Social justice mobs never apologize when they're wrong, and will destroy one of their own without a second thought

"Barrett Wilson" (a pseudonym, since the writer now fears his former online compatriots), writes at Quillette, July 14, 2018 (emphasis added):

In my previous life, I was a self-righteous social justice crusader. I would use my mid-sized Twitter and Facebook platforms to signal my wokeness on topics such as LGBT rights, rape culture, and racial injustice. Many of the opinions I held then are still opinions that I hold today. But I now realize that my social-media hyperactivity was, in reality, doing more harm than good.

Within the world created by the various apps I used, I got plenty of shares and retweets. But this masked how ineffective I had become outside, in the real world. The only causes I was actually contributing to were the causes of mobbing and public shaming. Real change does not stem from these tactics. They only cause division, alienation, and bitterness.

How did I become that person? It happened because it was exhilarating. Every time I would call someone racist or sexist, I would get a rush. That rush would then be reaffirmed and sustained by the stars, hearts, and thumbs-up that constitute the nickels and dimes of social media validation. The people giving me these stars, hearts, and thumbs-up were engaging in their own cynical game: A fear of being targeted by the mob induces us to signal publicly that we are part of it.

"McCarthyism masquerading as liberal open-mindedness" in Silicon Valley / San Francisco

During a Reddit AMA, author/investor Tim Ferriss gives one of several reasons why he's leaving the Bay Area. 

Silicon Valley also has an insidious infection that is spreading -- a peculiar form of McCarthyism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism) masquerading as liberal open-mindedness. I'm as socially liberal as you get, and I find it nauseating how many topics or dissenting opinions are simply out-of-bounds in Silicon Valley. These days, people with real jobs (unlike me) are risking their careers to even challenge collective delusions in SF. Isn't this supposed to be where people change the world by challenging the consensus reality? By seeing the hidden realities behind the facades? That's the whole reason I traveled west and started over in the Bay Area. Now, more and more, I feel like it's a Russian nesting doll of facades -- Washington DC with fewer neck ties, where people openly lie to one another out of fear of losing their jobs or being publicly crucified. It's weird, unsettling, and, frankly, really dangerous. There's way too much power here for politeness to be sustainable. If no one feels they can say "Hey, I know it makes everyone uncomfortable, but I think there's a leak in the fuel rods in this nuclear submarine..." we're headed for big trouble.

His destination, Austin, leans hard to the left itself, but apparently it's much less McCarthyite than SV/SF is.

Open-mindedness is seen as a virtue only when one's passionate views are held by a minority of those in positions of power and influence.  Once those views become dominant in some place (e.g. the Bay Area), open-mindedness goes out the window and dissenting opinions are suppressed.

Stacking the deck: "White Privilege" theory in a nutshell

In a world where everybody plays by the same rules and is judged by the same standards, racism would describe any action or attitude that shows favor for one race over another or displays overt contempt for members of a particular race.  Similarly, sexism would describe any action or attitude that shows favor for one sex over another or displays overt contempt for members of a particular sex¹. 

The "Progressive" Left, however, is not interested in everybody playing by the same rules and being judged by the same standards.  Adherents  have produced out of whole cloth the notion of "White Privilege".  As you can see in the image below, here is how White Privilege theory answers the assertions that anybody can be racist or sexist:

Minorities² cannot be racist and women³ cannot be sexist, because they "do not hold political, economic, and institutional power".

In essence, whites (especially white males) have a stranglehold on political, economic, and institutional power, and whites employ that power to oppress women and ethnic minorities -- even without consciously meaning to.  The oppressors enjoy all of the privileges of being in the oppressor class, and they jealously guard all of the privileges they enjoy.

So you see, if you're white -- especially a white male -- the deck has been stacked against you.  These terms have been subverted to exclude the possibility of any opposing viewpoint.  Suggestion: if you find yourself in a debate with a Progressive over one of these issues, let them know you refuse to engage them until they prove to your satisfaction that White Privilege is an actual thing.

Images via "The Safest Space" on Twitter

Footnotes:
¹ Progressives are pushing hard on the notion of gender fluidity⁴ nowadays, and that would seem to render the whole notion of sexism moot...wouldn't it?  Sexism seems to imply binary gender.

² Many Progressives exclude Asians from the ethnic minority status (witness the active attempts to discriminate against them in California public universities), because for the most part they refuse to act like they're oppressed.

³ White women have the dubious honor of being both oppressor and oppressed, depending on the topic of the moment.

⁴ (Wow, a footnote on a footnote!) Many Progressives define the "oppressor" class as white heterosexual males to allow white sexual minorities to be counted as oppressed in some circumstances.

Everybody knows that straight white males are supposed to be self-loathing

Via The Meta Picture

Mandatory voting is, quite possibly, one of the worst ideas ever

This week, I was quite surprised to learn from my Facebook newsfeed that quite a few on the left are excited about the notion of mandatory voting for American citizens (at least, I assume they're wanting this just for the citizens).  My gut reaction is that this is, quite possibly, one of the worst ideas ever presented as a solution to the phenomenon of low voter participation.

Before explaining why I believe this, I should note that this erupted into the news this week because our Dear Leader just endorsed the notion.  Yahoo! News, March 18:

Obama floated the idea of mandatory voting in the U.S. while speaking to a civic group in Cleveland on Wednesday. Asked about the corrosive influence of money in U.S. elections, Obama digressed into the related topic of voting rights and said the U.S. should be making it easier — not harder— for people to vote.

Just ask Australia, where citizens have no choice but to vote, the president said.

"If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country," Obama said, calling it potentially transformative.

Yes, it would be grand if citizens took seriously their civic responsibility to participate in our democratic institutions.  So, why don't they?  The president's speech encapsulates the reasons that I usually see proffered by the Left:

Not only that, Obama said, but universal voting would "counteract money more than anything."

Disproportionately, Americans who skip the polls on Election Day are younger, lower-income and more likely to be immigrants or minorities, Obama said. "There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls," he said in a veiled reference to efforts in a number of Republican-led states to make it harder for people to vote.

Yikes!  So...anywhere from a half to two-thirds of voting-age citizens are informed, motivated folks who are systematically kept away from the polls by Republican voter-suppression efforts.

Seriously?

Forcing these 50%+ of voting-age citizens to the polls won't turn them into informed, motivated voters.  Any person who takes a half-serious look at human nature should be able to conclude two things: (1) These uninformed, unmotivated folks will look for the easiest way to avoid the failure-to-vote penalty (most likely a fine); and (2) The informed, motivated folks (both left and right) will be ready to help the uninformed, unmotivated folks discharge their duties in the most expedient way possible.

"Just tell me who to vote for, okay?"

This will come down to a contest of which ideological tribe can get the most apathetic sheep to the polls.  The Left's giddiness about the mandatory voting proposal is evidence enough that progressives believe that they would win that contest.

How to know if we really believe in the right to free speech

Mark Steyn, in a recent speech given in Australia:

Anyone can be in favour of free speech for Barney the Dinosaur and the Wiggles, but if you’re not in favour of free speech you find offensive and repellent and loathsome, you’re not in favour of free speech at all. And you’re on the side of creeping totalitarianism.

Ironically, a generation ago it was the left that claimed the need to remind conservatives of this truth.

NAACP blasts lack of diversity in NBA and NFL

Just kidding!  They would never complain about the overwhelming dominance of African Americans in professional basketball and football!

This week their target is the television newsroom, as reported July 7 by the Wall Street Journal:

In a press release issued this morning, the NAACP condemned 24-hour cable news channel CNN for its recently announced prime time news lineup, calling the lack of diversity in its collection of news anchors a “glaring omission.”

Of course, they don’t do the heavy lifting of proving that qualified minorities are trying to get jobs or promotions and are being denied.  As usual, they simply infer discrimination without having to be in the same ZIP code as the facts.

As our president is fond of saying, let me be clear: The NAACP's goal is not diversity.  Its goal is to increase representation of African Americans wherever it sees said representation to be deficient.  This is not necessarily wrong in itself.  What's wrong is the fact that they're hiding under the cloak of Diversity.  If diversity was truly the the NAACP's goal, it would at the very least express discomfort at the overrepresentation of African Americans in basketball and football.  Raise your hand if you think that will ever happen.

(Don’t miss the part of the article where the NAACP press release essentially says, “everyone knows Fox News is racist, but we expected better from CNN”. Again, reinforcing the liberal meme without being required to prove anything.)

Are President Obama's opponents motivated primarily by racism?

Let's follow the logic here.

Democrats routinely accuse Obama's detractors of opposing him because he's black. 

So... Does this mean that I secretly agree with his ideology and agenda, but I'll oppose him to the point of harming myself... simply because he's black?  Seriously?

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that the Dems who make this charge are pathetically ignorant, but I really think that's not the case.  They're smart enough to know that if a conservative gets tricked into trying to defend himself against this absurd charge, he's already lost in the court of public opinion.

Conservatives need to stop trying to prove a negative.  When this slander is hurled our way, we need to laugh at our accuser, wondering aloud if he realizes how ridiculous he sounds.

Thomas More wrote that "the devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked".  I doubt that the Dems will endure it well either.

Conservatives shouldn’t play the identity politics game either

Phylllis Schlafly makes her case for the type of person who should be nominated to replace John Paul Stevens, should he be the next to retire:

For as long as we can remember, the U.S. Supreme Court has included at least one military veteran. Recent examples include Republican-appointed Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and Justice John Paul Stevens, who is expected to resign this year.

The Democrats have not placed a veteran on the Supreme Court in nearly half a century. When President Obama fills Stevens' seat, will the High Court be left without anyone who has military experience?

Veterans in the U.S. Senate should make sure that such an embarrassment does not occur. Cases concerning the military appear every year before the Supreme Court, and our nation will not be well-served by a court lacking in military experience.

With all due respect, Mrs. Schlafly, we shouldn’t be concerning ourselves with whether or not this group or that group is respresented among The Nine.

For my part, the only special interest I want to see represented in the Supreme Court is The Constitution of the United States.

Yeah, I know, I know. But I can dream, can’t I?

Conservatives shouldn’t play the identity politics game either

Phylllis Schlafly makes her case for the type of person who should be nominated to replace John Paul Stevens, should he be the next to retire:

For as long as we can remember, the U.S. Supreme Court has included at least one military veteran. Recent examples include Republican-appointed Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and Justice John Paul Stevens, who is expected to resign this year.

The Democrats have not placed a veteran on the Supreme Court in nearly half a century. When President Obama fills Stevens' seat, will the High Court be left without anyone who has military experience?

Veterans in the U.S. Senate should make sure that such an embarrassment does not occur. Cases concerning the military appear every year before the Supreme Court, and our nation will not be well-served by a court lacking in military experience.

With all due respect, Mrs. Schlafly, we shouldn’t be concerning ourselves with whether or not this group or that group is respresented among The Nine.

For my part, the only special interest I want to see represented in the Supreme Court is The Constitution of the United States.

Yeah, I know, I know.  But I can dream, can’t I?

If Obama’s opponents REALLY were motivated by racism…

Neal Boortz today has a slam-dunk retort to those intellectual featherweights who insist that opponents of Obama’s policies are driven by racism:

So .. here is what Jimmy Carter, Bill Moyers, Hank Johnson, much of the Washington and New York press corps, Newsweek Magazine and the brilliant thinkers on the American left would have you believe of Americans right now:

• We would be more than willing to welcome cap-and-trade with open arms, even if we paid a thousand dollars or more extra every year for our energy use, if Barack Obama were only white.
• We would be dancing in the streets celebrating the dawning of government control of our health care if only Barack Obama were white.
• It would be just dandy if government bureaucrats rationed health care for our parents, as long as the president is white.
• We would jump at the chance of the government owning ALL of the auto manufacturing companies .. not just General Motors ... if the president just didn't have dark skin.
• We would applaud those ACORN workers giving tax avoidance advice to a pimp and his prostitute if the workers hadn't been black.
• Most Americans - even ones that don't pay income taxes now - would be more than willing to give 70% of everything they earn to the federal government when asked ... so long as they are asked by a white president.
• We would have been thrilled, I tell you ... THRILLED to have all of those Islamic goons being held at Guantanamo be not only released, but sent to be school resource officers at our local government schools, if only a white president put that plan in motion.
• It would be OK if a white president stood back and allowed Iran to build its coveted nukes ... we're only unhappy about that because a black president is doing it.
• Deficits? We don't care about deficits! Make our children and grand children and great grand children pay through the nose for our president's spending habits ... just so long as the president isn't black.
• Government pork? Like we actually care? Look ... you folks in Washington can spend all the money you want - how about more studies of the mating habits of Polish Zlotnika pigs? - just make sure it's not a black president who signs the spending bill into law.
• We wouldn't care if all illegal aliens were counted twice in the next Census ... just so long as the president isn't black.
• Those Black Panther thugs who threatened voters in Philly? The ONLY reason we're upset that they were given a pass is because Barack Obama is black.
• Every single member of the president's cabinet could be a tax cheat as far as we're concerned ... just so long as the president is white.
• Forced unionization? Bring it on! We love card check! We love the idea of union goons threatening and intimidating workers to sign a card saying they want to belong to a union! What we don't like is that a black president is pushing this idea.
• Single-party talks with that Gargoyle that runs North Korea? It's about time we legitimized that little pipsqueak. We're only mildly upset here because the person who is doing that happens to be black.
• More regulation of the finance sector? We could care less! For all we care you can nationalize the banks and decree that only the government can make home loans .. .and you can even apportion those home loans on the basis of race if you want to ... just so long as the president is white!
• Minimum wage? Like we care about that? Raise it to $15 an hour if you want! Just give us our white president back.

Remember, though: These folks are not interested in the truth.  They are interested in accumulating and retaining power. In this quest, the end justifies the means.

Fred Thompson: ‘Absurd’ for Senators to base judicial confirmation vote on nominee’s testimony at hearing

FredPac e-mail alert posted the text at Free Republic.  Emphasis added.

It is expected that Senators will say that they want to wait and see what Judge Sotomayor will say at her confirmation hearing before they decide how they will vote.

This is understandable, I suppose, but from my experience, what a nominee says during his or her hearing, while certainly not irrelevant, is one of the least important considerations upon which they should base their vote. Nominee’s judicial and professional record, along with their public statements and reputation for integrity, are much more reliable indicators as to the kind of judge they will be. Our Founding Father recognized this early on, and it is the main reason confirmation hearings were not held on a regular basis until the 1950s.

There are two things that work against any substantive new information being revealed in a confirmation hearing.    
First a nominee can and should refuse to go very far in giving their opinion regarding any legal issue that might come before the Supreme Court in the future. That, of course, covers most any legal issue.

Second, in 1990 the distinguished jurist, Robert Bork, refused to subject himself to the usual dog and pony Q and A, “how to handle the senators” sessions now given to nominees in preparation for their hearings, the so-called "murder board."  During the hearings he engaged in an open and candid dialogue with regard to his judicial philosophy. We know how that turned out. The odds are great that never again will a nominee make the mistake of committing candor.     

For some time now everyone has understood the name of the game: Take as much off the table as possible as inappropriate for discussion. Then, dance around the rest. When you get a question that you're expected to answer, try to sound as knowledgeable as possible, but play for time and never say anything committee members would find objectionable.         

So the process is basically for the purpose of giving the nominee the opportunity to commit a gaffe of other unforced error. Then the nominee may be denied confirmation, not so much for their lack of qualifications or even their judicial philosophy, but for their not being clever of artful enough to win the game.

I would suggest that for a person to be judged on the basis of a few days of practiced, self-serving comments and obfuscation, instead  of their entire life and record is absurd. And to think that their service on the Supreme Court would be consistent with their statements before a committee they will likely never sit before again, instead of their record is inconsistent with both logic and experience.     

In other words, it’s foolish in the extreme to rush into marriage thinking you know a girl, when everything you think you know about her is based on what she told you while you were out on a date.

Defending our country comes in at #8 (right after fair-trade coffee)

US Naval Academy professor Bruce Fleming reports that, in the Age of Obama, our military is descending ever deeper into the morass of political correctness (emphasis added):

The Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead announced in Annapolis recently that "diversity is the number one priority" at the Naval Academy.

The Naval Academy superintendent, Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, echoed him. Everyone understands that "diversity" here means nonwhite skins.

Fowler insisted recently that we needed to have Annapolis graduates who "looked like" the Fleet, where enlisted people are about 42 percent nonwhite, largely African American and Hispanic.

AG Eric Holder presses for expansion of thought crimes laws

Using recent attacks on George Tiller, the National Holocaust Museum and an Army recruiting station as his justification, U.S. Attorney General has called for tougher penalties for crimes motivated by -------- (I’ll pause as you go back and review the incidents which prompted this call) -------- gender, disability or sexual orientation.
The Associated Press reports:

The attorney general's call for Congress to act came as a civil rights coalition said there has been a surge in white supremacist activity since the election of the first African-American president and the economic downturn.
"Over the last several weeks, we have witnessed brazen acts of violence committed in places that many would have considered unthinkable," Holder told the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.
He cited separate attacks over a two-week period that killed a young soldier in Little Rock, an abortion provider in Wichita and a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Federal agents and prosecutors already are involved in the local investigations of each attack.
The violence, Holder said, "reminds us of the potential threat posed by violent extremists and the tragedy that ensues when reasoned discourse is replaced by armed confrontation."
"We will not tolerate murder, or the threat of violence, masquerading as political activism," he said. "So let me be clear. The Justice Department will use every tool at its disposal to protect the rights ensured under our Constitution."
Holder said that to stop such violence, Congress should pass an updated version of hate crimes legislation in order to more effectively prosecute those who commit violent attacks based on gender, disability or sexual orientation.
The growing number of hate crimes against Latinos also shows the need for tougher laws, Holder said.

For better or worse, everything Holder mentioned is already covered under existing “hate” crime laws. Perhaps he wants to go for mandatory life imprisonment. Or maybe this is the one situation where the left will support the death penalty.
Regardless, the very notion of “hate” crimes is uncomfortably akin to Orwellian “thought” crimes. To the untrained observer, there is no difference in outcome between “hate” crimes and the more ordinary, garden-variety crimes. To the left, however, what the criminal was thinking at the time he or she committed the crime makes all the difference in the world in determining the sentence.
As if the family of the victim would be consoled by the knowledge that the criminal’s act against their loved one was nothing personal.

6/17 UPDATE: The House passed the bill in April, but, LifeSite News reports, the Senate is trying to smuggle it through as an amendment to a tourism bill.

Quick takes on the Sotomayor nomination

Tim Graham, Newsbusters:

The nomination of a Hispanic for the Supreme Court will remind conservatives of the case of Miguel Estrada, a promising Hispanic conservative that the Democrats filibustered -- at the circuit court level -- and in 2003, Estrada gave up the battle.

Here’s one priceless exchange from ABC’s This Week on February 9, 2003, with an ABC reporter now working as a talk-show host on National Public Radio:

MICHEL MARTIN: Miguel Estrada is a very promising young lawyer who went to some excellent schools, had excellent clerkships, has a good work record. What he lacks in judicial background he makes up with a compelling life story....And you know what that’s called George? Affirmative action. He is an affirmative action candidate as practiced by the Republican Party and the conservative movement....

GEORGE WILL: Michel, affirmative action, in the Michigan style, would be to give Estrada 20 extra points. He didn’t get that. He got the highest possible rating by the ABA.

Ilya Shapiro, Cato@Liberty:

She has a mixed reputation, with a questionable temperament and no particularly important opinions in over 10 years on the Second Circuit. Most notably, she was part of the panel that summarily affirmed the dismissal of Ricci v. DeStefano, where the City of New Haven denied firefighter promotions based on an admittedly race-neutral exam whose results did not yield the “correct” racial mix of successful candidates. Sotomayor’s colleague José Cabranes—a liberal Democrat—excoriated the panel’s actions and the Supreme Court will likely reverse the ruling next month.

If this is the kind of “empathy” the president wants from his judges, we are in for a long summer—and more bitter confirmation battles in the future.

Matthew Vadum, American Spectator:

President Obama's radical new nominee to replace Associate Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, used to serve on the board of LatinoJustice PRLDEF (White House backgrounder), one of the racial grievance groups that helped to sink the judicial nomination of Honduran-born Miguel Estrada in 2003.

Along with groups such as the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), LatinoJustice fought a war of attrition against President George W. Bush's 2001 nomination of conservative Miguel Estrada, a Honduran-born immigrant, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Democrats in the Senate filibustered the nomination and a weary Estrada withdrew from consideration in 2003.

Today LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit, hailed the nomination of Sotomayor on the basis of her ethno-cultural heritage. "As the second largest and fastest growing population in America, with a large pool of qualified individuals to choose from, it was wholly appropriate for the president to nominate a Hispanic," the group said in a written statement. (PDF)

Human Events has collected some quotes that suggest Sotomayor is not troubled by her lack of judicial impartiality:

• “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
  
• "I simply do not know exactly what the difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”
  
• “I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.”
  
• “All of the Legal Defense Funds out there -- they're looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is -- Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't ‘make law.’ ”

Stephen Dinan, Washington Times:

Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed, providing a potent line of attack raised by opponents Tuesday after President Obama announced he will nominate the 54-year-old Hispanic woman to the high court.

"Her high reversal rate alone should be enough for us to pause and take a good look at her record. Frankly, it is the Senates duty to do so," said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.

Steve Milloy of Junkscience.com regarding one of those reversed decisions:

Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor represents a potential threat to U.S. consumers and to the economy in terms of energy and the environment.

In her 2007 Second Circuit decision in Riverkeeper, Inc. v. EPA 475 F. 3d 83, Judge Sotomayor sided with extreme green groups who had sued the U.S. EPA because the agency permitted cost-benefit analysis to be used in the determination of environmental protection technology for power plant cooling water intake structures.

Fortunately, Judge Sotomayor’s decision was recently overturned by the Supreme Court, fittingly on April 1, 2009 (Entergy v. Riverkeeper, No. 07-588).

Had the EPA been required to abide by Judge Sotomayor’s decision, American consumers would have been forced to pay billions of dollars more in energy costs every year as power plants producing more than one-half of the nation’s electricity would have had to undertake expensive retrofits.

Newbie Democrat Arlen Specter confirms that Sotomayor's gender and ethnicity are the main reasons why she should be confirmed:

I applaud the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Her confirmation would add needed diversity in two ways: the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the high court. While her record suggests excellent educational and professional qualifications, now it is up to the Senate to discharge its constitutional duty for a full and fair confirmation process.

Meaning, of course, that only a misogynist racist would oppose her.


(Image found here)