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education and schooling First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

The Controversialist

“Feminism is cancer.”

Milo Yiannopoulis is provocative. Apparently of violence as well as of thought.

Until very recently, best known for his Twitter presence (@nero) and his work at Breitbart, Mr. Yiannopoulis, a gay British man in his mid-​30s, has undertaken what he calls his “Dangerous Faggot Tour,” — speaking to anti-​left audiences in hired halls at the heart of the modern university.

He outrageously decries the regnant “Social Justice Warriors” of anti-​capitalism and intersectional feminism, and defends free speech and the candidacy of Donald Trump.

But obviously he is egging on the student mobs. One stunt was to take a poll asking whether the subject would rather his or her daughter get cancer or become a feminist.

Cancer, Milo chortles, was the overwhelming result.

Most people hate modern feminism, he says. It’s only on campuses that the youngsters are unhinged enough to believe that

  • rich, pampered college students are “oppressed” just because they are women or gay or trans; that
  • white men are “systemically” their “oppressors” and thus “privileged”; and that
  • there exists an overarching Patriarchy in capitalist America, but not in the Mideast.

So he is shouted at and “protested” everywhere he goes. This week, Black Lives Matter protesters basically took over an event at DePaul University, with a young woman invading Milo’s personal space, apparently (you decide) hitting him in the face during a Q and A.

The university, which had charged organizers a huge fee for “extra security,” did nothing. Milo’s suing to get back that payment — for services plainly not rendered.

Some patriarchy. Some privilege.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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DePaul University, Black Lives Matter , Social Justice Warriors, Dangerous Faggot Tour, Milo Yiannopoulis , provocative,

 

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

The Senator Intrudes

We know that the media in general, and Silicon Valley, too, have strong anti-​conservative biases — even if, in another sense, the Fourth Estate serves as almost the embodiment of one understanding of the conservative impulse: relentlessly upholding established institutions, against all attacks. The American media strongly defends the modern state; every program, it seems, is sacrosanct: the only thing wrong with Big, Intrusive Government is that it is not as Big and Intrusive as it should be.

This week, several ex-​Facebook news curators alleged systemic “political bias” in how stories receive the top spot in Facebook’s Trending news section. So Sen. John Thune (R‑S.D.) intrudes. He wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in his official capacity on the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Communication. Thune says that if Facebook is, in effect, promoting stories by means of a hidden political agenda, this amounts to something like a public fraud, which lies within this committee’s purview.

I don’t see how. And I really would like such biases and pseudo-​frauds to be dealt with by consumer pressure rather than government whip. And that should be without regard to the partisan stripe of the bias — or the whip.

Anthony L. Fisher, over at Reason, notes that the senator has a logic problem: he rests his case for government oversight of Facebook rules and consumer relations on the infamous “fairness doctrine,” which is not operative at this time, and which Thune has previously and repeatedly opposed.

And for good reason: the doctrine produced government-​enforced muting of speech, not fairness.

But this all may mean almost nothing. I’d never even noticed Facebook’s Trending section.

Have you?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Sen. John Thune, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, fairness doctrine, censorship

 


Photo of Sen. John Thune credit: Gage Skidmore on Flickr

 

Categories
ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Negative, Positively

In art class, students learn about “negative space,” how positively one can react to artistic representations and indications of absence, of the space between objects, “blank” space. This land of shadow and reified Absence can have a powerful impact on our perceptions.

Well, behold, the piece of work that is major-​party politics in America, 2016.

Usually we pretend that our elections are about what we approve of, about who and what we are for. But this year, with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton the likely nominees of their respective parties (Ted Cruz having pulled out after being trounced, Tuesday, in the Hoosier State, and John Kasich, likewise, yesterday morning), the positive spin on negativity will ramp up to new levels. As Anthony L. Fisher observed primary night on reason​.com, Trump and Clinton are the most- and second-​most hated major party politicians ever, polling the negatives “even higher than 2004-​era George W. Bush.” (Who won.)

With the negatives of both candidates looming so large, is it too obvious to take note of the high likelihood of an extremely negative campaign coming up?

Maybe we should gamble on the terms of opprobrium that will be let loose:

Traitor, incompetent, corrupt crony-​pushing insider, harpy of modish feminism.…

Buffoon, racist, corrupt crony capitalist, chauvinist of the vulgar tongue.…

Into this negative space we can expect a rush of interest in minor-​party challengers, Libertarians and Greens. Protest votes could hit new heights. And they might make a difference.

But can anyone really profit from such negative space? Color me dubious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Negative space, positive space, election, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump

 


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ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Austan Antic, Hey!

The other day, Fox News Network’s Bill O’Reilly asked University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee a question.  The subject was the socialistic gimme-​gimme attitude of youthful Bernie Sanders supporters. The previous segment, “Watters’ World,” had paraded interviews with a handful of college students, asking them to clarify just how much free stuff they wanted.

It was a funny segment, if you think young people talking foolishly about government is funny.

Calling Sanders “the Giveaway King,” O’Reilly asked Goolsbee his general impression of the gimme-​gimme attitude. It was the softest of softball questions. “What do you think about that?”

Talk about open-​ended. Any response given thus says a lot about the interviewee, seeing how broad he may answer.

“Well, look, I’ve told you I’ve never been a big fan of socialism,” spake President Obama’s famed advisor. “I’m an economics professor.” Chuckling, he went on. “I’ve got the sense you don’t want these people getting free air to breathe. You’d like them to mail in their checks to make sure they work for it.”

Goolsbee could have started off as sensibly as he ended: “I’m against free stuff. Socialism doesn’t work.…

He didn’t. He immediately reduced O’Reilly’s position to that of a straw man, using the reductio ad absurdum.

Why? For levity’s sake? Well, both O’Reilly and Goolsbee were jovial.…

But his nasty quip fulfilled a purpose, making sure that ideologues on the left continued to have license to think the worst about their opponents.

Thus Austan Goolsbee, despite his protests, carried water for crazed socialism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Austan Goolsbee , Bill O’Reilly, Bernie Sanders, free stuff

 


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Categories
Accountability crime and punishment folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Story, Story, Story

David Brooks has a story to tell you.

His New York Times op-​ed, yesterday, “The Danger of Single Story,” builds on a good premise: “each individual life contains a heterogeneous compilation of stories. If you reduce people to one, you’re taking away their humanity.”

Brooks puts a political edge on what otherwise might sound like a lesson in manners with his next sentence: “American politics has always been prone to single storyism — candidates reducing complex issues to simple fables. This year the problem is acute because Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the giants of Single Storyism.”

Brooks then asserts that Trump and Sanders share a similar story that they beat to death, “the alien invader story.”

You can see how it applies to Trump, a staunch opponent of illegal immigration. Aliens invade!

But Brooks recognizes that Sanders’s story is about “the evil entity called ‘the banks.’” Not exactly alien. This menace is home-​grown.

Then our pundit moves on to issues not in the single-​story vein of Trump and Sanders, and how what seem to be opposite stories (incarceration prevents crime; too much incarceration is a moral horror) can both be true.

Crime is low right now, but Brooks devotes most of this putative paean to multiple crime stories. The third Bernie story he takes a bite of, the $15 minimum wage, belies the Single Storyism charge. That is, the point of his essay.

Way to go, sophisticate.

He also draws a complete non sequitur: “Raising the minimum wage to $15 may make sense in rich areas.” Nothing he wrote gives any credibility to that. At best the hike would do nothing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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David Brooks, dichotomy, dualism, false, minimum wage, crime, illustration

 


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Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture individual achievement media and media people national politics & policies

Parker and the Pope

Kathleen Parker is far from my favorite columnist, but her Sunday column comparing Pope Francis and presidential aspirant Sen. Bernie Sanders regarding their shared message on economic fairness and equality of outcomes was well worth the effort.

She treats the men differently. She gives Pope Francis a pass because, as a religious leader, he “wants to raise consciousness about our obligation to the less fortunate,” while bashing Sanders, the politician, who “wants to restructure America’s economic institutions to ensure that money trickles down — mandatorily rather than charitably.”

“Let’s face it, most of us work hard … for a paycheck.” So Parker pointedly asks, “As the tax man chisels away at such monetary rewards, where goes the incentive to work hard?”

How persuasive — encouraging actual, real-​world achievement — would a Sanders Four Year Plan be?

Addressing the Pope’s harsh words for individualism, Parker argues, “The ‘rampant individualism’ that Francis condemns is precisely what has driven American ingenuity, entrepreneurship and a level of prosperity unmatched in human history.”

Precisely.

In other words, maybe — just maybe — we did build it. Through our own sweat and toil. Individualism is decidedly not big government. And it is not public-​private crony capitalism, either.

So, considering that it was America’s laissez-faire-ism that created such great wealth and prosperity, which presidential candidates are promising a return to more robust and vivacious individualism?

Not the ones promising everything. Nor the one promising the “best deal.”

The job of the next heroic leader will be to shovel whole layers of intrusive government out of our way.

Parker seems on board, boasting, “This is common sense.”

Hey, wait a second, Kathleen, that is my line. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Kathleen Parker, Pope Francis, Bernie Sanders, economic fairness

 


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