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September 2020

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The University as Madrasah By Rick Fuentes

By on September 27th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/the_university_as_madrasah.html

A progressive and tenured professoriate who luxuriate in a rewarding lifestyle and station have held sway over the student body politic in higher education for generations.  Bred of a style of campus Marxism seeded in the sixties and disbelievers of free-market capitalism, they shunned the rigors of the competitive workplace and snuggled up to academia as the best excuse for employment.  Their avocation is a latter-day version of critical race theory (CRT), the brainchild of a Harvard law professor and early mentor of Barack Obama that breaks everything down to race, law, and power and views the American DNA as strands of intolerance, greed, and systemic racism.  Its most recent variant ascribes social and racial injustices to frame a system so corrupt in its origins that it must all be burned to the ground. It embraces a social studies syllabus that has replaced an even-handed warts and all view of American history with an all warts set of grievance studies.

With increasing audacity, progressive faculty in social sciences and gender studies programs are preaching a groupthink that brings undergrads to a low opinion of themselves and their country.  They impugn whole races and genders over privilege and power, promote class warfare as atonement, and give a wink and nod when rioting overtakes propitious moments of social unrest.  Allegiance to this thinking requires the abrogation of all opposing views.  

The oppression of conservative views and speech on campus is an alarm few university administrations have heeded.  A study of campus speaker and teacher disinvitations and disruptions by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) found that since the Trump administration took office in 2017 there have been 113 attempts or actual incidents of speaker cancellations, protests, or disturbances at public and private colleges.  In 76 of these cases, the controversy came from individuals and groups with leftist political leanings and 24 came from those on the right.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Barrett Announcement By Rich Lowry

By on September 27th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-barrett-announcement/

It was outstanding. Trump is at his best in such settings, when he really has no choice but to be on his best behavior. As for Amy Coney Barrett herself, she is truly an inspired choice — a distinguished professor and jurist who is a deeply grounded originalist and, everything suggests, a composed and winsome public speaker.

 

She hit the right notes today. She honored the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, made her judicial philosophy crystal clear, and movingly introduced her incredible family. The high point may have been when Trump brought her family up on the stage with her. Her personal life shouldn’t strictly matter, but in the current context — when confirmations are political wars and there will be a determined attempt to portray her as a moral monster — it obviously does.

Democrats and the Left would be well-served to not wage a campaign of personal destruction against her and instead focus on the process and the supposed threat to the ACA, but they won’t be able to help themselves.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

What’s at Stake in 2020 By Matthew Continetti

By on September 27th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/whats-at-stake-in-2020/

In short, the future of American government

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has clarified what is at stake in the 2020 election. It is not, as some believe, democracy itself. Nor is it, as others assume, our continued existence as a nation. Democracy will survive Donald Trump, and the United States of America will outlast Joe Biden. The question that 2020 will help to answer is what sort of democracy, and what sort of nation, America will be as it prepares to enter the second quarter of the 21st century.

The reaction to Ginsburg’s death, and to Republican plans to fill her seat on the Supreme Court, underscores the choice before the electorate: Does it prefer to live in a democratic republic ordered toward the principles of the Founders and the constitutional structure they designed to protect individual liberty? Or would it rather dwell in a plebiscitary democracy where the original meaning of the Constitution, when it is not explicitly repudiated, is politely overlooked in order to satisfy ever more radical egalitarian demands?

Needless to say, the answer is up in the air, and has been for some time. But we may be nearing a settlement, one way or another. The civil unrest of the past several months has made unignorable the existence of a large body of opinion that holds something is terribly wrong with America as founded, something that cannot be redeemed, and that American history and American institutions must be drastically revised to atone for the injustices committed against racial minorities. President Trump, in his inimitable way, has made the opposite argument, and called for a renewed appreciation of the American story and a resurgence of national pride.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tucker Carlson Names The Rich CEOs Funding Supplies, Bail For Louisville Rioters By Jordan Davidson

By on September 27th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/25/tucker-carlson-names-the-rich-ceos-funding-supplies-bail-for-louisville-rioters/

Tucker Carlson broke the news Thursday evening that a rioter bail organization led by a “pampered group of revolutionaries” was responsible for bringing rioting supplies to downtown Louisville after the charges in the Breonna Taylor case were announced on Wednesday. Sitting on the organization’s board is a former president at NBC and a finance CEO with Princeton University ties.

“These are violent thugs obviously — many of them, by the way, have college degrees from expensive universities. But in the end, they’re all just foot soldiers. There are legions behind them. People you don’t see on camera. It takes legions, it takes money, and it takes organization to stage effective riots for three and a half months,” Carlson stated.

In a viral video from Wednesday, rioters are seen unloading a truck of supplies such as Black Lives Matter and “abolish the police” signs, shields, water bottles, and more just minutes after the verdict was issued.

“It’s worth asking who is funding all of this? That is a central question. Too few have tried to answer it,” Carlson said, as clips of people unloading the truck played.

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