The Oppressive Rock

There are some really dumb things going on at our college campuses right now. It seems that the children we are sending to college have no concept of the real world and the fact that in the real world there may be people who say things they might not like.

Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about the removal of a boulder from the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

The article reports:

A large boulder has been removed from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after the Black Student Union and other racial justice activists complained about it being a “racist monument.”

What makes the rock allegedly racist? In the 1920s, a journalist once used a racist term to describe the large boulder.

The rock’s existence has apparently been oppressing students ever since.

Fox News outlined the “racism” of the rock, as claimed by student activists:

Chamberlin Rock, which rests atop Observatory Hill, is named after a 19th Century geologist and former university president, Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, whose work centered on glacial deposits, according to a bio on the university’s website.

But it was a reporter’s reference to the rock in a nearly century-old Wisconsin State Journal article that prompted the push for its removal.

In October 1925, the university had the boulder excavated and placed prominently atop the hill to honor Chamberlin, who would die in Chicago three years later. The rock was a rare specimen believed to be more than 2 billion years old, and before it was installed on Observatory Hill, only about a foot and a half was visible above ground, according to the article. It was believed to have been carried by glaciers from Canada to Wisconsin.

In the 1920s, a slang term used to describe large dark rocks included the N-word, and it appears in coverage of the rock’s installation.

University researchers did not uncover other instances in print where the rock was referred to with this word, but they said the Ku Klux Klan was active on campus at the time of the rock’s dedication, according to an article in the same newspaper published earlier this week.

How much did it cost the University to remove the rock? How much of that money could have been used for a scholarship for a worthy student? Racism is not acceptable–but it does exist–not to the extent that some claim, but it does exist.

Some People’s First Amendment Rights Are Better Than Others

According to Wikipedia:

While the United States Constitution‘s First Amendment identifies the rights to assemble and to petition the government, the text of the First Amendment does not make specific mention of a right to association. Nevertheless, the United States Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Alabama that the freedom of association is an essential part of the Freedom of Speech because, in many cases, people can engage in effective speech only when they join with others

It is not too much of a stretch to say that this includes the right of a business to do business (or not do business) with whomever they choose (excluding national security issues and things like that). Is that still true in America?

Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about a recent poll of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison regarding the rights of people engaged in business.

The article reports:

Students told ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom) that it was okay for a dress designer to turn down Melania Trump for political reasons. “You should be able to control your business in that regard, yeah,” one young man said. “I mean, it’s a free market, that’s what most conservatives want anyway,” another student chimed in. When asked if the dress designer has the right to do that, a young woman replied, “Absolutely.”

ADF also asked students what should happen if a church approached a Muslim singer for an Easter service. Students unanimously said that such a singer has a right to “opt out” of that arrangement. “That seems like such an unusual circumstance that they would want them … like a Christian church would force a Muslim singer to sing at their church if they didn’t want to,” one young woman said. Students agreed that no law should force someone to serve another person against their religious convictions.

But when asked if a Christian has the right to opt out of serving a same-sex wedding, the students hesitated.

The question behind this poll is something that is going to continue to arise in our country as we take in more refugees that choose not to assimilate and as Christianity is no longer respected in our culture. What about the Muslim who refuses to drive a truck that transports beer? What about the Muslim taxi driver that refuses a fare because the man is blind and has a seeing-eye dog? What about the checkout person at the supermarket who refuses to scan bacon? Generally speaking, these are employees–not the business owner. Does the business owner have to allow the limitations on their ability to do their job? If these people are given a pass on the basis of their religious beliefs, should Christians also get a pass?

One of the dangers of bringing people into America with a different culture and no desire to assimilate is that it opens the door for lawfare. Lawfare is the use of frivolous lawsuits to advance a political agenda. It is a primary tool of organizations like CAIR (The Council on American-Islamic-Relations) to bring American laws in compliance with Sharia Law. CAIR will create a situation to be used as a test case to further its agenda.

There was a recent instance of a situation where a person who spoke the language needed probably has prevented a lawsuit that was being planned (here). Please follow the link and read the story. We don’t know exactly what was being planned–whether it was a lawsuit or something more serious–but thanks to a lady who spoke the appropriate language, whatever was planned was stopped in its tracks!

America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Our culture (up until recently) was a Christian culture. Many parts of America still have a Christian culture. To attempt to bring an alien culture into America rather than assimilate as refugees is going to create problems and tension. You can only live in peace with people who choose to live in peace with you. Unfortunately there is an element in Islam that does not want to live in peace with anyone who does not follow the tenets of Islam. That is a problem.

Undermining Our Society–One College At A Time

The Daily Caller is reporting today that taxpayers are funding course at colleges that actually undermine America.

The article reports:

Two more taxpayer-funded American universities — the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Colorado Denver — will offer undergraduate courses focused exclusively on how “whiteness” is a serious social problem in the upcoming spring 2017 semester.

The course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is matter-of-factly called “The Problem of Whiteness.”

The description for the course focuses on America’s — and the entire world’s — whiteness problem explains that “white supremacy was created by white people” and suggests that “white folks” “have the greatest responsibility to eradicate it.”

The class “will ask what an ethical white identity entails, what it means to be #woke.”

I would like to explain that white people did not have a choice as to whether or not they were born white. I would also like to explain that many white people, many black people, and many people of other races have worked hard to make America a land of equal opportunity for all. Note that America is a land of equal opportunity–not equal outcome. There will always be people with more talent and more brains who are more successful than some others. Otherwise wouldn’t we all go into sports, music or acting and make millions? People are not perfect and therefore cannot create a perfect society. We try, and most of us do the best we can, but perfection is not ours to have.

The article includes the following story:

Last academic year, hundreds of students and professors at UW–Madison marched and protested because campus cops located a black student during a class and arrested him for allegedly spray-painted politically-charged graffiti — including “RACIZM IN THE AIR,” “DON’T BREATHE,” “– GOD” and “THE DEVIL IZ A WHITE MAN” — on a bunch of buildings all over the taxpayer-funded campus.

The spray-painting vandalism caused over $4,000 in damages to university property.

The arrested student, Denzel McDonald, calls himself “King Shabazz.” It’s not clear if McDonald chose this name to honor King Samir Shabazz, a New Black Panther Party national field marshal who has a face tattoo reading “Kill Whitey.”

Meanwhile, the University of Colorado Denver is offering a three-credit course for the spring 2017 semester called “Problematizing Whiteness: Educating for Racial Justice.”

A flyer for the course posted around the CU Denver campus — spotted by Campus Reform — features a Soviet-style red fist clasping a pencil and an invitation to “JOIN THE FAMILIA NOW.”

Critical Whiteness Studies addresses the need for a deeper analysis of race, one that accounts for both sides of the race coin, that of the plight of people of color AND how Whites are also complicit in a system of race,” the flyer course description explains.

Does this sound like we are teaching our children how to be successful or are we teaching our children to be victims? These are taxpayer-funded colleges. I don’t want to see the government setting the curriculum for colleges, but I do think in cases like this we need some sort of limits (or find students and professors with enough common sense to throw this garbage out).

Why Elections Matter

The Chippewa Herald reported on Sunday that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has signed a $70 billion, two-year state budget.

The article reports:

The budget approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature includes all Walker’s priorities, including a $650 million income tax cut, expansion of private school vouchers and changes to the state’s Medicaid and food stamp programs.

…Walker made 57 changes to the budget using a veto power that allows him to cut words from sentences to change their meaning and remove individual digits to create new numbers. His two most significant vetoes eliminated provisions creating a bounty hunter program and kicking an investigative journalism center off the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

I live in Massachusetts, where our taxes are going up and the gasoline tax is going to be indexed to inflation so it can be automatically raised without the Democrats who control the state having to take responsibility for the tax increase. Massachusetts has some of the best schools in the country and obviously some of the least educated voters. I don’t know anything about schools in Wisconsin, but obviously their voters are pretty smart.

 

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Editorial Compliance Equals Access

The German newspaper called Deutsche Welle posted a story last Thursday about the American media. The headline of the story was “US journalists trade independence for access.” The article points out that in Germany it is not unusual to require authorization before interviews can be published, but that America is moving in that direction.

The article reports:

But in the United States, the balance of power between the journalist and the politician has increasingly shifted in favor of the latter. According to a July 15 report by Jeremy W. Peters of the New York Times, political journalists in Washington are increasingly trading their editorial independence for high-level access to members of the Obama administration.

Quotes gleaned from administration officials by a reporter are not just reviewed by the publication’s editor, they are often sent to the very same officials for approval – and even redaction – before going to print.

According to Stephen Ward, there is a growing and unhealthy “pressure on journalists and … on news organizations to get the story, to be first, to be the first tweet.”

“The officials who know this are quite aware that in this era of 24 hours news, access is king,” Ward, the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told DW. “This is just a game of access – it’s as old as journalism.”

Access may partially explain the leftward tilt of American journalism, but I think there is also another explanation. Since the 1960’s our colleges have shifted to the political left. They have reflected the political and social upheaval of that time. The professors of today are often the students of that era or were educated after the our college campuses turned left. The inmates are running the asylum.

The article concludes:

Ultimately, journalists must assume much of the responsibility for the weakening of their editorial independence, according to Ward. He argues that they have increasingly bought into a partisan political game that revels in scandal at the sake of context.

“We are never going to get rid of all the tweets and the 24-hour business – all the fast-food journalism that we are seeing,” Ward said. “But we can at the core of political discourse maintain certain sources of news and analysis that are informed and not breathless – (that are) thoughtful.”

Our republic depends on a honest mainstream media. It is distressing that at this time we have to turn to the alternative media for the truth.

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