Elise Stefanik, an Upstate New York Representative who will inevitably inflict herself on some Presidential primary or other, has words for the university presidents who have been getting a bipartisan grilling over the past week. These school officials quite probably are rather mediocre, as people in their position often are. But make no mistake. What's gotten them into trouble is that they haven't been cracking down on free speech enough. Evidence that there are actual threats of genocide being made on campus is remarkably thin, but there's an information war to be fought, and for that reason alone heads must roll. So rolling they are.
As for this standard of "moral clarity" being thrown around, well, it has some history behind it. But does it mean "being clear and consistent in your morals"? Um, no. Very much not.
2 comments:
You're right that Stefanik is an idiot but she's far from being the only one. Imagine demanding that hateful speech be banned rather than standing up for free speech and the Constitution.The general level of discourse in the upper levels of American society has been sinking towards schoolyard levels for years. These are the kids who were caught cheating in high-school for copying other people's work. What we have now is what you get when there's nobody left for them to copy from.
This Chris Bray article Jer read me yesterday, "It Says on This Piece of Paper..", pretty much answers the how and why we've found ourselves with incompetents in charge. The worst part about recent years in particular is seeing just how incompetent our leaders really are. The problem with the current antisemitic charges is seeing them busily laying the tracks for the next level of censorship.
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The other article was one I mentioned having read on The Spectator a few days ago. Rockefeller’s Dream: Global Governance Through ‘Climate Change’. It sounds like a realistic version of what we've been witnessing. Scates writes for the American Thinker.
Elise Stefanik being one idiot among many is something of a given. I think most people of principle understand that freedom of speech is important in itself and that if no one stands up for it soon no one will be free. But the people with actual political power in the main seem more interested in shaping the restrictions to their clients' interests than anything else.
Bray makes a lot of good points. Does the system even reward competence. It seems to me that what it really supports is familiarity belonging to the right social groups. So what we're getting is politicians and other authorities who are incapable of disagreeing with the crowd, even within their own minds.
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Interesting. David Rockefeller was a member of one of the most successful families of the Industrial Era. He seems to have convinced a lot of people that his organizing was a more benign use of the family's economic power. But these activities are in a real sense just a big power grab. Many such cases.
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