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education and schooling ideological culture

Some Scandal

Why do public schools and libraries expose their charges to drag queens and cross-​dressers but not to strip-​club “artistes”?

Both are overtly sexual and “kinky” and contra traditional family values. But “drag” is where men (and now boys) dress up in parodic feminine clothing. Milton Berle did it as comedy while the “Drag Queen Story Hours” held these days in schools and libraries around the country play for something else.

In late May, in Iowa, “Ankeny’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) club hosted a drag event as part of the club’s end-​of-​the-​year meeting,” explains KCCI Des Moines. “The event was not for the whole school.”

Thankfully

“Drag event at Ankeny High School,” ran the headline, “draws criticism from some parents” — why the “some”? Normally, wouldn’t it read “draws criticism from parents”? Could the editor have used it, here, to weaponize this as a divisive issue rather than a public scandal?

Before you can say “Sodom and Gomorrah,” the real problem with allowing drag shows in schools reveals itself: this is not unlike a religious issue, except the religion is irr-. 

A tent revival meeting in a public school should be scandalous, too, if with a different “some.” While prayer groups and LGBTQ+ clubs are both fine on public school campuses, as part of normal student activities allowed outside the curriculum, a mass baptism would not be fine, and neither are … drag shows.

Behind all this I catch a whiff of something worse than the push to normalize (rather than merely legalize) “sex work”: anti-​natalism. Not having babies. All of this fits the population reduction ideology that has been pushed since the Sixties.

A tax-​funded movement against the basic task of humanity. 

That’s the most scandalous.

The opposite of Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment ideological culture

The Long Road Back

Decades of wrongheaded policies have eroded San Francisco’s once much-​vaunted charm. 

These policies include onerous burdens on building construction; lax attitudes toward homeless folks’ tent cities and public excretory practices; and a green light for sundry criminal activities, including broad-​daylight theft.

The green light flashed statewide in 2014, when Californians passed Proposition 47, giving looters much less to worry about if caught stealing less than $950.

Remove a disincentive and you wind up with a huge incentive: thugs were emboldened; folks on the margin between criminality and civilized peace went the wrong direction.

In San Francisco, they were further emboldened when voters installed Democrat Chesa Boudin as district attorney in 2019. At least the election was close.

A recent recall election wasn’t so close, with some 61% voting to oust him.

In the cause of abetting criminals, DA Boudin did everything but serve as getaway-​car driver.

Right away, he fired several prosecutors, and The Epoch Times reports that soon “more than 50 prosecutors, support, and victim services staff had either been fired or had quit their jobs over Boudin’s progressive agenda.”

The agenda included ending cash bail, slashing incarceration rates, routinely releasing repeat offenders.

Although it has lost a lot, San Francisco still has piers and fog and that famously twisty road, Lombard Street. Residents have a ways to go to emerge from their ideological fog and perhaps must travel an even twistier road to reclaim their city.

By getting rid of Boudin — and three pretty rotten school board members in another recent recall election — San Franciscans have taken the first steps back to something like sanity. Which always makes next steps easier.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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general freedom ideological culture media and media people

Showcialism, Schmocialism

Americans have never gotten into “socialism” like the rest of the world. This places pushers of socialistic ideas in a tricky situation. So they often defend socialism in less than honest ways. 

William Neuman, formerly of the New York Times, is a current example of this. St. Martin’s has just published his Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela, and boy, do we get a story.

Hugo Chávez called himself a socialist, repeatedly, but Neuman won’t accept it. Why? Venezuela was basically ruined by Chávez and his henchmen and successors. So the former New York Times reporter provides excuses. 

Which is not to say I have read his book, or will. I am entirely trusting a review by Jim Epstein, at Reason, and agreeing per a plethora of other examples with Epstien’s critique of Neuman’s denialism.

While Neuman insists that Chávez was, in effect, a SINO (Socialist In Name Only), using the s‑word just as cover — “showcialismo” — Epstein takes us back to reality. “One classic definition of socialism is government control of the means of production. Chávez nationalized banks, oil companies, telecommunications, millions of acres of farmland, supermarkets, stores, the cement industry” and on and on. Now wonder, then, that “nationalization led to deterioration, abandonment, and collapse.”

Neuman cannot blame socialism, oh no. So he lamely argues it was just “bad management.”

But that is what socialism is, and must be. Even when managed by the very best experts, those experts must fail, in the end, because they lack the expertise that counts — the know-​how that is spread out among all participants in society. 

Markets leverage that knowledge best.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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free trade & free markets ideological culture

The Woke Mob’s Capitalism

A prominent rating system has gone “woke.”

“Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500,” Elon Musk tweeted a few weeks ago, “while Tesla” — the billionaire’s high-​end electric car company — “didn’t make the list! ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”

We could quibble. Is “phony” the right word? “Social justice” has always been slippery. It’s a “mirage,” explained Hayek, really just a stalking horse for power.

What Musk is objecting to, though, is worth thinking about. The ESG standard is supposed to mean something … based on objective criteria. The reasons to eject Tesla from its Top Ten and place Exxon at the pinnacle are laughably transparent. It’s a woke power grab. The leftist ideology has taken over another capitalist institution, the better to create …

What?

Socialism? Fascism?

Michael Rectenwald, in a fascinating essay, calls it “woke corporatism.” 

The plan is, he writes, to “establish a woke monopolistic cartel.” Musk’s company has been “subjected to the S in ESG — the ‘social’ or ‘social justice’ quotient.”

Musk, Rectenwald argues, “has been deemed a deplorable, and thus his company does not pass ‘social justice’ muster.” In other words, the putatively pro-​inclusion folks are excluding him from the ranks of the favored.

And all because he wants free speech on a social media platform!

Laissez-​faire grew out of economists’ objections to the grinding inefficiency and over-​politicization of business. Adam Smith, back in 1776, called the pre-​liberal, insider-​based trade system “mercantilism.”

The leftist mob now pushes a neo-neo-​mercantalism, mobocracy capitalism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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education and schooling ideological culture

The Enforcers of Conformity

In the American academe of 2022, you never know who will be next on the chopping block for disputing the latest insanities. At the moment, that someone is former Princeton University classics professor Joshua Katz.

Katz is supposedly being fired for a relationship he had with a student 15 years ago and for which he was penalized in 2017. Actually, it’s for exposing the racist assumptions of so-​called antiracism in a 2020 article.

It seems Princeton has been itching for an excuse to can him. Last year, the university found its excuse when the student involved in the older controversy, provoked by the new one, revived the old complaint.

Katz’s lawyer, Samantha Harris, says “the message to would-​be dissenters is clear: the price of speaking out is having your personal life turned inside out looking for information to destroy you.”

Only a few colleagues have publicly supported Professor Katz.

Or even still talk to him. 

More have joined the bandwagon against him. When it’s been most urgent to profess the truth, these professors have preferred a “safer” path.

In 2020, Katz wrote: “The pressure to apologize . . . to appease one’s tormentors can be tremendous, but do not give in to the pressure. If you feel you did no wrong, do not apologize.”

If Professor Katz wants to put this nightmare behind him, I’d understand. If he wants to sue Princeton for a billion dollars or so, well, I’d understand that too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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ideological culture partisanship

Ultra-​Dumb

A turn in rhetoric caught the attention of the attention-catchers.

On Friday, USA Today explained “Why Biden is blasting the ‘ultra MAGA’ agenda, not Donald Trump, in his midterm push.” The paper explained that Biden, seeking “to avert a midterm disaster that would all but end his domestic agenda,” is pointedly not mentioning the name of his predecessor in office.

“Instead, the White House works aggressively to paint Republicans and their policies as an ‘ultra MAGA agenda’ in a push to overcome the president’s brutal approval ratings and voters’ frustration with high inflation to help Democrats maintain control of Congress.”

Jenn Psaki, on the way out as the president’s press secretary, attributed the “ultra MAGA” epithet to none other than that genius specimen of Homo politicus himself, Joe Biden. But, as reported in the Washington Post, that’s just another whopper for the cameras and the gullible.

Actually, the Post didn’t put it like that. “The attack line followed months of testing from the Center for American Progress Action Fund,” writes USA Today, summarizing the Post’s reportage. “Democrats believe ‘ultra MAGA’ tells a story of a movement that’s no longer just about Trump.”

Democrats are right … in that “ultra MAGA” does tell a story.

Democrats are wrong … to imagine it could dissuade Republicans. Many conservatives now embrace the epithet, mocking Democrats for thinking they’ve found the key to unlocking Democratic success in the upcoming mid-terms.

While I won’t be embracing Ultra for my messaging — is Ultra Freedom or Ultra Responsibility or Ultra Accountability on the menu? No? Then: no! — I can join conservatives in shaking my head at rule by focus group.

And President Biden’s calling MAGA “the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history?”

The charge — coming from the party of riots, lockdowns, shortages, and inflation — seems ultra-suspect.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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