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“They should all live together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence,and the disgrace of evil and credit of worthy acts their one measure of difference between man and man.  Plutarch (c.47AD – c.119AD)

“I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University”

                                                                                                                                                William Buckley (1925-2008)

The word meritocracy has Latin and Greek roots. It is a system where economic goods and political power are vested in individuals on the basis of talent, effort and achievement, rather than on wealth or social class. The word was popularized in 1958 by Michael Young, a British sociologist and politician in a book The Rise of Meritocracy, which satirized the tripartite school system in England that put children, at age eleven, onto one of three paths toward future education opportunities: Grammar schools for those heading to university; technical training for those with mechanical skills, and secondary schooling for all others. Forty-three years later, Mr. Young wrote an article for The Guardian in which he said his satire had been stripped of its meaning and had been embraced by an elite to justify their status.

Meritocracy is under attack. In a piece for The New Yorker last September, “Is Meritocracy Making Everyone Miserable?”, Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club, wrote: “In recent years, we have been focused on two problems, social mobility and income inequality…” Mr. Menand cited Daniel Markovits, author of The Meritocracy Trap who concluded “that the whole system is a Frankenstein’s monster. We created meritocracy with good intentions, and now we are its victims.” Meritocracy, it is true and like free-market capitalism, does create inequalities – a natural process. Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford’s Hoover Institute went further. “Merit,” he wrote earlier this month, “will soon become a dirty, counterrevolutionary word.” When it no longer works to the advantage of elites, it is renounced.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/claim-trump-wont-leave-office-if-he-loses-

T here have been many “interesting times” in human history, even if there is actually no ancient Chinese curse wishing that we may live in them. On the contrary, had some sage conjured up a hex along the lines of “May you live in stupid times,” our time would fit perfectly.

One could have that reaction daily to many media reports. This week, my nominee is this one in the Washington Post: “Trump’s assault on election integrity forces question: What would happen if he refused to accept a loss?”

The premise is that the president is engaged in “relentless efforts to sow doubts about the legitimacy of this year’s election” by “escalating attacks on the security of mail-in ballots.” This is coupled with Trump’s refusal, a priori, to accept the legitimacy of the election outcome, echoing the position he took in the last presidential campaign — you know, before the same Democrats who feigned outrage over Trump’s demurral began four years of mulishly refusing to accept the outcome of the 2016 election.

The Post distorts the president’s refusal to rubber-stamp an election that has not happened yet — under circumstances where there is immense reason for concern about mail-in ballots — as a “refusal … to reassure the country that he would abide by the voters’ will.” Of course, Trump is not saying he won’t abide by the result; only that he won’t concede at this point that it will be an honest result. Recall that Richard Nixon abided by the result in 1960 even though there were grounds to doubt that it was on the up and up.

The Post’s cold sweats are amplified by William A. Galston, a columnist and former Clinton administration official who is with the strenuously anti-Trump Brookings Institution. He declaims that Trump is “undermining confidence in the most basic democratic process we have” and “arousing his core supporters for a truly damaging crisis.” Galston is so disturbed that, he informs us, “Words almost fail me.” Almost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YpfJgVZ5ow

https://townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/2020/02/06/the-unteachables-n2560821

Last week, I received a phone call from a professor who teaches in another department here at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington (UNCW), where I have taught for the past 27 years. He was reporting a case of possible discrimination, which resulted in a professor being denied tenure thus losing his livelihood very soon. When I received the call, I immediately began asking questions to assess the validity of his concern. After just a few questions, I came across some information that will shock the conscience of any clear thinking, rational individual.

By way of background information, professors at our university must pass through several hoops to get tenure after they are initially hired for a tenure-track position. The initial contract is only for a few years. If professors get reappointed, a few years later they have an opportunity to apply for lifetime tenure. But to get this tenure, they first have to get approval from a majority of the tenured professors in their department, their department chair, and their college dean. If applicants succeed at this, they face a final vote from the university-wide Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion (RTP) Committee. Since every faculty member must pass through this committee, its chair is arguably the most powerful professor on campus.

In the case that was reported to me, the applicant had received all three initial approvals. But, then, the RTP committee chair rejected the application. When I learned this, I asked about who is currently on the RTP committee. That is when I learned that its chair is Dr. Kimberly Cook.

https://townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/2020/06/02/white-man-cant-breathe-n2

Cary Aspinwall and Dave Boucher are investigative reporters for The Dallas Morning News. They deserve a Pulitzer Prize for an article written last summer that apparently no one in America has read, which is why I am summarizing it here today. It was about a man named Tony Timpa who cried for help more than 30 times as Dallas police officers pinned his neck to the ground. Before he died, Timpa shouted repeatedly, “You’re gonna kill me!”

And kill him the police officers did. After Timpa became unconscious, the officers who had him cuffed assumed he was asleep. As the minutes passed, the officers joked about waking him up for school and making him waffles for breakfast.

Body camera footage shows first responders waited at least four minutes after Timpa became unresponsive to begin CPR. Even worse, the police officers pinned his handcuffed arms behind his back for nearly 14 minutes and zip-tied his legs together. Shortly after he was loaded onto a gurney and put into an ambulance, Timpa was pronounced dead.

This culminated an incident that began when Timpa called 911 from the parking lot of a Dallas porn store. He told a dispatcher he suffered from schizophrenia and depression and was off his prescription medication. Later, police incident reports falsely claimed Timpa’s behavior that night was aggressive. In stark contradiction, the police video shows Timpa struggling to breathe and asking the officers to stop pinning him down.