Fall 2022 potpourri

October 11, 2022. A random set of video clips, followed by a potpourri of random musings.

• "Jordan Peterson:- History is a rough Business... https://youtube.com/shorts/HYg3p-0IDNk?feature=share

• "Bill Maher annihilates wokeism" https://youtube.com/shorts/6ismTcKQUmY?feature=share

• "What issue is never being talked about? Jordan Peterson https://youtube.com/shorts/YDSAXPaGFTA?feature=share

• "FEMINIST justifies SINGLE MOTHERHOOD | JustPearlyThings" https://youtube.com/shorts/VbYNjQfMA5o?feature=share

Musings

• The idea that you must either be a racist or an anti-racist -- no third option -- has always struck me as a ludicrous, false, indefensible and illogical premise. The self-proclaimed "anti-racists" don't get to define the typology to suit their theory.

• There appears to be some pendulum swing back to the right, with people willing to confront cancel culture, Black Lives Matter, and the like, while simultaneously universities seem to have surrendered completely to the DIE mentality -- and die they might, as the schools become prohibitively expensive, arrogant, and absent of significant lifetime value.

• A Notre Dame professor -- holding a position endowed with wealth from the fossil fuel industry -- embarrasses himself with a critique of his own university and his own hypocrisy.

• I am happy that Jane and Gaby escaped high school and higher education before the real DIE/woke theology came to take hold and embedded in the missions statements of these once respectable and academically focused school, now posing as social engineering experiments and opponents of free speech.

Girls as . . . Not Necessarily Woke - WSJ.pdf

Download PDF • 149KB

Amidst all this, there is even the occasional sign of the adults reclaiming the asylum from its inmates:

Protester Sanctions Spark Tensions at Marquette

Student protesters shut down Marquette’s convocation in August. They knew there’d be consequences—but many believe the university took the penalties too far. »

And here was my response:

Quintessential example of a university thinking that they had made a deal with the angels only to find the devil in the details. Or as Steve would cite, The Law of Unintended Consequences, i.e., offering generous to students only to have them say that they want more aid. Those protesting ("jeering") the protestors are the ones who should be protesting, protesting the re-directing of their tuition dollars to these wholly ungrateful, petulant, self-righteous students, and the offices they fund to support this student silliness.

I've mentioned this before. When I was associate dean at MU in the late 80's and MU was considering expanding its "affirmative action" programs, I said they needed three things: academically qualified minority students, an incentive for them to attend, and an environment that assimilates them. Instead, they surrendered their core values of academic excellence, reduced the real cost for those high-need aid students, diluted the admissions and grading standards, diluted the academic rigor of the curriculum, lent the students money that their worthless majors and degrees would never allow them to pay back the debt, added millions of dollars of overhead for DIE-related support, and allowed this new class of students to set the standards for behavior and academic expectations on campus.

Is Loyola following the same path? These consequences may have been unintended, but any reasonable analysis would have seen these as inevitable.

• Per usual, the enlightened and always amusing Sergio Vitale forwarded me a series of lectures from Hillsdale College.

Below are links to each of the six videos in the series:

1. “What is the Great Reset?” by Michael Rectenwald

2. “Woke Capitalism vs. Profit” by Vivek Ramaswamy

3. “Cashless Society” by James Rickards

4. “Is ‘Environmental Justice’ Good for the Environment?” by Mark P. Mills

5. “The Great Reset from China’s Perspective” by David P. Goldman

6. “The Alternative to the Great Reset” by Brian Wesbury