“House Republicans are aiming to block the Pentagon from removing a Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.”

The Democrats’ march to Year Zero continues apace with the Biden regime’s proposed removal of a Civil War Memorial that marks the grave of the memorial’s Jewish sculptor who is buried at its base. The memorial’s removal would also necessarily desecrate the graves of numerous Confederate soldiers buried nearby. //

The memorial is intended to celebrate the post-war reconciliation of the North and South, a celebration of unity that apparently rankles Democrats and their rabid desire for division and destruction.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-travesty-at-arlington-national-cemetery/

RAMASWAMY: So I think the diversity equity inclusion agenda has been abused. In the name of diversity we have, at many of our universities, totally sacrificed diversity of thought. In the name of equity, we've perpetuated a lot of inequity and inequality of opportunity through affirmative action and otherwise.

In the name of inclusion, we've created a new culture of exclusion where certain points of view aren't welcome. //

RAMASWAMY: So especially in a university setting, what do I care about? Diversity of viewpoint. This is important, actually. I think diversity of viewpoint is part of what this country was built on.

Well, the best way to foster diversity of viewpoint is to screen candidates for the diversity of their views, actually. Many look at the board members of many universities. You got to go through their partisan affiliation. It's not 80-20. It's going to be like 90-10 in the other direction.

That's completely at odds with the representation of this country. //

RAMASWAMY: So do I value diversity of viewpoint? Absolutely. Do I think we're doing a good job of that? No, we're not, and it's not an accident. In the name of diversity, we've actually created a new culture of conformity.

And so I think it's entirely possible to have a group of 10 people who look similar to one another, who have different views. I think it's entirely possible to have a group of 10 people who look different from one another or look the same as one another but have different views or look different from one another and have the same views.

All the programs that were put in place to combat racism actually create more racism.

And so I think the best way to screen candidates for the diversity of their experiences is to actually ask them about the diversity of their experiences. And I think the use of these racial and gender quota systems, I think they have actually created a new form of racism in the United States that otherwise would not have existed. //

It's sad to me. I mean, I've hired -- not because I was thinking about it consciously -- plenty of black women in different positions of authority in this campaign or other companies or whatever.

And I can tell you, it saddens me. When people look at somebody who I hired on the basis of merit, and say that they only got that job because of their race or gender, that doesn't do anybody a favor.

And so I think if we restore true meritocracy in this country and embrace true diversity of thought, chances are we're actually going to have a bunch of different shades of melanin and a range of genders in different positions.

But let it be not the goal. Let it just be a byproduct of actually selecting for people who are the best person for the job, and especially in a university setting, diverse viewpoints as well. //

DEI must DIE.

The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2023

The conditioning is the point. They want normal people to change the way they speak and even the way they perceive things they see in public. With enough beatings over the head, many will do just that. //

Cliff-Hanger
a day ago
LibreOffice. Completely free, of charge and open-source and, most importantly, free of microsoft (funny name for a company founded by a womanizer, ain't it?) though it is available for windows.

After the past week's Congressional hearings, the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania are being exposed to an amount of publicity and scrutiny they're not used to and likely wish would go away. As we reported, the trio claimed that calls for genocide against Jews needed to be placed into context before deciding whether they violated student codes of conduct.

The backlash was swift, and so was the backpedaling. //

Hallen
2 minutes ago
...indicating that Gay might have plagiarized...

There is no 'might have'. She did. 100%, no doubt, blatant plagiarizing.

It's even more egregious because Swain, the brilliant woman Gay plagiarized, is also a black woman. It's even more funny because Swain is conservative and rational. She has done a lot of work debunking the whole 'Democrat to Republican migration in the south' canard. You can see her on Prager U talking about it. Brilliant woman.

It's dastardly that Gay stole so blatantly from Swain and the fact that the Harvard PhD committee didn't even notice. Talk about the bigotry of low expectations. Harvard so wanted a black female PhD that they willingly (I'm betting) ignored the plagiarism in order to credential here. And then they made her president as soon as they could even though she lacked any form of credible academic achievement or publishing. //

anon-t26i
4 hours ago
What we have is an infatuation with higher education. Once upon a time a PhD was granted to, not persons of continuing education, but to persons who contributed new, not re-hashed, not unusual view points on an already known idea, but new, original ideas to the corpus of knowledge in the discipline. There is no evidence that the number of PhD's we currently have, and paid for, and continue to pay for have contributed that number of new ideas. In any discipline much less than a "studies" program, which is no discipline at all.

Victor Davis Hanson
@VDHanson
·
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Our Three Blind Mice

​​​​​​“Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run…”

The recent testimonies of the three university presidents (Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of MIT, and... University of Pennsylvania’s Liz McGill) concerning their inaction about endemic anti-Semitism on their campuses have probably done more damage to higher education than any recent event in memory. (And note there was not a white, male, heterosexual supposed oppressor to be found among the enlightened). …

The three blind mice could not even lie well. Like nearly all contemporary university presidents, they have long revoked admissions, suspended students, or relieved faculty from teaching for any language, expression, or advocacy they considered incorrect, which translates as anything not compatible with wokism or DEI. Invoking ‘freedom of speech’ to disguise their moral cowardice is pathetic when they have never on their campuses believed in freedom of speech. One incorrect word about someone trans, a misplaced pronoun, or a clumsy reference to a non-white student, and the offender would be punished immediately—followed by the usual performance-art, virtue-signaling, “this is not who we are”/“there is no place for such hatred on this campus” memo from a careerist dean or bully provost. …
1:04 PM · Dec 9, 2023

‘Irish Lives Matter’ Graffiti, Anti-Illegal Immigrant Signage Treated As ‘Hate Incidents’ in Northern Ireland

“We are under no illusions that ‘Irish Lives Matter’ is a racist slogan which is directly counterpoised to movements against the oppression faced by black people and other ethnic minorities.” //

LB1901 | November 30, 2023 at 6:24 pm
If a government condemns citizens for promoting their own people in their own country, it’s not your country any more. You’ve been conquered. //

henrybowman in reply to LB1901. | December 1, 2023 at 1:00 am
This.

““We are under no illusions that ‘Irish Lives Matter’ is a racist slogan”

Now, I admit we have a not insubstantial beam in our own eye… but how does a “representative government” of an ethnic people* get so far out of control as to oppress those very people in deference to others?

*By this, I mean that Ireland has been populated almost exclusively by the Irish since Rome fell, unlike the USA which has been a “melting pot” for 250+ years.

“Canceling” people who disagree with you over ordinary political issues is bad for civil society. Ruining someone’s life because he wore a MAGA cap or tweeted something stupid or supported the wrong initiative creates an oppressive environment for open discourse.

“Canceling” people who sign petitions and hold up signs that openly celebrate or justify the targeted, brutal murders of women and babies, on the other hand, is good for civil society. Stopping malevolent ideas from being normalized is good. Exercising your First Amendment right to free speech and free association to shun and call out people who spread odious ideas in public life is a moral imperative. //

When I say I’m a free-speech absolutist, I mean it. The state should do absolutely nothing to inhibit or censor pro-Hamas Americans from expressing their opinions. Free speech isn’t contingent on your position. Hate speech is free speech. The government has no business prodding or even suggesting limitations on our rhetorical interactions. Even outside state intervention, we should be upholding the values that promote free expression. We can peacefully coexist with colleagues, neighbors and friends who hold contradictory opinions within the normal parameters of political debate.

Likewise, Americans have a right to use their freedom to call out and disassociate themselves from people who take the side with nihilistic murder cults.

Get ready to say goodbye to a lot of familiar bird names, like Anna's Hummingbird, Gambel's Quail, Lewis's Woodpecker, Bewick's Wren, Bullock's Oriole, and more.

That's because the American Ornithological Society has vowed to change the English names of all bird species currently named after people, along with any other bird names deemed offensive or exclusionary.

Decolonization is a polite, academic-sounding phrase for genocide. These people don't want you to talk smack about our big-D, high-T ancestors settling this land and celebrating "Indigenous People's Day." They want to kill you. And they want you to go along with it just like the machinery of the Holocaust couldn't have functioned without the kapos and sonderkommandos who bought themselves a precious few days by killing others.

Decolonization is a strategy of losers directed at winners. It is a means by which members of failed cultures want to replace successful ones.