The following interview was conducted by Alexander Wendt on July 5, 2020, and originally appeared in German on Tichys Einblick on July 13, 2020. Translated by Russell A. Berman.

Alexander Wendt: Professor Bolz, the costs of the coronavirus pandemic are still unknown, but they will surely leave deep scars for years to come. Will our society return from post-materialism to a society with hard materialist concerns with numbers and balance sheets?

Norbert Bolz: Even before the coronavirus crisis, I had doubts as to whether the notion of a post-material society made much sense. To my mind, the post-material term only makes real sense as a description of digitalization and the rise of information technology. But the superstructure that is usually meant by post-material seems to me to be mainly a substitute for religion, and it never had the real significance for society that many ascribe to it.

Q: So the crisis wont change much?

Bolz: It will have a salutary impact to the extent that it will lead many people to focus on fundamental concerns: health, safety, and the basic functions of the state that guarantees these matters. We are returning to a Hobbesian understanding of the state. During the recent wonderful decades, we did not have to worry much about the need to protect our security. That has changed.

Q: What does it mean for public communication if we start talking more about Gross Domestic Product and less about gender identities?

Bolz: We may soon be facing materialist distribution struggles, with open conflict between utopianists and realists, as has been the case in the United States for several years. Up to now, public discourse in Germany has been dominated nearly exclusively by a milieu distorted by affluence. In the post-coronavirus era, we may find that that rhetoric will be ratcheted down. There are two different cultures in Germany: idealists from the ivory tower and others who have to earn money. Up to now, the idealists have been in charge of the public debate. A paradigmatic example of this kind of windbag is the acting chair of the Social Democrats, Kevin Khnert. He studied nothing, completed nothing, and has no real knowledge of anythingbut he speaks well and knows how to present himself. On the other side, there are engineers, natural scientists, and entrepreneurs who do not speak in public because they never learned how, and public speaking is not part of their self-understanding. Until now they have more or less accepted the fact that they barely play a role in the public debate. But I think it is quite likely that they will develop a greater interest, now that it has become a matter of the real economic consequences of the crisis, at least to participate in the social debate and not to leave the field to the big talkers.

Q: What do you see happening in the United States?

Bolz: It is remarkable that in the United States, political correctness is even crazier than here, but there is also a free opposition camp. Talk radio reaches a large public there and gives many a chance to participate in public discussion. Twitter plays a larger role as well.

Q: Canadian author Jordan B. Peterson has evoked the so-called intellectual dark web. That is his ironic designation for a platform where he can talk with the neurologist Sam Harris and entrepreneurs like Eric Weinstein without the limitations of political correctness. Is something like that possible in Germany too?

Bolz: A while ago I made reference in a tweet to the intellectual dark web, where interesting discussions really do take place. In Germany, too, there are plenty of interesting, nonconformist minds. So far what is missing is money, the economic support that is needed to establish a sustainable public platform.

Q: Actually the classical media ought to provide a platform like that for open debates, if only out of self-interest. Why doesnt that happen?

Bolz: This ought to be their job. I can only explain the extreme conformism in the editorial offices of most media through the very similar socialization of all journalists. There is no longer much difference between the private and the state-financed media in the discussion of most political topics. This sort of conformism is fatal, especially in this period in which all the political parties pretty much say the same thing, with the exception of the AfD [Alternative for Germany].

Q: What do you read?

Bolz: I used to appreciate Die Welt a lot. It bothers me that there too one now finds the hymns of praise for Angela Merkels great political leadership. If I want to read about German domestic politics, then I feel best turning to the Neuen Zrcher Zeitung. It offers a perspective that is distinctly different.

Q: The private media are calling for state subventionsabove and beyond the sixty million euros already committed to support newspapers. Are we facing a statist structural transformation of the public sphere?

Bolz: I cant say much to that. I can only pray that it doesnt happen. When it is a matter of the existence of ones own place of work, some media companies are evidently willing to sell their souls. I can even understand that. But the results would be terrible.

Q: In the context of the pandemic, scientists have had a clearly stronger influence in politics and media. Some virologists suddenly appear to be more important than members of the cabinet or leading editors. What does this mean for public debate?

Bolz: I am not able to judge the competency of the virologists who now appear widely in the media. During the pandemic, in general I appreciate the scientists and politicians who honestly concede that they still do not know enough. But as for wide swaths of the humanities: many are sinning against Max Webers exhortation against using the lecture as an opportunity to sermonize.

Q: Who is doing that?

Bolz: For example, Ottmar Edenhofer from the Potsdam Institute for Research on Climate Change. He is very proud to be the actual author of the papal encyclical Laudato si on climate questions as well as the key advisor for the climate policies of the German government. There are plenty of representatives of sociology, political science, psychology, as well as law who would love to appear in media debates as leading advisors. A real casting takes place: your chances to appear are best if you provide exactly what the editorial boards want on a specific topic. The fact that these academic opportunists appear more and more has become a big problem for academia.

Q: Do you see a chance that a new generation of scholars might break through this conformism?

Bolz: I am not particularly optimistic that a future generation of humanists and social scientists can break through the strictures of paternalism and conformism. People worry about their careers, and state control is becoming ever stricter. The result is opportunism scholarship. Thats why I place my bet more on thinking outside of the institutions.

Q: You recently left this academic world through retirement. Was that a painful departure?

Bolz: I am enjoying my freedom, which includes, among other things, the fact that no one can threaten me with disciplinary action. I can send out my missives on Twitter and place them in other select media channels. Otherwise I am experiencing what Goethe once described as the privilege of age: the gradual withdrawal from public visibility.

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Extreme Conformism in the Media: An Interview with Norbert Bolz - Telos Press

WHEN I first worked for newspapers and the Associated Press in New Hampshire in the 1970s, there was an interlude when the accepted style was: Ms. Smith (who prefers that designation)... Ive since told many disbelieving students about this bumpy construction. I use it to make the point that language drives change, and while the getting-there is usually awkward, the arrival is worth it.

I think of this getting-to-Ms. process when I read opinions along the lines of the New Hampshire Sunday News editorial, Wokefulness: A colony by any other name (7/12), which criticizes a decision by the board of the MacDowell Colony, the renowned writers retreat in Peterborough, to drop Colony from its name. The reasoning, according to the board member quoted, is that colony can convey a sense of hierarchy and exclusion.

There are two sets of reasons to shift our language. There are those official changes we need to make because the terms are already widely understood to be outdated and offensive a team called the Redskins, for example. And there are those cases in which we change because the language is one immediate way that all of us can model respect and point to where we want to go in the future.

Adding Ms. to the title-choice list and shoving girl offstage in favor of woman for adult females were signs of such respect. The changes did not sweep away sexism, but were among the many small, important steps taken to move away from systemic gender discrimination of the workplace and beyond. The colony change falls into this category.

This language-tidying work feels to some like reactive political correctness, and they cant say the new phrases without rolling their eyes. In the 90s I had a newsroom colleague who always mimed quotation marks when using the term person of color in conversation. (This stopped when irritated young reporters began making the same air quotes whenever they described a person as white or elderly or dead.)

I often hear folks decry language police or insist Im too old to change. Yes, it takes time to unlearn the muscle memory of language. As a person who has spent most of my life wrangling words and whacking my way through weedy paragraphs in search of clarity, I too still stumble over language changes.

But opting out of this evolution is, at the very least, lazy. Worse, such recalcitrance adds to the fissures in our society that widen and split open.

The editorial opines that the real problem with MacDowells decision is not the word in question, but with people trying to out-do each other in wearing their linguistic sensitivity or wokefulness on their sleeves. That misses the point. The MacDowell decision is an effort to be respectful, to move away as the sun sets on an old empire and its class and racial divisions. As with every other shift toward more thoughtful language, it is a small apology that other, bigger changes are overdue.

Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett is an author and editor in Manchester.

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Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett: MacDowell rebranding is about respect - The Union Leader

In the current clamor of certain elements of the populace rioting for socialism, it seems appropriate to provide a short lesson in history, a subject many colleges and universities have long since assigned to the dust bin. Apparently the hammer of political correctness has driven these learned havens from teaching such for the fear that it might offend someone because they feel left out of the process. History is vital. Without it, we cannot know who we are or where we are. Living in the now is chaos. Does that appear familiar?

Many years ago, about the time our founding fathers were shaking off the shackles of bondage, Alexander Tyler, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, wrote about the fall of the Athenian Republic over 2,000 years before that time. He concluded that a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. Call that socialism, the precursor to communism. The average age of the worlds great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

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Are we there yet? - Dothan Eagle

A gate with a historic marker is shown on the Ohio University campus in Athens, Ohio. (AP ... [+] Photo/Joe Maiorana)

Major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post are writing stories about how Covid-19 is devastating universities and towns surrounding them, particularly in Flyover Country, that part of America located away from the Atlantic or Pacific Coasts where media, business and political elites too often think most of the great minds and wisdom of our nation are found. The Times, for example, recently focused on the University of Akron, and Ohio University, where I reside. Let me speak briefly about three universities in the Buckeye State, including those two.

These schools are getting clobbered financially. Enrollments have been falling for years, so the schools were already in tenuous financial shape before Covid-19. The University of Akron in 1989 had 28,967 students; 30 years later, in fall 2019, it had 17,743, 38.7% fewer. What this fall: maybe 15,000? Moreover, early in this century, Akron went on a huge building splurge including a large fancy stadium, unsuccessfully hoping to attract students, but instead incurring a huge debt burden. Complicating things, another large state school, Kent State, is but 13 miles (16 minutes) away.

As Inside Higher Ed put it, Akron recently had a bloodbath. It fired 97 full-time professors, some tenured, after another 21 had already resigned or retired. This continued a major program retrenchment begun in 2018. Whole disciplines are being decimated, no doubt ending several majors. Meanwhile, of course, the school still subsidizes intercollegiate sports with more than $20 million annually, justly infuriating the faculty.

Conference rival Ohio University (OU) is the oldest Midwest university, with a gorgeous campus including 200-year-old buildings. Reeking in tradition, it inspired David McCulloughs recent best seller, The Pioneers, and is the school where Lyndon Johnson proclaimed his Great Society. A selective admission school with a decent-sized (by state school standards) endowment, OU over the past decade ignored the basics (maintaining high academic standards), lowering entrance requirements to maximize enrollments, while emphasizing political correctness regarding things like sustainability and diversity. A flight to quality in higher ed hurt schools like Ohio University that lowered high academic standards. Huge budget woes have forced it to let roughly 400 staff go, including a good number of faculty, vast numbers of supporting workers, but absolutely no, to my knowledge, high priced administrators, nor have any sizable cuts come to the $20 million plus athletics subsidy required so OU can compete annually in the Last Resort Bowl or its equivalent.

Wright State University in Dayton has had the most perilous decade of all. A new university, founded only in 1967, it grew substantially and by 2011 had 18,275 students; in fall 2019, the number had declined by 32% to 12,423, Wracked by internal dissent, in February 2019 the faculty went on a 20-day strike severely hurting the institution. Its finances have been extremely precarious. Founded originally as a branch of both Ohio State and Miami Universities, both schools are within about an hours drive of the Wright campus, as is the University of Cincinnati. Do you need four major public universities within an hour of Dayton, a city with fewer residents than 100 years ago, which also has a fine private school (University of Dayton) as well as a large community college (Sinclair)?

My guess is something important will happen regarding minimally one of these colleges. Ohio University, academically the highest quality, better endowed, and more geographically isolated from competing institutions, will likely survive, possibly even flourish if it renews its previous emphasis on excellence. Wright State is extremely vulnerable to merger into one or more surrounding institutions. Some sort of merger or increased cooperation between Akron and Kent State also seems likely. Some observers go further, predicting remote learning and alternatives to traditional degrees (like coding academies) may doom most vulnerable American universities.

Ohio is probably fairly typical. The short term prognosis is: Highly unpredictable, but with falling enrollments, rising expenses (money for masks, testing, etc.), loss of athletic revenue, declining state subsidies, falling endowment income and donor grants, half-filled dorm rooms, declining international enrollments, etc. -very bad financial outlooks, even for elite schools suffering smaller enrollment loss. Some low-cost community colleges, however, may actually gain enrollments. But Covid-19 will kill off some schools.

My latest book is Restoring the Promise: Higher Education in America.

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The Great College Depression Begins: Three Ohio Tales - Forbes

The Times has revealed today that counter-terror police officers are considering dropping the term Islamism to describe terror attacks motivated by Islam. If it feels like weve been here before, we have. Ever since Islamist terror hit the West in September 2001, the circular debates over the correct way to describe terrorists has been a near-constant distraction.

In 2014, precious time and energy that could have been used to save the lives of innocent aid workers, journalists, religious minorities and civilians living under the jackboot of ISIS or indeed stopping hundreds of our own citizens joining the frenzy was instead spent debating whether or not we should call the group Daesh, or the un-Islamic State.

Unsurprisingly, this parochial debate did not exactly strike fear into the hearts of terrorists. One told the journalist Graeme Wood:

Were happy to have you discussing whether to call us Daesh, ISIL, or ISIS' As long as youre talking about that, he said and not about theology, politics or military operations - we know youre not taking us seriously.

It is more apparent to terrorists than us that these conversations, though well-meaning, have little benefit to the actual business of countering terrorism.

Which brings us to ideology, and the attempt by police to ban the term Islamist. Islamism is the particular name for a political ideology which seeks to establish an Islamic state. Its adherents range from those working within democracy to those willing to murder civilians to achieve this aim.

According to critics of the word, 'Islamism' should be dropped because it conflates religious belief with terror. But the term Islamism, rather than Islamic is intended to draw a distinction between the political ideology and the religious beliefs of more than two million Brits. It is important though to understand how religion informs the political ideology. Which it does, significantly.

I was present in the police meetings where these issues arose, and was disappointed that the use of the term 'Islamism' was framed in the context of the current discussions on race. This made it near impossible to make a dispassionate case in an entirely separate debate. Islamism is not just a made-up term, or a relic of a more racist past to be expunged like a statue or American Football team name. It is a necessarily precise and accepted term to describe the ultimate objective of both al-Qaeda and, as the name suggests, Islamic State.

When innocent people are gunned down in European capitals and minorities are persecuted in the Middle East, it is of the utmost importance to understand why this is happening. We need to know that we are not simply dealing with a band of malcontents or the vulnerable, but a distinct and coherent violent programme which, as repugnant as it may be, should be respected and understood as an opponent.

The authorities are being led to believe that there is discontent over the use of the term Islamism, but they must also be aware that any backlash over its use risks being dwarfed by the response to its abandonment.

The public wants to see effective counter-terrorism operations, and they want to know that some effort is being made to challenge the ideology behind the violence. How can they possibly have any confidence that the authorities are tackling Islamism, if they wont even name it?

Our institutions seem unaware at the moment of just how far they are drifting from the majority opinion as they consciously or otherwise adopt the political leanings and politically correct language of public sector professionals and supposed community groups.

The police have largely escaped the distrust bred by this disconnect, but following a series of failures inextricably linked to political correctness, from Rotherham to the failure to protect public statues, the police risk sailing ever closer to the winds of public resentment.

If they are seen to be withholding the truth over what is still the greatest terror threat to this country, then trust will deteriorate and policing by consent will be undermined.

Just imagine, in the wake of an atrocity (and there will be more) a senior British police officer using a euphemism to explain the murder of our fellow citizens. The resentment these displays can breed should not be underestimated, and the chasm between the public and institutions leaves anger to fill this vacuum.

Perhaps the most overlooked people in this debate are the formidable Muslims standing up to Islamism every single day across the country. Making Islamism more of a taboo than it already is would undo so much of their hard work, and would be a frustrating betrayal of brave men and women who need our support.

If the authorities and experts need to do a better job of communicating the crucial distinctions between the ideology of Islamism and the faith of Islam then so be it, but this is vastly preferable to a sleight of hand to describe the threat we all face together, both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

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Why police shouldn't stop using the term 'Islamist terrorism' - Spectator.co.uk

Officers and squaddies march to a different tune

Jul 18th 2020

I ALWAYS GET asked to be a suicide bomber in training exercises, reveals a British soldier of North African descent. The role has its perks: spending an afternoon far away from barked orders, waiting to ambush a passing patrol. But with his fellow troops eagerly wrapping a rag around his head, he found it hard to ignore the profiling. I wouldnt term it abuse, I would term it racial ignorance on a staggering scale. Its a group of people who are naturally attracted to a particular political ideology, and dont want to engage with political correctness.

The armys job is to fight the queens enemies, and the fact that they have often been of a different colour to her is embedded in its culture. A non-white reservist says friends ask him why he wants to fight a white mans war. Once a year his regiment sits down to watch Zulu, a film about a bloody battle between British soldiers and African tribesmen. He says that the atmosphere isnt racist, but you can see how there might be some negative connotations amongst the junior ranks.

Nicola Williams, the Service Complaints Ombudsman, said in December 2019 that incidents of racism are occurring with increasing and depressing frequency. The army is trying to change this, and says of instances of racism The Economist put to it, such as the one above, There is no place for racism in the military and anyone behaving in this way can expect to be disciplined or dismissed. Last month, General Sir Nick Carter, the head of the armed forces, wrote to every soldier to say that the army supports Black Lives Matter (BLM). A few weeks later, central command waived the usual rule that politics is off-limits by letting troops attend BLM protests.

Senior staff hope that supporting BLM will send a positive signal. The young cohort from which the army recruits is more ethnically diverse than the population as a whole. Black and minority ethnic (BME) troops make up 8.8% of the 145,000-strong armed forces, which is in line with the population, but that includes 3,760 Gurkhas, around 1,300 Fijians and other non-white troops recruited from Britains former colonies. So it needs to improve its image among BME people to keep its numbers up.

This new approach also reflects the increasingly liberal views of senior staff in the armed forces. A growing professionalism has raised entry and training standards while making promotion more meritocratic. Once a cadet at Sandhurst, Britains officer-training academy, was a bit like Prince Harry: an Old Etonian, with deep family ties to the army, who was rather dim and prone to using racial slurs (as the young prince did as a Sandhurst cadet in 2009). Nowadays cadets are more likely to share the princes current views on race. The public-school contingent has been reduced to under half of Sandhursts intake. Socially mobile graduates now dominate.

Private soldiers still tend to come from low-income families in white working-class towns where social attitudes are more conservative. A BME soldier describes fellow squaddies as having a hillbillies in the Deep South who voted for Donald Trump mentality. A lance corporal was jailed in 2018 for joining National Action, a fascist group. Later that year a group of soldiers caused outrage after posing for photographs with Tommy Robinson, a far-right activist. Some of the counter-protests to BLM were organised by veterans who claimed to be guarding war memorials from potential vandalism. A black reservist says, Ive been surprised with the amount of people who have come out with the All Lives Matter mantra, and then actually having to sit down with NCOs [non-commissioned officers] and explain the whole situation to them.

The shared conservatism which once helped officers and troops to overcome class distinctions has now gone. There is a growing division in attitudes between commissioned officers, who see liberal reforms as necessary, and squaddies, who think political correctness is destroying the armys esprit de corps and undermining its professionalism. Ive had officers try and tell me about white privilege, sighs one soldier. That doesnt go down well with a bunch of blokes from the north.

Not all officers have moved in line with senior staff. Some allowed troops to attend counter-protests. But under new regulations officers who arent seen to encourage diversity will not be promoted. Anthony King, chair of war studies at Warwick university, thinks that in their drive to support diversity officers might sometimes be seen to promote women and ethnic minorities who had failed to meet the armys own rigorous standards. Independently of any committed racism or sexism on the part of the soldiers, this is bound to generate a reaction, he cautions. A former squaddie says he left the army last year when a female officer was promoted despite failing fitness tests. According to a spokesman, All fitness courses require the same challenges for both men and womenall staff being promoted are expected to pass the relevant tests. The squaddie is unimpressed. The army is just for shit cunts and liberals now, he says.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Culture war"

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Black Lives Matter and the British armys culture war - The Economist

I'd like to add a few additions to your article on the John Mason statue "In Windsor, a former Mystic fixture could be removed from pedestal again," July 11 which is accurate on the whole.

In 1992, Columbus was celebrated for his voyage in 1492. Our local peace group, the Southeastern Connecticut Coalition for Peace and Justice, viewed his voyage as an invasion, not discovery which view has been finally recognized nationally with the removal in New London and around the United States of Columbus statues.

When we learned through meeting with "Wolf" Jackson and other local Pequots about the 1637 massacre, and the statue of John Mason standing on the site of that massacre, our focus changed to the removal of that statue, and in the process educating the local community about the Pequot War. Almost two years of hard work culminated when the Groton Town Council voted to remove the statue.

As you mentioned in the article, people living in that neighborhood now have little knowledge about the horrible massacre which took place in their neighborhood. The "peace tree" and plaque which replaced the statue have not been well-maintained. However, the Pequot tribal members are aware of the apology implicit in the removal of the statue, and are, I believe, relieved that it is not on the site.

Edith Fairgrieve, Dave Silk, Melinda Cole-Plurde, Cal Robertson and I, Rick Gaumer, were the activists involved with Wolf and various Pequots in the struggle to recognize the wrong our ancestors committed in Mystic. We appreciated the willingness of the Groton Town Council to learn from history. Once removed, our group did not express an opinion on the disposition of the statue.

In some ways, the move to a small green inWindsor, surrounded by Colonial-era buildings, corrects the image of the colonists given by various museums Old Sturbridge Village, Old Deerfield, Plimoth Plantation with an obviously war-like violent statue. We all need to know this aspect of our history in this land.

By the way, the day after the Groton Town Council voted to remove the statue, I found out that an ancestor of mine, Nicolas Olmsted, a son of a founder of Hartford, took part in the massacre. In fact, Mason, in his account of the battle, when the battle was in doubt, ordered Nicolas to run through the village with a torch, setting fire to the homes. Many died in the fire or were killed fleeing the flames.

I had never seen the statue until the day before its removal. The horror I felt on that site continues to haunt me to this day.

Finally, concerning the recent commentary by Marcus Mason Maronn,his characterization of Uncas and Sassacus as genocidal butchers, equal to Mason, is wrong. It was Mason who led the killing of up to 700 men, women, children and elders. Both the Narragansetts and the Mohegans, allies of the colonists, were appalled by the slaughter of innocents. The historical record is clear.

Maronn repeatedly refers to the controversy about the statue as pushing some form of political correctness.No, the controversy is a response by those who came to understand Mason's and the colonists' actions, which amounted to attempted genocide.

Rick Gaumer lives in Norwich.

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Reminder of the violence that founded a nation - theday.com

A few weeks ago, the political scientist Yascha Mounk launched an online platform called Persuasion. In it, he observed, It is difficult to convey just how many amazing writers, journalists, and think-tankers have privately told me that they can no longer write in their own voices; that they are counting the days until they get fired; and that they dont know where to turn if they do. Next, an open letter, which Mounk, among others, signed, appeared in Harpers. It appeared in part to serve as a riposte to the defenestration of former editorial page editor James Bennett at the New York Times, whose sin was publishing an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton. The letter stated, Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. But the Harpers letter and Persuasion did not persuade everyone: Mounk was promptly denounced in the New Republic, which maintained, in their obsession with the left and cancel culture, Mounk and his fellow travelers are dangerously close to suggesting that the free society we enjoy is as much under attack from the left as from the right.

But are Mounk and Co. seeing ghosts? Or are they warning about a real development? A scorching resignation letter from Bari Weiss who has worked at the Opinion section of the New York Times for the past four years as a staff editor and writer is sure to heighten the debate over political correctness at Americas leading media organizations. Weiss, who left the Wall Street Journal to join the Times, addresses her epistolary effort to the papers publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. In her letter, Weiss suggests that the paper is sacrificing its standards to accommodate the prevailing political trends on the Left, that, in effect, Twitter is editing the paper, and that she herself was subjected to constant bullying for expressing her views. If her account is accurate, then the newspaper has disgraced itself.

Weiss has herself long been a figure of controversy for writing such heterodox essays such as Three Cheers for Cultural Appropriation and for her impatience with modern feminists. As a controversialist, she surely welcomed a good deal of the outrage her pieces incited. The more she was attacked, the more her profile rose. In the May 2019 Vanity Fair, Evgenia Peretz observed, For writers hoping to gain a following, slamming Bari Weiss has become an easy way to be seen. It wouldnt matter if she were writing for The Wall Street Journal. The problemor opportunity, reallyis that shes writing for The New York Times, which is supposed to be their paper, and that shes getting famous for it.

But something appears to have snapped during Weiss tenure at the Times. She indicts the newsroom atmosphere as a hotbed of intolerance in which views that do not comport with the regnant progressive beliefs are treated as heretical. According to Weiss, If a persons ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets. She adds, my own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how Im writing about the Jews again.'

The Times issued a carefully layered corporate response to Weiss cri de coeur. Acting editor Kathleen Kingsbury responded, We appreciate the many contributions that Bari made to Times Opinion. Im personally committed to ensuring that The Times continues to publish voices, experiences and viewpoints from across the political spectrum in the Opinion report. We see every day how impactful and important that approach is, especially through the outsized influence The Timess opinion journalism has on the national conversation. But the question isnt the outsized influence that the Times haswhat publication does not seekto influence public debate as much as possible?but whether it is open to publishing provocative and controversial pieces from more than an ideologically narrow frequency band.

Weiss will presumably elaborate on the affair in coming days. She will prosper from the controversy which amounts to a form of breaking ranks. But it is a perturbing sign of the times that she seems to have been too radical for the Timesand that the paper did nothing to prevent her colleagues from vilifying her.

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest.

Image: Reuters.

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Why Did the New York Times Seek To Silence Bari Weiss? - The National Interest

As the 2020 election begins to heat up, I am compelled to write about the 10th Districts Congressman Josh Harder and how poorly his values match up with those in our Valley. Many of the stances he has taken, and those stances he hasnt, go to show why we need to vote him out of office this November.

Just last month, Harder signed a letter, alongside other far left legislators, which insists on allowing biologically born males who identify as transgender to compete in womens sports. Obviously, a male has a great deal of genetic advantages, otherwise sports would not be differentiated by gender in the first place. Our congressman, however, does not address these advantages, nor does the letter he signed even acknowledge their existence. Opportunities in the athletic world should not be taken from the young girls in our district for the sake of political correctness.

To continue pandering to his leftist base, Representative Harder was among the ranks of Democrats that blocked a resolution denouncing rioters and looters who are taking advantage of the Black Lives Matter movement to cause chaos and destruction. Towns in our own district like Ripon and Oakdale were labeled as racist by leftist groups, and he never even thought to defend them.

Josh Harder claims to Put the Valley First, but he does not represent our values and ignores when our people are under attack. Should we allow him to continue representing us when he refuses to uphold our standards and defend our people? That question is for you to decide.

Joseph Marines

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Where are Harder's values? - The Turlock Journal

Comedian Judy Gold doesnt hesitate to speak her mind. In her new book Yes, I Can Say That, the veteran stand-up, actress and Emmy-winning writer-producer (The Rosie ODonnell Show) weighs in on serious topics including free speech, censorship and cyberbullying, while paying tribute to her Jewish (and other) comedy heroes by telling some of their best jokes and her own.

I wanted people to understand what good comedy is, how powerful it is, Gold told the Journal. Its the most palatable way to talk about uncomfortable and subversive topics and to deal with differences. Thats what a joke is: taking circumstances and personalizing them, having a point of view. Its disarming. Even in the darkest of times, people make jokes. It unites people.

Nevertheless, Gold, her peers and comics who came before her have somehow been held to a higher standard, facing backlash from easily offended monitors of political correctness.

I believe in free speech. I think everything is fodder for comedy but it has to be a smart, well-crafted, funny joke, Gold said. For example, jokes about COVID-19 would be about wearing masks and gaining weight in quarantine. The same applies to race issues. If youre trying to incite hatred or division, its not funny.

Gold also spends time talking about herself, her family and what it was like growing up to be 6 feet 3, Jewish, female and gay. The world identifies you by a physical characteristic and thats not who you are. Everybody has to make a comment. Its hard to embrace when youre a young kid and you want to look like everyone else, Gold said. It was hell, but it gave me a sense of humor and a thicker skin.

A Newark, N.J., native, Gold grew up with two older, quieter siblings. I was always funny and had this sense of humor, but I also wanted to control what people were laughing at, which directed her into stand-up. She first tried it on a dare while in college at Rutgers University, and hasnt looked back.

Her comedy always has been very Jewish. Its in my DNA. Its generation after generation of being kicked out of countries and anti-Semitism, she said, noting that she has been a victim of Jewish hatred way more than anti-LGBTQ. Ive gotten it on stage and its way worse on the internet. But it hasnt stopped her from joking about her shocked reaction to her sons desire to add a New York ZIP code tattoo to his arm. I mention the Holocaust every time I get on stage.

She sees the world through Jewish eyes and believes activism is an integral part of that. I love the social justice part of being Jewish, tikkun olam. We have to give back and repair the world, she said. Theres so much we can do for one another. We share the planet and I think its our duty to contribute for the good and the betterment of society.

I wanted people to understand what good comedy is, how powerful it is. Its the most palatable way to talk about uncomfortable and subversive topics and to deal with differences. Judy Gold

She speaks fondly about her religious education and love of tradition. There was a sense of pride in our house in being Jewish. My mother loved being a Jew. She was very observant. We kept kosher, did all the holidays, Shabbat dinner every Friday, we had a Sukkah. Everything. I went to Hebrew school and Hebrew high school. Our synagogue was Conservative, leaning more toward Conservadox.

While on tour, she attended services all over the U.S. to say Kaddish for her father during the year after his death, and recalled going to a service at a Swedish synagogue two years ago. Wherever I went they were singing the same songs. It felt familiar, and theres something very comforting about that, she said.

These days, celebrating Shabbat with home-made challah keeps her connected to her faith during the pandemic, which has derailed her plans to appear in Last Summer at Bluefish Cove on Broadway. I had so much planned, she said. Personal and universal frustrations provide fodder for her podcast Kill Me Now, in which she and celebrity guests discuss the things that make them mad. Upcoming guests include Beth Lapides, Mary Lynn Rajskub and Jordan Carlos.

Unable to tour to perform or promote her book, Gold has done both via Zoom. She performed on the back of a flatbed truck at a drive-in movie theater in Queens, N.Y. You cant hear them laughing so they just flash their lights, she said. It was fun, but theres nothing like live performance. The world without the arts is really a sad place.

She eventually hopes to do a one-woman show based on Yes, I Can Say That, write another book and marry Elysa Halpern, a therapist, real estate executive and her partner of 13 years. Shes someone I want to grow old with, Gold said. She has two sons from a previous relationship: college-bound Ben, 18, a 6-foot-8 basketball player, and Henry, 23, a production assistant.

In the books acknowledgements, she thanks her boys for putting up with her screaming, Keep it down! Do you understand that I have to write a book? I love you both more than anything. And remember that Im counting on you to pluck my chin hairs when Im lying in my own urine at the Hebrew Home for the Aged.

Asked about the lessons she has learned from her career, Gold provided several. You cant measure your success by someone elses success. Its really about reinventing. No one is going to do the work for you. If you get the chance, you have to be prepared, she said. And you have to enjoy getting there.

Yes, I Can Say That is available starting July 28.

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Judy Gold Stands Up for Comedy in Her Book 'Yes, I Can Say That' - Jewish Journal

(MENAFN - The Conversation) BBC audiences were recently introduced to their first black Doctor Who . In the episode which aired in the UK on January 26, Jo Martin previously best known for roles in Holby City and Blue Story played an ostensibly ordinary human who was, towards the end of the episode, revealed as a previously unknown (possibly past, future or parallel) incarnation of television''s most famous Time Lord.

A few weeks earlier the latest version of the show''s recurring super-villain, The Master, had for the first time been portrayed by a person of colour, a role played with manic zeal by Sacha Dhawan in a performance dubbed by The Guardian as the '' Hot Camp Master ''.

Both events provoked strong responses on social media, from enthusiastic plaudits through to rants from fans ranging from the sincerely ''woke'' to the reactionary and even racist. The latter response might be considered out of character for the followers of a show whose liberal hero has for more than half a century renounced violence and struggled for peace, social justice and environmental sustainability.

This is a series whose very first episode had a female producer, Verity Lambert , and a British Asian director, Waris Hussein phenomena virtually unheard of back in 1963. (The latter was also played by Dhawan in the BBC''s 2013 docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time .)

It''s a programme which, in 1972, argued passionately (albeit symbolically) in favour of membership of the European Economic Community (or in its own terms the Galactic Federation ), and a year later railed against the impacts of industrial pollution.

In recent years, it has foregrounded LGBT+ protagonists , issued dire warnings against climate change and even made reference to the fabrication of evidence to support the invasion of Iraq.

Yet since 2017, when Jodie Whittaker was cast as the first female Doctor Who, arguments have raged between those strange misogynists depicted by the Huffington Post''s Graeme Demianyk as '' man babies '' and, in contrast, the likes of The Guardian''s Zoe Williams, who heralded Whittaker''s Doctor as representing '' the revolutionary feminist we need right now ''.

If, like mine, your social media bubble overwhelmingly favoured the Remain campaign and still can''t get its head around the fact that the majority of people didn''t, then your friends and followers may well have applauded Martin''s appearance. But you might then be surprised if you were to venture into some Doctor Who fan forums . You''d see quite a backlash against what some perceive as the politically correct direction their favourite show has taken. ''This show and all it used to offer has been destroyed by politically correct writing and casting,'' opined one fan . Another responded: ''It''s not ''woke'', unless your idea of woke is ''it has a black woman in it''. It''s the blandest form of mainstream liberalism but some internet talking heads treat it as if it was 50 minutes of Jodie Whittaker reciting the Communist Manifesto.''

The outrage of the anti-PC brigade has simultaneously fuelled and been fuelled by coverage in the mainstream media. Echoing a populist press narrative that the series has become, in the words of the Daily Mail , ''a tiresome ordeal of political correctness'' since Whittaker assumed the role, The Sun reported this week that viewers baulked at the programme''s ''unbearable political correctness'' as ''another female Doctor'' was revealed.

Also writing in The Sun, Jeremy Clarkson observed that ''angry fans say it''s littered with ham-fisted attempts to ram Lefty dogma down our throats''.

This backlash has sparked an equal and opposite reaction one which, like the fan who described the series'' current ideological stance as ''the blandest form of mainstream liberalism'' is not simply aligned with that stance, but which is concerned that its stance is not radical or robust enough. Writing in the New Statesman, assistant editor Jonn Elledge has argued that the casting of the first female Doctor has been undermined by the fact that that she has been ''given no material as meaty'' as that written for the supporting male characters.

Despite having repeatedly argued for the importance of that casting decision in books and articles, both here and elsewhere , I''ve since expressed concern at the series'' simultaneous weakening of the character.

Jack Hudson has recently argued in The Guardian that, beneath its guise of progressive politics, the show has in fact grown profoundly conservative in ways which may at once alienate both its progressive and its reactionary fans.

In December Lenny Henry (in the run-up to his recent appearance in the series) was quoted as suggesting that BBC bosses would rather cast a dog than a black actor in the title role. In this context, Martin''s casting as the first black, female Doctor seems particularly significant.

Yet Martin''s Doctor is not (as yet) the series'' lead. Progressive voices in fandom have sometimes suggested that, when Whittaker eventually leaves the series, her successor will most likely (and most appropriately) be a woman of colour. There may now be those who fear that Martin''s tangential Doctor (whoever and whenever in the Time Lord''s timeline she may turn out to be) has ticked both those boxes and that the production team may next time once more fall back on casting a white, male lead.

These arguments will doubtless continue to rage, along with much bigger ones. The polarisation of political perspectives among the British public since the Brexit referendum of course remains a matter of ongoing national concern. The current disagreements amongst Doctor Who fans once a group which unambiguously embodied the liberal consensus may appeal to the mainstream media precisely because they mirror those larger societal divisions, and may prove of greater significance as indicative of those broader ideological shifts and splits.

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Doctor Who: fan reaction to first black Time Lord exposes Britain's deep divisions on race and gender - MENAFN.COM

We are living in a peculiarly paradoxical age. A time when it has never been easier to have access to free speech, and yet, simultaneously, a time when it has never been easier to be abused, sidelined, and cancelled for speaking ones mind.

British historian Niall Ferguson has diagnosed todays paradox by identifying the rise of the emocracy a culture where feelings matter more than reason. Ostensibly democratic, but lacking purposeful dialogue, discourse, and debate, the modern public sphere has come to be shaped by three phenomena that are fast eroding the bases of civil conversations, mass engagement, and the intellectual playground of ideas.

The first of these phenomena is the rapid intrusion of political correctness into the main forums of discussion, chiefly the portals of social media. Originally meant to increase sensitivity and create awareness about unconscious bias, political correctness has now devolved into a toxic brand of ideological convenience where offence and outrage reign supreme. Take for example, the case of J K Rowling, who was recently ripped to shreds by the guardians of online morality for voicing controversial statements about sexual identity and menstruation. There is little doubt that Rowlings observations were ignorant and insensitive, but instead of catalysing a broader conversation around biological sex is it a binary or a continuum? the residents of the emocracy went all guns blazing in shaming Rowling publicly, and, of course, promising to dissociate from their previously unbridled Harry Potter fandom.

The biggest problem with political correctness and its concomitant brand of moral policing is that it engenders an attitude where individuals start taking offence on behalf of groups. Not only does this practice go against the basic notions of classical liberalism where personal identity trumps groupthink it also encourages a deeply patronising behaviour that is rooted in the misconception that those who choose to be offended have attained a normative zenith from where they can be appropriate adjudicators of what constitutes right and wrong, what can be excused as clumsy and what must be expunged as atrocious.

The second ingredient of the emocracy is the polarisation of society into distinct silos and compartments. In the Indian context, this would mean being branded as either a sickular or a bhakt, something that manifests itself in its crudest version on the comments section of virtual platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In the real world, if you happen to be a distinguished political spokesman like Sanjay Jha, you get removed from the Indian National Congress simply for suggesting a framework to revitalise the party, for any form of dissent is out of bounds.

The underpinning of polarisation revolves around the false choice of us versus them the misplaced view that people can be categorised into good and bad and that there is no need to actively invite opinions from the other side. This paves the way for social interactions in which confirmation bias dictates what is said or not said, as the insistence on stamping out diametrically opposite views leads to the silent murder of the freedom of speech.

Todays polarised polity has forgotten that the freedom to speak is a freedom we uphold not only when we hear echoes of our own stances, but also (more importantly) when we listen to that which we find unacceptable, repellant, or both.

Clamping down on inappropriate content be it in the realm of politics, arts, or other forms of civic participation ensures a double violation, as enunciated in John Stuart Mills iconic essay, On Liberty. Not only do we trample upon the hard-earned right of the speaker to say what they want, but we also deprive a potential audience from being exposed to the concerned content.

Such exposure is crucial to provoke us into asking why we know what we know. But in an emocracy, any challenge to our calibrated knowledge is received with indignation and seen as a licence to unleash ad hominem insults that appeal solely to emotions instead of furthering the intellect.

The third, and perhaps most pernicious, constituent of the emocracy is the inexorable trend of cancel culture, wherein individuals and institutions are removed and isolated from civil society because they have been pronounced as inexcusable transgressors of the contemporary zeitgeist. Evident in the statue activism across the world to the resignation of company chiefs on account of misguided opinions shared decades ago to the call for modern thinkers (like Steven Pinker) and renowned philosophers (like Alexis de Tocqueville) to be airbrushed from the annals of intellectual activity, cancel culture is everywhere.

But even as we proceed to cancel people by precluding any reasonable appreciation of complexity, subtlety, and historicity, we fail to ask the most pertinent question: What happens to those that get cancelled?

In the case of historical figures like Winston Churchill or George Washington, their ambivalent legacies are reduced to monolithic impressions that see them either as unparalleled patriots (for those blindly supporting them) or glorified racists (for the cancel brigade), without arriving at the middle ground of a comprehensive analysis. In the case of individuals living amidst us, cancelling them merely amplifies their position as outliers, exacerbating self-loathing (among the disgruntled), apathetic indifference (among the defiant) and the impossibility of rehabilitation (among those who breed genuinely dangerous ideas, such as the denial of the holocaust or homosexuality).

By cancelling others for things they had done years, decades, and sometimes centuries ago, an emocracy retroactively imposes moral standards that have themselves evolved across time. Such an imposition pays no heed to context, argumentation, or the possibility of alteration.

The slippery slope of cancel culture means that once we set off on it, there is potentially no stopping.

Should we also proceed to cancel Immanuel Kant because he may have disparagingly used the n-word in his polemics? Should we also cancel Mahatma Gandhi because some of his utterances display racial insensitivity, in the early part of his South Africa stint?

Since the overwhelming assumption is that everyone is accountable for everything at everytime, should we, eventually, cancel each other because all of us have, at some time or another, said or done something problematic?

It is undeniable that there are people who deserve to be called out for misusing their privilege or position, but where is the threshold that separates sloppiness from malice and ignorance from evil? Where is the nuance that locates the intricate axis of the moral spectrum instead of falling prey to a sanctimonious, know-it-all reductionism?

Transforming or reversing ones ideas, beliefs, and opinions across time does not make one a hypocrite, it simply makes one human.

That is precisely the message that some of the worlds leading intellectuals including Noam Chomsky, Salman Rushdie, and Margaret Atwood sought to impart in an open letter published in Harpers Magazine on July 7, which denounced a vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the stifling of debate on the basis of a blinding moral certainty.

Feelings and emotions, as vital as they are to our identities, cannot be the be all and end all of the public sphere.

(Priyam Marik is a freelance journalist writing on politics, culture, and sport. He is also a published poet who can be found sampling new cuisines, debating and cheering for FC Barcelona when he's not writing)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the authors own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

Continued here:

The rise of emocracy, and the death of debate - Deccan Herald

No quick judgments

So many of us are quick to jump to conclusions about others.Youre vocal about supporting law and order? You must be a knuckle dragging hick or a yacht owning snob, blindly following FOX and the WSJ, and love President Trump.

Since when is supporting law and order inhumane? Since when is wanting to protect your community inhumane?

Since when did personal property ownership mean nothing?

Hysterical?

Why is it inhumane to want to live in safety?

Why is it considered inhumane to want people entering our country to have no criminal intent?

Why is it considered radical to question scientific studies?If scientific studies and beliefs were not questioned, wed still be using leeches to cure disease and avoiding eggs to promote heart health.

Who thinks believing in basic human rights is a bad thing?

Please site your reams of statistical data.

When did it become liberal to make bold assumptions about community members who are Christian? When did it become liberal to make bold assumptions about anyone disagreeing with you?

Yes, the better question is when did the very principles this country was founded on become radical?

Jackie Rohr

Chagrin Falls

Take a breath

Environmental racism is an obstacle to social justice.

Our communities of color are literally chocking to death. Studies indicate that more than 300,000 people die every single year from health issues related to air pollution. A disproportionate number of the victims are people of color.

COVID-19 deaths are higher in highly polluted areas. Climate change and weather-related disasters effects are more severe on groups that have been excluded from socioeconomic progress and get little help in rebuilding their lives. The dialog and actions toward building a more just society cannot be separate from efforts to repair and eradicate environmental injustice.

As insurmountable as this sounds, radical and immediate action must be taken to fight climate change. In 2019, a bipartisan coalition of former Federal Reserve chairs, top economic advisers to recent presidents of both parties and Nobel Prize-winning economists have endorsed a federal carbon tax, one that would distribute all of the revenue to American households. H.R. 763 Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act is a bipartisan bill designed to aggressively decrease carbon emissions in the U.S. In the past couple of months, we have challenged racial injustice and changes are coming. Its time to act on climate change and take radical action. Demand Congress to act on H.R.763.

Catalina Maddox-Wagers

Cleveland Heights

Greatest Generation, indeed

This letter is in regard to Barbara Christians column about the Greatest Generation.

My father is the son of an immigrant mother and a part of the Greatest Generation, and at age 94, he is still alive. His own father was a machine gunner in WWI in Marne, France and became deaf in one ear because of it but still refused the government assistance offered him for his hearing loss because of his pride and love of nation.

Freebies were an insult to him. Fast forward to my own dad lying about his age and enlisting in the Navy at age 17 after Pearl Harbor to defend his beloved nation and then went on to serve on three submarines. Prior to that he attended the old John Adams High School and grew up across the street. His older brother Jimmy not only was a marine who fought at Okinawa in WWII but was also the very first NASCAR winner for Ford Motor Co. in Dayton, Ohio in 1950 at the Winston Cup. He even beat Richard Pettys dad Lee and greats like Curtiss Merriweather in an old Ford Detroit police car with a flathead where he emerged shirtless and the nickname Shirtless Jimmy Florian stuck and NASCAR outlawed going shirtless from that day forward. So much for the south claiming all first titles for NASCAR. Clevelands own blood has Fords first.

So I guess this is one example of a once thriving Cleveland neighborhood back in the day that is part of what truly bred the Greatest Generation. I remember playing at the school playground in the mid 1960s directly across from his childhood home but not without an adult because I was told the neighborhood was growing unsafe.How can that be? My dad grew up here safe.

But now I have to ask a serious question. Why in 2020 and for many years prior to, am I not able to drive through that very same neighborhood just to visit my own mothers grave who tragically died in 1961 along with other close relatives buried at Cavalry Cemetery without fearing for my safety or life because of the increasedcrime rate that surrounds it? I miss placing flowers and touching her gravestone along with my grandparents right next to hers. After all, men like my dad from the Greatest Generation, who grew up in that very same neighborhood including through the Great Depression by eating rice daily and were happy just to get an apple on Christmas morning, never feared like I do for their nor their family members safety back then either. Sadly, this is true of many of Clevelands old neighborhoods today.

What happened?

Perhaps we need to reexamine so-called old and outdated American family values that have become mostly extinct today for modern political correctness sake despite my dads childhood home that still stands today.

Barbara Toncheff

Chagrin Falls

Silent no more

As a member of the Silent Generation, I must be silent no more.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was not accepted by the Democrat Party as president. The Civil War ensued and was fought over the institution of slavery. Jan. 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the south followed by the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery and the 14th which gave black people equal protection under the law; the 15th amendment gave black men the vote.

In 2016, Donald Trump was not accepted by the Democrat Party as president. Following a booming economy of three years, civil unrest and rioting precipitated by the unconscionable murder of a black man, by police, ensued. This travesty, occurring in the midst of a devastating pandemic, could be crippling without strong and measured leadership. Black Lives Matter began with peaceful protests, which seemingly were hijacked by Antifa, anarchists, Marxists and paid mobsters. Perhaps the radical Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, an organization with no connection to Black Lives Matter, was involved in incitement of rioting and looting.

President Trump has benefitted the Black community promoting education and enterprise. Black unemployment was at an all time low of 5.5 percent in 2019; in 2014, it was over 12 percent. Trumps First Step Act authorized early release and rehab opportunities to nonviolent prisoners, 90 percent of whom were black. Charter schools have been granted $500 million and federal funding to black universities has been increased by 17 percent.

This man can be brash and in your face; political correctness is not his forte, accounting for the blinding Trump hate. He is leading us through daunting crises. He has instituted tax reform and cuts, provided a financial stimulus to all, discontinued harmful business regulations, reformed the VA with health accountability, secured the border, moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and established fair trade rules putting America first. He led us to a booming economy and will continue this quest in spite of constant opposition and sniping through the radical lefts domination of the media, entertainment and education at the expense of the American people.

Lets make America great again.

Sheila Collins

Solon

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Letters to the editor - 07/16/2020 | Viewpoint | chagrinvalleytoday.com - chagrinvalleytoday.com

The idea of saving trees or otherwise not using paper turns out not to be such a great idea when those promoting a paperless world are seeking something they want.

As much as universities claim to be environmentally friendly, theyll never eliminate paper mailings since alumni are more likely to give in response to a U.S. mail request for donations than an online request. I receive the alumni magazine for Northwestern University and the magazine for Northwesterns Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. The magazines tend to be pretty politically liberal with such topics as climate change and social justice, which is why my donations to Northwestern go to athletics or the library rather than to the general fund where the money could be used for political correctness in the classroom. I will at least browse through those issues, reading mostly the sports and 1980s alumni news items in the schoolwide Northwestern magazine and the history articles in the College of Arts and Sciences periodical. I dont look at the Northwestern website, and while I gave them an email address in the 1990s that address is now obsolete. The only way I can read what Northwestern would like me to read is when they send me a hard copy. It includes envelopes with donation requests.

From time to time, I will copy an article or brief from one of the Northwestern alumni magazines. I did so recently with the College of Arts and Science magazine. The irony is that I had to reduce the article since the magazine was bigger than 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches so Northwestern sent out more paper than necessary.

Going paperless sounds nice for universities in many aspects, but when the universities are trying to reach alumni the paperless sphere isnt the best way to build a connection with alumni. It is doubtful that universities will eliminate hard copies of their alumni publications, and it is even more doubtful that universities will eliminate sending paper solicitations by U.S. mail.

During the primary election earlier this year, I received numerous mailings about how certain ballot measures were environmentally friendly or environmentally unfriendly. All of those mailings utilized paper. Internet political advocacy relies on a user specifically seeking a website. Paper political advocacy provides an outreach to those who would not take the initiative to use the internet. Even if voters use the internet for information, the proper keywords are required to find the specific website of a ballot issue, and the voter may find multiple sites with information and not necessarily look at only the one desired by the advocate.

The primary election also included candidates for office, and I received plenty of mailings from them. The general election will be no different. The mailings might not tell me what I need to know about how the candidates stand on key issues, but they tell me which issues the candidate emphasizes. If I use the internet to determine my vote, I will go to the website of an interest group and find how the candidates stand on that groups issues. As is the case with a ballot measure, the candidate must reach out to me. They cannot expect me to search for them. Despite candidates talking about how environmentally friendly they are, they will never eliminate paper campaign mailings.

Saving trees doesnt seem to be as important as obtaining donations or votes. The trend toward more online interaction stops when somebody is asking for something from someone who hasnt made the decision to provide it.

Joe Naiman can be reached by email at jnaiman@reedermedia.com.

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Universities and politicians don't save trees when seeking money or votes - Valley News

I would like to lodge a complaint about wearing face masks.

No one can tell if youre smiling.

You see others on the sidewalk, in the stores hand-sanitizer aisle, in the appropriately spaced fast food takeout line, and their eyes alone fail to accurately convey whether they are regarding you with suspicion, derision or warmth, if they are regarding you at all. Turns out the curvature of ones lips is a key and underappreciated element of interpersonal communication.

Other than that, I cant figure out what the big deal is. Masks help block microscopic stuff from flying in and out of your mouth and nose at a time when that seems especially important. Pretty simple.

But, we come to find out, its not simple at all.

Requiring face masks violates something in the Constitution, somewhere. Oh, here it is: My rights dont end where your fears begin. Or is that a bumper sticker?

Theres enough to be angry about in this world already without raging over 6-inch squares of fabric. Phishing scams, gang drive-bys, drunken street racers. Somehow, though, some people these days seem most exercised about masks.

Not so much in New York. A surge of COVID-19 cases overwhelmed New York Citys health care system three months ago and hospitals upstate braced for what seemed like an inevitable onslaught. They prepared to triage patients in hallways and cafeterias.

It never happened. New York health authorities say closing nonessential businesses and getting public buy-in on masks and distancing ended the crisis. If New York Citys high population density helped feed the virus 22,000 lives over a few horrific weeks, those three simple steps masks foremost among them all but starved it.

That lesson apparently has no bearing on Kern County, though. We are different here: Barely 100 deaths and an overly dramatic governmental response. What exactly makes COVID-19 worse than the regular flu?

Here, mandatory masks epitomize the wussification of America. Theyre nothing more than wearable political correctness. The ultimate nanny state overreach. Some sort of semi-secret lib armband, but for your face.

Wheres my Constitution?

Most people grasp that masks, imperfect though they may be as guards against infection, are worth the level-one hassle. Every credible medical organization, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on down, says the simple precaution of wearing a mask is the difference between a pandemic controlled and a pandemic fueled.

Yet we continue to see the smirks on unmasked faces.

Remember those doctors, nurses and medical professionals weve been hailing as the heroes of this health crisis? With resounding unanimity, they tell us the single most important thing we can do to knock back this virus is wear a mask when were out.

Way to go, Doc. Now pipe down and get back to work. Ill pay attention as soon as this overblown virus hits someone I care about.

Ignoring front-line health care professionals right now is a little like telling a World War II veteran that the Nazis were just misunderstood. But thank you for your service.

Why do some of us behave this way?

I blame the greatness of America. Literally, the traits that made the United States the most desirable place on earth to live, a singular target of aspiration and envy, a symbol of freedom and hope in a world sick of tyranny and turmoil, are the same traits that foster, at least within a distinct demographic slice of the country, a unique sort of arrogance.

A national character built on the foundation of Manifest Destiny and the belief that perseverance and fortitude can overcome any obstacle is the same one that, unenlightened by the true responsibilities of citizenship, confuses rights with privileges and license with obligation.

Cowboys dont wear masks unless the cattle are stirring up dust.

The rest of the world must look at us and shake their heads.

B-b-but back in March the medical establishment was telling us masks were of no benefit. Well, the medical establishment was wrong about that and has been saying so for months.

Face masks have emerged as one of the most powerful weapons available in this battle. As The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, growing evidence suggests that facial coverings can help prevent transmission even if an infected wearer is in close contact with others.

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Journal of the American Medical Association this week that he believes the virus can be corralled over the next four to eight weeks if we could get everybody to wear a mask right now.

Well complain about restaurants and bars closing, small businesses suffering, sport leagues shutting down, and in the same breath reject the simplest protection because it looks wimpy and makes our glasses fog.

On Saturday, the Kern County Public Health Services Department reported 495 new COVID-19 cases, double the number of any previous single day.

Shut up and put on a damn mask.

Robert Price is a journalist for KGET-TV. His column appears here Sundays. Reach him at RobertPrice@KGET.com or via Twitter: @stubblebuzz. The opinions expressed are his own.

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ROBERT PRICE: Cover that smirk with a mask, pal - The Bakersfield Californian

Its never been about Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpDHS expands authority of personnel to collect information on people threatening monuments: report GOP signals Trump's payroll-tax cut in Republican coronavirus bill for now Trump threatens to double down on Portland in other major cities MORE.

Its always been about the Donald Trump voter.

To say that Donald Trump is a flawed human being is an understatement. The same could be said about the Donald Trump voter.

We are all flawed in our own individual ways. The president wears his flaws on his sleeve, which is refreshing in a strange and compelling way.

The Trump voter loves America, reflexively, even if America and its political class lets it down on occasion.

The Trump voter stands for the national anthem at the beginning of every Major League Baseball game and sings Take Me Out to the Ballgame during every 7th inning stretch. There is no ambiguity in that essentially non-political exercise.

The Trump voter sees this country as the good guy but wonders why we spend so much of our blood and treasure getting involved in foreign wars. Its a valid question that the Never Trumpers rarely ask.

The Trump voter doesnt trust the political class and is prone to believing in some outlandish conspiracy theories, some of which turn out to be true. Yes, the Obama White House did frame Michael Flynn and did try to railroad Mr. Trump out of his job.

The Trump voter has been reflexively against China, mostly because they dont like to see Americas manufacturing base and the jobs that come with them exported overseas. But, at the same time, they like buying the cheap big screen televisions that they can find at the local Walmart.

The Trump voter has a love/hate relationship with its local Walmart. They love the prices but wonder about big corporations in general.

The Trump voter likes law enforcement, but only when it keeps the peace and doesnt infringe on their own personal liberty. Many Trump voters wouldnt mind seeing the cops doing a lot less, and they are horrified by stories of no-knock warrants gone bad. The idea of defunding the cops sounds really stupid to them.

The Trump voter has given up on the national media and many of the local television news outlets as well. They get their news from Fox, because at least Fox tries to be fair and balanced. Most reporters feel free to share all of their liberal political opinions at all times, and it is annoying to the typical Trump voter.

The Trump voter wont wear a mask unless they have to, and then only begrudgingly. The president wearing a mask of the weekend wont change their basic opinions of masks.

The Trump voter probably hasnt thought that much about statues, but they certainly dont like the idea of angry mobs tearing down the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial or whatever 18th century white male figure who is standing defenseless, down the street.

The Trump voter agrees with the president that schools need to reopen this fall. They know that keeping the kids at home is bad for the kids and bad for the parents. They may like the folks who teach their kids, but they have little tolerance for the unions that are playing this virus to extort more concessions out of the spineless politicians who have unnecessarily closed the economy.

The Trump voter got exactly what they expected from this president. Somebody who would shake up the political system, who would stand up to China, who would take on political correctness and who would get the economy moving again.

They would like the president to get a better handle on the COVID-19 panic. Its a tough situation, sure, but Mr. Trump cant let the governors close down the economy again. None of us can afford that, especially not the president.

The Trump voter knows the risks of being a Trump voter. They see what happens to people who wear MAGA hats or have Trump stickers on their cars. They know what happens when they say too much on social media and they know what can happen to people who say what they really believe.

So they keep their mouths shut. But they are going to vote this fall. They cant wait to vote this fall.

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at http://www.thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) when he was majority whip and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).

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Feehery: It's about the Trump voter | TheHill - The Hill

Editor:

I support the president and disagree with NASCARs decision to ban the Confederate flag (Trump takes aim at NASCAR, Wallace, Reading Eagle, July 7). Such is akin to burning books.

When I see a Confederate flag, I do not think of slavery, racial intimidation or white supremacy. I think of the thousands of very brave men who, regardless of the right or wrong of their cause, walked into blazing Union rifle and cannon fire in the many battles of the Civil War, under the banner of the Stars and Bars. I see the Confederate flag as a tribute to those men. It should not be banned. Those soldiers were Americans, and their bravery deserves to be honored.

I believe slavery, racial intimidation and white supremacy were and are despicable. To blame the Souths banner for such is just another perversion of political correctness. The same applies to the removal of Confederate statues. Those statues describe our history, which should be remembered by all of us so that the negatives are not repeated.

In anticipation of being called a racist, I reject that epithet out of hand. Too often it is used by people who lack an effective counterargument.

Art Becker

Reading

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Letter: Allow Confederate flag and leave statues alone - Reading Eagle