UNLV speech code proves politcal correctness still runs amok on campus

“I hate bigots.”

“I will not tolerate intolerance.”

Now, would the utterance of words like these on the UNLV campus get me in trouble under the current draft of the university’s “Policy on Bias Incidents and Hate Crimes”?

Bigots have feelings, too. Don’t they?

Fortunately, according to Chancellor Jim Rogers, the policy as drafted is dead on arrival. Unfortunately, UNLV President David Ashley said he plans to appoint a four-member task force to redraft the policy.

He said this even though a memo from the Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, that would be Christine Clark, says, “On March 24, 2009, after 18 months of development, revision, vetting, and dialogue, the UNLV Policy on Bias Incidents and Hate Crimes was officially approved by President Ashley and adopted by the UNLV campus.”

Dr. Christine Clark

Redrafting this policy would be like trying to Bowdlerize the “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Campus speech codes — which this one clearly denies being (“This is not a speech code.”),while emphatically codifying in a 14-page meander what is unacceptable speech — are anathema to free speech. They are superfluous exercises in politically correct jargon meant to silence anyone who dares to question the liberal dogma: All behavior frowned upon by your parents is perfectly OK and there’ll be hell to pay for anyone who deigns to even hint otherwise.

Frankly, the whole thing reads like that refrigerator magnet version of Shakespeare. Key phrases are jumbled together, many repeatedly, to form actual sentences that read like: “To be or not be, those are the slings and arrows dreamt of in your philosophy.”

It could be rewritten to read:

“If you hear something that offends you:
“a) you may report it to your counselor or dean.
“b) you should exercise your right of free speech to tell the oaf where to get off.”
“c) you should just get over it.
“Should you witness an actual crime, report it to the cops.”

The main problem with this bias policy is that the default setting is to call the campus cops, who are then obligated to write up a report, no matter how trivial the complaint. It says that if the complaint does not warrant a police investigation, the report will be referred to the appropriate non-police administrator. It also requires training for investigating “bias incidents and hate crimes.”

A UNLV professor explains in comments appended to Glenn Cook’s column on this topic Sunday that the policy is about political correctness, “a system of beliefs which hold a vice-like grip over public debate, deciding what can be debated, what are the terms of the debate, which policies are acceptable and which aren’t. Political correctness classifies certain groups as victims in need of protection from criticism and others as oppressors (white, male, heterosexual) and believers feel that no dissent should be tolerated.”

Just ask President Obama’s top economic adviser Lawrence Summers, who resigned as president of Harvard University after he speculated women might not have the same math and science aptitude as men.

Let’s let the policy speak for itself. Here is the definition of a bias incident:

“A.  ‘Bias Incidents’ refers to verbal, written, or physical acts of intimidation, coercion, interference, frivolous claims, discrimination, and sexual or other harassment motivated, in whole or in part, by bias based on actual or perceived race, ethnicity, color, religion, creed, sex (including gender identity or expression, or a pregnancy related condition), sexual orientation, national origin, military status or military obligations, disability (including veterans with service-connected disabilities), age, marital status, physical appearance, political affiliation, or on the basis of exercise of rights secured by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

Got that? You can call the campus cops if someone makes a frivolous claim about you exercising your First Amendment rights.

If you think that is rich, wrap your mind around this footnote explaining just what “physical appearance” is covered: “Personal appearance means the outward appearance of any person, irrespective of sex, with regard to bodily condition or characteristics, manner or style of dress, and manner or style of personal grooming, including, but not limited to, hair style and beards. It shall not relate, however, to the requirement of cleanliness, uniforms, or prescribed standards, when uniformly applied to a class of employees, or when such bodily conditions or characteristics, or manner of style of dress or personal grooming presents a danger to the health, welfare, or safety of any individual.”

Don’t you dare discriminate against me because I’m an overweight, aging, gray-haired white male veteran with a handlebar mustache, who wears boots and leather sports coats, but forget to shower? Sic him, guys.

The whole thing is an exercise in self-contradictions, including this blunderbuss of a declaration that “the educational mission of the University requires the need for freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable—in short, the right to dissent.” So long you display no bias against dunderheaded academics who couldn’t get a real job.

You may challenge the unchallengeable so long as you are being inclusive, of course. And if you retaliate against someone you think has made a frivolous claim against you, that “will not be tolerated.” Everything else must be tolerated, but not that. You can’t give a bad grade or write a letter or deny a promotion, etc.

Just file a claim against everyone in sight and you’ve got it made.

Above all you should know, “Discrimination is illegal.” It says so. If your professor gives you an F in your class and gives someone else an A, that is discrimination. Call the cops.

Demise of the Fourth Estate does not bode well for the body politic

“Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or witty saying; it is a literal fact — very momentous to us in these times.”
— Thomas Carlyle

When the Founders penned the Constitution they focused mightily on making sure that no one branch of government could become so strong as to usurp so much power that its inevitable corruption could not be corrected by actions of another branches.

Then they added additional layers to their scheme of checks and balances, their mistrust of power, by including free speech and free press in the First Amendment so they could sound an alarm.

When any one aspect of that scheme is weakened, the whole is threatened.

A recent study at Princeton University offers evidence of this from a small niche. Researchers Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido — in a paper titled, “Do Newspapers Matter? Evidence from the Closure of The Cincinnati Post” — found that the closing the relatively small Cincinnati Post, whose paltry 27,000 circulation paled in comparison the dominant 200,000-subscriber Cincinnati Enquirer, appeared to impact the body politic of the community.

“The Cincinnati Post published its last edition on New Year’s Eve 2007, leaving
the Cincinnati Enquirer as the only daily newspaper in the market. The next year,
fewer candidates ran for municipal office in the suburbs most reliant on the Post,
incumbents became more likely to win re-election, and voter turnout fell …” they found. “Although our findings are statistically imprecise, they demonstrate that newspapers — even underdogs such as the Post … can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life.”

One can’t help but wonder what the closing of the substantially larger Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer will mean for their respective communities. The entrenchment of incumbents alone is enough to warrant consternation.

Shortly before the study was published another Princetonian — Paul Starr a professor of communications and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton — penned a lengthy tome in The New Republic on the dangers to our system of governance in a void left by declining newspapers.

In “Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption),” Starr

Princeton professor Paul Starr

offers an excellent history on the rise of the modern newspaper, a review of some financial alternatives for newspapers, an analysis of just what their demise might foretell and some warnings that we should not expect the scribblers on the Internet to fill the void.

“News coverage is not all that newspapers have given us,” Starr writes. “They have lent the public a powerful means of leverage over the state, and this leverage is now at risk. If we take seriously the notion of newspapers as a fourth estate or a fourth branch of government, the end of the age of newspapers implies a change in our political system itself. Newspapers have helped to control corrupt tendencies in both government and business. If we are to avoid a new era of corruption, we are going to have to summon that power in other ways. Our new technologies do not retire our old responsibilities.”

The stakes are that high.

Admittedly, a number of newspapers have shirked their responsibilities and succumbed to the entreaties of various politicians and political parties, and thus deserve the schadenfreude of those who gleefully applaud the agony of the press. But these people should realize that the result is more of what they so despise, not less.

WSJ publishing depressing news about the paper back ‘home’

Most of us who now call Las Vegas home came here from somewhere else and like to keep up with how the folks back “home” are doing.

And, if you are reading this, you probably had a favorite newspaper you used to read and perhaps check in on it online from time to time.

Today The Wall Street Journal has put together a comprehensive list showing how the top 100 U.S. newspapers are faring — which have had staff reductions (really all), which are for sale, which are bankrupt, which have closed, survive as online only or a combination.

Depressing, but fascinating.

A conservative explains why conservatives must help newspapers find a free market answer

When I get one of those e-mails from some snide person gloating over the fiscal woes of the newspaper industry and saying, “I get my news from the Internet anyway,” I am tempted to print it out so I can wad it into a ball and fling it across the room.

When I hear one of those conservative talk show radio hosts engaging in a bit of schadenfreude over the pains of the “liberal” media, I want to curse at the radio and call in to ask just where he thinks he gets all the news on which he is commenting.

But now an alert reader has sent me a photocopy of an article containing the most concise and most illustrative explanation I’ve yet seen. It is in a article in National Review by James V. DeLong under the headline “Black and White and Dead All Over.”

In it DeLong, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, explains why conservatives should be leery of many of the ideas being floated for rescuing the newspaper business.

“To say that you don’t need newspapers because you get your news from the Internet,” DeLong writes, “is like saying that you don’t need to burn coal because you rely on electricity.”

He suggests conservatives would be wise to help newspapers find a free market answer to their profitability problems lest they become dependent on foundations and government subsidies — which have brought us the monolithic ideology and political correctness we find on university campuses.

Assembly Democrats surrender your right of suffrage without a shot

Americans have fought and died for the right of suffrage — No taxation without representation!

We’ve changed the Constitution to award the right to vote to former slaves with the 14th Amendment, to women with the 19th and to 18-year-olds with the 26th.

On Tuesday, 27 Assembly Democrats advanced the process toward giving away your right to vote for president and vice president, approving legislation that would award all five of Nevada’s Electoral College votes to whoever is the popular vote-getter nationwide, no matter how we, the people of Nevada, cast our ballots.

They might as well cancel the election entirely. It would be a meaningless sham unless by some statistical fluke Nevada’s comparative handful of votes tipped the outcome nationally.

Democrats, still smarting over the 2000 election in which Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote, have come up with an end-run on the Constitution, devising this affront to common sense and the rule of law. If enough states with a majority of the popular vote embrace this plan it supposedly would take effect.

Never mind that amending the Constitution legally requires approval of three-fourths of state legislatures.

Under this benighted concept the Legislature might as well vote to award the state’s five Electoral College votes to the highest bidder. I hear they are scrapping the bottom of the barrel in Carson City, financially as well as intellectually. We could pick a proxy. Award our votes to the Democratic National Committee directly and avoid the mess and fuss of an election altogether.

How about a lottery? All voters pitch in $5 for the state’s dwindling coffers, then pull a name out of a hat and that person gets to either pick our presidential winner or sell it to the highest bidder. Free markets and all that.

The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law, and the courts have ruled that includes the concept of one person, one vote: “The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing — one person, one vote.”

Those 27 Democrats are attempting to usurp your vote. Don’t you think it is time to usurp theirs? They did swear to uphold the Constitutions of the nation and the state. Does this not violate that oath?

Contact every one of them and tell them what you think of this vote.

____________________________

Vote on AB413 on Assembly Final Passage at 12:07 PM on 04-21

27 Yea

14 Nay

1 Excused

0 Not Voting

0 Absent

---

Paul Aizley	Yea
Bernie Anderson	Yea
Morse Arberry	Yea
Kelvin Atkinson	Yea
David Bobzien	Yea
Barbara Buckley	Yea
John Carpenter	Nay
Chad Christensen	Nay
Jerry Claborn	Yea
Tyrus Cobb	Nay
Marcus Conklin	Yea
Moises Denis	Yea
Marilyn Dondero Loop	Yea
Heidi Gansert	Nay
Edwin Goedhart	Nay
Pete Goicoechea	Nay
Tom Grady	Nay
Don Gustavson	Nay
John Hambrick	Nay
Joe Hardy	Nay
Joseph Hogan	Yea
William Horne	Yea
Ruben Kihuen	Yea
Marilyn Kirkpatrick	Yea
Ellen Koivisto	Yea
Sheila Leslie	Yea
Mark Manendo	Yea
April Mastroluca	Yea
Richard McArthur	Nay
Kathy McClain	Yea
Harry Mortenson	Yea
Harvey Munford	Yea
John Oceguera	Yea
James Ohrenschall	Yea
Bonnie Parnell	Excused
Peggy Pierce	Yea
Tick Segerblom	Yea
James Settelmeyer	Nay
Debbie Smith	Yea
Ellen Spiegel	Yea
Lynn Stewart	Nay
Melissa Woodbury	Nay

FBI looking for one of those ‘nonviolent’ left-wing extremists

Remember those life-loving, nonviolent left-wing extremists our Homeland Security Department warned us about earlier this year? The people who would rather attack computer systems because that would not harm people?

The FBI just announced that they have added one of them to their “Most Wanted” list.

He is Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 31-year-old computer specialist from Berkeley, Calif., wanted for the 2003 bombings of two corporate offices in California. According to the FBI announcing the warrant on television, one of his bombs was packed with nails. Not wishing to harm people?

The AP notes, “The move to add a domestic, left-wing terrorist to the list comes only days after the Obama administration was criticized for internal reports suggesting some military veterans could be susceptible to right-wing extremist recruiters or commit lone acts of violence. That prompted angry reactions from some lawmakers and veterans groups.”

San Diego is said to be a strict vegan who carries a 9mm handgun.

Tantrums are in the eye of the beholder

I was hardly surprised by Sun Editor Brian Greenspun’s Sunday column denigrating the tax day “tea parties” as “childish tantrums” and calling the historical reference a “sham.”

After all, from his perspective the government can never take enough of your money.

Now, I’m no fan of gaggles of people parading around with picket signs and shouting rhyming slogans. It is hardly the most persuasive polemic device available in a serious debate about government spending priorities and tax burdens.

I said as much in advance of the “tea party” outings, noting that the original Boston version was less about the 3 pence tea tax than about whether Parliament had the right to tax Americans without proper representation. From what I saw and heard from the rallies, they were not merely outburst against taxes but also about the principles.

Perhaps it was an unconscious homage on the part of Greenspun’s headline writer, but I was mildly amused that the headline used the word tantrum, though the column never did.

You see, in January I headlined one of my blog items: “UNLV rally as persuasive as a temper tantrum,” and wrote: “To me the scene at UNLV Thursday night had all the eloquence and persuasive power of an organized temper tantrum. They should’ve been sent to their rooms without supper.”

Great minds travel in the same plane. But fools merely think alike … even from opposite perspectives.

Contemplating great truths … and what’s close enough for government work

In my opening remarks this weekend to a small gathering of professional journalists and educators to discuss our roles when it comes to the First Amendment, I remarked that both of our groups sometimes lose sight of the fact that education and free speech are not the final objectives, but merely the means of attaining the kind of society this nation’s Founders hoped to accomplish.

Merely the tools, not the finished product.

An education lays the foundation of knowledge on which to build a lifetime of social intercourse and free speech assures that all arguments and philosophies have a fair chance to succeed under self-governance. Not exactly brilliant or original, but a framework and perspective for the topic at hand.

What followed was a lively and productive discussion of issues, principles and practicalities.

But what made me give pause for reflection — downright omphaloskepsis, if you will — was a good-natured chiding from one of the speakers, who pointed out a recent paraphrasing of John Milton’s Areopagitica in one of my columns. If I recall correctly, he said that was naïve and “the worst possible argument” in support of free speech.

To refresh, these are Milton’s words: “And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.”

Of course, in the hard-science, stark reality world in which one mixes chemical A with chemical B and gets AB 100 percent of the time, Milton’s conclusion is nonsense. Falsehood frequently prevails. Voters frequently choose wrongly.

To which we defenders of Miltonian philosophy can only bubbler: But it is a war not a battle. Over time the self-interest of the people will come to the fore.

That, too, admittedly, is wishful thinking.

But in our subjective world, accomplishing the greatest good for the greatest number as often as possible is better than the alternatives, don’t you think?

The “perfect” world, of course, would be one in which I am king. Perfect for me that is, perhaps not for you. The trick is for you and me to form a collusion so that other guy over there does not become king. The happiness of two out of three is better odds, if not a sure thing.

There are any number of foundational principles that are provably untrue — all men are created equal, for example — but these serve as worthy constructs for a tolerable social order.

We all live happier lives assuming our children and our grandchildren will inherit a decent world — one that will not be obliterated by some physics experiment that goes awry on July 11, 2012.

Maybe we are just pretending our lives are meaningful, fruitful and consequential — and we not just gnats on an uncaring horse’s arse.

But as another great pretender, Winston Churchill, said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Until then …

Homeland Security insists they are on the watch for lefties, too

When the Homeland Security Department was taken to task for sending out a warning to local law enforcement agencies around the country about paranoid right-wing extremist bigots with proclivities to violence, they were quick to defend themselves by saying they were not singling out right-wing extremists but had, in fact, produced a similar warning in January about left-wing extremists.

Indeed they did.

It was dated Jan. 26, six days after the presidential inauguration. It was titled, “Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade.”

It warned that environmentalists, anarchists and animal rights defenders might try to attack the computer systems of companies they see as polluters or harmful to animals in some way.

The Homeland Security warning states that “cyber attacks are attractive options to leftwing extremists who view attacks on economic targets as aligning with their nonviolent, ‘no-harm’ doctrine and tactic of ‘direct action.’”

It mentions this nonviolence policy several times, concluding these groups prefer tactics such as animal releases, property theft, vandalism, and cyber attacks, as opposed to bombings or arson. It never mentions their old favorite, tree spiking, in which metal spikes were hammered into trees such that when loggers’ chainsaws hit them the saws fly apart, often killing the logger.

The report specifically warned about incidents such as the one in July 2007 when an animal rights extremist hacked into a company computer and deleted 300 user accounts. “To restore the accounts, the perpetrator demanded that the company sell its shares in a corporation that conducts tests using animal subjects,” the report stated.
It mentioned at e-mail attack in October 2005 that cost a firm $1.4 million and an April 2005 cyber attack that cost another company $1.25 million.

Horror of horrors.

Somehow the folks at Homeland failed to mention the March 2008 arson fire in a Seattle suburb that destroyed five “built green” $2 million homes, for which the Earth Liberation Front took credit.

No mention of the four ELFers indicted in the 1998 Vail, Colo., resort arson.

No mention of the $50 million San Diego condo project destroyed by arosonists. No mention of the numerous SUV dealerships destroyed by fire.  No mention of the Michigan State University animal research facility arson or that one at the University of Washington, where genetic engineering was said to be taking place. Nor scuttling of whaling ships. Nor the beatings of executive, nor kidnapping threats, nor booby-trapped letters, nor firebombing of cars.

No, Homeland gives us this in the appendix: “Animal rights and environmental extremists seek to end the perceived abuse and suffering of animals and the degradation of the natural environment perpetrated by humans. They use non-violent and violent tactics that, at times, violate criminal law. Many of these extremists claim they are conducting these activities on behalf of two of the most active groups, the Animal Liberation Front and its sister organization, the Earth Liberation Front. Other prominent groups include Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty; and chapters within the Animal Defense League, and Earth First!”

We don’t care what the evidence shows, those right-wing paranoid extremists are out to get us

Paranoia: an unfounded or exaggerated distrust of others, reaching delusional proportions. Paranoids constantly suspect others are out to get them.

An April 7 Department of Homeland Security “assessment” of the pending danger of “rightwing extremists” to launch violent attacks against the federal government says more about the state of our “intelligence” resources than about any extremist threat or even right-wingers.

It begins on a solid foundation of equivocation, speculation and self-delusion: “The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.” (I added the italics.)

That asterisk refers to another wishy-washy generalization down page that springs full-grown from the furtive imagination of people who are true , true believers — it must be true because all our friends just know it’s so:

“Rightwing extremism,” we learn, includes hate-groups and one-issue groups “based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups,” as well as those who reject “federal authority in favor of state or local authority.” The latter would, of course, include Thomas Jefferson, a widely known revolutionary who disseminated hate speech and called for the violent overthrow of the legitimate government. He was a bit paranoid about being hanged, you know.

Here are a couple of key phrases showing the imminent danger: “have not indicated plans to carry out violent acts” and “not yet turned to attack planning.”

At one point it suggests returning military veterans might be recruits for hate groups. Never mind that the FBI found that from October 2001 through May 2008 only 203 veterans out of 23,000 had joined groups so identified. Whether the grouips really are, or not, is another matter.

The 9-page document makes repeated references to the “historical election of an African Ameican president” as a driving force for hatred without once documenting this supposition. It talks about all sorts of race-based hate, again without substance other than a couple of vague references to years-old incidents in no particular context.

It mentions “fear and paranoia,” “extremist paranoia” and twice refers to “rightwing extremist paranoia.”

But it then talks about a decline in such right-wing extremist groups following the bombing in Oklahoma City (and the execution of the perpetrator), disruptions of terrorist plots (Ruby Ridge and Waco were mentioned earlier) and new legislation banning paramilitary training.

You are not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

But you just might be paranoid if you envision plots for which there is no documented evidence other than your own vivid imagination and suspicions of those right-wing extremists over there … and back there … and under there.