Race – Page 11 – Maverick Philosopher

There is no Systemic Racism

The Democrat Party is a party of race-hustlers. Clear proof of this is their endlessly repeated lie about 'systemic' or 'structural' or 'institutional' racism. David Horowitz, Big Agenda (Humanix, 2017), p. 51:

While institutional or systemic racism has been illegal in America for 50 years, the 2016 Democratic Party platform promises that "Democrats will fight to end institutional and systemic racism in our society." There is no evidence that such racism actually exists. It is asserted in a sleight of hand that attributes every statistical disparity affecting allegedly "oppressed" groups to prejudice against them because of their identity. This "prejudice," however, is a progressive myth. This is not to say that there aren't individuals who are prejudiced. But there is no systemic racism in America's institutions, and if there is, it is already illegal and easily remedied.

The Dem's race-obsession is an amazing thing to behold. With every passing day it becomes more insane. An Asian man becomes the focus of a controversy because his surname 'Lee,' which is a mere sound-preserving transliteration of some Asian characters, reminds some idiots of Robert E. Lee. Soon thereafter, a banana peel ignites a controversy at Ole Miss. One can only hope that the Dems keep it up and destroy themselves. They have found that playing the race card has gotten them what they want in many cases. But they need to think twice about transforming every card in the deck into a race card. For while the leaders of the party are extremists, many of the rank and file retain a modicum of common sense.

Liberals Need to Preach What They Practice

Liberals who have amounted to something in life through advanced study, hard work, deferral of gratification, self-control, accepting responsibility for their actions and the rest of the old-fashioned virtues are often strangely hesitant to preach these conservative virtues to those most in need of them. These liberals live Right and garner the benefits, but think Left.

They do not make excuses for themselves, but they do for others. And what has worked for them they do not think will work for others. Their attitude is curiously condescending. If we conservatives used 'racist' as loosely and irresponsibly as they do, we might even tag their attitude 'racist.'

It is the 'racism' of reduced expectations.

It is not enough to practice what you preach; you must also preach what you practice.

Law professors Amy Wax and and Larry Alexander have recently come under vicious fire for pointing out the obvious: many of our social problems are rooted in a collapse of middle-class cultural norms. But it is a good bet that the leftist scum who attacked them live by, and owe their success to, those very same 'racist' norms. It is an equally good bet that they impose them on their children.

Now let me see if I understand this. The bourgeois values and norms are 'racist' because blacks are incapable of studying, working hard, deferring gratification, controlling their exuberance, respecting legitimate authority and the like?

But surely blacks are capable of these things. So who are the 'racists' here? The conservatives who want to help blacks by teaching them values that are not specifically white, but universal in their usefulness, or the leftists who think blacks incapable of assimilating such values?

Or is it something like the opposite of 'cultural appropriation'? Is it that whites violate and destroy black 'culture' by imposing on blacks white values that blacks cannot appropriate and turn to use? But of course the values are not 'white' but universally efficacious.

Just as self-control helps keep me alive, self-control would have kept Trayvon Martin alive if had had any. And the same goes for Michael Brown of Ferguson.

Kimball on Stove on Race

Roger Kimball, Who Was David Stove? Excerpt:

Stove’s essay “Racial and Other Antagonisms” is similarly emollient. He begins by noting that some degree of friction is the common if not the inevitable result when “two races of people have been in contact for long.” Only in the twentieth century, however, has such antagonism been described as a form of “prejudice.” Why? Earlier ages had the concept, and the word. Part of the reason, Stove suggests, is that by christening racial animosity “racial prejudice” we transform it into an intellectual fault, i.e., a false or irrational belief that might be cured by education—and this, Stove observes, “is a distinctly cheering thing to imply.” Alas, while it is certainly true that racial antagonism is often accompanied by false or irrational beliefs about the other race, it is by no means clear that it depends upon them. And if it doesn’t, education will be little more than liberal window dressing.

Stove’s essay on race is full of discomfiting observations. He defines “racism”—a neologism so recent, he points out, that it was not in the OED in 1971—as the belief that “some human races are inferior to others in certain respects, and that it is sometimes proper to make such differences the basis of our behaviour towards people.” Although this proposition is constantly declared to be false, Stove says, “everyone knows it is true, just as everyone knows it is true that people differ in age, sex, health, etc., and that it is sometimes proper to make these differences the basis of our behaviour towards them.” For example,

if you are recruiting potential basketball champions, you would be mad not to be more interested in American Negroes than in Vietnamese… . Any rational person, recruiting an army, will be more interested in Germans than in Italians. If what you want in people is aptitude for forming stable family-ties, you will prefer Italians or Chinese to American Negroes. Pronounced mathematical ability is more likely to occur in an Indian or a Hungarian than in an Australian Aboriginal. If you are recruiting workers, and you value docility above every other trait in a worker, you should prefer Chinese to white Americans. And so on.

Stove readily admitted that some of these traits may be culturally rather than genetically determined. But he went on to observe that “they are still traits which are statistically associated with race, well enough, to make race a rational guide in such areas of policy as recruitment or immigration.” As I say, David Stove would not have been made to feel welcome at many American colleges or universities.

……………………………………..

It can't be racist if it's true. Now what Stove says above is true, except when he says that "everyone knows it is true." There are people who sincerely believe it to be false. But surely most of us know that it is true even if we won't admit it publicly. In any case, what Stove says above is true, and it can't be racist if its true, whence it follows that Stove violates ordinary usage when he defines 'racism' as he does. And that is a foolish thing to do. Meaning is tied to use, and only a linguistic Don Quixote tilts against the windmills of prevalent usage. To shift metaphors, some words and phrases are just not candidates for semantic rehabilitation.

Stove needs a different word. Whatever word that is, it won't be 'racism.' 'Racism' is currently used to label an attitude of irrational hatred of members of a race not one's own precisely because they are members of a race not one's own.

It is obvious that one's acceptance of the Stovian truths does not entail that he bears any racial animosity to anyone.

I have just engaged in some clear thinking and truth-telling. But what's the point in a world becoming stupider and crazier by the day?

You are not a Racist if You Speak the Truth about Race

My title answers the question I posed in my post Are the Police Racist? I asked:

If a statement about race is true, is one a racist for making it? Is one a racist for reporting the following?

Homicide numbers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976–2005 indicate that young African-American males account for homicide victims at levels that are ten to 20 times greater than their proportion of the population and account for homicide offenders at levels that are 15 to 35 times greater than their proportion of the population.

I received two intelligent responses one in agreement, the other in disagreement. Here is the first:

[A leftist I am reading] argues, and this touches your point, that propaganda can consist of claims that are true and made sincerely. Such as ‘there are Muslims among us’, which is true, and does not even communicate something false (namely that Muslims are inherently dangerous to others), but rather is misleading. ‘It simply does not follow that the flawed ideological belief that makes some claim effective as propaganda is expressed or communicated in that claim’. I think he would treat the statement you quote in the same way.

Homicide numbers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976–2005 indicate that young African-American males account for homicide victims at levels that are ten to 20 times greater than their proportion of the population and account for homicide offenders at levels that are 15 to 35 times greater than their proportion of the population.

Is that true? Damned right. Is it made sincerely? Surely so. But it is effective propaganda because misleading, according to him. Bizarrely, he says that the word ‘welfare’ does not appear on any banned list, yet always conveys ‘a problematic social meaning’. Even a word like ‘mother’ is problematic (has a ‘harmful social meaning’) whenever it is used. F–k me.

BV: Leftists subscribe to the hermeneutics of suspicion. Thus they refuse to take what conservatives say at face value as expressing a sincerely held opinion based in empirical fact. If I cite the FBI statistic, I am speaking in a 'code' using 'dog whistles' that other conservatives can hear. So if I say that blacks as a group are more criminally prone than whites, what I am really saying is that blacks have to be kept in their place or hunted down. I am legitimating their alleged unjust 'mass incarceration.' I am condoning the alleged murder of the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown of Ferguson. (The truth, of course, is that these two youths were not murdered but brought about their own deaths by their immoral, illegal, and extremely foolish behavior.) Thus leftists ignore the manifest meaning of what the conservative says and seek out some latent 'ideological' meaning, where ideology has the Marxist sense of a legitimation of existing relations of power and domination.

It has been said, correctly in the main, that for a conservative, leftists are wrong, whereas for a leftist, conservatives are evil. It is because they regard us as evil that they refuse to accord us respect as rational interlocutors with a point of view worth examining. This is why they exclude conservative speakers and shout down those who somehow make it onto campus. This is why they pepper us with purely emotive epithets such as 'fascist' and the 'phobe' constructions which are designed to impugn our sanity.

So when I cite the FBI stat to explain why blacks are 'over-represented' in the prison system I am accused of retailing racist propaganda when I am simply speaking the truth.

I am one of those conservatives who think that leftists (including most contemporary liberals) are not merely wrong but morally defective people. They deny the plain truth and slander their opponents. They don't value free speech. They have no understanding of the values of the university. They enable and apologize for barbarians.

Part of what fuels their destructive worldview is the false empirical belief that every group is equally competent and qualified at everything so that if one group does worse than another the explanation has to be that they have been put upon, held back, oppressed, marginalized, victimized. So women and men are innately just as good at the STEM disciplines — which is false — and if you suggest otherwise as James Damore did, you lose your job at Google. Even more absurd is the belief that men and women as groups are equally competent in all combat roles in the military and that to suggest otherwise is to promote unjust discrimination.

My theory is that the Christian metaphysical belief that we are all equal before God as persons got secularized after the death of God (in Nietzsche's sense) into a false empirical belief that we are all equal in empirical fact, and that indications to the contrary can be explained away in terms of racism, sexism, ageism, etc.

The other response I got in effect points out that truths about race and ethnicity can be asserted with scurrilous intent. Now that of course is true. I've made the point myself more than once.

Suppose I encounter a man in a wheel chair, a man without legs. If I say, "You, sir, have no legs!" I speak the truth, but commit a low-level moral offense. There are truths the enunciation of which is morally contraindicated in certain circumstances.

So of course a racist could cite the FBI statistic in a scurrilous way.

But the issue is precisely this: if you speak the truth about race it does not follow that you are a racist. For your intentions may be good and what you say may be something that needs to be heard.

Are the Police Racist?

A short video by Heather MacDonald. Can you spare five and one half minutes?

Question for liberals: If a statement about race is true, is one a racist for making it? Is one a racist for reporting the following?

Homicide numbers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976–2005 indicate that young African-American males account for homicide victims at levels that are ten to 20 times greater than their proportion of the population and account for homicide offenders at levels that are 15 to 35 times greater than their proportion of the population.

Do Black Lives Matter?

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am not now, and never have been, a Southerner, a redneck, a plantation owner, slave holder, apologist for slavery, Civil War re-enactor on the Confederate (or Union) side, racist, or white supremacist.

I condemn slavery as a grave moral evil. I also condemn abortion as a grave moral evil.

Holding that all lives matter, I hold that black lives matter, including unborn black lives.

Why the Left Can’t Let Go of Racism

Shelby Steele on the racism racket.

After actual racist oppression of blacks was eliminated, the Left invented 'structural,' 'systemic,' or 'institutional' racism to keep the race hustle going. It was plain to objective investigators that the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown had nothing to do with race hatred. Those two brought about their own deaths by their own bad behavior. But since they happened to be black, the Left seized on their deaths as examples of the imaginary construct, 'structural racism.'

Victor Davis Hanson on Joan Baez and Abolitio Memoriae

In Our War Against Memory, Hanson writes (hyperlinks added),

How about progressive icon Joan Baez? Should the Sixties folksinger seek forgiveness from us for reviving her career in the early 1970s with the big money-making hit “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”— her version of The Band’s sympathetic ode to the tragedy of a defeated Confederacy, written over a century after the Civil War. (“Back with my wife in Tennessee / When one day she called to me / Said, “Virgil, quick, come see / There goes the Robert E. Lee!”) If a monument is to be wiped away, then surely a popular song must go, too.

[. . .]

The logical trajectory of tearing down the statue of a Confederate soldier will soon lead to the renaming of Yale, the erasing of Washington and Jefferson from our currency, and the de-Trotskyization of every mention of Planned Parenthood’s iconic Margaret Singer, the eugenicist whose racist views on abortion anticipated those of current liberal Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (Ginsburg said, “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”)

[. . .]

The strangest paradox in the current epidemic of abolitio memoriae is that our moral censors believe in ethical absolutism and claim enough superior virtue to apply it clumsily across the ages — without a clue that they fall short of their own moral pretensions, and that one day their own icons are as likely be stoned as the icons of others are now apt to be torn down by black-mask-wearing avengers.

A final paradox about killing the dead: Two millennia after Roman autocrats’ destruction of statues, and armed with the creepy 20th-century model of Fascists and Communists destroying the past, we, of a supposedly enlightened democracy, cannot even rewrite history by democratic means — local, state, and federal commission recommendations, referenda, or majority votes of elected representatives. More often, as moral cowards, we either rely on the mob or some sort of executive order enforced only in the dead of night.

More on Dreher vs Buchanan on “All Men are Created Equal” and White Supremacy

Dr. Patrick Toner comments and I respond in blue:

Your piece on Dreher and Buchanan accepts Dreher's overall reading (or misreading, as I see it) of Buchanan's argument — you seem to accept that Buchanan actually means to somehow call into doubt the metaphysical doctrine of the equality of men. This seems clearly wrong to me.

But before coming to that point, I want to check with you about another thing, namely, Dreher's accusation that Buchanan is openly endorsing white supremacy in his essay. Things you've said elsewhere about the failure to define terms such as "white supremacy" make me hesitant to actually ascribe to you the belief that Buchanan is a white supremacist, but if that's right–if you aren't accepting the white supremacy charge–at any rate nothing in Sunday's piece makes that explicit. And when you end your piece by talking about Buchanan "apparently repudiating" the doctrine of equality, there is at least a hint that you're willing to accept the charge.

BV: Thank you for these fine comments, Patrick. As a philosopher you understand the importance of defining terms. And yet you haven't offered us a definition of 'white supremacist.' Absent a definition, we cannot reasonably discuss whether or not Pitchfork Pat is a white supremacist, and whether the white supremacy charge is clearly bunk as you claim it is.

We could mean different things by the phrase 'white supremacist' and cognates. I hope you will agree with me, however, that the phrase is actually used by most people emotively as a sort of semantic bludgeon or verbal cudgel for purely polemical purposes in much the same way that 'racist,' 'Islamophobe,' 'fascist,' and other emotive epithets are used. On this usage, no morally decent and well-informed person could be a white supremacist. The implication is that a white supremacist is a bigot, i.e., an unreasonably intolerant person who hates others just because they are different. It is a term of very serious disapprobation.

I would guess that you understand 'white supremacist' in something very close to this sense — which is why you take umbrage at Dreher's claim that Buchanan is a white supremacist. Bear in mind that that is Dreher's claim. I don't make it. My point of agreement with Dreher is solely on the question of the meaning of "All men are created equal." It is spectacularly clear that, in the piece in question, Buchanan shows a lack of understanding of the meaning of the sentence. Buchanan reads it as an empirical claim subject to falsification by experience. It is not, as I explain in my parent post. Here again is what he wrote:

“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?

I was really surprised when I read that. It occurred to me that it might just be a slip occasioned by old age, anger at recent developments, or too much Irish whisky.

Now consider the following candidate definition of 'white supremacist.'

D1. A white supremacist is one who holds that the culture and civilization produced by whites is, on balance, superior to the cultures and civilizations produced by all other racial groups.

One could be a white supremacist in this sense and hold all of the following: (a) Slavery is a grave moral evil; (b) All men are created equal in the sense I explained; (c) No citizen should be excluded from the franchise because of race; (d) No citizen should be excluded from holding public office because of race; (e) All citizens regardless of race are equal before the law.

Buchanan might well be a white supremacist in the (D1)-sense. Here is a bit of evidence: "Was not the British Empire, one of the great civilizing forces in human history, a manifestation of British racial superiority?" Buchanan is not saying that the Brits merely thought themselves to be racially superior but that they really were.

I think the white supremacy charge is clearly bunk–or at any rate, I'll say this: nothing in that particular column of Buchanan's can reasonably support a charge of white supremacy. And I don't say that on the basis that "white supremacy" hasn't been adequately defined, or any other such technicality. I just mean it should be clear that Buchanan's point is not to endorse white supremacy, but simply to point out that if that charge applies to Lee and co, then it applies to Washington and Jefferson and co, and indeed then we need to throw out the whole western culture that gave us the metaphysical doctrine of equality.

BV: Again, unless you tell us what you mean by 'white supremacy,' there is no way to evaluate what you are saying. The matter of definition is not a mere technicality; it is crucial. I sketched two senses of 'white supremacist,' the 'semantic bludgeon' sense and (D1). Now I agree that Buchanan is not a white supremacist in the first sense, but it looks like he is in the second. So I totally reject your claim that "nothing in that particular column of Buchanan's can reasonably support a charge of white supremacy."

You are also failing to appreciate that, just like an alt-righty, he shows no understanding of "All men are created equal." He is clearly giving it an empirical sense. That's blindingly obvious. Now I am going just on this one column. Perhaps in other works he says something intelligent on this point. This is why Dreher is right against Buchanan despite the former's over-the-top rhetoric.

And then on to the next point: having thrown out the grounding upon which that doctrine stands, upon what shall we build our egalitarian utopia? We can't re-establish the equality doctrine on some universally-acceptable empirical ground! Buchanan doesn't doubt the equality doctrine: he points out that the iconoclasts seeking to build their new world on it, have no basis upon which to rationally accept it. It's not a new or brilliant claim–it's pretty standard and obvious, I'd have thought.

BV: I am not quite sure what you are driving at here, but a tripartite distinction may help:

a) The Declaration sentence is empirical but false.

b) The Declaration sentence is empirical and true.

c) The Declaration sentence is metaphysical, and thus non-empirical.

The alt-righties accept (a). The loons on the Left accept (b). You and I accept (c). You and I agree that the equality doctrine cannot be built on empirical ground. I would guess that you and I also agree that if the Declaration sentence is making an empirical claim, then that claim is false.

I wrote this up yesterday in a little blog post, and I'm encouraged a bit in my reading (not that, in truth, I doubted it before!) by finding this column (not by Buchanan) posted today on Buchanan's website.

Generally, I try to follow the advice of Thoreau, "read not the Times, read the eternities," and so I ignore such issues. But I do read your blog faithfully, and for some reason–maybe just a lingering respect for Buchanan, who has always struck me as a decent man–you prompted me to read a bit of political ephemera to try to sort it out. :)

I hope you're doing well!

BV: Thank you, sir. I think we agree on the main issues, except that I really think it is important to define 'white supremacist' and not bandy it about unclarified.

I too love the Thoreau aphorism (and I'll bet you found it on my site; if not, forgive me my presumption) but I would add that in dangerous times one has to attend to the Times lest our enemies win and make it impossible for us to read the Eternities. Boethius was able to do philosophy in a prison cell, but most of us lesser mortal are not Boethian in this regard.

Keep your powder dry! (May the loons of the Left vex themselves over whether this is some sort of 'dog whistle.' It does have a Pitchfork Pat, "locked and loaded" ring to it.)

I’m a Racist Because I Like Chess

I left the house at 5:15 this morning, hiked 45 minutes over the local hills to arrive at 6:00 sharp at Gecko Espresso where I met up with Lowell S. a local chess aficionado. We played under the influence of caffeine for a solid two hours, one game, recorded, to be analyzed when next we meet. I checkmated the old man.

Chess is a delightful game, especially when you win. An oasis of sanity in an insane world. But we must admit that it is a deeply racist game and that all who play it are racists. The following excerpt from a cognate post explains why.

Another proof that chess is racist and oppressive and ought to be banned is that blacks are woefully under-represented among its players. This evil can have only one explanation: racist suppression of black players. For everyone knows that blacks as a group are the equals of whites as a group in respect of intelligence, interest in chess, and the sorts of virtues needed to play the undemocratic and reactionary 'Royal Game.' Among these are the ability to study hard, defer gratification, and keep calm in trying situations.

For these and many other reasons, we must DEMAND that chess be banned.

We must manifest solidarity with our oppressed Taliban brothers who have maintained, truly, that chess is an evil game of chance.

Some Questions About White Privilege

A demanding entry from 1 September 2014. Not for liberals. It requires thought.

What is White Supremacy?

Robert Paul Wolff offers the following:

Hatred has fundamentally very little to do with White Supremacy. White Supremacy is a policy of domination and economic superiority of Whites in a multi-racial society. African-Americans are not worried about whether White people want to be friends. Most of the African-Americans I know have quite enough friends, thank you very much. African-Americans demand legal, economic, and political equality. And that terrifies many Whites, who do not want to give up the superior legal, political, and economic position in American society that they acquired through being born White.

Perhaps Malcolm Pollack will comment on this definition over at his place. He tilts in the alt-right direction; I reject the alt-right.

Here are some preliminary thoughts/questions of my own.

1) If White Supremacy is a policy, who is implementing it? The government? Is the government insuring the economic superiority of Whites? How? By what programs?

2) Blacks have every right to demand legal and political equality, but they cannot reasonably demand economic equality. That is something they have to work for.

3) Whites are in an economically superior position to blacks, no doubt, but one cannot validly infer from this that Blacks have been unjustly discriminated against.

4) It is false that Whites enjoy by birth legal and political privileges denied to Blacks. If you think they do, name the privileges.

5) Suppose a white Southerner considers slavery a grave moral evil and is glad the Union was preserved. He opposes, however, the Left's iconoclasm re: statues of Robert E. Lee, et al. Is this person a White supremacist?

6) If 'white supremacist' is not to be just another smear word like 'racist,' then it has to be defined. How ought it be defined?

7) Suppose Whites as a group are superior to Blacks as a group in some respect R, and suppose Jones points this out. Is Jones a white supremacist with respect to R? This raises the question: How can White Supremacism with respect to R be a bad thing, which it is supposed to be, if it is true?

8) Wolff's decoupling of White Supremacy from hatred suggests that he is thinking of it as something 'institutional' or 'systemic.' Are our institutions white supremacist? What might that even mean given that our institutions allowed for the elimination of slavery and Jim Crow?

Addendum (8/18)

Malcolm Pollack responds, and I agree (red emphasis mine, italics his):

Consider: a generation of identitarian politics across the West has deliberately cultivated tribal resentments among non-whites. For decades white people have been blamed in media and academia for all the world’s ills, while aggressive immigration policies have openly sought to make them minorities in every one of their homelands (a prospect that is widely celebrated in our mainstream institutions). In colleges and universities, white applicants are disfavored for admission, while curricula feature pugnacious courses on eliminating “whiteness”. At the Academy Awards, a black actor says of his latest film “I get to kill all the white people! How great is that?”, and the audience laughs and cheers.

Is it any wonder, then, that in this toxic climate, many white people are developing a sense of identitarianism themselves? This is not “supremacy”; it is nothing more than an perfectly natural (and, therefore, easily predictable) sense of unity and belonging, in an explicitly and increasingly hostile environment. Express this readily understandable sentiment in public, however, and you are now a “white supremacist” — and your sense of identity is not mere attachment, but can only be “hate”.

“White supremacist”, then, is nothing more than a cudgel, to be used without mercy against anyone who says, however reluctantly, that: yes, we are white, and we are not ashamed of it, and if you are determined to divide all of society into competing racial groups, then our people will have to play the game too. It is a truly awful state of affairs, and it will all get much, much worse before it gets any better. “Diversity is our strength”? Rubbish. As we are already learning to our sorrow, it is anything but: it is the death of peace and order and comity, and, at last, of nations and cultures.

In Case You Missed It

Can One Change One's Race? A critique of Rebecca Tuvel's notorious article. Written sine ira et studio. Just a calm refutation.

Alan Dershowitz is a Racist!

So says Maxine Waters. I have some advice for this sorry specimen: Lie about others and they may tell the truth about you.

The Bret Weinstein-Heather Heying Caper at Evergreen State

Having come to expect lunacy from lefties, I was not dismayed, but entertained, by the absurd bigotry that seeps out of the following passage from this Chronicle of Higher Education piece:

Now the couple weighed a new option. A producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight, a prime-time show on Fox News, had asked if Mr. Weinstein wanted to make his case to the conservative commentator and his millions of viewers.

It was a nauseating thought, says Ms. Heying. Theirs was an NPR family. Back in college, Mr. Weinstein had stood up to fraternities at the University of Pennsylvania over sexist and racist behavior at their parties. In an ideal world, says Ms. Heying, they would have talked to The New York Times or The Washington Post. But that’s not who had come calling.

"He was horrified, I was horrified," Ms. Heying told The Chronicle. "Tucker Carlson is someone he mocks in his classes."

Weinstein teaches biology and he wastes class time on political commentary and mockery of talk show hosts?

One thing I do like about lefties, though, is that they eat their own with a hunger and ferocity unlike anything on the Right. The 'progressive' Weinstein, who is now a 'racist,' is learning this the hard way. May he come to his senses. May he come to appreciate that conservatives are the new liberals, and liberals the new fascists.

I have written a number of articles critical of NPR and PBS. Here is an excerpt from National Public Radio and the Tit of the State:

"If the product is so superior, why does it have to live on the tit of the State?" (Charles Krauthammer)

One answer is that the booboisie of these United States is too backward and benighted to appreciate the high level of NPR programming. The rubes of fly-over country are too much enamored of wrestling, tractor pulls, and reality shows, and, to be blunt, too stupid and lazy to take in superior product.

Being something of an elitist myself, I am sympathetic to this answer. The problem for me is twofold. NPR is run by lefties for lefties. That in itself is not a problem. But it is a most serious problem when part of the funding comes from the taxpayer. But lefties, blind to their own bias, don't see the problem. Very simply, it is wrong to take money by force from people and then use it to promote causes that those people find offensive or worse when the causes have nothing to do with the legitimate functions of government. Planned Parenthood and abortion. NEA and "Piss Christ." Get it?