling the language: don’t go for it. “We” were dumb enough to allow the left to call leftist states true ‘blue,’ and conservative states commie ‘red.’ That was moronic, but typical.
Let the ignorant brats of hollywood and sports say what they want: we’re not listening, nor buying their products.
Conservatives don’t have money? Ah, no. What they don’t have is a spine. A long time ago I switched from the left to become a conservative. I’d noticed at that time that conservatives failed to push back in any meaningful way almost everywhere. Whatever “clout” the left has is manufactured, puffed up and, if challenged, vigorously beaten back because if it’s not, then say goodbye to the left. America isn’t leftist. But the left tries to make it seem like leftism is the default POV.
The left is fighting as hard as ever right now because they control no federal branch of government or much of anything at the state level. So the battleground moves further into the media, schools, pop culture, etc. If the right loses control of, say, the presidency, the loss doesn’t hit as hard because there is more to life on the right than politics. To a leftist, politics is the only reason they get out of bed in the morning.
The left has fire in its belly because if the left doesn’t fight harder than its opponent, it loses everything. Most everyone else does not think this way. They just want to be left alone, they have jobs, rec soccer for their kids, etc.
No war is won by the side that’s more content. The longer the right does nothing, the more entrenched the left will get, and it’s pretty dire now, as Prof. Jacobson has detailed above. At some point it will be too late to do anything. I don’t believe we are at that point yet.
I dropped my National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Scientific American subscriptions in the early ’80s… they had gotten unreadable due to their leftist bias. I still remember an enormous feature on cap and trade in Scientific American which of course had nothing to do with science. The propaganda started a long time ago.
Please do not be disheartened. It has taken 100 years for the Progressives to convince half the people in this country that the American Dream is dead. And, now, the half that still believe in that dream are standing firm and saying enough is enough.
The Progressive movement was designed by the wealthy of the world back in the 1880s. It was designed to create and maintain a stagnant, stratified society by making the lower classes feel, if not content with their social position, that upward mobility was no longer really available. Progressive policies sought to convince people that their place in society was where they belonged. It also bought off the members of the lower classes, through nanny state programs.
Academia adopted Progressivism because it provided a means to create a society in which they could compete effectively. Academia has always been separate from the rest of society. Yet, within academia, competition for social standing is some of the most intense and vicious in the world. The problems is that most academicians are not really equipped to compete outside academic society. And, traditionally, academics, just as with artists, rely upon patronage.
So, you have the wealthy and academia both attempting to recreate society to their advantage. And, we have finally reached the tipping point. The rest of society has been pushed to the point where they finally have woken up to the threat posed by the Progressive movement. But, it will take some time for the movement to be pushed back. As I said, it has taken 100 years to reach this point. It will not be reversed in a few months.
People who are not indoctrinated with Progressive ideas will not send their children to institutions of higher learning where they will be subjected to Progressive indoctrination. That means that the funding for these institutions will be reduced. This will cause cuts in staffing. This will eventually force colleges and universities to respond to the wants and needs of their customer base [students] or close their doors. This is the main reason why Liberal/Progressives want universal higher education. To maintain control of the institutions and their curriculum. But, to do that, the Progressives must maintain control of the government(s). And, that is where the war will ultimately be won.
Force of arms will not be the answer. Armed conflict would destroy this country. But, simply saying no to Progressives at the ballot box, will choke off their resources. And just like a plant without water, Progressivism will eventually wither and die.
So, hang in there, baby. Rome was not built in a day. Continue to keep providing a beacon where truth can be seen, heard and discussed. And, the trend in this country will be reversed. It will take a while.
I note with amusement that Salon’s list of 25 conservatives worth following includes Ken White. I’m a huge fan of his, but nobody who knows anything about him, least of all himself, would call him a conservative. On the contrary, he is openly and proudly a liberal, consistently supports liberal policies and politicians and opposes conservative ones. His distinction is that he honestly believes in the first amendment and will defend the freedom of speech no matter whose it is. He completely agrees with antifa on the nature of the speech they wish to suppress, he merely denies their right to suppress it. If Salon thinks this makes him a conservative it must have a very low opinion of liberals.
Don’t get bent out of shape over Scientific American. It’s been an SJW laughingstock for over 10 years, what with their psychotic cult-like support of AGW and suppression of dissent.
Nobody in science or engineering takes them seriously.
There’s nothing scientific about Scientific American. It was actually pretty good up to maybe the late ’70s. Then it went haywire. I don’t know if an old editor died, or was kidnapped by elves and replaced with a changeling, or what, but it was obvious that they weren’t talking like scientists any more, they were talking like liberals. And no matter what liberals say, liberalism isn’t science. And science isn’t liberal. Science is concerned with what’s real … and nothing else.
The Cornell faculty “Take a Knee” protest? No _wonder_ you’ve got such a pained look on your face.
It’s bad enough when 20-somethings act like terrible tempered 2 1/2 year olds. But faculty? Omigosh! Jeez Louise. Get a grip der guys!
Cheer up, Professor. Check out Manitowoc Minute on YouTube. Ace turned me onto it.
Manitowoc Minute – loved it! I’m Ireland’s #1 Packer fan – its a “Green thing”!
I was #1 Packer fan but no more. The Packers and the NFL are dead to me. Rodgers came out of the closet as the ultra liberal he is , surprised he doesn’t wear all black and carry a mask. Bennett has brought nothing but BLM BS like his lying brother up in Seattle. Murphy, WoW what a disappointment. I am so sad that my Packers chose to be absolutely disrespectful of our flag, Military and Country
Boycott the NFL…
Sorry about Packers Rodgers, maybe he can do some soul searching… he needs to make up with his family, his karma is out of wack
Is God no longer in control? The heathens may rage, but He Who sits in Heaven will laugh. Strive to effect righteous change, but don’t worry.
The destruction of language bothers me considerably. I see news articles using they/their/them to refer to singular subjects, or so I think, because the misuse causes the actual meaning to be unclear. For instance, “A person was killed when their car ran off the road.” It’s sloppy and confusing.
You pretty much have to use they/their/them to avoid being “sexist” by using him/his. I refuse to use him or her.
No you can refuse to be bullied into their language insanity
The singular “they” has been used in English since the 14th century. Therefore by definition it is correct English, and it is you who are attempting to destroy the language with prescriptivist nonsense.
Couple thoughts:
Awareness of the Problem
– many of the areas of rot that you cite have been known for a while, like higher ed
– I think also my thinking of how big a project reversing the current course has been for a while that this is a generational effort not an election or two
– the perfidy of big government republicans and their corrupting influence and willingness to derail the tea party is not new
We did not get here overnight. Obama was my wake up call that the train was really far down the tracks of disaster, but the roots go way back
Election of Trump
While trump’s election is good news, it also revealed a few things that we knew to a greater extent:
– the scale of institutional corruption is much deeper under Obama than I suspected
– the emergence of deep state, FBI, DOJ and military rot at all levels beyond what I thought
– the penetration of government at all levels by Islamist sympathizer and agents
– the extent to which university administrations are willing participants in the current college insanity, e.g. not to just fall under title IX regulatory overreach but propagate it even if regulations are repealed
– the depths of media propaganda and collusion
– much of his work is being done by mere EO, and easily reversed
As you start to drain a swamp, as a country boy myself, I can tell you it starts to stink. An overwhelming smell. It is tempting to stop. Just to avoid that smell, that terrible smell.
However, there are generational level good news trends too.
– Trump’s remaking of the judiciary if it continues will last for decades
– the issues of “regulation without representation” has finally come to the forefront. It is the taxation without representation of 250 years ago and it is the issue of today
– Trump has single-handedly accelerated the destruction of one of those rot infested platforms, the media. While it takes an army of bloggers and the right conditions, he has beclowned them thoroughly
– for the first time, the clear impact of this isneverywhere. ESPN, NFL are dropping share and support like a rock trying to swim. George Lopez getting booed off the stage at a charity fundraiser … it’s the first change of the tide
– structural change is coming. University : higher ed for example …
While Bernie is pushing for free college, many parents are wishing like myself are wishing for the death of university and the emergence of what comes next.
The costs are high and returns are low. This is when the private market steps in and changes things. All the best university lectures in the world are available on an iPad for a $1000 a year subscription. Free MOOC stem courses give everyone access to MIT and Stanford.
Change is coming and 100s if not 1000s of schools will perish. U of Missouri and Evergreen are down 20%+ in an enrollment despite the best efforts of the MSM to hide these issues.
– Twitter and Facebook etc are issues. As is Corporate progressivism in general but while ESPN and NFL may not return to what they are, they also may not recover.
MMA overtook boxing when it died. So to while others. When an Iowahawk meme of leftist infiltration becomes a wildly propagated meme and broadly understood, then the tactic has hit a high-water mark.
– I see positive signs among youth
My kids go to school where kids make fun in middle school of trigger warnings. “Are you triggered, bro?” is an insult and a baiting of others. When that group hits college, will safe spaces survive?
I think a multi- generational long pushback has started. It will take time.
The storm clouds I see on the horizon are the deeper ones. National level crises that can fuel the flames for radical
change, good or bad.
– healthcare crisis has not gone away and has the ability to cause bad decisions. Panic at the loss of healthcare will turn any voter into a vote for a way out
– pension crisis will be similar. Loss of pension for 10 million+ largely government workers as states go bankrupt will cause major disruptions that again can cause large distortions
– mass automation. I do not fear the productivity gains that come from mass automation as the end of work and end of jobs … but many do. And that fear will create opportunities for many bad actors to emerge
– the next monopolies … Google and Facebook (not so much twitter ) wield tremendous power that could make it hard to dislodge them. Their investments in machine learning, their knowledge of people put them in a unique position
Ad blockers, safe VPNs, etc may well become a normal part of what we all use too.
– permanent decline and capture of Europe
What would a radical Islamic capture of Western Europe mean? What will a new Gates of Vienna moment look like?
A reshaping is coming for sure.
In short, the rot is becoming fully exposed. The stink is huge, the task seems overwhelming. But the foundations for a generational turn are there. False idols and rotten trees are being felled slowly everywhere. The bigger risk is not just that we falter in what we are doing, because we cannot. The risk is that there are even bigger storm clouds on the horizon.
When Harvard invited Chelsea Manning to speak at an event and bestowed on him a title of “Fellow”, it prompted CIA Director Mike Pompeo to write a letter to Harvard withdrawing from the event where Manning would appear.
In the letter, Pompeo referred to Manning using female pronouns. I’ve seen Bret Baier use female pronouns in describing Manning on Fox.
Conservative elite, like progressives, are willing to lie about objective reality.
About five years ago or so I referenced on this blog Solzhenitsyn’s essay, “Live Not By Lies”. I said we were not yet at that level of deceit, but we were approaching it. It’s only gotten worse. You see people on both sides lying every day now.
“…men, who are dominating these fields…”
That is never going to change. Arthur Jensen addressed this in his book “Bias in Mental Testing”. In 1932 in Scotland, ALL school children between the ages of 10 1/2 and 11 1/2, with the exception of the blind and the deaf, were tested. The difference in IQ by sex was insignificant, but the Standard Deviation for males was about 16 1/2 points, for females about 15 1/2 points. That means that AVERAGE males and females were about the same, but due to that wider variation in male performance, a larger percentage of males had very high IQs, conversely a larger percentage of males had very low IQs.
For average performance, males and females perform about the same, but top chess players, business executives, scientists and engineers will be disproportionately male due to that higher variance in male performance. The only way to eliminate that inherent slight male bias in higher positions is to actively discriminate in favor of slightly lower performing females- a recipe for disaster.
Prof. J;
Coming to the party late but want to weigh in on the difference you have made with the subject matters, the work/research you do here with the aid of some super contributors, just a terrific job. The group you have assembled and the family you have created here at L.I., please know you may give yourself the right and the time to take care of first things first…yourself and your family. We will stay the course with L.I. until such time you say “No More”. GOD Be With You and Yours.