A friend of mine was unceremoniously fired from Felician University in 2023–one of sixteen people fired on a single day–after 23 unrelenting years as an English comp instructor to students with an average SAT verbal score well below 500. I described her in a letter of recommendation, without exaggeration, as “the most dedicated college instructor I had ever encountered” in two+ decades in the profession. Her office was across the hall from mine, and every now and then I’d eavesdrop on her efforts. I couldn’t imagine putting even half the effort into teaching that she did. Continue reading
Tag Archives: American politics
UHC, Denials, and Wrongful Death Revisited
The questions you ask determine the answers you get. If you ask the right questions, you have some hope of reaching the right answers. If you ask the wrong ones, you’ll likely reach the wrong answers. If you give up on asking, you get nothing but what you started with, so that if you begin in ignorance, you end there.
The debate about the killing of Brian Thompson threatens to begin and end either in misdirection or reinforced ignorance or both. Stuck between two competing brands of outrage–one exulting in Thompson’s death, the other outraged at the exultation–we’re in danger of losing the denials/reimbursement plot altogether. I know I’ve posted on this issue already, but think I’ve found a better way of saying what I was trying to say in that post, one that does a better job of asking the right questions than my last post did.* So here is UHC, Denials, and Death, Take 2. Continue reading
Pete Hegseth is (Half) Right
Everywhere one looks, commentators are aghast at Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense. But as usual when it comes to defense matters, everyone is wasting their energies on the wrong questions. Hegseth has become notorious for his view that women should not play combat roles in the US military. This pointless red herring has now become the centerpiece of opposition to him. How could he believe such a thing? How could he say it? What kind of cretin rejects the universal belief that women should serve in combat roles in the US military? Continue reading
Force and Fraud on Campus
So much falsehood has been offered up in the last seven months that it seems futile to single out a discrete claim as a particularly egregious example that absolutely demands rebuttal. But one claim happens to combine egregiousness, absurdity, and in my case, proximity in space and time, in a way that really does demand a response.
I’m sure most readers are aware of the recent demonstrations on college campuses in defense of Palestinian rights. I happen to live in Princeton, New Jersey, not far from Princeton University, and have visited Princeton’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment a dozen times in the last six days. Two students were arrested on campus on Thursday, April 25th, and thirteen were arrested on Monday, April 29th, for a total of fifteen arrests. Continue reading
“First They Came for the Professors…”
“….but I was a university administrator, so I called the cops, egged them on, and assumed the role of aggrieved victim.”
Ironically, Emory University’s Caroline Fohlin specializes in the political economy of early twentieth century Germany. You can’t make shit like that up, but her arrest does starkly raise the question posed by Jason Brennan’s valuable book, When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice (Princeton, 2018): when, exactly, does it become legitimate to fight back? And how? Those aren’t rhetorical questions, and the answers don’t involve an infinite regress. Individual human beings have a right of self-defense, after all. Believe it or not, that right isn’t just the monopoly of Jewish States.
Continue readingHow to Fix the United States
How to Fix the United States: Amendments and a Constitutional Convention
At this point, it must be obvious to everyone paying attention that the United States is a nation in deep trouble. Over the last two decades, both the effectiveness and democratic credentials of the US federal government have gone into decline, which has helped to drive increasing political polarization and public frustration that steepens the decline. More of the public turn to extremist politicians promising to eviscerate their political enemies, which makes the compromises needed in the American federal system totally impossible. Even the basics cannot get done: a single senator holds up over 300 military officer promotions for many months; a group of six radical House members out of 435 cause a government shutdown by holding up funding bills. Continue reading
“It’s OK to Be Gay”: Hamtramck and the Jihad for Gay Pride
This Washington Post article tells the story of a betrayal–a double betrayal, really. The first betrayal is the one mentioned in the article itself. The Muslims of Hamtramck, Michigan accepted the generosity and hospitality of pro-immigrant activists, including Pride activists, then stabbed them in the back.
In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.
“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”
That betrayal is obvious. The other one is harder to see, but just as real. The Muslims of Hamtramck have not only betrayed their neighbors but their co-religionists: Muslims abroad fighting for gay rights and pride. Continue reading
John Davenport’s “The Democracy Amendments”
I’m very pleased to announce the publication, about two weeks ago, of PoT blogger John Davenport’s newest book, The Democracy Amendments: Constitutional Reforms to Save the United States (Anthem Press, 2023). I read and commented on the book in manuscript form, and thought it was spot-on. I agreed with virtually every one of John’s diagnoses and reforms; I only wonder how many of them will be taken seriously enough to be put in place, or even to find a place in public discussion. The book’s subtitle may seem hyperbolic, but isn’t: the United States really is a sinking ship, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that reforms like John’s are needed to keep it afloat. We probably need a lot more than that, but John’s reforms would be a good starting point.
“All Aboard!”
I asked a bunch of New Jersey state legislators–Andrew Zwicker, Roy Freiman, and Mitchelle Drulis–where they stood on S.1923, which “[p]rohibits investment of pension and annuity funds by [the] State in companies that boycott Israel or Israeli businesses,” and A.3882, which establishes the State’s official definition of anti-Semitism. I also asked each of them for an explanation of why they hold the view they hold. Never got an answer from any of the three, so I’ve decided to return the favor in the upcoming primary election by voting against them, even if they’re the only choices on the ballot. Hard to vote for people who insist on turning the state legislature into a forum for the defense of an apartheid state, but can’t be bothered to explain what they’re doing or why. Continue reading
The Lost Boys
Here’s an exchange I just had with Stephen Hicks over a recent Wall Street Journal article, “A Generation of American Men Give Up on College” (Sept. 6, 2021). (The Journal piece is paywalled, but can be one-time accessed by registering.)
Naturally, I’m having trouble with the technological wonders of the “block editor,” so I’ve indicated in italics where each separate quotation begins.
Stephen’s reaction to the article:
Two thoughts:
- This is a bad thing. Boys and young men have been ill-served by mainstream education, such that they are unmotivated and unprepared for life’s challenges — and they know it in their bones.
- This is a good thing. Rather than waste two or four more years of the same at colleges and universities that extend the mis-education, the young men will gropingly get into real life and actually find something engaging and valuable to do.
Policy of Truth 