Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Leftism and Political Correctness

  • Next Stop the Twilight Zone: Forbidden Descriptors

    Here.  Hardly a day goes by without a half-dozen new examples of willful liberal stupidity.  It has to be willful: nobody could be this inherently devoid of common sense. Related articles A Hitchcock-Serling Coincidence Kitties Crepuscular Jack Klugman and The Twilight Zone

  • The PC-Whipped Germans

    This is unbelievable.  (HT: Mike Valle)

  • Copy Editors and Political Correctness

    The Recent Referrers list pointed me to this old Feser post that links to a similar protest of mine.  Excerpt: At least the PC “non-sexist” stuff is not entirely the fault of copy editors, however. Many publishers of academic books and journals insist on this “inclusive language” nonsense, and it is an outrage. It is bad…

  • Liberal Education and Government Abuses

    Peter Berkowitz has an excellent column  under an awful title: Tenets of Liberal Education Underpin Government Abuses.  (I am assuming, perhaps wrongly, that Berkowitz chose the title.)  The problem is not liberal education.  The problem is the hijacking of liberal education by leftists, and the PoMo Prez who is a product of left-hijacked educational institutions. …

  • Universities as Leftist Seminaries

    'Seminary,' like 'seminar,' is etymologically related to 'semen,' seed.  seminary (n.) mid-15c., "plot where plants are raised from seeds," from Latin seminarium "plant nursery," figuratively, "breeding ground," from seminarius "of seed," from semen (genitive seminis) "seed" (see semen). Meaning "school for training priests" first recorded 1580s; commonly used for any school (especially academies for young…

  • L.A. Schools: No Suspension/Expulsion for Willful Defiance

    I said a few entries back that liberals lack common sense. Here is further proof, as if further proof is needed: This week, the Los Angeles Unified School District—the second-largest in the nation—decided to end the practice of suspending or expelling students for "willful defiance," starting this fall. District officials said the practice disproportionately affects…

  • What is to be Done?

    What is to be done about the threat of radical Islam?  After explaining the problem, Pat Buchanan gives his answer: How do we deal with this irreconcilable conflict between a secular West and a  resurgent Islam? First, as it is our presence in their world that enrages so many, we should  end our interventions, shut down…

  • The Liberal Quota Mentality Illustrated Once Again

    If blacks make up 12% of the student population, then blacks ought to make up 12% of school expulsions.  Fair is fair.  Discrimination on the basis of skin color is wrong.  But in Clark County, Nevada, in 2009-2010 black student expulsions were at 43% of the student population.  So Clark County is racist.  Blacks are being targeted…

  • Your Federal Right Not to be Offended

    Here Related: Of Black Holes and Political Correctness: If You Take Offense, Is that My Fault? We were talking of Hawking.  I said 'black hole.'  You heard 'black ho' and took offense . . . . Is that my problem? Do you really want to maintain that something is offensive just in virtue of someone's…

  • Critical Thinking Versus Utopian Thinking

    Critical thinking is not necessarily opposed to the status quo. To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, to assess, to assay, to  evaluate. The etymology of krinein suggests as much. A critical thinker may well end up supporting the existing state of things in this or that respect. It is a fallacy of…

  • The Madness of Liberal Moralizing

    Heather Mac Donald's piece starts off like this: The paradoxes of liberal morality were on glaring display last week. The Obama administration OK’d the sale of “Plan B” post-coital emergency contraception over the counter without prescription (or parental consent) to girls as young as 15. At the same time, the City Council moved a step…

  • Psychological Projection and its Dangers

    I have found that it is dangerous to assume that others are essentially like oneself. Psychologists speak of projection. As I understand it, it involves projecting into others one's own attitudes, beliefs, motivations, fears, emotions, desires, values, and the like.  It is classified as a defense mechanism.  To avoid confronting an unsavory attitude or trait in…

  • Ron Radosh on Salman Rushdie and the Left’s Moral Equivalentism

    I was about to write an entry on Rushdie's recent NYT op-ed, but Radosh has done the job and has done it well.  Excerpt: A good example of the old moral equivalence was to equate the Gulag in the Soviet Union, in which hundreds of thousands were imprisoned, starved to death and executed in massive frame-ups,…

  • Islam, Radical Islam, and the Left’s Denial of the Threat

    In the nine years I have been blogging I have been careful to distinguish between Islam and radical Islam (militant Islam, Islamism, Islamofascism, etc.)  I can't say I have had any really good reason for this charitableness on my part.  Perhaps it is that I just didn't want to believe that 'moderate Muslim' is as much…

  • Promiscuous Post-Modern PC Prudes

    What follows is the whole of Victor Davis Hanson's Promiscuous Prudes with a bit of commentary. More than 500 people were murdered in Chicago last year. Yet Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel still found time to berate the fast food franchise Chick-fil-A for not sharing "Chicago values" — apparently because its founder does not approve of…