Category Archives: Affirmative Action

Once Upon A Time: Intellectual Debate Before Institutional Rot

Affirmative Action, America, Britain, Education, Gender, Intelligence

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Brilliant British men and women, unlike their American counterparts, think it is “better to be paid with honor than with money.”–Gore Vidal.

In this clip, Frank Delaney talks to Enoch Powell and Gore Vidal, on BBC2, in December 19, 1982. A real treat. Agree or disagree with their banter, these are deep thinkers, adept at the conversational joust; at the art of repartee. When have we last heard this kind of quality conversation?

If only such brilliance were possible now on the national stage in either country. It’s not—purged by decades of anti-male, MeToo, affirmative action and other therapeutic and dumbing-down initiatives and policy sweeps.

In short: institutional rot.

 

 

  • Image of British politicians Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell at the Conservative Party Conference, Brighton, UK, 16th October 1965. (Photo by Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

UPDATE II (11/5): California Collapsing Under The Weight Of Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action, America, COVID-19, Energy, Free Markets, Intelligence

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When it is reported that “among the hundreds of people who handled the blackouts from Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s emergency operations center, only a handful had any training in the disaster response playbook that California has used for a generation”—you know this is a nice way of saying:

Affirmative action.

The Associated Press found that, “The utility entered 2019 planning to ‘de-energize’ its aging electric grid during autumn windstorms, so that downed lines couldn’t spark a blaze. Yet among the hundreds of people who handled the blackouts from PG&E’s emergency operations center, only a handful had any training in the disaster response playbook that California has used for a generation, The Associated Press found.”

The emergency personnel managing the blackouts for the nation’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Company,  delivers  third-world quality service to California.

From “When Merit-Based Hiring Is Deemed Racist, Bridges Fall Down”:

When the best-person-for-the-job ethos gives way to racial and gender window-dressing and to the enforcement of politically pleasing perspectives; things start to fall apart.
A spanking new bridge collapses, new trains on maiden trips derail, Navy ships keep colliding, police and FBI failure and bad faith become endemic, and the protocols put in place by a government ‘for the people’ protect offending public servants who’ve acted against the people.

You can be sure that the same fate awaits the task of contact tracing vis-a-vis COVID. It is a highly skilled endeavor, detective work, if you will. The South Koreans, for example, to it to perfection.

Contact-tracing, however, will be used as a job-creation opportunity for the government. Instead of merit-based appointments, state and federal authorities will make politically advantageous appointments .

AP News Wild Fire Hub.

UPDATE I (11/1):
Exactly. Even Tucker, commiserating with fleeing Californians, failed to mention that they pollute every other locality at which they arrive. Idaho, apparently, is getting toxic. How low IQ can you get? Escape a place due to x, y, z; replicate x, y, z in new home.

UPDATE II (11/05): Prop 16 in California may just fail, but, somehow, I think they’ll find a way to retain That Sinking Feeling.

NEW COLUMN: ‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?

Affirmative Action, America, Argument, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Race, Racism, South-Africa

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THE NEW COLUMN is “Systemic Racism Or Systemic Rubbish?” It was featured first on Townhall.com. It is also on WND.COM, the Unz Review and American Renaissance.

On Sunday, you can read it on the great American Greatness.

The column is first in a series of three. Excerpt:

The “systemic racism” refrain is a meaningless abstraction.

Operationalize the nebulous abstraction that is “systemic racism,” or get out of my face!

To concretize a variable, it must be cast in empirical, measurable terms–the opaque “racism” abstraction being one variable (to use statistical nomenclature).

Until you have meticulously applied research methodology to statistically operationalize this inchoate thing called “racism”—systemic or other—it remains nothing but thought crime:

Impolite and impolitic thoughts, spoken, written or preached.

Thought crimes are nobody’s business in a free society. (By logical extension, America is not a free society.)

The law already mandates that people of all races be treated equally under its protection. The law, then, is not the problem, logic is. In particular, the logical error of reasoning backward.

“Backward reasoning, expounded by mystery author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle through his famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes,” writes Dr. Thomas Young, “applies with reasonable certainty when only one plausible explanation for the … evidence exists.”

Systemic racism is most certainly not “the only plausible explanation” for the lag in the fortunes of African-Americans, although, as it stands, systemic racism is inferred solely from one single fact: In aggregate, African-Americans trail behind whites in assorted academic and socio-economic indices and achievements.

This logical error is the central tenet of preferential treatment—affirmative action, and assorted quotas and set-aside edicts and policies.

According to diversity doxology, justice is achieved only when racial and ethnic groups are reflected in academia and in the professions in proportion to their presence in the larger population. On indices of economic well-being, the same egalitarian outcomes are expected.

Equalizing individual and inter-group outcomes, however, is an impossibility, considering that it is axiomatically and self-evidently true to say that such differences have existed since the dawn of time. …

… THE REST: “Systemic Racism Or Systemic Rubbish?“, on Townhall.com, WND.COM, the Unz Review and American Renaissance.

On Sunday, you can read it on the great American Greatness.

American Greatness, where I do verbal swordplay for civilization, is the best, cutting edge, paleoconservative webzine. Julie Ponzi, its skilled, bold editor, harnesses and enhances the best talent our side has for the battle of ideas ahead.

Busiest Comments Section is on American Renaissance.

UPDATED (8/7/020):

Readers reached are worth everything.

Chris Matthews Ousted For Not Being A Girly Guy

Affirmative Action, Conservatism, Etiquette, Feminism, Gender, Media, Sex

Chris Matthews has always been a tough-talking, gnarled interviewer. His style is manly and abrupt. You can’t have that in the Age of the Girly Boy—where men are expected to be clones of the females with whom they work. Or, else.

Guy talk, like calling a woman, actress Kerry Washington, “a total knockout,” and commenting to one Laura Bassett, “Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?”—those won’t do in the age of the wimp.

Matthews also used silly hyperbole to describe Mr. Sanders’s victory in the Nevada caucuses, and he dared to question, rather than just accept, E. Warren’s version of Mr. Bloomberg’s alleged sexual misconduct.

Ageism is also a factor.  A stupid society worships the stupid. Unfortunately, in our age, The Age of the Idiot, the younger the individual, generally the more ill-educated and illiterate he or she is.

Irony of ironies: Conservative-minded people (check) are more likely to defend Matthews on principle than progressives, creators of the culture that has just cancelled him.

New York Times:

… Mr. Matthews, 74, had faced mounting criticism in recent days over a spate of embarrassing on-air moments, including a comparison of Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign to the Nazi invasion of France and an interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren in which the anchor was criticized for a condescending and disbelieving tone.

On Saturday, the journalist Laura Bassett published an essay accusing Mr. Matthews of making multiple inappropriate comments about her appearance, reviving longstanding allegations about the anchor’s sexist behavior. By Monday, his position at the news network he helped build had become untenable.

Accompanied by his family, Mr. Matthews walked onto the “Hardball” set inside NBC’s Washington bureau shortly before 7 p.m. to deliver a brief farewell. His longtime crew members, who had been told of his plans roughly an hour earlier, looked on stunned.

“I’m retiring,” Mr. Matthews told viewers in a solemn and brief monologue as his broadcast began at 7. “This is the last ‘Hardball’ on MSNBC.”

His sudden signoff took many colleagues by surprise — “Wait. What?” the MSNBC anchor Katy Tur wrote on Twitter — but it followed days of discussions with Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC and one of the early executive producers of “Hardball.”

Mr. Griffin, who is close with Mr. Matthews, traveled to Washington over the weekend to discuss his future in person, according to three people who requested anonymity to describe sensitive conversations.

On the air on Monday, Mr. Matthews made clear that the timing of his exit was not entirely his choosing. “Obviously, it isn’t for a lack of interest in politics,” he said, going on to apologize for his past insensitive comments.

“Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were OK are never OK,” he said. “Not then, and certainly not today.” …

… Commenting on the Nevada caucuses, Mr. Matthews compared Mr. Sanders’s victory to Germany’s takeover of France in World War II, drawing the ire of many liberals. He later apologized on-air, saying, “In the days and weeks and months ahead, I will strive to do a better job myself of elevating the political discussion.”

A day later, he was under fire again, this time for repeatedly questioning Ms. Warren about her assertion that Michael R. Bloomberg had mistreated his female employees. Ms. Warren was referring to a widely reported anecdote, and Mr. Matthews’s disbelief was criticized as sexist and dismissive.

On Friday, yet another faux pas: Mr. Matthews confused the identities of two African-American politicians, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Jaime R. Harrison, a Democrat running for Senate in that state. “Big mistake; mistaken identity, sir, sorry,” Mr. Matthews said after he was corrected on-air. …

* Chris Matthews, Via Slate