Thank you, Catholic Herald!

Great editorial in that British Catholic paper today.

It sets a respectful tone for its argument and then gets right down to the business of bracing candor:

Firstly, as is often the case with Pope Francis, his analysis of the economic state of the world is unduly pessimistic. It is correct to say that pollution leads to premature deaths. Indeed, many would argue that climate change will do so and some that it already does so. But, there are trade-offs. And the underlying picture is one of huge increases in life expectation and health because of the economic development that is taking place. Indeed, in many parts of the world, the environment is improving dramatically.

Within the document there are also various ad hoc attacks on the market economy, some of which are somewhat bizarre. For example, the Pope argues that water should not be privatised because it is a scarce resource. In fact, the purpose of markets is to allocate scarce resources. Whilst it is important that all have access to clean water – and improvements in this regard are a crucial element of the economic development of the last 30 years – to argue that it should not be provided by markets is no more sensible than arguing that food should not be provided by markets. Indeed, in many African and Asian countries (as well as in the US and Australia, for that matter), water shortages are seriously exacerbated by relatively wealthy industrial and farming interests benefiting from water subsidies and growing totally inappropriate water-thirsty crops. These subsidies are highly regressive.

Though he criticised water privatisation, nowhere in the document did the Pope mention fossil fuel energy subsidies – in other words, the policy of paying people to emit greenhouses gases. As The Economist put it: “It would be hard to find a worse [mistake] than energy subsidies. Recent research has shown that they enrich middlemen, depress economic output and help the rich, who use lots of energy, more than they do the poor… But now a new working paper by the International Monetary Fund highlights another cost too: damage to the environment. Including this, the authors reckon that the total drag on the global economy caused by fuel subsidies now amounts to a stonking $5.3 trillion each year…Poorer countries dole out the largest amount of subsidies; some spend up to 18 per cent of their GDP a year on them.”

Readers might ask why the Pope should mention something so specific? But he brought up many detailed issues. As well as criticising water privatisation, he also criticised carbon tax credits – widely regarded as the way to reduce carbon emissions that has the smallest cost to the poor.

There is much to debate, but that is not the impression given in the document. Nowhere is it recognised that the models of development that are criticised have led to rapidly falling rates of poverty, global inequality and deaths from natural disasters whilst access to education and healthcare has improved. Furthermore, nowhere is it acknowledged that the natural resource intensity of production falls dramatically as countries develop. The carbon intensity of production falls; we stop using whales for oil; we stop plundering forests and instead nurture them; and so on. This does not alter the fundamental moral problem the Pope was addressing but it does put a different spin on the models of political economy that we might embrace to achieve desirable results.

The editorial nails what ought to have been the focus of the encyclical, for it is crucial to the actual problems of a, economic-environmental nature that vex us:  "poorly defined and enforced property rights."

Let's get clear on who owns what and then we can talk ways to address inequities.

Carly Fiorina's greatest political skill: maintaining her clarity while thinking on her feet

And that's rather rare these days.  Here she is handling a volley from Whoopi Goldberg on The View pretty much perfectly:

“Because I -- you said some wonderful things and it made me ask the question: If you feel that women should have the choice -have the choices, why do you think choice is not a good thing?” Goldberg asked.

And here’s one thing I love about Fiorina. She’s so direct and articulate. She totally stands her ground, and I LOVE it.

“Well, look, I think that abortion is obviously a very delicate subject,” she replied. “I happen to believe that science is proving us right. I mean, the zygote – the DNA in a zygote is the same the day you die. But I understand, respect, we don't all agree. We do have common ground on this issue now. The majority of women, the majority of young people, the majority of Americans now think that late term abortion for any reason at all is a problem. So, what I say is let's go find that.”

Of course, The View’s women started squeaking and squawking again, because THAT COULDN’T POSSIBLY BE TRUE. But Fiorina went over them and said, “I think if you read the polls, you would see that.”

BOOM.

Fantastic.

Post-America's hatred for the history of the United States of America

He was a self-made man, having made his way through a West Indies childhood as an orphan.

He was chief staff aide to General Washington during the Revolution.

He was one of the authors of The Federalist Papers.

He created the nation's monetary system.

He was the first Secretary of the Treasury.

He asserted that blacks and whites were intellectual equals, and he strove to bring slavery to an end.

And now, Alexander Hamilton's face is going to be replaced on the ten-dollar bill. The Freedom-Hater who currently holds Hamilton's old position, Jack Lew, says that his department's current thinking is to replace him with "a woman who has played a major role in our history who represents the theme of democracy":

Presumably it’ll be Harriet Tubman, the name most often mentioned as a potential replacement for Jackson. Hard to believe the feds, having resolved to remove one of the most influential Founders from the sawbuck in favor of a woman, would double down on an all-white currency by choosing a white woman over a black one. Besides, Tubman is better known to most Americans, I’d bet, than leaders of the suffrage movement like Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony, or Elizabeth Cady Stanton. One of the arguments made on Twitter last night for why Hamilton ended up being sent into currency retirement is that many of us simply don’t know who he is, his amazing achievements notwithstanding. He’s expendable culturally in a way that American presidents like Washington, Lincoln, and even Jackson aren’t. It would be odd if the woman who replaced him is much more obscure than he is, even granting that women had grossly fewer opportunities than men like Hamilton did to make a major mark on American politics until recently. Tubman made hers despite everything that was stacked against her. Eleanor Roosevelt did too, although it would be beyond strange to find FDR’s First Lady on the currency when FDR himself, arguably the most consequential president of the last hundred years, isn’t.

But I digress. Jack Lew’s rationalizations aside, why’d they bump Hamilton instead of Jackson? One theory being kicked around last night was that a Democratic administration wouldn’t bump a former Democratic president from the currency, but like I said above, that doesn’t wash. There are few modern Dems who view the term “Jacksonian” as a compliment. Another possibility, as noted, is that Hamilton’s less well known to the public than Jackson is, which may be true but isn’t so true that it would explain a strong preference for bumping the former instead of the latter. Washington and Lincoln are untouchable American icons; Jackson once had an iconic status, but time and greater public awareness of his political sins have eroded his cultural currency. His own accomplishments don’t rival Hamilton’s. He should have been the first to go and would have gone with less objection from people who know their history. Maybe Hamilton was picked for retirement precisely because the administration knew that replacing him would be more likely to provoke a public outcry, especially among GOPers who think greater respect for the Founders and their constitutional scheme are key to restoring American greatness. The more Republicans grumble about Hamilton being tossed, the easier it is to frame their complaints as opposition to having a woman on the currency, a fine little flourish for the “war on women” crapola to come this year and next. Exit question: Which GOP candidate will be the first to call for reinstating Hamilton?

Exactly. That the Freedom-Haters will use this to bait Republicans into an identity-politcs tussle is a no-brainer.

Post-America is one grim place.

The core purpose that must drive us

Yesterday I tried and tried to write a post about Donald Trump.  I tried the angle of how his mode of articulation betrays his essential shallowness. ("I think religion is a wonderful thing.") ("I have a great relationship with the blacks.") ("[Latin America] is not sending us the right people.") ("Krauthammer is a dummy.") I tried the angle of the absence of evidence of any real appreciation for, and understanding of, America's founding principles. I tried the angle of the vulgarity of his braggadocio.  I tried the angle of the shallowness of the parade of women in his life.

But I realize that Donald Trump's ability to make the splash that he does is but another manifestation of where we are collectively in post-America.  (See post below.) There is no shortage of vulgar, shallow opportunists chomping at the bit to shape public policy and cultural trends in our sad land.

Again, as has been the case for the last few Independence Days, I mark the holiday's approach with none of that old-school excitement. The spirits of Jefferson and Madison are nearly impossible to discern in the present atmosphere we breathe.  There is no regard for self-evident truths, there is no sense of gratitude to Nature's God for the three gifts that Mr. Jefferson took care to enumerate in his thunderous document.

The essential stuff - the spiritual stuff - that one finds in the guts and hearts of great and good leaders is only found in the tier of statesmen least likely to rise to positions of supreme influence.  In their stead, we find preening empty suits who allow us to reach this juncture:

A tryptic of cynical indifference has further reminded me that nobody in the USG gives a flying canary whether the people do well, prosper or even survive. Much of the US border remains more wide open than Debbie when she done did Dallas. An independent inspection determined that 95% of a sample of fake bombs or weapons got past the TSA at various airports nationwide.  The OPM was successfully hacked and every USG Federal Employee has had their PII* potentially stolen by foreign agents. And does any post-modern American even figuratively commit seppuku for this? 

The attitude of complete indifference to their mandate that our governing officials put on brazen display is far more distressing than any of the three failures I alluded to above. There is an arrogance and a sense of entitlement that has made the thoughtful among us saddened and a bit sick for lo the years. 

William Murchison at Real Clear Politics asks us to consider that someone - more than likely from the tier least equipped to deal with it - will assume responsibility for a culture, society and nation thus beset:

 1. The parlous condition of the Middle East. President Obama acknowledges we have no strategy for countering ISIS. American leadership, as distinguished from overlordship, needs restoration -- boots on the ground or not, though how you do it without boots I can't imagine.

2. Recent reshufflings of alliances and friendship aren't working. We need to acknowledge as of old the consonance of U.S.-Israeli interests and the non-consonance, for most purposes, of American-Iranian interests. Put it this way: The Israelis are the good guys of the Middle East; the Iranians --well, pffffft!

3. Czar Vladimir Putin seems to have in mind the re-yoking of Russia's neighbors to the Russian ox cart. What does it take to show us that Putin can be trusted as far as anyone can throw a grand piano? American-European unity with the Ukraine and the Baltic countries against Putin's disgraceful designs is of the essence.

4. At home, the biggest problem isn't political; it's moral, conjoined to politics. There isn't much comity among Americans -- less so now than maybe since the pre-1861 period, due to our current gift for using politics as a blunt instrument against the differently minded. We're engaged, whether we know it or not, in extinguishing freedom of thought and speech. The Supreme Court is about to tell us what marriage really "means." Universities put out a crabbed narrative about American guilt for every defect in the modern world: "racism," "sexism," "environmental depredation." America can't catch a break from the hoity-toity thinkers of academe (and the media), who know what a bunch of bums Americans were for most of their history.

5. Naturally this doesn't do a lot for education and intellectual inquiry. Personal identity appears to count more than knowledge or accomplishment.

6. Family -- one of the great "schools" of civilization -- is in disorder as many shun the old structures that supposedly compromise "freedom."

7. The economy! What's all this to do with jobs and pay?! Only everything. A people characterized by decency and common sense can do anything, including make a living. Otherwise, forget it.

And those being led are increasingly disinclined to see any venerable institutions providing a way out of the morass:

Americans have little confidence in most of their major institutions including Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court, banks and organized religion, according to the latest Gallup poll.

"Americans' confidence in most major U.S. institutions remains below the historical average for each one," a Gallup spokesman said in a news release. Only the military, in which 72 percent of Americans express confidence, up from a historical average of 68 percent, and small business, with 67 percent confidence, up from 63, are currently rated higher than their historical norms. This is based on the percentage expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in these institutions, the Gallup spokesman said.

Note the inclusion, in the list of institutions experiencing record-low confidence, of what ought to he the anchor of a society yearning to regain its health:

Americans have less confidence in organized religion today than ever measured before — a sign that the church could be "losing its footing as a pillar of moral leadership in the nation's culture," a new Gallup survey finds.

It's not that there aren't forces striving to counter this downward spiral. Eloquent pundits, committed and effective activist groups, conferences where citizens of such persuasion gather and imbue their efforts with the synergy of collective energy, and those few willing to step forward into roles of official governance are still in abundance.

But the task before us is not to fix a few nagging problems, after which we will have "made America great again."  What has been given to us to do is no less herculean than to save Western civilization from its death throes.

That must be our purpose, whatever our role.  And let us take its full measure, so that it guides us away from distraction and infatuation.

It is very late in the day.

The present moment as a crucible for our worldview

There's the parade of cartoon characters occupying center stage in the public consciousness: Donald Trump, Caitlin/Bruce, Rachel Dolezal.

There's the danger that inevitable gaps in the consistency of the actual conservatives among the Republican candidates will drive the litmus-test fever-swamp types among the party's base into the arms of said Trump.

There's the new faux legitimacy conferred upon the climate-change fiction by the papal encyclical, a document of stunning poisonousness that calls for yet more global governance and less national sovereignty, and that provides some very potent fuel to the guilt-mongerers among those interested in shaping public policy.

There's the array of real and growing threats, most of which have already reached a degree or peril best characterized as disaster: ISIS, the OPM cyberattack, the baked-in failure of patty-cake with Iran, the flood of unassimilated newcomers to our country, most of them illegal aliens, the rot of our educational system, the marginalization of Christianity, and the collapse of a dignified common culture.

There's the fully achieved dependency of a critical mass of the populace on government for basic survival, as evidenced by the number of people completely out of the workforce, the number of people on food stamps, and the number of people who want Congress to ensure, in the event of a King v Burwell decision that reads ACA literally, that subsidies are available in all fifty states.

Our character, fortitude and fealty to principle as conservatives is being tested as never before.

It's not a matter of whether this nation has ever lived through tougher times.  That's really impossible to measure, given the relentlessness of societal and technological change.  It's a matter of our understanding that our ideology - when you talk about it as fully formed and standing on all three of its indispensable pillars - is the correct one from among the choices in this dark age, and resisting the temptation to dilute it, or skew the emphasis within it toward one pillar at the expense of the others, or to introduce some exotic new strain of thought that changes its basic character.

We all know about how we are shouted down, mocked and marginalized by the Left whenever we take our message beyond the confines of our echo chamber.

We all know about those among us who aren't committed to the deepest contemplation of the full grandeur of what we embrace. (This is the type who can be led to fall for a charlatan like Trump.)

Let us permit all this to temper our steel.  Let our accurate understanding of the human condition appear like a gleaming and unblemished forging to those few remaining fellows who really and truly have not made up their minds.

Do not be dragged into the weeds.  Do not be cornered. Above all, do not succumb to the temptation to pack it all in.

We are needed, and we must remain fixed on the glory that comes from an unflinching assessment of reality.

Maybe this can be our moment.  You now what they say about the darkest hour and the dawn.

The pointlessness of patty-cake - today's edition

Kind of renders null the whole point of gathering in Geneva to jaw-jaw, doesn't it?

Top Iranian Brigadier General Massaoud Jazzayeri stresses on Sunday that no foreign national would ever be allowed to inspect Iranian military sites.
Fars News reported:

Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri underlined that no foreign national would ever be allowed to visit or inspect Iran’s military sites.

“We reiterate that the permission will definitely never be issued for any kind of access to the military centers, even if it runs counter to the acceptance of the additional protocol (to the NPT),” General Jazzayeri said on Sunday.

He noted that the Iranian Armed Forces and the country’s Air Defense System are tasked with safeguarding the country’s interests and security, and said, “Foreigners’ visit to defense and military centers as well as obtaining information about the related equipment and tactics is against the orders (of commander-in-chief Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei) and also the demands of the entire Iranian nation.”

General Jazzayeri underlined the need for vigilance in defending the Iranian nations’ rights in different fields, and said, “No protocol should disturb our country’s national security.”

Think of all the carbon-producing jet fuel and all the tax dollars spent on this charade.

The slipping viability of the food co-op model

My wife and I belong to a cooperatively run grocery store in a nearby city.  It was founded in 1976, and the city in question is a college town of the Ithaca-Madison-Berkely variety. So, as you'd imagine, the aroma of leftism hangs heavy in the air at its five locations around town. The magazine rack at the checkout area is heavy on titles having to do with intentional communities, honoring the goddess within, sustainable gardening, living off the grid and Buddhist meditation. And Mother Jones.  We belong because you do find cool stuff that isn't available just everywhere, even though we're aware we're paying a fairly hefty price for it.  And we use our wild card, which helps.  And the sesame cashew noodles in their deli are a party for your mouth.

But times are catching up to the way this organization is structured.  Got a letter today saying that "major renovations of two Kroger stores [I've been to those, and they indeed rock] and Lucky's opening on the south end of town . . . have significantly changed our competitive landscape.  We recognize that our shoppers and owners now have many more choices for organic and natural foods."

The store sees that it "needs to make make a number of changes in how we do business in order to remain relevant and continue to provide a cooperatively owned option . . . "

Buh-bye senior discount, for instance.

The letter cites some noteworthy stats, such as that, while sales of organic and "natural" groceries have been rising, co-ops have seen significantly less growth.

They have company: "All food co-ops around the country are having to adjust to this more competitive environment and lower sales growth."

Indeed they will, if they want to retain the patronage of Generation X Finance contributing writer Jeremy Vohwinkle:

In my case, virtually all of the downsides are financial. If you sign up for a food co-op and expect to save money, you might want to think again.

The first financial issue that stuck out was the membership fee. I had to pay $35 just to become a member. Of course I realize it’s going to a good cause so it didn’t bother me too much, but still, shelling out almost a week’s worth of groceries toward a membership fee just for the privilege of buying this food was a bit tough.

Second, raise your hand if you think that food will be cheaper if it’s sold to you directly by the farmer, cutting out the middle man, and not having to be shipped halfway across the country. Yep, that’s what I thought too. Common sense would tell you that if a local farmer can sell food directly to the consumer without needing to wholesale to a grocery store and ship up their product that it would be cheaper than the store. Wrong. I know that depending on the size of the co-op, your location, and the membership size that this may differ, but I was in for quite a shock when I went shopping for the first time.

A dozen eggs were $4.00. A pound of bacon was $8.50. A head of iceberg lettuce was a shocking $3.00. To give you an idea, I can get the those at the supermarket for $1.49, $3.00, and $0.99 respectively. I know, I know, but you’re supporting local farmers and this stuff is probably organic, right? That’s true, but I can actually still get the organic equivalents of those items for less than the co-op right at the grocery store.

Of course, a lot of stuff costs an arm and a leg at, say, Whole Foods or Fresh Thyme, too.  But they seem to profitable.
And therein lies a key fact: They are organized like normal-people corporations. 

Again, we see narrative - in the case of business models for grocery stores, the narrative that a co-op is morally superior to a corporation - coming back to bite those perpetuating it in the tail end.

And that narrative is even manifest within the realm of the corporate model.  Why do you see breakfast-cereal brands like Kashi at "health-food" stores and not Kellog's or Post?  Allow me to cut to the chase: because the former is, according to the narrative made my groovy hippies dedicated to a fair and clean world, and the latter is made by square old suit-wearing white males obsessed with profit.

News flash for the tofu-and-sprouts crowd: you do better when your focus is on what is happening with the money. Staff tends to stay employed, customers tend to get greater value, and owners tend to get maximum return on their investment.

And, actually, the corporation is really a lot like the co-op model.  The first corporations, the groups chartered by European royalty to venture forth and procure tea and sugar and such, were the pooled money of folks who were willing to see if those big ships sailing for India and the Americas could get something going.  The words even sound somewhat alike: Cooperative. Corporation.

So get over it.  Be a real-world organization and make lots of money.  I want to know that those sesame cashew noodles will be around for the foreseeable future.

Carly on Hillionaire's relaunch

Carly Fiorina is whip-smart and solidly principled.  Hillionaire is an empty pantsuit driven by pro-tyranny ideology.  This is not necessarily going to translate into the former being a formidable candidate and the latter being a flame-out, because this is not a perfect world.

But the former has the latter's number, as we can tell from an MSNBC interview this morning:

“I mean, she says wants to campaign for all Americans and then throws every Republican out there under the bus. She talked about being a champion for the middle class and then proceeds to talk about a set of energy policies that will raise energy bills for the middle class. She talked about money in politics. She’s going to raise more of that money than anyone else,” she continued.

“So, as usual, a deeply contradictory speech. But, hey, it was a good launch. It was a great rally. She had a good rally in Iowa. I guess she actually took an interview from The Des Moines Register. So, we should not underestimate her.”

Indeed we shouldn't.  On the other hand, we shouldn't tiptoe around her, and I don't look for Carly to do any of that. Now, Jeb, on the other hand . . .

All rise and salute The Self!

Catholic writer Elizabeth Scalia is a treasure.  She is the antidote to the tiresome, pointless exchange of soundbite-sized volleys and counter-volleys, the snark, vitriol and ad hominem attacks that characterize social-media battles.  She's one of those minds / hearts that demonstrate why one can't hope to win games of Corner-the-Rightie-and-Make-Him-Concede-His-Intellectual-Inconsistency.  The worldview of the three-pillared conservative - the worldview in which a morality rooted in the West's Judeo-Christian foundation is the most essential of the three pillars - cannot be reduced to two-sentence defenses of particular positions into which one has been boxed.

At Patheos today, she looks at the biggest-picture significance of the tumble of transabledness, transgenderism, and the strange case of Rachel Dolezal that has belched up from the sewer of fundamental transformation to flood the streets of post-American public life.  The essay is called "Objective Truth and Self-Marginalization."  Read it in its entirety, but here is one of the money paragraphs:

The most interesting and ironic thing about the End of Objective Truth is that it has been brought about (and celebrated) largely by people who have proudly, for some decades, eschewed the idea of faith and “bronze age oogedy boogedy”, for the world of hard facts and science. Often they will tell you that they do not believe in God because they live in a world buttressed by the (Catholic-invented) Scientific Method, and full of measurable, verifiable and quantitative data.

Now, it seems, Science is to be thrown into the dumpster, along with God. A life of faith, is for the naifs. Heaven is the safe-haven of the gullible, the under-educated, the unenlightened, and the narrow-minded, who are incapable of seeing a man as a woman, a healthy body as disabled and a white woman as a victimized black woman. And a life of Science, insisting that male-chromosomes, untamed by drugs, remain male chromosomes, that healthy bodies are in fact healthy, and that German-Swedish DNA is neither Nigerian nor Ethiopean, is just a life of bigoted mean-ness, a life that has no compassion for the reality of the human mind.

“Reality,” Robin Williams once mused, “what a concept.”

Mark it down, people. June 2015 is when the human animal declared “who the hell are God and Science to dare tell us what the truth is, anyway?” Faith in one’s feelings trumps both. Individual feelings are become a personal truth, and personal truth is absolute and unassailable reality.

“Only a Sith thinks in absolutes”, said Obi-Wan, and only mean people think in terms of Objective Truth. “I know what I know, and it’s the truth”; subjectivity is The New Absolute. The New Absolute is the Almighty Me, and what I AM.

I begin to understand why Tom McDonald worries that all of this trendy-transism will ultimately lead us to transhumanism: the ultimate marginalization away from boring humanity as we become like as gods.

And take the time to read her 2011 essay, to which she links in the course of her argument, entitled "The Soft Tyranny of Sentimentalism."  It may be even more essential.  It certainly has become more timely with the passage of the past four years.

Stamping out normal-people communication all over the Western world

It's not just at the University of Oklahoma, which we covered in the post immediately below.

Germany is most definitely on board with the wackiness:

Some of you have likely experienced a sense of dismay over the rather inexplicable drive to wipe out gender roles and definitions in the United States of late, and we’ve covered more than a few examples here. But on the odd chance that it makes you feel any better, I would submit a report on the current state of affairs in Europe where they are simply leaving us in the dust. Sure, it’s probably not going to be all that shocking, particularly given the nature of some of these socialist leaning paradise destinations, but if nothing else it only goes to show that things could always be worse. Let’s start the tour! (From the WaPo. And I’ll probably add a bit of emphasis to move things along.)

In Berlin, for instance, fresh rules for billboard ads in a district of the liberal German capital read like a new constitution for a land without gender identity. Girls in pink “with dolls” are basically out, as are boys in blue playing “with technical toys.” In ads showing both adult women and men, females cannot be depicted as “hysterical,” “stupid” or “naive” alongside men presented as “technically skilled,” “strong” or “business savvy.”

Adult women — featured alone or otherwise — must not be shown “occupied in the household with pleasure.” And in one stipulation pounced upon by critics, the equal-opportunity board of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg — home to Checkpoint Charlie and remnants of the Berlin Wall — no longer wants to see images of women “smiling for no reason.”

When the jihadists impose their conquest, they'll damn sure remind us that there are gender differences.

Let me get this straight; segregation is inclusion?

That seems to be the message at University of Oklahoma :

Officials at the University of Oklahoma have announced plans to enhance inclusivity on campus by building a separate-but-equal student lounge which will segregate gay, lesbian and transgender students by themselves.

The idea for ostracizing students based on their sexual preferences came from an OU group called Queer Inclusion on Campus, reports The Oklahoma Daily.

“Queer Inclusion on Campus is an initiative of several students representing the issues that are important to the LGBTQ community,” OU senior Alexander Ruggiers told the campus newspaper. “We produced a document that we delivered to a lot of high level administrators about things that we wanted to see changed.”

The students behind the 20-page document had originally sought a resource center for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. Thus, the special, segregated study lounge amounts to a compromise.

That's just one of Queer inclusion's demands:

A post on the group’s Facebook page lists 11 demands for segregation including scholarships only for gay students, “safer learning environments,” a new bureaucrat devoted to diversity and more gender-neutral bathrooms.

What's next?  Separate drinking fountains and bathrooms?

Maybe because it's so huge is why we're not seeing proper coverage yet

Maybe it is just taking a bit to sink in. This is not to say that there hasn't been reportage, but consider the scale of the damage:

The scale of a massive cyber-attack on America’s governmental infrastructure that was revealed last week is still coming to light. As is the case with virtually all preemptive strikes, hackers believed to be linked to the People’s Republic of China have executed an attack so comprehensive and sophisticated that it could only have one aim: the preventative neutering of America’s defensive capabilities. Along with others, I dubbed this the nation’s cyber-Pearl Harbor last week, and that characterization looks only more apt today. In concert with the debilitating effect of Edward Snowden’s revelations while in Russian custody, this attack may seriously hinder America’s ability to secure and respond to more conventional threats to its interests.

A little more than one year ago, the Department of Justice revealed that it had charged five members of the Chinese military’s Unit 61398, an economic cyber-espionage unit, of engaging in criminal activity. They had been accused of being part of a ring of cyber spies that had executed a variety of attacks and surveillance missions targeting U.S. commercial firms and interests. Apparently, around that same period, China executed the largest scale cyber-attack on an American governmental target in history. That’s right: The strike that exposed the personal data of all of the approximately 2.7 million federal employees in the Office of Personnel Management’s systems to People’s Liberation Army hackers went virtually unnoticed for over a year. The scale of the damage done to American information security was not discovered by federal investigators but rather by a private software development firm that uncovered the breach during a routine product demonstration.

This staggering incompetence is eclipsed only by the extent of the damage done to American national security.

The hack exposed the SF-86 background files of virtually every governmental employee; those 127-page forms include all of the applicant’s personal information, as well as the details of their relations, friends, current and former professional contacts, and even old college roommates.

It's really time to reconsider the degree to which we should be entangled with China.  I know every municipality large and small up and down the pike has an economic-development board that is courting joint ventures, educational exchanges, US plants there and Chinese plants here.  That's looking increasingly like a bad idea.

The regime in Beijing is still Maoist as hell, and now has the 21st-century savvy to exploit the West's foolishness with hair-raising sophistication.

The relentless goose-stepping of the jackboots - today's edition

There's a good chance that when you first came across the term "microagression," you rolled your eyes and filed it away as just the next step in the downward spiral from the "hate-free zone" era.  Just something that normal people would have to work around in the conduct of their daily lives.

But you probably also considered its elasticity.  Your worst fears about that are now confirmed:

“America is the land of opportunity,” “There is only one race, the human race” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” are among a long list of alleged microaggressions faculty leaders of the University of California system have been instructed not to say.

These so-called microaggressions – considered examples of subconscious racism – were presented at faculty leader training sessions held throughout the 2014-15 school year at nine of the 10 UC campuses. The sessions, an initiative of UC President Janet Napolitano, aim to teach how to avoid offending students and peers, as well as how to hire a more diverse faculty.

At the gatherings, deans and department chairs across the UC system have been instructed to be careful using (read: instructed not to use) phrases such as “America is the land of opportunity” or even use forms that provide only “male” and “female” check boxes, among a long litany of supposed microaggressions listed in a document underlying the “Faculty Leadership Seminars.”

The document has drawn little scrutiny until now, when a professor in the UC system pointed it out to The College Fix. The professor chose not to attend the seminars, but myriad materials on the UC Office of the President (UCOP) website give indication as to what sort of lessons were taught there.

Other sayings deemed unacceptable include:

● “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough.”

● “Where are you from or where were you born?”

● “Affirmative action is racist.”

● “When I look at you, I don’t see color.”

These phrases in particular are targeted because they promote the “myth of meritocracy” or represent “statements which assert that race or gender does not play a role in life successes.” Others are said to be color blind, apparently a bad thing that indicates “that a white person does not want to or need to acknowledge race,” according to the handout, “Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send.”

Whenever a school administrator, at any level, use words like "training," "awareness," "diversity," "inclusiveness" or their latest weapon, "microagression," you can be sure you're dealing with someone who harbors a visceral hatred for basic human freedom.

Your overlords' latest exercise in tyranny

A parlor game in which I occasionally indulge is which five cabinet-level federal departments I'd get rid of immediately.

Don't you think HUD would be a likely candidate? 

And, by the way, the Most Equal Comrade is a goose-stepping jackboot:

A report published this morning by The Hill says President Barack Obama is pressing forward with new Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations that will withhold block grants to communities if they don’t build enough "affordable housing in wealthy neighborhoods." The executive order, known as the “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Act,” was issued by the president last year and will be used to promote racial quotas in white suburban neighborhoods. It will also force thousands of communities to house the nation’s burgeoning population of new immigrants.

“HUD is working with communities across the country to fulfill the promise of equal opportunity for all,” a spokesperson for the federal agency said, according to the Hill report. “The proposed policy seeks to break down barriers to access to opportunity in communities supported by HUD funds.”

In other words, it doesn't matter that the families who currently live in these neighborhoods worked hard to achieve their American Dream. It is racist to deny that same outcome to those who haven't worked for it. It should just be handed to them out of "fairness."

So much for everybody living where they live based on making their own determination as to what is the best among their set of options.

This is why we call them Freedom-Haters.

Of course, you know one solution would be to do away with federal block grants. Anybody up for keeping the flow of gummint money as local as possible?

As goes atmospheric science, so goes American history

I haven't yet posted about the College Board's revision of the Advanced-Placement tests for US history, mainly because I was already OD-ing on manifestations - cultural, economic, and world-leadership-wise - of post-American infantilism, and I needed a decent outlook in order to meet my daily obligations.

But Daniel Henninger at the WSJ today has some great observations on the matter.

You no doubt know the basics by now. The College Board folks have come up with a system of "coding," an edict for declaring what will henceforth be the accepted criteria for determining what is important about the study of our nation's past:

“This coding helps teachers make thematic connections across the chronology of the concept outline. The codes are as follows: ID—Identity; WXT—Work, exchange, and technology; PEO—Peopling; POL—Politics and power; WOR—America in the world; ENV—Environment and geography—physical and human; CUL—Ideas, beliefs, and culture.”

An example: “Native peoples and Africans in the Americas strove to maintain their political and cultural autonomy in the face of European challenges to their independence and core beliefs. (ID-4) (POL-1) (CUL-1) (ENV-2).” 

Or: “Explain how arguments about market capitalism, the growth of corporate power, and government policies influenced economic policies from the late 18th century through the early 20th century. 3.2.II, 4.2.II, 5.1.II, 6.1.I, 6.1.II, 7.1.II, 7.2.II.”

And inevitably: “Students should be able to explain how various identities, cultures, and values have been preserved or changed in different contexts of U.S. history, with special attention given to the formation of gender, class, racial, and ethnic identities. Students should be able to explain how these subidentities have interacted with each other and with larger conceptions of American national identity.”

Poisonous indoctrination much?

And, as is the case with a certain breed of "scientist" with a vested interest (as in government grants) in portraying those who understand that the global climate is not in any kind of trouble as marginal wackos, so these manipulators of historical inquiry want to portray anyone who objects to their machinations as unserious.

Those who drafted this puddle of dog vomit want to talk a good game about how it fosters rigorous debate and a wide range of ideas.  Henninger is having none of it:

At one point the curriculum’s authors say: “Debate and disagreement are central to the discipline of history, and thus to AP U.S. History as well.” This statement is phenomenally disingenuous. From Key Concept 1.3: “Many Europeans developed a belief in white superiority to justify their subjugation of Africans and American Indians, using several different rationales.” Pity the high-school or college student who puts up a hand to contest that anymore. They don’t. They know the Orwellian option now is to stay down.

Zinn and Chomsky live.

Fortunately, there is a sizable backlash, including the 56 professors and historians who published a petition on the  National Association of Scholars website.

But don't assume that their effort will be sufficient.

It requires us as well.

Filling the vacuum in a post-American world

Leftist with no core principles beyond a vague notion of a unicorns-and-rainbows- world, along with the libertarians with whom they are aligned on matters of foreign policy, like to think that the call for real American resolve and leadership in the face of grave dangers comes from some cabal of neocons exclusively.

Not so. As we send another 500 advisors into Iraq and conduct a bombing sortie here and there, the Mideast is poised for a regional war with global implications:

“The conditions are very much like 1914,” says Michael Stephens of the Royal United Service Institute in London. “All it will take is one little spark, and Iran and Saudi Arabia will go at each other, believing they are fighting a defensive war.” 

Hiwa Osman, an Iraqi Kurdish commentator, was even more blunt: “The whole region is braced for the big war, the war that has not yet happened, the Shiite-Sunni war.” 

U.S. and foreign experts say the U.S still has not developed a strategy for dealing with the Sunni extremists who now hold more territory Iraq and Syria than one year ago. President Barack Obama on Monday acknowledged that the U.S. strategy in Iraq was a work in progress. “We don’t have, yet, a complete strategy, because it requires commitments on the part of Iraqis as well,” Obama said at the close of the G-7 summit in Germany. “The details are not worked out.”

The experts criticize America’s detachment from the four wars now under way in the region. And they say the Obama administration is banking on Iran to stabilize the region, a very dubious course.

Here are some more experts.  You don't see a neocon name among them:

“We really don’t have a strategy at all. We’re basically playing this day by day,” Robert Gates, a former secretary of defense, told MSNBC last month.
The one conflict where the U.S. has poured money, weapons and military advisers is Iraq, but the outlook after the Sunni city of Ramadi fell to the Sunni extremists is for a long, drawn-out conflict.
John Allen, the former retired Marine Corps general who serves as U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State, told an audience in Qatar last week that it “will be a long campaign” and defeating its ideology will take “a generation or more.”
Allen laid out five areas for cooperation against the Islamic State – denying “safe haven” to its forces, disrupting the flow of foreign fighters, curbing access to foreign finances, providing humanitarian relief and responding to group’s propaganda.
But he made no mention of addressing the political causes that allowed the Islamic State to take root in Iraq – disaffection by Sunnis with their treatment by the Shiite-led central government.
“IS cannot be ended by Kurds, Shiites, Americans or Iran. It has to be done by Sunni Arabs,” said Osman. “You need to present them with a deal for the day after IS is defeated. And no one has managed to articulate that vision for them,” he said.
Conceivably, that would be a federal system that ends Shiite domination of the security services, but most importantly secures reconciliation with Baathists, members of the party that ruled Iraq under the late dictator Saddam Hussein. Baathists are said to comprise a great many of the top positions in the Islamic State military apparatus.
“I am extremely pessimistic” about the future of Iraq, said Toby Dodge, a leading scholar on Iraq who teaches at the London School of Economics. He said he doubted that Prime Minister Haider al Abadi, “a very decent man, a smart man,” could save Iraq. But “he’s hostage to his own constituency, radical Shiite Islamism. What he needs is to appeal to the disenfranchised Sunnis of the northwest.”
He said an Iraqi civil war “is almost unavoidable.”
Some Iraq scholars argue that the country can be saved. Decentralization of power, reconciliation with Baathists and other concessions that would motivate Sunnis to oust the Islamic State are “feasible, absolutely,” says Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Some Iraq scholars argue that the country can be saved. Decentralization of power, reconciliation with Baathists and other concessions that would motivate Sunnis to oust the Islamic State are “feasible, absolutely,” says Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

But he said the administration is not making the effort.

“I believe it is negligence,” he said. “They continue to insist we can’t want this more than the Iraqis. . . . This is historical nonsense. If you leave it to the Iraqis, they won’t do the right thing even if they want to.”

The other big issue left out of Allen’s presentation was a strategy for Syria, where the Islamic State has its headquarters. Pro-Western rebel forces are willing to fight the Islamic State but insist on also taking on the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which has permitted the Islamic State to seize and hold territory, mostly without a fight.

Last week, when Islamic State forces advanced on the country’s biggest city, Aleppo, the regime bombed rebels, not Islamic State forces. In response to rebel pleas, the U.S. mounted one airstrike Sunday against the Islamic State, but it didn’t coordinate it with fighters on the ground. This has raised suspicions that U.S. won’t block the Islamic State from advancing on Aleppo.

“I just don’t think they care,” said Pollack.

Because the Most Equal Comrade is too busy employing executive-branch overreach and secrecy to set up an EU-style economic cooperation group around the Pacific rim that will erode American sovereignty and impose policies regarding such matters as immigration and the environment that will continue his hobbling of America's economic well-being.

Hey, I guess we all play to our strengths. Facing the stark realities just ain't a strength for the MEC.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/10/269371/mideasts-worst-case-a-big-war.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/10/269371/mideasts-worst-case-a-big-war.html#storylink=cpy