Valid observations, I think from Andrew Sullivan about why Trump gained so much traction. (You can read the original, longer piece linked to in this column by Kurtz who summarizes some of his points about how the media — and all of us — missed seeing Trump’s appeal early on):
Andrew Sullivan thinks Donald Trump’s election would threaten western civilization—an “extinction-level event,” in his words—but let’s put that little matter aside for a moment.
In the process of savaging Trump, Sullivan also illuminates the source of his appeal. …
Sullivan is back in action with a New York magazine cover story casting Trump as a tyrant. But he strikes a nerve—with me, at least—in turning his attention to the working-class Americans who helped power Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination.
This, in my view, is a principal reason that most of the mainstream media utterly misjudged Trump’s appeal.
(Sullivan): “For the white working class, having had their morals roundly mocked, their religion deemed primitive, and their economic prospects decimated, now find their very gender and race, indeed the very way they talk about reality, described as a kind of problem for the nation to overcome. This is just one aspect of what Trump has masterfully signaled as ‘political correctness’ run amok”—that is, a progressive passion for “racial and sexuality of outcome,” rather than mere equality of opportunity. …
“Much of the newly energized left has come to see the white working class not as allies but primarily as bigots, misogynists, racists, and homophobes, thereby condemning those often at the near-bottom rung of the economy to the bottom rung of the culture as well. A struggling white man in the heartland is now told to ‘check his privilege’ by students at Ivy League colleges…
“These working-class communities, already alienated, hear — how can they not? — the glib and easy dismissals of ‘white straight men’ as the ultimate source of all our woes. They smell the condescension and the broad generalizations about them — all of which would be repellent if directed at racial minorities.” …
_________________________________________
“In a column in today’s The New York Times, liberal opinion writer Nicholas Kristof essentially admits there is discrimination against conservative ideology on college campuses. The opinion piece is rather eye-opening because for the first time we are hearing from a prominent progressive who admits there is a problem on campuses with conservative intolerance.
“We progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives … We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us,” Kristof wrote.
Kristof believes universities are stigmatizing conservatives and undermining “intellectual diversity.” Proof of Mr. Kristof’s point has reared its head frequently in recent months.
For example, earlier this year, LawNewz.com wrote about a student senator who faced impeachment for daring to bring a controversial conservative speak to campus. And last year, Wesleyan students wanted to shutdown their student newspaper after a controversial piece on the Black Lives Matter movement. In the petition, the students wrote the paper, “neglects to provide a safe space for the voices of students of color.”
While some may disagree with what these conservative students and speakers have to say by cutting off their opportunity to express themselves, Kristof argues we are really doing a disservice to everyone. As Mr. Kristof writes, universities should not only be working to promote diversity in terms of race, background, and culture, but also in political belief and thought.”
“Do the rights of boys who identify as girls trump the rights of girls who are born girls?
That question is at the heart of a lawsuit filed by dozens of Illinois parents after the Obama administration’s Department of Education strong-armed their school district into allowing a transgender student the right to use all girls’ locker rooms.
“The girls are mortified,” said Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jeremy Tedesco, a religious liberty law firm representing some 50 families. “They are in a constant state of fear that their bodies are going to be exposed to a male in these settings. It’s a constant state of stress and anxiety for them.”
At least one of the plaintiffs, a female student at the high school, was harassed and bullied because she is uncomfortable changing in the same locker room with a biological boy.
“While she was in the changing stall, other girls who were in the locker room began calling her names, including ‘transphobic’ and ‘homophobic’,” the lawsuit states.
The DOE has yet to respond to the lawsuit.”
—————-
Good to see some parents fighting back. And they’re not alone.
“North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration sued the federal government Monday in a fight for a state law that limits protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The lawsuit seeks to keep in place the law, which the U.S. Justice Department said last week violated the civil rights of transgender people against sex discrimination on the job and in education.
The Justice Department had set a Monday deadline for McCrory to report whether he would refuse to enforce the law that took effect in March. McCrory’s defiance could risk funding for the state’s university system and lead to a protracted legal battle.
Federal civil rights enforcement attorneys focused in their warning letters particularly on provisions requiring transgender people to use public restrooms that correspond to their biological sex. The letters threatening possible federal lawsuits were sent to McCrory, leaders of the 17-campus University of North Carolina system, and the state’s public safety agency.
McCrory’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in North Carolina, asks a judge to block Justice Department action that could threaten billions of dollars in federal money flowing to the state.
“The Department contends that North Carolina’s common sense privacy policy constitutes a pattern or practice of discriminating against transgender employees in the terms and conditions of their employment because it does not give employees an unfettered right to use the bathroom or changing facility of their choice based on gender identity,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit called the law a “common sense privacy policy” and said the Justice Department’s position was a “baseless and blatant overreach.”
—————————–
Mr. P and I were just talking about all of this over lunch. I grew up cocooned in the South where most people looked like and thought like me. I have tried many times to explain to others about the racial inter-dependency in the South, but have failed miserably.
My husband on the other hand, grew up outside of Washington DC in an area that had experienced white flight and more minorities moving in.
Because the South has long been the butt of national jokes and looked down upon with disdain, I don’t know whether or not I saw this coming. As I explained to Michelle a week or so ago, I live in a little utopian pocket here in the South. One of my high school teachers was very liberal and had adopted children from all over the world. The oldest, who graduated with me, was from Vietnam. The youngest from India. Children of the World is a local adoption agency and there are so many girls here from China that we celebrate in the local schools the Chinese New Year.
I think we have displaced the white, straight, male to the degree that we have and we have caused this problem. For about 20 years now the white, straight, male was the last group of people you could publicly scorn. They are tired and they are fighting back. God help us all.
As Michelle stated it is a class schism, but it is also an economic schism. White, straight men used to be able to provide a better life for their children than the one they had. Now they can’t.
You can’t one group of people at the expense of the other group of people. I don’t have an answer for the situation we find ourselves in, but there has to be someone who can restore some sanity—then I fear who that someone may be.
And I think there’s a connection between Sullivan’s analysis and the Kristof article — academia has become so tilted to the left (it has been for decades now, but it seems now it’s swung to a rather alarming and extreme degree) that it is producing a generation of people who have the smugness that looks “down” on white/middle class/older people as being hopelessly bigoted and homophobic and in need of silencing or ridiculing.
Few demand conformity of thought — enforced by a strong-armed, big government — as much as the far left does.
Which is why I shudder at the thought of 4 *more* years (on top of the 8 we’ve just endured) to continue in the same direction, virtually remaking the Supreme Court for many years to come.
Yep (referring to michelle’s comment about the comments on the Kristof article on FB). A few examples:
_________________________________________________
I agree that it is very important to have more diversity of political opinion and thought in academia. However, in the case of evangelicals and other ultra religious conservatives, we shouldn’t be making accommodations for those who reject science and demonize the LGBT community under the guise of their religion. There is far too much of that regressive ideology in American society already without letting more of it seep into our institutions of higher learning.
_______________________
As a strong liberal, I would never want conservatives or anybody to be discriminated against or treated unfairly. That being said, I do not find my lack of acceptance toward what I consider oppressive views to be liberal arrogance or intolerance. It’s hard for me to have conservative friends. Intolerance? No, it’s just that most conservatives I come across are, for example, not feminists (or do not align themselves with corresponding groups) and I don’t think I should be expected to be friends with someone who doesn’t believe in the validity of my rights. The same rings true for education. Do I think conservative teachers are not smart, or not valuable faculty? Of course not, I treat them with respect and listen to what they have to say. But when my science teacher tells me global warming isn’t a real threat, or another staff member tells me women are too emotional to be president (both of these things have happened, and came from two Republican teachers at my school)… that makes me not really want them to be teaching, because those views are honestly terrifying. This doesn’t mean all conservatives believe in the same things, reject science, or aren’t feminists — but I’ve been hard-pressed to find a single conservative peer, politician, teacher who I think understands how oppressive systems in our country work or have true empathy for those with less privilege than they. This doesn’t mean that they should be discriminated against, no, but it does mean that maybe it’s a good thing to reject the values of conservative parties and their detrimental practices, especially when it comes to teaching our youth.
______________________________
Conservatives who aren’t obstructionists deserve inclusion, no question. Evangelicals view the world through a veil of fiction, which has no place in education or government.
______________________________
If I picture one of today’s evangelical conservatives, the kind who demand that we teach creationism as science, I have to say I’m glad for and celebrate the “discrimination.” When they can grow up and distinguish myth from science, then we can talk, What hallmarks does a conservative sociologist bear? Does he advocate that women belong in the kitchen and design surveys and write tomes to prove his thesis? Do hey publish studies to show that gay men have legions of sex partners (Gagnon and Simon) and teach courses like “Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Drug Abuse,” a course that I successfully challenged at a local community college? I mean this seriously. How does his conservatism tincture his scholarship, if any? Somehow I don’t have these problems with progressive thinkers.I don’t see the political agenda there that fairly screams from the work of conservative evangelicals. Let them compete for jobs in seminaries and teach their theology there, where it can be evaluated with other theologies, but keep religion out of liberal arts curricula.
________________________________________
There are plenty of private institutions of higher learning that are conservative and evangelical…How about suggesting they have some liberals teaching there?….Stop apologizing for being liberal. It means a woman’s right to choose her life, people choosing their public bathroom, people being included no matter skin color or economic background…like voting, places to live etc….I am sure there is diverse opinion in most public universities….And most poly sci and history teachers teach broadly. Young people can make up their own minds after being exposed to many ideas rather than that of their church or their parents. I grew up in the Bible belt. Really, I know how stifling that mental environment can be. I rebelled and learned to think. Even though I went to a fairly conservative college.
__________________________
I’m struggling to understand the benefit. Why do we want more conservatives on campus? How do we benefit? Generally speaking, conservatives prefer not to experiment and prefer not to open their minds. How will this mindset enable knowledge generation on a university campus?
See? They don’t believe in discriminating, but (here it comes, the “But…”) there are simply good and just reasons why conservatives and evangelicals should not be heard in educated circles in society.
A conservative, if conservative is what he really is,
must be an obstructionist WRT the way the country is going.
We don’t need a revival in America.
We need a prophet to turn us around.
My wife: You have become Bick Benedict. Your whole life you fought socialists, Democrats, Organized Labor, Organized Perversion and tree-huggers. Now, in your old age, you are fighting the Trumpkins. Of course, that makes me Elizabeth Taylor while you are Rock Hudson.
I still remember the FB posts from a liberal friend as the gay marriage topic was heating up. He’d say (over and over again) “the train is coming, get on board or get run over.”
The state of North Carolina and the federal government are now in a state of declared legal war. On Wednesday afternoon, the Obama administration sent a letter to North Carolina governor Pat McCrory demanding that the state “not comply with or enforce H.B. 2,” its so-called transgender bathroom law. According to the letter, a state requirement that people use the bathrooms reserved for their biological sex violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Department of Justice gave the state until today, May 9, to assure the federal government that men can use women’s restrooms and showers in state facilities.
Today, the state answered the Department of Justice — with a lawsuit. …
… A public-relations battle over bathrooms and showers has transformed into a fight over the meaning and indeed authority of the Constitution itself. In its zeal to advance the sexual revolution, the Obama administration has defied the will of Congress, unilaterally rewritten federal law without even bothering to go through a statutory rulemaking process, and now seeks to bring a sovereign state to heel through a combination of threats and lawsuits. …
… The Obama administration is playing dangerous games with our constitutional republic. Unlike nullification crises in years past, this time the state government is leading the way in attempting to preserve the will of Congress and our nation’s system of checks and balances by defending federal law as written.
The executive branch has gone rogue by amending federal law through unconstitutional action. The administration is supplementing and buttressing its lawlessness with sheer bullying. Governor McCrory and the North Carolina legislature have shown admirable resolve. May they continue to stand firm. We’re way beyond bathrooms now.
_______________________________________________________
Kim, the gist of your comment reminded me of an interview I heard on our national radio station last week. You all may or may not know, but last year our Supreme Court struck down a law banning assisted suicide and gave the government a year to rewrite the law. An extension was granted the newly elected Liberal Government, and they have until June 6 to pass the new law. As you can guess, the drafted bill isn’t encouraging. Anyway, the bill was still in first reading last week, and the Liberals basically told their MPs (members of parliament, equivalent to the House of Representatives), which hold the majority of seats, to vote the bill through the first reading (it has to pass through three readings) because time was running out. Well, one lone Liberal MP wouldn’t back down. He’s not Christian, he’s not pro-life; he’s First Nations (read Native American) and his traditional beliefs oppose what he called “the valorization of suicide”. He pointed out that the Court ruling and subsequent drafted legislation were primarily for the benefit of the middle class, and that such a normalization of taking one’s life would have a devastating effect on his people, who have already suffered from too many of their young people committing suicide. First Nations have some of the worst living and economic conditions of anyone in Canada, thanks to an archane government policy (the Indian Act dates back to the 1800s) which resembles, as my father often has said, apartheid. The interviewer told him at the end that he made a compelling case. It remains to be seen if the bill will pass, but someone spoke the truth, and it didn’t come from a quarter that could be as easily dismissed as the religious right.
That being said, a while back I read an article from The Economist which talked about the disenfranchisement of the white, working-class male, and it made a lot of inflated claims about women taking over the workforce. Well, my maternal ancestors came from the British working class in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and in that working-class, which made up the majority of Britons, men and women both worked, in factories, in farm fields, in upper and middle class households, wherever they could get work. My great-grandmother was a domestic servant. And most working class people where in terrible financial straights – my great grandmother’s mother died in childbirth with only an apothecary to tend her. So, I think that this idea that somehow the white working male is in a new position, where he has to compete with women for jobs, is nonsense.
Chas, The NR article says that the Yankee government is at war with North Carolina. Let us know if Texas needs to send troops as we did to Virginia in 1861.
Dennis Pager tonight on CNN: (paraphrasing) Unfortunately, (political) choices in the real world are rarely between good and bad; but but between bad and worse.
Wandering Views 
Valid observations, I think from Andrew Sullivan about why Trump gained so much traction. (You can read the original, longer piece linked to in this column by Kurtz who summarizes some of his points about how the media — and all of us — missed seeing Trump’s appeal early on):
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/09/what-media-missed-trumps-appeal-to-folks-who-feel-culturally-marginalized.html?intcmp=hpbt2
________________________________________
Andrew Sullivan thinks Donald Trump’s election would threaten western civilization—an “extinction-level event,” in his words—but let’s put that little matter aside for a moment.
In the process of savaging Trump, Sullivan also illuminates the source of his appeal. …
Sullivan is back in action with a New York magazine cover story casting Trump as a tyrant. But he strikes a nerve—with me, at least—in turning his attention to the working-class Americans who helped power Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination.
This, in my view, is a principal reason that most of the mainstream media utterly misjudged Trump’s appeal.
(Sullivan): “For the white working class, having had their morals roundly mocked, their religion deemed primitive, and their economic prospects decimated, now find their very gender and race, indeed the very way they talk about reality, described as a kind of problem for the nation to overcome. This is just one aspect of what Trump has masterfully signaled as ‘political correctness’ run amok”—that is, a progressive passion for “racial and sexuality of outcome,” rather than mere equality of opportunity. …
“Much of the newly energized left has come to see the white working class not as allies but primarily as bigots, misogynists, racists, and homophobes, thereby condemning those often at the near-bottom rung of the economy to the bottom rung of the culture as well. A struggling white man in the heartland is now told to ‘check his privilege’ by students at Ivy League colleges…
“These working-class communities, already alienated, hear — how can they not? — the glib and easy dismissals of ‘white straight men’ as the ultimate source of all our woes. They smell the condescension and the broad generalizations about them — all of which would be repellent if directed at racial minorities.” …
_________________________________________
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s a liberal finally admitting the obvious….
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/liberal-nicholas-kristof-admits-there-is-conservative-discrimination-on-college-campuses/
“In a column in today’s The New York Times, liberal opinion writer Nicholas Kristof essentially admits there is discrimination against conservative ideology on college campuses. The opinion piece is rather eye-opening because for the first time we are hearing from a prominent progressive who admits there is a problem on campuses with conservative intolerance.
“We progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives … We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us,” Kristof wrote.
Kristof believes universities are stigmatizing conservatives and undermining “intellectual diversity.” Proof of Mr. Kristof’s point has reared its head frequently in recent months.
For example, earlier this year, LawNewz.com wrote about a student senator who faced impeachment for daring to bring a controversial conservative speak to campus. And last year, Wesleyan students wanted to shutdown their student newspaper after a controversial piece on the Black Lives Matter movement. In the petition, the students wrote the paper, “neglects to provide a safe space for the voices of students of color.”
While some may disagree with what these conservative students and speakers have to say by cutting off their opportunity to express themselves, Kristof argues we are really doing a disservice to everyone. As Mr. Kristof writes, universities should not only be working to promote diversity in terms of race, background, and culture, but also in political belief and thought.”
LikeLiked by 4 people
Good. And no, they don’t.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/05/06/sorry-girls-your-civil-rights-in-illinois-just-got-double-flushed.html
“Do the rights of boys who identify as girls trump the rights of girls who are born girls?
That question is at the heart of a lawsuit filed by dozens of Illinois parents after the Obama administration’s Department of Education strong-armed their school district into allowing a transgender student the right to use all girls’ locker rooms.
“The girls are mortified,” said Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Jeremy Tedesco, a religious liberty law firm representing some 50 families. “They are in a constant state of fear that their bodies are going to be exposed to a male in these settings. It’s a constant state of stress and anxiety for them.”
At least one of the plaintiffs, a female student at the high school, was harassed and bullied because she is uncomfortable changing in the same locker room with a biological boy.
“While she was in the changing stall, other girls who were in the locker room began calling her names, including ‘transphobic’ and ‘homophobic’,” the lawsuit states.
The DOE has yet to respond to the lawsuit.”
—————-
Good to see some parents fighting back. And they’re not alone.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/north-carolina-governor-leads-lawsuit-over-lgbt-rights/ar-BBsOiow?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U142DHP
“North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration sued the federal government Monday in a fight for a state law that limits protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The lawsuit seeks to keep in place the law, which the U.S. Justice Department said last week violated the civil rights of transgender people against sex discrimination on the job and in education.
The Justice Department had set a Monday deadline for McCrory to report whether he would refuse to enforce the law that took effect in March. McCrory’s defiance could risk funding for the state’s university system and lead to a protracted legal battle.
Federal civil rights enforcement attorneys focused in their warning letters particularly on provisions requiring transgender people to use public restrooms that correspond to their biological sex. The letters threatening possible federal lawsuits were sent to McCrory, leaders of the 17-campus University of North Carolina system, and the state’s public safety agency.
McCrory’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in North Carolina, asks a judge to block Justice Department action that could threaten billions of dollars in federal money flowing to the state.
“The Department contends that North Carolina’s common sense privacy policy constitutes a pattern or practice of discriminating against transgender employees in the terms and conditions of their employment because it does not give employees an unfettered right to use the bathroom or changing facility of their choice based on gender identity,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit called the law a “common sense privacy policy” and said the Justice Department’s position was a “baseless and blatant overreach.”
—————————–
Sure is.
LikeLike
The Kristof column was excellent, posted it this weekend (to a limited group of friends) on FB.
LikeLike
I follow him on FB and you should avoid the bigoted nasty comments– proving his point. 😦
Sullivan’s comments have merit–to some extent hasn’t a lot of the schism in our country really been more about class?
LikeLike
Mr. P and I were just talking about all of this over lunch. I grew up cocooned in the South where most people looked like and thought like me. I have tried many times to explain to others about the racial inter-dependency in the South, but have failed miserably.
My husband on the other hand, grew up outside of Washington DC in an area that had experienced white flight and more minorities moving in.
Because the South has long been the butt of national jokes and looked down upon with disdain, I don’t know whether or not I saw this coming. As I explained to Michelle a week or so ago, I live in a little utopian pocket here in the South. One of my high school teachers was very liberal and had adopted children from all over the world. The oldest, who graduated with me, was from Vietnam. The youngest from India. Children of the World is a local adoption agency and there are so many girls here from China that we celebrate in the local schools the Chinese New Year.
I think we have displaced the white, straight, male to the degree that we have and we have caused this problem. For about 20 years now the white, straight, male was the last group of people you could publicly scorn. They are tired and they are fighting back. God help us all.
As Michelle stated it is a class schism, but it is also an economic schism. White, straight men used to be able to provide a better life for their children than the one they had. Now they can’t.
You can’t one group of people at the expense of the other group of people. I don’t have an answer for the situation we find ourselves in, but there has to be someone who can restore some sanity—then I fear who that someone may be.
LikeLiked by 2 people
And I think there’s a connection between Sullivan’s analysis and the Kristof article — academia has become so tilted to the left (it has been for decades now, but it seems now it’s swung to a rather alarming and extreme degree) that it is producing a generation of people who have the smugness that looks “down” on white/middle class/older people as being hopelessly bigoted and homophobic and in need of silencing or ridiculing.
Few demand conformity of thought — enforced by a strong-armed, big government — as much as the far left does.
Which is why I shudder at the thought of 4 *more* years (on top of the 8 we’ve just endured) to continue in the same direction, virtually remaking the Supreme Court for many years to come.
LikeLike
Yep (referring to michelle’s comment about the comments on the Kristof article on FB). A few examples:
_________________________________________________
I agree that it is very important to have more diversity of political opinion and thought in academia. However, in the case of evangelicals and other ultra religious conservatives, we shouldn’t be making accommodations for those who reject science and demonize the LGBT community under the guise of their religion. There is far too much of that regressive ideology in American society already without letting more of it seep into our institutions of higher learning.
_______________________
As a strong liberal, I would never want conservatives or anybody to be discriminated against or treated unfairly. That being said, I do not find my lack of acceptance toward what I consider oppressive views to be liberal arrogance or intolerance. It’s hard for me to have conservative friends. Intolerance? No, it’s just that most conservatives I come across are, for example, not feminists (or do not align themselves with corresponding groups) and I don’t think I should be expected to be friends with someone who doesn’t believe in the validity of my rights. The same rings true for education. Do I think conservative teachers are not smart, or not valuable faculty? Of course not, I treat them with respect and listen to what they have to say. But when my science teacher tells me global warming isn’t a real threat, or another staff member tells me women are too emotional to be president (both of these things have happened, and came from two Republican teachers at my school)… that makes me not really want them to be teaching, because those views are honestly terrifying. This doesn’t mean all conservatives believe in the same things, reject science, or aren’t feminists — but I’ve been hard-pressed to find a single conservative peer, politician, teacher who I think understands how oppressive systems in our country work or have true empathy for those with less privilege than they. This doesn’t mean that they should be discriminated against, no, but it does mean that maybe it’s a good thing to reject the values of conservative parties and their detrimental practices, especially when it comes to teaching our youth.
______________________________
Conservatives who aren’t obstructionists deserve inclusion, no question. Evangelicals view the world through a veil of fiction, which has no place in education or government.
______________________________
If I picture one of today’s evangelical conservatives, the kind who demand that we teach creationism as science, I have to say I’m glad for and celebrate the “discrimination.” When they can grow up and distinguish myth from science, then we can talk, What hallmarks does a conservative sociologist bear? Does he advocate that women belong in the kitchen and design surveys and write tomes to prove his thesis? Do hey publish studies to show that gay men have legions of sex partners (Gagnon and Simon) and teach courses like “Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Drug Abuse,” a course that I successfully challenged at a local community college? I mean this seriously. How does his conservatism tincture his scholarship, if any? Somehow I don’t have these problems with progressive thinkers.I don’t see the political agenda there that fairly screams from the work of conservative evangelicals. Let them compete for jobs in seminaries and teach their theology there, where it can be evaluated with other theologies, but keep religion out of liberal arts curricula.
________________________________________
There are plenty of private institutions of higher learning that are conservative and evangelical…How about suggesting they have some liberals teaching there?….Stop apologizing for being liberal. It means a woman’s right to choose her life, people choosing their public bathroom, people being included no matter skin color or economic background…like voting, places to live etc….I am sure there is diverse opinion in most public universities….And most poly sci and history teachers teach broadly. Young people can make up their own minds after being exposed to many ideas rather than that of their church or their parents. I grew up in the Bible belt. Really, I know how stifling that mental environment can be. I rebelled and learned to think. Even though I went to a fairly conservative college.
__________________________
I’m struggling to understand the benefit. Why do we want more conservatives on campus? How do we benefit? Generally speaking, conservatives prefer not to experiment and prefer not to open their minds. How will this mindset enable knowledge generation on a university campus?
LikeLike
See? They don’t believe in discriminating, but (here it comes, the “But…”) there are simply good and just reasons why conservatives and evangelicals should not be heard in educated circles in society.
LikeLike
I told you not to read the comments . . .
LikeLiked by 1 person
Haha. So predictable, they are. Funny that they don’t catch the irony just dripping in their own remarks!
LikeLike
A conservative, if conservative is what he really is,
must be an obstructionist WRT the way the country is going.
We don’t need a revival in America.
We need a prophet to turn us around.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My wife: You have become Bick Benedict. Your whole life you fought socialists, Democrats, Organized Labor, Organized Perversion and tree-huggers. Now, in your old age, you are fighting the Trumpkins. Of course, that makes me Elizabeth Taylor while you are Rock Hudson.
LikeLike
Yes, don’t dare “obstruct” the progressive state.
I still remember the FB posts from a liberal friend as the gay marriage topic was heating up. He’d say (over and over again) “the train is coming, get on board or get run over.”
Wow.
Talk about brooking no dissent.
LikeLike
Now the DOJ is going after North Carolina, to force it into line. “the train is coming …”
This is getting more than worrisome.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435182/north-carolina-bathroom-law-obama-justice-department-governor-pat-mccrory-lawsuit
_______________________________________________
The state of North Carolina and the federal government are now in a state of declared legal war. On Wednesday afternoon, the Obama administration sent a letter to North Carolina governor Pat McCrory demanding that the state “not comply with or enforce H.B. 2,” its so-called transgender bathroom law. According to the letter, a state requirement that people use the bathrooms reserved for their biological sex violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Department of Justice gave the state until today, May 9, to assure the federal government that men can use women’s restrooms and showers in state facilities.
Today, the state answered the Department of Justice — with a lawsuit. …
… A public-relations battle over bathrooms and showers has transformed into a fight over the meaning and indeed authority of the Constitution itself. In its zeal to advance the sexual revolution, the Obama administration has defied the will of Congress, unilaterally rewritten federal law without even bothering to go through a statutory rulemaking process, and now seeks to bring a sovereign state to heel through a combination of threats and lawsuits. …
… The Obama administration is playing dangerous games with our constitutional republic. Unlike nullification crises in years past, this time the state government is leading the way in attempting to preserve the will of Congress and our nation’s system of checks and balances by defending federal law as written.
The executive branch has gone rogue by amending federal law through unconstitutional action. The administration is supplementing and buttressing its lawlessness with sheer bullying. Governor McCrory and the North Carolina legislature have shown admirable resolve. May they continue to stand firm. We’re way beyond bathrooms now.
_______________________________________________________
LikeLike
Kim, the gist of your comment reminded me of an interview I heard on our national radio station last week. You all may or may not know, but last year our Supreme Court struck down a law banning assisted suicide and gave the government a year to rewrite the law. An extension was granted the newly elected Liberal Government, and they have until June 6 to pass the new law. As you can guess, the drafted bill isn’t encouraging. Anyway, the bill was still in first reading last week, and the Liberals basically told their MPs (members of parliament, equivalent to the House of Representatives), which hold the majority of seats, to vote the bill through the first reading (it has to pass through three readings) because time was running out. Well, one lone Liberal MP wouldn’t back down. He’s not Christian, he’s not pro-life; he’s First Nations (read Native American) and his traditional beliefs oppose what he called “the valorization of suicide”. He pointed out that the Court ruling and subsequent drafted legislation were primarily for the benefit of the middle class, and that such a normalization of taking one’s life would have a devastating effect on his people, who have already suffered from too many of their young people committing suicide. First Nations have some of the worst living and economic conditions of anyone in Canada, thanks to an archane government policy (the Indian Act dates back to the 1800s) which resembles, as my father often has said, apartheid. The interviewer told him at the end that he made a compelling case. It remains to be seen if the bill will pass, but someone spoke the truth, and it didn’t come from a quarter that could be as easily dismissed as the religious right.
That being said, a while back I read an article from The Economist which talked about the disenfranchisement of the white, working-class male, and it made a lot of inflated claims about women taking over the workforce. Well, my maternal ancestors came from the British working class in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and in that working-class, which made up the majority of Britons, men and women both worked, in factories, in farm fields, in upper and middle class households, wherever they could get work. My great-grandmother was a domestic servant. And most working class people where in terrible financial straights – my great grandmother’s mother died in childbirth with only an apothecary to tend her. So, I think that this idea that somehow the white working male is in a new position, where he has to compete with women for jobs, is nonsense.
LikeLike
I see a reference to NC was posted here earlier —
LikeLike
Chas, The NR article says that the Yankee government is at war with North Carolina. Let us know if Texas needs to send troops as we did to Virginia in 1861.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Buddy Holly, Don McLean and Trump.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/05/the_republican_party_died_long_before_trump.html
LikeLike
Dennis Pager tonight on CNN: (paraphrasing) Unfortunately, (political) choices in the real world are rarely between good and bad; but but between bad and worse.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Prager.
Meanwhile. looks like Misten will be challenging Bosley for president?
My animals are now torn between potential administrations.
LikeLike
https://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/2016/05/08/we-conservatives-should-take-some-blame-too/
LikeLike