Category Archives: Political Correctness

Following Donald Trumps defeat in the 2020 election, and after the bloody Jan. 6 riot that Trump instigated, the 45th U.S. president immediately lost many of his ties to world leaders he once called friends. However, Brazils far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who has modeled himself in Trumps image, sought to keep the bromance alive.

Thats something former President Trump, months after officially departing the White House, hasnt forgotten, and has expressed some interest in returning the favor.

This summer, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, Trump told confidants that hes open to publicly endorsing Bolsonaros reelection, potentially at a mega-rally in Brazil where he and Bolsonaro could appear together side-by-side, to rail against what they each deem undesired election outcomes. Bolsonaro, who is widely expected to decisively fail in his reelection bid next year, has been preemptively spreading groundless claims of election fraud, a strategy jarringly reminiscent of Trumps failed coup in the United States.

Whether Trump ends up visiting his Brazilian peer soon or not (the U.S. government issued a level four advisory for those interested in visiting Brazil), the links between Bolsonaro-world and Trumpland remain firmly intact.

President Bolsonaros son Eduardo, who serves as a member of the Brazilian parliament and has been described in the U.S. press as the Donald Trump Jr. of Brazil, recently met with Trump, according to a post on the Brazilian lawmakers Instagram account. Last month, the younger Bolsonaro posted pictures of himself at Trump Tower standing next to the former president. Bolsonaro, whose infant daughter posed alongside the ex-president in an autographed MAGA ball cap, said he took the opportunity to invite [Trump] to come to our country when he sees fit, maybe in a CPAC-Brazil.

Trump apparently did not make it to Brazils version of the annual U.S. conservative summit, although Donald Trump Jr. spoke to the conference via video. CPAC Brasil 2021, which was hosted in Brazils capital city of Braslia early this month, is one of several foreign spin-offs of the stateside conference, which is put on by the American Conservative Union. The ACU is fronted by Trump-aligned lobbyist Matt Schlapp, who is also a friend to the Bolsonaro political dynasty.

It was on the way back from that trip that a delegation of American conservatives, including Trumps former senior adviser and spokesman Jason Miller, was briefly detained by Brazilian law enforcement as they attempted to fly out of the country on Tuesday. The incident came on Brazils independence day, as Bolsonaro urged his supporters to defend his administration by flooding into the streets of Braslia, as well as other major cities

A day before he was detained, Miller appeared on former top Trump aide Steve Bannons podcast to praise Bolsonaro, whom he described as a very impressive man.

In a lot of ways, President Bolsonaro has the same superpowers that President Trump does, Miller said.

Gettr, Millers attempt at a pro-Trump social media platform, has proven especially popular with conservative Brazilian supporters of President Bolsonaro, according to a recent report by Stanford Universitys Internet Observatory. As a part of that study, researchers looked at the frequency of flag emojis in Gettr users profiles: Brazilian flags, affixed to 11,350 profiles, were second only to American flags, found on 20,650 accounts. The flag metric is an imprecise measurement of the national demographics of Gettrs roughly 1.5 million followers but nonetheless points to a notably large and vocal community of pro-Bolsonaro users on the social media app. Their presence in such numbers, Stanford researchers wrote, is likely due at least in part to the support of Bolsonaros son Flavio, who announced he was joining the platform back in July.

The pugnacious Brazilian president has returned the favor, courting Miller with a high-level meeting during the Brazil trip. Miller met with a barefoot Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo, according to pictures posted on Twitter by fellow attendee Matthew Tyrmand, a board member of pro-Trump conservative activist James OKeefes Project Veritas group. During the meeting, Bolsonaro and his son held up a Project Veritas shirt.

He wants to be sort of the South American branch of Trumpism, if you will, said Gustavo Ribeiro, the founder of Brazilian news website The Brazilian Report.

Bolsonaros critics had accused him of using the protests to stage a coup or his own version of a Jan. 6-style attack on government institutions. While protesters broke through some police barricades the night before, the pro-Bolsonaro rallies were stymied by low attendance and a heightened law enforcement presence.

Eduardo Bolsonaro has become an emissary between his father and the American far-right. In 2019, the younger Bolsonaro joined a sort of international populist movement founded by Bannon, as the representative for South America.

Andre Pagliarini, an associate professor at Hampden-Sydney College who studies modern Brazilian political history, said the Bolsonaros affiliate themselves with Trump associates like Bannon in an attempt to get closer to Trump.

Its that lingering Trump dust that is still on Bannon that appeals to them, Pagliarini said.

Eduardo Bolsonaro has even courted less internationally known Trump allies in the United States like MyPillow CEO and staunch Trump ally Mike Lindell. In August, Bolsonaro spoke at Lindells ill-fated cyber-symposium event, a bumbling attempt to prove the false conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Before his speech, Bolsonaro handed Lindell a red MAGA hat he claimed came from the twice-impeached former U.S. president.

Bolsonaro will win unless its stolen byguess what?the machines, Bannon said while the younger Bolsonaro was on-stage.

The machines! Lindell agreed.

For his part, the Trumpist pillow magnate hasnt gone all in on Bolsonaro just yet. Lindell told The Daily Beast on Thursday night that he is currently not planning on sinking any money or resources into anything Brazil-relatedbecause he is working to launch new fronts in his audit crusade in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Alabama, Colorado.

Bolsonaro is expected to lose his 2022 reelection campaign to left-wing former Brazilian president Luiz Incio Lula da Silva. Ahead of that projected defeat, Bolsonaro is bringing Trump and the GOPs baseless allegations of massive voter fraud to Brazil, part of an effort to claim victory even if he loses.

Here is a network of denialism in the United States thats established after Trump loses that they can kind of plug themselves into, Pagliarini said.

Bolsonaro has already adapted American culture-war fights for Brazil, according to Ribeiro, embracing fights over gun control and supposed COVID-19 cure hydroxychloroquine.

Bolsonaro was also an early promoter of ivermectin, the anti-parasitic drug thats been embraced as an unproven COVID-19 treatment by anti-vaccine groups in the United States.

We dont have a Second Amendment here, but still they use arguments very similar to what Republicans would use in the United States about the freedom to bear weapons, Ribeiro said.

Some pro-Trump media outlets have embraced Bolsonaro as a figure Bannon has called the Trump of the tropics. QAnon social media channels eagerly followed the Brazilian protests, casting them as ordinary Brazilians reclaiming their freedom from liberal elites. Right-wing blog The Gateway Pundit argued that pro-Bolsonaro protesters and Trump supporters were all part of a single global battle against so-called corruption.

This isnt the first time meetings between Bolsonaro and Trumpworld have made headlines. In March 2020, a meeting between Trump and Bolsonaro at Mar-a-Lago became a prominent coronavirus hotspot in the United States after several Bolsonaro aides tested positive for the virus.

Trump has praised Bolsonaros style many times when he was in office, and loves how Bolsonaro goes after the media in his country and political correctness, said a source close to Trump whos spoken to him about Bolsonaro several times. But the [former] president has been sure to point out that he is better looking than Bolsonaro at least twice when Ive spoken to him.

Link:

Inside the Bromance Between the 'Trump of the Tropics' and the Original - The Daily Beast

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, The American Prospect gave cautious support to striking back against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, while warning about the risks of a wider war and emphasizing the need to preserve our own civil liberties at home. We opposed the Iraq War but insisted there were circumstances when the use of American power was justifiable. On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we devoted an issue to the lost decadethe squandered opportunity after 9/11 to use the ensuing surge of solidarity and patriotism to deal with the real challenges the nation faced (and still faces). Not all the articles that appeared in the Prospect reflect a single viewpoint; the Prospect has also served as a platform for debate. Here are some excerpts from a few of the many articles we published over the past 20 years:

(October 22, 2001)

By Robert Kuttner

There is a terrible risk that we will overreach or underreach; that we will target the wrong enemy and inflame hundreds of millions of ordinary Muslims without wiping out terrorists If ever there were a moment to engage and debate complexities, it is this one.

By Paul Starr

We are embarked upon a war that has no clear limits and may require deep engagement in a region of the world that is strange and hostile to us. Our involvement there could backfire. The war might spread to neighboring countries. To avert these risks, we ought to keep the grander visions of the conflict in check. We must not compound the tragedy of September 11 by undertaking a jihad of our own.

By Harold Meyerson

Today, proportionality is both a moral and a strategic concern. As we learned in Vietnam, you dont win a war in which public sentiment is crucial by destroying a villageor a nation, or a regionin order to save it.

By Michael Walzer

[Terrorism] aims at a general vulnerability. Kill these people in order to terrify those. A relatively small number of dead victims makes for a very large number of living and frightened hostages. This is the ramifying evil of terrorism: not just the killing of innocent people but also the intrusion of fear into everyday life, the violation of private purposes, the insecurity of public spaces, the endless coerciveness of precaution But when moral justification is ruled out, the way is opened for ideological apology. In parts of the European and American left, there has long existed a political culture of excuses.

By Paul Berman

The present conflict seems to me to be following the twentieth-century pattern exactly, with one variation: the antiliberal side right now, instead of Communist, Nazi, Catholic, or Fascist, happens to be radical Arab nationalist and Islamic fundamentalist The genuine solution to these attacks can come about in only one way, which is by following the same course we pursued against the Fascist Axis and the Stalinists. The Arab radical and Islamist movements have to be, in some fashion or other, crushed. Or else they have to be tamed into something civilized and acceptable, the way that some of the old Stalinist parties have agreed to shrink into normal political organizations of a democratic sort.

By Robert Kuttner, Harold Meyerson, and Paul Starr

(September 30, 2002)

As Congress debates war with Iraq and the new Bush doctrine, it must look beyond November and beyond Baghdad and ask if the direction the administration wants to take America in actually will bring us the security Bush promises. The administrations unilateral determination to overthrow Hussein is already taking us down a dangerous path. Overthrowing the system of international law and security that has worked for the past half-century is more dangerous still.

By Paul Starr, Robert Kuttner, and Michael Tomasky

(February 21, 2005)

In reaction against Bushs embrace of Wilsonian rhetoric, some liberals may be tempted to go to the opposite extreme, downplaying any democratic aims of American foreign policy and asserting only the goals of peace and stability. That is not our view. In charting an alternative to Bushs foreign policy, liberals should uphold liberal aims. But those aims are not well served by a policy that has discarded the framework of international law and institutions built up since World War II and has made American power appear illegitimate in the eyes even of traditional allies President Bush has been wrong, often calamitously so, about many things, but he is right that America must do all it can to prevent another 9-11. When facing a substantial, immediate, and provable threat, the United States has both the right and the obligation to strike preemptively and, if need be, unilaterally against terrorists or states that support them The liberal alternative to Bush is not to lessen our power but to listen to the world and, in the process, to add to the power that we and other liberal democracies can marshal to strengthen our security and freedom and to get on with the forgotten agenda of protecting the global environment and alleviating the poverty and misery that are still the fate of hundreds of millions of the worlds people.

By Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias

(October 23, 2005)

Most liberal hawks are willing to admit only that they made a mistake in trusting the president and his team to administer the invasion and occupation competently The incompetence critique is, in short, a dodgea way for liberal hawks to acknowledge the obviously grim reality of the war without rethinking any of the premises that led them to support it in the first place An honest reckoning with this wars failure does not threaten the future of liberal interventionism. Instead, it is liberal interventionisms only hope.

By Tara McKelvey

(October 23, 2008)

A quiet revolution in the U.S. military has resurrected Vietnam-era strategies to fight the war on terrorism. Retired Lt. Col. John Nagl makes counterinsurgency seem so appealing that its easy to forget its dark side.

By Michelle Goldberg

(October 27, 2009)

One of the few remaining rationales for maintaining the occupation is protecting Afghan women. Is that enough? The answer depends on whether one believes that the American military can be a force for humanitarianism. After the last eight years, thats a hard faith to sustain. Staying in Afghanistan seems indefensible. The trouble is, so does leaving.

By Adam Serwer

(June 3, 2010)

The [Obama] administrations studious avoidance of associating terrorism with Islam isnt political correctness run amok. It represents one of the few points of divergence between the Obama administration and its predecessor on matters of national securitya deliberate effort to narrow the scope of the war on terror to a fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups.

(September 2011)

By The Editors

Ten years after the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon, the United States is in bad shape, but our problems have little to do with what al-Qaeda did to us. Americas troubles stem from what the country has done to itselfor rather, from what our political leaders have done with the nations power and resources The patriotism that swept America after September 11 could have helped forge a genuine moment of national unity and common purpose. Instead, the Bush administration and other Republicans used it as an opportunity to vilify liberals who opposed the push for war in Iraq or the need for wider government surveillance The American public is ready for a rapid drawdown of troops [in Afghanistan] and ambitious nation-building at home. In a larger sense, bin Ladens death can provide closure to the 9/11 decade. We never should have lost a decadeand we must not lose the next onebecause of 9/11.

By Rick Perlstein

We had heard Bush when he declared, We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. It turned out, however, that this was not the fight the Bushies were spoiling for.

By Kim Scheppele

From the end of World War II to the start of the global war on terror, international law provided crucial support for the promotion of human rights around the world. But the response to the September 11 attacks has had a profound and little-appreciated impact on international law with devastating global consequences for human rights, democracy, and constitutionalism.

By Jamelle Bouie

(May 2, 2012)

If anything, the beginning of the end in Afghanistan will help Obama build his leadership case against Mitt Romney.

By Robert Kuttner

(September 11, 2014)

There are key differences between September 11, 2001, and September 11, 2014. The first is that America is not under direct assault. The second is that we at least have a president who is reality-based, not prone to messianic interventionism, and who makes war only reluctantly. But in the thirteen years since the first 9/11, the Middle East has become even more unstable. And the face of radical Islam has become more hydra-headed. To say that this reality is, in large part, the legacy of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush does not make todays policy choices any easier.

By Karen J. Greenberg

(November 30, 2020)

Shuttering Guantanamo, long overdue, offers the chance to bring closure to the 9/11 era.

By Emran Feroz

(July 14, 2021)

What started as a counterterrorism operation led to wholesale cooperation with and empowerment of rapacious warlords, corrupt politicians, and drug barons.

By Rozina Ali

(August 10, 2021)

The Afghanistan War may be ending, but the age of war drones on. We may not be barreling cities with bombs anymore, but inflicting law and order at home and around the world, it turns out, still results in physical and moral carnage.

Continued here:

The Prospect Responds to 9/11and to the Wars That Followed - The American Prospect

Following 2020's competition 'freedom of expression and satire in danger,' the Euro-Mediterranean Centre LIBREXPRESSION (Fondazione Giuseppe Di Vagno -1889-1921) have boldy chosen a natural successor for 2021.

'Cancel Culture and Political Correctness' is this year's category for Europe's finest political cartoonists.

160 press cartoonists from 55 countries were invited to take part and entered 218 satirical cartoons. The material was examined by an international jury and chaired by Thierry Vissol, director of the Librexpression Centre.

The 56 semi-finalist cartoons selected by the jury will be displayed from 20 September to 31 December in an exhibition in the cloister of the Monastery San Benedetto in Conversano (Italy) and published in a paper catalogue.

The ten finalist cartoons, presented below, will also become postcards available to the public.

The three winners will be announced and awarded prizes on September 26th during the 17th edition of the Fondazione Giuseppe Di Vagno's Lector In Fabula festival.

The LIBEX2021 competition was organised with the collaboration of Cartooning for Peace and voxeurop.eu

The ten finalists, in alphabetical order, are as follows:

We will update this story when the winners are announced on September 26.

Read the original:

'Cancel Culture and Political Correctness': here are the finalists for the 2021 LIBEX cartoon prize - Euronews

Former President Donald Trump has yet to announce if hell be running for president once again but revealed in an exclusive interview with "Gutfeld!" that his decision will make some people "very happy."

"I love our country," he said. "I think youll be very happy. I would say two, three years ago you might not have been that happy but now I think youd be happy Ill make a decision in the not-so-distant future."

According to Trump, the polls agree with him as some ratings hit 98% approval for the Republican Party which makes the former president "feel appreciated."

Trump went on to bash the liberal media for protecting the "incompetent" Biden administration at all costs, including staying silent on the developing disaster in Afghanistan.

GREG GUTFELD: IF MY TRUMP INTERVIEW ISN'T EMMY-AWARD WINNING STUFF, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS

"I watch the evening news and they talk about everything they can but they dont like to talk about Afghanistan."

"[CNN is] torn because if they cover it, theyll get higher ratings but they dont want to cover it because its bad for the radical left Democrats," he said. "And theyre doing that to protect some of the most incompetent people in the history of politics."

The mainstream media also refuses to acknowledge rising crime in Americas cities which has been fueled by the defund the police movement following Black Lives Matter protests last summer. Trump noted prosecutors now "only go after Republicans."

"Look at Chicago where they say 113 people were shot at and 28 died. Thats worse than Afghanistan," he said. "We didnt lose, I told you, a soldier in many, many months and here they have 28 people died over a weekend? Its a disgrace."

TRUMP TO GUTFELD: YOUR FABULOUS RATINGS ARE BEATING SOME VERY UNTALENTED PEOPLE; SLAMS BIDEN AFGHAN CRISIS

Trump also mentioned the class action lawsuit being filed against Big Tech giants like Twitter and Facebook for silencing his free speech, even though Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used to visit the White House to "kiss my ass," he revealed.

Meanwhile, under the Trump administration, political correctness and "woke" thinking were kept in check. Now that Biden has allowed wokeism to trickle into everyday living, such as critical race theory in school curriculum, Trump pointed out that Americans are becoming more aware of its threat to the country.

"Woke means youre a loser," he said. "Im watching parents in Virginia theyre tired of it. They dont want it.Theyre finally getting it Theyre throwing these maniacs out and its been great to watch."

Trump also revealed that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, was never one to back critical race theory in military training, yet was quick to re-implement it under Biden.

Trump commented on Bidens mental fitness to act as commander in chief as the world has watched him stumble through press briefings and publicly announce his adherence to written instructions and stressed how it could be a national security risk.

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"Its so sad for our country," he said. "I got to know Putin and President Xi of China and Kim Jong Un and all of them very well. Theyre at the top of their game. When they see the scene at the meetings that theyve had where [Bidens] wife, whos lovely, is screaming, come here, Joe When they see that, I cant imagine theyre inspired."

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Trump tells Gutfeld I think youll be very happy with 2024 plans - Fox News

Nishant Uppal is the author of 'Narcissus or Machiavelli? Learning Leadership from Indian Prime Ministers'.

What leadership lessons can you learn from Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morarji Desai, P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi?

You could study their speeches and policies, preserved and discussed in books and newspapers. Or you could take a short cut, like reading Nishant Uppals book Narcissus or Machiavelli? Learning Leadership from Indian Prime Ministers(published by Routledge), to find out.

An associate professor,Uppal is on the faculty of organization behaviour in the human resources management group at IIM Lucknow.Excerpts from an interview:

How did you balance academic rigour and political correctness while analysing the personality traits of various Indian Prime Ministers?

The trade-offs were unavoidable but not irresolvable. I used robust and universally acceptable personality traitsnarcissism and Machiavellianismthat have been deployed by international researchers for studying political leaders behaviours and associated policy outcomes.

The framework prevents the researchers bias from interfering with intended outcomes, and thus protects from any potential controversy. Nonetheless, narcissism and Machiavellianism are generally seen as negative traits; therefore, some of the research outputs in the bookdespite being entirely unbiasedcan be treated pejoratively. This systematic risk, in any such intellectual and scholarly pursuit, is unescapable.

What made you study this subject?

India has entered its 75th year of Independence. This deserves a lot of appreciation, as its continual and efficacious existence is against several predictions that were made when India received its freedom from colonial powers. While we celebrate our triumph, it is necessary that we occasionally put India through a critical lens. There are various parameters of success; I chose to study the one consistent with my line of research and expertise: personality-policy connect.

Political institutions and government bodies operate through human agency. Scholars of history and political science suggest that political and governmental actors in upper echelons impinge a great deal of themselvestheir experiences, preferences, and dispositionsinto their decisions and leadership behaviours, often with great consequences. Despite the availability of several such researches on the international landscape, Indian political leaders have scarcely been put through such scrutiny.

Tell us about your research methodology?

Political leaders are physically and politically distant, and few become available for controlled laboratory-based experimental research. Besides, it is too ambitious for social scientists, who like to pose onerous questions, to expect lawmakers to fill lengthy survey forms. Thus, I employed the historiometric analysis that utilizes historiophoty (the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and filmic discourse) and historiography (the representation of history in verbal images and written discourse) to examine the truth and accuracy presumed to govern the professional (or unprofessional social media governed) practice of psychographic profiling of the subjects in question.

Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Saddam Hussain, Robert Mugabe, and Vladimir Putin have been put through historiometric scrutiny. One study that examined George W. Bushs personality predicted quite accurately his stimulants and reactions with respect to the US attack on Iraq. The historiometric approach deployed on Indian prime ministers may reveal some important predictions and policy consequences.

Narcissus was a hunter in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection. What insights can leaders draw from his story?

Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool, and ultimately perished as a result of his self-preoccupation. Psychologists such as Sigmund Freud identified various manifestations of narcissism, including self-admiration, self-aggrandizement, and a tendency to see others as an extension of ones self. Modern social scientists added other dispositional dimensions to narcissism such as exploitation, entitlement, superiority, arrogance, self-absorption, self-admiration, and an insatiable urge to be at the centre of attention. In my book, I put prime ministers through this dispositional lens.

Historiometric examination revealed narcissistic tendencies in the Indian prime ministers personality. Nehrus fashion choices from jacket to achkan with red rose seem parallel to Indiras sari and Modis self-named embroidered suit. All three exteriors represent brand images that are carefully crafted to propagate Nehrus chachaship, Indiras Durganess, and Modis Modinomics and Moditva.

NiccolMachiavellis bookThe Princeis associated with using unscrupulous means to achieve success. What can it offer leaders who prioritize ethics in public life?

Often, Niccolo Machiavellis book The Prince is misconstrued as cynical. While for a leader with high Machiavellianism end justifies the means, it is not universally villainous. Comparisons have been drawn between Kautilya (Chanakya) and Machiavelli, which explains that both were political and public policy thinkers and promoted result-oriented means to achieve goals.

In The Prince and The Discourses, Machiavelli advocated extreme behaviours such as manipulation, exploitation, and deceitfulness with an analytical attitude without a sense of shame or guilt for acquiring and maintaining power in socially and politically competitive situations. He advised leaders to take on many carefully crafted personas to create a leader-like image by exhibiting greatness, boldness, gravity, and strength in their actions. The Prince suggests that men are moved by two principal thingslove and fear.

Wouldnt it be simplistic to conclude that India hasnt had any women as Prime Ministers apart from Indira Gandhi because women refuse to be narcissistic or Machiavellian. What other explanations are possible?

While empirical evidences from the science of psycho-pathology reveal the differential presence of narcissism and Machiavellianism in women and men, political leadership can rarely be understood if gender is seen through a binary static lens. Generally, for women in lower gender egalitarian societies, exhibiting more charismatic and authoritarian leadership behaviours may provide a way for them to appear more androgynous and thus acceptable. Androgyny may offer women a way out of the double bind they are put in when they are associated with leadership ability but also the expressive qualities associated with their prescribed gender role; therefore, the association with goddess Durga.

Excerpt from:

"Historiometric examination revealed narcissistic tendencies in the Indian prime ministers... - Moneycontrol.com

Charlotte Spears 24 (she/her)

Over the summer, Davidson College President Carol Quillen announced that this academic year would be her last as president of the college. As the process to find a replacement begins, the search committees could make a historic decision. For the first time in the schools 184 year history, Davidsons next president will not be required to be a member of the Christian faith.

In January 2020, the college bylaws were updated to no longer require that 75 percent of the board of trustees or the president be Christian. The change was met by mixed reviews. On May 18th an email was sent to thousands of Davidson alumni denouncing the updated bylaws and the process by which the school approved the decision.

The email, co-signed by 11 alums of classes from 1957 to 1985, expressed concern that the schools Christian foundation has clearly been fundamentally altered and found it difficult to envision how the religious component of the Statement of Purpose will be adhered to in the future if the President and potentially up to 75% of the Board were to have no personal Christian affiliation. The email also addressed how the group of alumni feel that Davidson has gone in a direction that veers away from the Colleges traditional academic focus and wanders into the realm of political and social activism. The fundamental goals of the College appear to be sublimated to other goals, namely the orthodoxy of political correctness.

Alumni, professors and students immediately reacted to the wide-spread email on social media.

Rev. Katey Zeh 05 started a petition asking the college administration to hold the senders of the email accountable for their attempt to hijack the colleges processes, evolution, and progress. Zeh demanded that the alumni be legally investigated to identify how they obtained the thousands of alumni emails.

I was pretty furious when I got the email, Zeh said. Given that their posture was a Christian supremacist stance, and as someone whos an ordained Baptist minister, I find that highly offensive to weaponize Christianity in that way.

Zeh believed that the email was nefarious and violated the honor code that Davidson students sign as members of the community.

Im someone who supports Constitutional rights and religious freedom, Zeh said. Religious freedom is freedom from religion and its freedom of religion. But for me, a deeper part of that is understanding the richness of religious pluralism and how being in relationship with people who identify differently across all kinds of parts of our lives actually elucidates my own sacred truth to be in conversation and dialogue with people who hold different religious viewpoints.

Zeh hopes that the alumni reaction to the bylaw changes can be a learning opportunity for the community.

What does it mean to be an alumni? Zeh asked. Not just to give money or go to events or talk about the school, but to really keep within our values beyond our time at Davidson, and to use our responsibilities and our platforms well and to hold one another accountable beyond the classroom. I really think that thats what this is about.

Kenny Xu 19 called Zehs petition to hold the senders of the email against the bylaw changes accountable a terrible idea and started a counter petition.

Those people literally have names on Davidsons facilities. Xu said. One of the signatories on the email, Stephen B. Smith, has the field at Richardson Stadium named after him. They literally funded thousands of peoples education, and have a record of public service in their country that is unparalleled.

Xu believed the contents of the email criticizing the by-law changes were valid.

We should respect the way that Davidson was founded. Xu said. The way that the people who decided to create an institution like Davidson did so for a specific reason. Now, many people, [of] different faiths have chosen to come here. And I think that is amazing. That is wonderful. But that is something but you still should always look back at. An institution is more than just the present members that are here currently. It also goes back to its own history and its own founding. And we always need to pay careful respect to that.

Dr. Rose Stremlau, associate professor of history, disagrees with the idea that the college needs to maintain a strict adherence to the values at the time of the colleges inception. Since 1837, Davidson College has amended and changed its bylaws many times to allow for a more inclusive and diverse community. In 1962, the school integrated, and in 1972, the school made the choice to co-educate.

We cant forget that many of the folks who signed that letter never had a female professor or had a professor who wasnt white, they never had a professor who wasnt Protestant. Stremlau said. And so, I read that letter and my eyebrow went up.

Stremlau equated the bylaw changes to developments in the way history has been taught at the college. According to Stremlau, All but one of the Davidson College alumni who wrote the email attended while Prof. Chalmers Gaston Davidson was faculty in the History Department. In classes, he taught a version of American history that didnt reflect current understandings in the field by the time he retired.

Stremlau made the point that her classes, today, contain a far wider range of perspectives, readings, & viewpoints than any he taught. Therefore, she challenges the email justification of condemning the veer[ing] away from the colleges traditional academic focus.

In regards to the recent developments made by the college, Stremlau said Davidson is better for it Our students are better for it, and they will make a better world because of it.

There are really, really, really amazing people who arent Presbyterians who would do an amazing job [as President], Stremlau said in reference to the search for the next president. If a person embodies everything Davidson is about, why wouldnt we want to interview them, why wouldnt we want them to be part of the pool from which we pick?

Dr. Chris Hawk 67 believes the authors of the email have devoted a lot of their time and talents to support Davidson over the years and they share legitimate concerns about the direction the college is headed.

For 10 years in a row we lead the country in terms of percentage of alumni who had made a contribution to the college, and were talking about some of the most generous donors to the college who wrote this email, and for them to be concerned enough to write the email will probably play out in other ways and I think its just really unfortunate, Hawk said.

Hawk believed the process was rushed, vague and not a good way to operate.

Although the email critiqued the process through which the laws were changed, President Carol Quillen stood by the boards decisions.

I think the process that the board designed was a good one, Quillen said. The adaptive process, the open conversation to the public, [the board] received over 5,000 responses to a survey that held webinars. I think the process the board designed was a sound one, and the board responded to suggestions from others about how the process should be run.

Quillen also responded to the critique that the process was rushed.

I would say the [bylaw changes] has been a topic of conversation for as long as I have been at Davidson and decades before that, Quillen said. So the topic is not new. The discussion of these bylaw requirements is not new.

Ten years before the adapted 2021 bylaws, J.D. Merrill 13 and Nick McGuire 14 launched a campaign to prove that there was sufficient support to change the requirement that the college president had to be a member of the Christian faith.

Merrill and McGuire started a petition that was signed by 703 members of the college, a student referendum that showed 83 percent of students were in favor of the change and a faculty referendum where 87 percent of faculty were in favor of the change. Merrill also noted that 89 percent of students did not identify as Presbyterian, therefore nine out of ten students wouldnt have been eligible to be president.

McGuire noted that the values the college admires are not exclusive to Christianity.

I know plenty of Presbyterians who do not live up to those values, McGuire said. I know plenty of non-Presbyterians who do live up to those values.

Merrill believed the old bylaws stood counter to the colleges tradition for inclusivity and honesty.

We dont need this jurisdiction in place, because we are Davidson people and we will always have a search committee that represents Davidson, and that body will always put forward a candidate for the presidency that represents who we are and what we stand for, Merrill said. Our values are derived from and intertwined with the values of the Presbyterian Church, but not exclusively.

Merrill believes that this bylaw change is the most recent example of how affirming these values can lead [the college] to evolve to become a better and more just institution.

Just like the values that led us to integrate in the 1960s, they led us to co-educate in the 1970s, and have now led us to allow a person of any religious background or none at all, to be our president, Merrill said. This is an affirmation of who we are. We continue to look in the mirror, and every time we face a critical question, we become a more just and inclusive institution. And that is something that truly should be celebrated.

Link:

Alumni, Faculty Respond to Bylaw Changes - The Davidsonian

Sept. 16 Cowards

Now comes the image of Satan, straight from the depths of hell Osama bin Laden.

We see our jet airliners being used as weapons of mass destruction, either killing or mutilating thousands of innocent human beings on American soil.

So, from whom do we exact justice upon? Do we seek out these so-called cells of demented cowards, who believe that becoming martyrs for their religious beliefs will afford them a shortcut to heaven, and bring them before one of our high courts as we did with the cowards who first attempted to destroy the World Trade Center?

Was this simply another criminal act?

I would strongly agree with George W. Bush and his statement that This is an act of war. I would further agree with Mr. Bush, as he stated, that we will not differentiate between those who carried out this cowardly act and those who harbor them.

The Clinton administration received warning after warning of this type of attack, and yet nothing but lip service was given by his administration as he and we did not want to appear to be warmongers which might have affected the way we were perceived by the liberals of this country, and by the alleged perception of our country by the rest of the world.

What do you think now, as you view the images of Sept. 11, 2001? If I were to outline my own opinion of how our military should react, it would probably not make print in The Wenatchee World. Read between the lines and draw your own conclusion (which Im sure most of you have).

If you will note, I have not used the word terrorist once. To me, that word lends the subhuman garbage of Sept. 11 much too much credence. From now on, let us all acknowledge them for what they truly are cowards.

Sept. 17 Hypocrites

In the last week, we have gone through some terrible times in our country. Overall, it has brought most of the people together except for some.

In 1968 I was in Vietnam, at the time of the Tet Offensive. I lost friends out of my unit there. Then I read of others who left the United States and ran off to Canada. To them I said, Coward!

Then I heard of a woman who went to North Vietnam. We called her Hanoi Jane. To her I still say, Traitor!

Now, in this time, I hear people in our Wenatchee Valley say that the U.S. deserved what happened to them. I say, Hypocrite and fool. To live in this great country that has done more for the rest of the world than any other and say these kinds of things must take a fool.

To help them know what a real fool is, perhaps they should read the book of Proverbs.

Sept. 18

{span style=font-size: 1em;}Choose peace{/span}We wonder how the world would change if the people of the United States were to respond to the great tragedy of Sept. 11, not by spending billions for war and destruction, but by spending even half those dollars to help people all around the world who are suffering from terrible hunger, disease and economic conditions.

We would be saying: We were attacked in hatred and rage, but we choose to respond as brothers and sisters to those who also hurt. We choose not war and destruction, but peace and healing.

Shirley C. Tucker, Norman C. Veach, Bill Kiehn, Laurelie Mingo, Lavonne Kiehn, Michael Dull, Rita M. Clark, Bob Anderson, Joann Anderson, Trueman Tucker

East Wenatchee, Wenatchee, Leavenworth

Sept. 19 Come together

What happened to New York City and Washington, D.C., was the biggest and saddest thing that has happened to the USA during my life. I am a young American female and feel horror and sadness for those who lost loved ones.

But this gives us no right to go after our fellow Americans and those of Muslim descent who live in our country.

When the Oklahoma bombing happened we as Americans did not go after each other, even though Tim McVeigh was a white man just like us.

Those who go after the Muslim people are no better then those who killed all those people in New York and Washington. Two wrongs do not make a right.

So we, as Americans, need to stand together and love one another and keep our heads up high.

May God bless each and every one of us.

Invisible no more

I watched the news last night and got misty-eyed thinking about the police officers, firemen and rescue workers buried in the rubble. I realized that I take our police officers, firemen, and rescue workers for granted. In fact, unless we are being pulled over for a traffic violation, or our house is on fire, they are invisible. They are always there putting themselves in harms way for us on a daily basis. They never know at the start of their shift what they will be called upon to do, or what life-threatening situations they will be put in to protect us, They do this willingly, on a daily basis. They deserve our thanks, and our respect, on a daily basis.

Sept. 20 Peace, not revenge

First off, let me just say that I, like the rest of the country, am deeply saddened by the events which occurred on Sept. 11. I feel as though my generation I was born in the 1980s has lost its innocence.

However, I find myself outraged by the attitudes of some of my fellow Americans toward this tragedy.

This very paper reported that some individuals sentiment was that we ought to bomb the hell out of them. Who, exactly, are them, anyway? I find it interesting that President Bush has declared us to be a nation at war, although we are still unaware of the identity of our adversaries.

We see the flags waving all over town, the signs stating the need for solidarity and hope, but beneath the surface, hatred, paranoia and prejudice are also on the rise.

When will we not just as Americans but as humans realize that the wounds caused by violence and destruction will not be healed through more violence and more destruction?

An attack on another nation would only serve to cost more innocent lives. It could never bring back those weve lost.

Dont send us to war, President Bush. Strive for peace, not revenge.

Sept 23 Political correctness kills

The majestic twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed by the political correctness of our time.

All of the innocent employees who worked in the skyscrapers were killed. All of the airline passengers, the flight crews, the pilots and rescue workers were killed by our passion for political correctness at all costs. Now we know the cost.

Political correctness at airport screenings precludes real screening. Our screeners are not allowed to see color.

Our politicians scream about education, but we are forbidden to use the education that we do have.

Example: Six passengers aboard an airline, who are obviously of Middle Eastern descent. Our education tells us that the Middle Eastern countries hate America. They refer to us as the Great Satan. They willingly blow themselves up if they are privileged to kill us in the process but airport screeners are no allowed to use that knowledge as a factor in screening airport passengers.

All of those Middle Easterners have a distinct color, but this cannot be used as a factor for extra screening. All of them have easily identifiable names that peg them to those countries that hate us with suicidal hatred, but their color and names are not allowed to be factors for extra screening.

The Middle Easterners non-use of our language is also not allowed to be a factor.

So our screeners were barred by political correctness from doing their job. Names, color and the non-use of English or broken English were not allowed to be screening factors for passengers because we might hurt the feelings of Arab-Americans. Instead, we allow a carefully crafted murder plot to proceed.

If our airport screeners had been allowed to consider these factors for extra screening, the World Trade Center would still be there. The airplanes would still be intact and all of the people who died would still be alive.

Note from Holland

This is an e-mail we received from our cousin, Margriet Bakker of Holland, on Sept. 14. I thought it would be nice to share:

Just a few moments ago Europe was silent.

For three minutes, cars, trains, trams and factories everything stood still in memory of the victims of the attacks in America.

Then the church bells started to ring and the TV played your national hymn.

I wanted to let you know that we are there with you all. We have to stay close together and work close together, to get this threat under control. And we love you all.

Willa Reynolds and the Baker family

Sept. 28

I am the daughter of Nelson N. and Virginia H. Martin of East Wenatchee. A daughter of Eastern Washington. Born in Spokane and reared during the summers and holidays by my grandparents and their circle of friends in the Wenatchee Valley.

Since college I have resided in the East Village of New York City, a city that I love for it is ever in a constant state of change. a city of diverse cultures, art and commerce.

Sept. 11, 2001. This day has forever transformed our lives. The Canyon of Heroes is now located at Ground Zero. To this day, firefighters, police and many out-of-state volunteer rescue workers keep their emotions in check, push their tired bruised bodies to remove the debris and hold on to the hope of a miracle of finding life.

My neighborhood is draped in black-and-purple mourning banners for the loss of our heroic firefighters. But, it is the American flag that truly blankets my city, from the corner deli, to the apartment building windows, Union Square and the familiar yellow taxi cabs, the Stars and Stripes are displayed proudly. With the leadership of a man born to be the mayor of NYC: Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, my city is moving. Back to work, back to school, back to the museums and theaters. Back to life.

I wish to thank the Wooten family, Thelma and Marge at the YWCA, Cashmere Methodist Church, Cascade Christian Academy, my friends at Pickle Papers, and to all in the Wenatchee Valley who placed me and my city in their prayers. The expression of love and concern has overwhelmed me and wrapped me in a quilt of love from home. Thank you all.

Terrorist war

I thought Id outrun the specter of that foul terrorist war many of us attended 35 years ago, but now he is roosting on our doorsteps.

I encounter people every day living normal lives and getting irate due to delays and closures at some facilities.

The private guards there your fellow citizens deserve some tribute, not derision. It is their job to be on a high level of alertness, and to be under- standing of a populace majority that doesnt yet feel personally threatened.

To these neighbors of ours who are already on a war footing and putting in long hours, day and night, to protect essential facilities, be grateful. Kudos and hurrahs to: Al Riedlinger, Lee Childress, William Hicks, Carl Marlin, Jonathan Jones, Sheri Pardo, Mark Headley, John Vickrey and Chester Harmon.

Remember this lesson I discovered as a young trooper in the Republic of Vietnam: There are no rear echelons in a terrorist war, and the enemy is indistinguishable from the good guys.

These security officers are putting themselves smack on the perimeter of freedom. God bless Americans!

Sept 30 Change in thinking

After the attack on America by the terrorists, my first reaction was shock, fear, and then anger. I wanted my government to launch every missile we have bought over the last few years into that country until they hand over bin Laden.

Then I started reading up on Afghanistan. They have literally nothing left to blow up. We can fire the missiles, but the only thing we will hurt will be the dirt.

As of right now there are at least 2 million refugees who cant be fed, and that number it is growing by the hour.

This situation reminds me of after World War II, when Europe was getting ready to turn to communism because of all the destruction. How did we stop the communists from taking over?

We started the Marshall Plan and we rebuilt the countries so that they could survive on their own, and the communists were voted out pretty quick. The same principle can be applied here. Can you imagine what would happen if the people over there realized that the United States is capable of feeding them while their own government isnt? Its not fast and dirty as some people would like, but it would eventually achieve our goals without having to fill thousands of body bags with more innocent Afghans or U.S. troops.

Oct. 1 Flying high

We are writing this letter to thank the employees of Tree Top and some anonymous citizen.

Recently, our American flag was stolen off our front fence, right on Cottage Avenue in Cashmere. Our entire family was in disbelief.

Our children, a 7- and an 8- year-old, asked, Mom, why would someone steal our flag?

We did not know what to say.

Anyway, on to our story of thanks. A few days later, a flag on a pole appeared on our fence no note, no nothing, just someones kind heart.

Another day passed, and two employees from Tree Top stopped by with a package and a note. They said they felt bad for us and wanted to help.

The other employees and these two kind folks pooled their money and bought us an American flag bigger than the one that was stolen.

Our family would just like to say thank you, and we are glad that there are people out there who are kind and caring. As you drive up Cottage Avenue and see our flag flying high, be reminded of the thoughtful people in our community.

I now know what to say to our children. Sometimes bad things happen in this world, and it is up to you to do your best to help others and to always be kind and caring. Then there will be two more people in this world to help make up for the ones who dont do their best.

Thank you, kind and caring citizens.

Oct 9 Never the same

I believe that the United States will not be the same after the attacks of Sept. 11. These events will make this country safer but the fear will always be in all of us. I feel very sorry for those who had to die and the destruction that was put upon those places.

I know that everybody wants to see the ones responsible punished. I believe that there is no punishment, just or fair, for something like this, because nothing will bring the lost ones back. This doesnt mean that a harsh punishment shouldnt be delivered, but when this punishment is executed the whole world will know that the United States of America is not a place for their unwelcome acts.

Oct. 10 Standing together

I have always been one to see the good and not dwell on the bad. I take time to grieve and be angry, then I look for the positive.

The terrorist attack on America hit everyone hard. I see people coping by way of anger and frustration. Some are in denial and wont acknowledge openly that it really happened.

I believe this is because a tragedy of this nature and degree is so incomprehensible it has left us all confused and in shock. We do not want to accept the fact that the world can be such an ugly place,

Many in our country want revenge, some want justice, others want things to go back the way they were.

Unfortunately, we cant go back in time but we can look for the way to a better world. We can look for justice and we can look for a way to see this doesnt happen again.

As I look around me, I find a country whose people are setting other matters aside to help each other. I see all kinds of people reaching out to do whatever they can to help each other heal and be strong.

I have seen more American flags than ever before, as we show our support and acknowledge our loss.

What I see is a good thing. Americans are strong in each other. The way I look at it, if the terrorists were trying to break us, it backfired.

United we stand. Divided we fall. We are a country that stands together.

Oct. 11 To Wenatchee, from New York City

Dear people of Wenatchee,

I am a local disaster volunteer of the American Red Cross in Brooklyn, N.Y., and am working at the headquarters facility at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Read the original here:

After the attacks | Safety Valve: 2011 letters | Opinion | wenatcheeworld.com - wenatcheeworld.com

In a few hours' time, comedy fans in Sheffield will take to the streets in protest. Their cause? Not Brexit, or climate change, but the decision to ban Roy 'Chubby' Brown from performing a gig in the city.

Chubby, who is not to everyone's taste,is best described as the Norths answer to Bernard Manning or Jim Davidson. An earthy stand-up comic from Middlesbrough,he isperfectly prepared to talk, joke and trade raillery about race, religion and sexuality in a way few other performers are. This week, after 30 years of performing in Sheffield, he was told he is no longer welcome.

Sheffield City Trust, which runs variousleisure sites on the local council's behalf, summarily cancelled a planned performance by him in the citys Oval Hall next year. The reason? The trust'schief executive, Andrew Snelling, said:

'We don't believe this show reflects Sheffield City Trust values.'

For local Labour MP Gill Furniss this was welcome news.'This is the right thing to do. There is no place for any hate filled performance in our diverse and welcoming city,' she said.

But to the councils dismay, few others agreed not least many local residents inSheffield whorather like Chubby. The cancellation spawned a furious popular reaction; 35,000 people have now signed apetitiondemanding Chubby be allowed on stage.

This isn't the first time thatChubby has had showscancelled: performances inAshfield, in Nottinghamshire,back in 2016, and Swansea a couple of years ago, were also called off. Does he deserve this treatment?

Chubbys patter is referred to by his detractors as racist, homophobic and misogynist. But its worth spending a few minutes on YouTube to see what he actually says. There is certainly a never-ending flow of insults, ridicule and profanity; and religion, race and sexuality undoubtedly get their share and more.

But you will hear little, if any, malice, nor are there calls to hate, attack or ostracise anyone. More than anything, Chubby is a highly successful performer because he has a disconcerting ability to see things through his audiences eyes. Forworking-class audiences familiar with thinking, talking and joking about race, sex, sexuality and religion in an entirely unsentimental way with little respect for political correctness, his popularity is hardly a surprise.

True, none of this cuts much ice with progressive intellectuals. But leave such people who are unlikely to be seen dead at a 'Chubby' show anyway to one side. For any ordinary observer, 'Chubby' is just a low if popular comedian, most of whose bons mots you wouldnt be very surprised to hear at the end of a long evening in a lively pub in a down-at-heel area.

Despite the City Trusts expressed high-minded desire to uphold the values of the city of Sheffield, few if any see this comedian as a hate-monger of any kind. And that may well be the real problem. There is a strong suspicion that what drives people to distance themselves from him may be something rather different: namely, good old-fashioned snobbery.

Is the same kind of condescension with which Emily Thornberry viewed 'White Van Man' at work here? In the decision to cancel this show, there certainly seems to be a suggestion that protecting people from entertainers who pander to their low tastes is an obvious priority.

Whatever the cause of the argument against Chubby Brown, he isnt going away. This morninga group of supporters who object to the efforts of the City Trust and local politicians to prevent his appearance will gather outside Sheffield City Hall.

Even if Chubby Browns brand of humour isnt your cup of tea, you may well think Sheffields approach to it even less so. If you do, and you want to strike a blow against petty municipal one-upmanship, then you should back the protest.

Read more here:

The snobbery of Roy 'Chubby' Brown's critics - Spectator.co.uk

Until today, the most depressing letter Ive ever read was the one I received from Arsenal Football Club informing me I had failed in my application to be the new 1st team manager.

Admittedly, I was only 11 years old at the time and Arsenal were one of the biggest clubs in the world, but still, the rejection stung.

However, the pain and anger I felt then paled into insignificance compared to the contorted rage and dismay I experienced when I read Portland State University professor Peter Boghossians public letter of resignation.

Sometimes, even in these increasingly absurd woke-ravaged cancel culture times, I still physically shudder at a particularly awful example of the way free speech is being annihilated at the altar of political correctness.

This was such a time.

Boghossian has lectured at PSU as full-time assistant professor of philosophy for the past ten years.

He was a popular lecturer known for his truth-seeking, non-indoctrinating style.

But hes now been forced to quit because he says the University has sacrificed ideas for ideology.

The woke destruction of a great educator (pictured isPortland State University professor Peter Boghossian who resigned over wokeism at the university) should terrify every one of us because these hysterical enemies of free speech are spreading beyond our colleges and destroying the foundations of American democracy:

Boghossian has lectured at PSU as full-time assistant professor of philosophy for the past ten years. In his letter, published in a newsletter run by Bari Weiss, a former New York Times journalist who also resigned over internal woke nonsense that attacked her freedom of speech, Boghossian started by saying something that resonated very personally with me

His decision came after a lengthy, vicious campaign was waged to drive him out a campaign that should appall and outrage every one of us, regardless of our political persuasion.

In his letter, published in a newsletter run by Bari Weiss, a former New York Times journalist who also resigned over internal woke nonsense that attacked her freedom of speech, Boghossian started by saying something that resonated very personally with me.

I teach classes like Science and Pseudoscience and The Philosophy of Education, he wrote, but in addition to exploring classic philosophers and traditional texts, Ive invited a wide range of guest lecturers to address my classes, from Flat-Earthers to Christian apologists to global climate skeptics to Occupy Wall Street advocates. Im proud of my work. I invited those speakers not because I agreed with their worldviews, but primarily because I didnt. From those messy and difficult conversations, Ive seen the best of what our students can achieve: questioning beliefs while respecting believers; staying even-tempered in challenging circumstances; and even changing their minds. I never once believed nor do I now that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.

Yes, yes, and bloody yes.

His words reminded me of what Albert Einstein once said about education:

I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.

That, surely, is the very essence of a proper education?

The best teachers Ive had in my own life all encouraged me to be bold, challenging and above all, open-minded.

I was a member of a school debating society when I was just ten years old and can still remember how invigorating it was to argue with my peer group about issues in the news.

For me, that principle is the very cornerstone of freedom of speech and expression which in turn are the very cornerstones of democracy. Ironically, I lost my job presenting Good Morning Britain (Piers Morgan with co-host Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain in March 2020) earlier this year for expressing an opinion that I didnt believe the Duke and Duchess of Sussexs wild unsubstantiated claims about the Royal Family during their incendiary interview with Oprah Winfrey. I was ordered by my bosses at ITV to either apologize for that honestly held opinion or leave, so I left

But the teacher who conducted these sessions always insisted we respect other opinions to our own.

Just because you feel strongly about something, that doesnt necessarily mean youre right, she would regularly caution. But you should always be entitled to have your own opinion, just as everyone else is entitled to theirs.

For me, that principle is the very cornerstone of freedom of speech and expression which in turn are the very cornerstones of democracy.

Ironically, I lost my job presenting Good Morning Britain earlier this year for expressing an opinion that I didnt believe the Duke and Duchess of Sussexs wild unsubstantiated claims about the Royal Family during their incendiary interview with Oprah Winfrey. I was ordered by my bosses at ITV to either apologize for that honestly held opinion or leave, so I left.

But last week, the UK TV regulator OFCOM vindicated me in a very important and significant report that emphatically endorsed my right to disbelieve Meghan and Harry (many of whose claims have since been disproven) and described the attempt to muzzle me as a chilling threat to freedom of expression.

OFCOM is a government-approved organization.

So, in effect, the UK government, which I spent most of the past 18 months beating up over its handling of the pandemic, defended my right to free speech more than my employer, one of the countrys largest media firms.

I bet Peter Boghossian wishes hed had an organization like OFCOM in his corner.

Instead, in a country (America) where the whole concept of a government-approved regulator dictating what citizens can say is a horrifying anathema, hes been hung out to dry in the most despicable, cowardly and freedom-wrecking manner.

Everything he stood for as a teacher, which is everything a teacher SHOULD stand for, shamefully repudiated.

In a statement to DailyMail.com, a spokesman for the university (pictured) said: Portland State has always been and will continue to be a welcoming home for free speech and academic freedom. What a load of disingenuous guff!

Brick by brick, he wrote, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division. Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. Faculty and administrators have abdicated the universitys truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly.

The more I read of the letter, the worse it got.

I noticed signs of the illiberalism that has now fully swallowed the academy quite early during my time at Portland State, Boghossian wrote. I witnessed students refusing to engage with different points of view. Questions from faculty at diversity trainings that challenged approved narratives were instantly dismissed. Those who asked for evidence to justify new institutional policies were accused of microaggressions. And professors were accused of bigotry for assigning canonical texts written by philosophers who happened to have been European and male.

He courageously took on this nonsense, openly questioning it.

He even began submitting hoax papers to academic journals about insane theories relating to social justice like dog rape and the notion that penises are the product of human mind and responsible for climate change.

Boghossian was taking woke mentality to a ludicrous degree, to illustrate how flawed academia can be because it too often prints anything that fits their ideals even if the theories are fake.

When the hoax papers were published, and it was revealed what hed done, he was attacked even more by the extreme illiberal left who were outraged at being exposed as such frauds.

Brick by brick, Boghossian wrote in the letter addressed toPortland States Provost Susan Jeffords (pictured) the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division

Boghossian claims, the more I spoke out, the more retaliation I faced.

He says he was harassed on campus with swastikas written on bathroom walls with his name next to them, flyers went around campus depicting him with a Pinocchio nose, he was spat on, feces were left on his doorstep, and colleagues told students not to take his class.

After someone formally complained about him, making a series of outrageous false claims, he was investigated by university administrators, and students who were interviewed told him they were asked if hed even beaten his wife and kids.

He hadnt, just as he hadnt done anything else that his accuser said hed done, and the investigation was dismissed with the claims deemed unsubstantiated.

But all this inevitably took its toll, and he eventually threw in the towel.

The final three paragraphs of his resignation letter are worth repeating in full:

This isnt about me. This is about the kind of institutions we want and the values we choose. Every idea that has advanced human freedom has always, and without fail, been initially condemned. As individuals, we often seem incapable of remembering this lesson, but that is exactly what our institutions are for: to remind us that the freedom to question is our fundamental right. Educational institutions should remind us that that right is also our duty. Portland State University has failed in fulfilling this duty. In doing so it has failed not only its students but the public that supports it. While I am grateful for the opportunity to have taught at Portland State for over a decade, it has become clear to me that this institution is no place for people who intend to think freely and explore ideas.

This is not the outcome I wanted. But I feel morally obligated to make this choice. For ten years, I have taught my students the importance of living by your principles. One of mine is to defend our system of liberal education from those who seek to destroy it. Who would I be if I didnt?

Exactly.

In a statement to DailyMail.com, a spokesman for the university said: Portland State has always been and will continue to be a welcoming home for free speech and academic freedom.

What a load of disingenuous guff!

In fact, theyre the complete opposite; PSU has woked itself into a place where its young impressionable students are encouraged to destroy anyone or anything they dont agree with and not to respect free speech, but to attack and deny it.

I found Peter Boghossians letter incredibly depressing.

Hes the very best kind of teacher yet hes been disgracefully framed as the very worst kind simply because he believes in free speech and fair debate.

America has reached a very dangerous moment where free thinking of the type Boghossian promotes has become the enemy and hyper-partisan woke ideology the only accepted school of thought.

And this is not a new phenomenon.

The most terrifying aspect of all this is that dangerously illiberal wokeism has been infesting schools and colleges for most of this century, much of it going under the radar.

So, students whove been brain-washed with it for the past 20 years are now heavily populating liberal society from the Democrat party and Silicon Valley to mainstream media and big business.

And every day we see horrifying new evidence of how these woke warriors as they see themselves are bullying their cowed bosses into supine submission.

Soon, theyll be running America. Into the ground.

This madness has to stop, or democracy will die.

PIERS MORGAN: The woke destruction of a great educator should terrify every one of us Source link PIERS MORGAN: The woke destruction of a great educator should terrify every one of us

Original post:

PIERS MORGAN: The woke destruction of a great educator should terrify every one of us - Texasnewstoday.com

The British are, by nature, a pragmatic race who take the truth in their stride.

They gave up most of their colonies when dreams of an empire became unaffordable after the victory in the Second World War.

They hitched their carts to an American horse during the Cold War, as it was obvious that Europe wouldnt last a week against the Soviet Union on its own.

They gave up Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997 without much fuss once they understood that Beijing wouldnt countenance the perpetuation of strategic colonial outposts.

And they manfully did their duty in Helmand province, Afghanistan, during the two decades-long global war on terror by accepting that this was the price for having a special relationship, one that allowed them a continued say in world affairs.

Ironically, the true wages of that defeat are only now starting to be paid by Britain at home.

The why and how are predicated upon British foreign policy being hamstrung by domestic socio-political compulsions and constraints of a left-liberal making.

Simply put, vote-bank politics has become so integrated into the British electoral system that the threat of Islamism and minority appeasement are now two sides of the only coinage in circulation.

A principal, public manifestation of that rarely discussed issue is the perennial question of why the West has consistently refused to highlight Pakistans role in the creation of the Taliban or take action against it for systematically derailing a trillion-dollar effort to solve the problem.

Could time, money, and lives have been saved if only they had admitted that the solution to the Afghanistan problem lay in Pakistan and acted accordingly?

Author Minhaz Merchant says that they knew, but still didnt act because of a long and sordid history of collusion between NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and Pakistan, going back to the origins of the Cold War.

No doubt, countless dollars were siphoned off by everyone involved, for generations, for which no one can point a finger at Islamabad today without sending prominent participants in the West to the clink.

In addition, fairly brazen political correctness is also being peddled furiously now, as the manifold dangers of the Wests disastrously hasty exit from Afghanistan becomes increasingly apparent. Look at just three absurdities that surfaced in Britain over the past few weeks:

- The British Chief of the Defence Staff, General Nick Carter, whitewashed the Taliban as a group of country boys with a code of honor. Worse, he denied calling them the enemy. Ah, well! Good to know, but who, then, did so many valiant British soldiers die fighting in the Hindu Kush?

- A BBC anchor shut down an American academician trying to argue that the root of the Afghan problem was Pakistan, on the flimsy ground that there was no one from the Pakistani side to rebut the professor.

- It was reported that Britain would give 30 million pounds in aid for housing Afghan refugees to countries bordering Afghanistan. Though not stated explicitly, this payoff will go largely to Pakistan.

Why would Britain behave thus?

These three incongruities, among others, plus veiled social media schadenfreude at Amrullah Saleh and Ahmed Masoods resistance not faring well in the Panjshir valley, raises a broader question: Why would you wish for the defeat of a group you supported, by those whom you called the enemy till just last month?

The answers lie in British domestic politics. We may call it the Blair-Corbyn effect, after former Labour prime minister Tony Blair and failed Labour prime ministerial candidate, Jeremy Corbyn, who adroitly mainstreamed good old-fashioned secular Congressi vote-bank politicking into British elections.

They and their left-liberal jamaat (every democracy hosts such a section these days) learnt, to their delight, that dozens of parliamentary constituencies could be won on the back of a decisive Muslim vote. It was a profitable discovery in a country where most victory margins amount to only a few thousand votes.

In the 2017 general elections, the Labour Party gained 30 seats to score 262 in a House of 650. It wasnt enough to cross the majority mark, but they stood just two percentage points behind the Conservatives.

Of those 262, a full two-thirds of their top 30 wins were in seats with a significant Muslim population. In a hundred-odd others, their margins matched minority demographics.

In 2019, Brexit (short for "British exit") overrode political correctness, and Labour were handed one of their worst electoral defeats in a century. They lost 59 seats and 8 per cent of the popular vote.

Yet, even in that debacle, as Swarajya showed using electoral and census data, it was the loyal Muslim vote that spared them the blushes.

The point, therefore, is that save for the bloc Muslim vote, Labour would have been wiped out in both 2017 and 2019, and it would have been a series of incredible Conservative sweeps.

The net result of this crushing, existential dependency on a vote bank meant that parties like Labour, which grew fat on identity politics, were now severely constrained from executing requisite foreign policy, in case it cost them the popular mandate.

No wonder that the more the West bombed the Taliban, the louder these people raised the bogey of Islamophobia at home.

Where does that leave Britain today, apart from calling the Taliban country boys or preventing an academician from voicing uncomfortable truths in public? In a pretty pickle.

Decades of pandering to pronouns and cultural separatism have created a fatal flaw in the British electoral system, where foreign policies lie at the mercy of domestic politics and an accursed enabling environment of counterproductive correctness.

Sadly, it is not just the Labour Party that is a victim of this macabre development. The ruling Conservative Party is just as delicately poised on a knifes edge, albeit for different reasons.

Indians, brought up on a strict diet of secularism, would recognise the situation in Britain today. Boris Johnson is where Atal Bihari Vajpayee was in the 1990s. Any erosion in popularity hands the opposition a sterling opportunity to cobble together a majority using the minority vote.

The problem is that such an alternative, if it were to ever secure the mandate, would be woefully stymied in formulating necessary policy, driven as they were by legitimate fears of somehow having to hold on to that crucial swing vote.

This is the surreal mess British politics is in at present, and this is what is driving absurd, conciliatory statements from various corners, which blithely force security concerns and geopolitics to be thrown to the four winds.

Pakistan wont mind, though. It is the new doctrine of deterrence they couldnt have constructed even if they tried. The importance of the swing Muslim vote in British constituencies ensures that important nations would stop short of pinpointing Pakistan as the true source of the jihadi problem plaguing Afghanistan, the subcontinent, and the world.

Today, non-appeasement of that vote bloc risks triggering either violence or vote-bank apathy. Who needs nuclear weapons when you can defeat a left-liberal party simply by not turning up to vote, or by implicitly threatening the government of the day with terrorist strikes at home?

The proof of this interpretation is self-evident in the election results, and in the fact that the perpetrators of both successful and aborted Islamist terrorist attacks in Britain over the past 15 years were born, bred, and radicalised there.

Perhaps, Britain might have avoided this terrible predicament, if only they had studied two things: past Indian secular politics and the way in which minority appeasement, and its attendant ills, are being systematically sidelined in India by the vote.

We, too, went through a torrid stage when a Congress government wanted to demilitarise the Siachen Glacier, give up efforts to reclaim Gilgit-Baltistan, accept terrorism as a way of life, or invoke pious, moral equivalences to shed tears for Muslim terrorists killed by our security forces (like at Batla House).

But we woke up and decided that national security concerns could not be held hostage to electoral exigencies.

Naturally, this is a work in progress since, as recently as this week, a former Indian editor said India could not afford to alienate its Muslim population when the Taliban were on the ascendant in Kabul. What he meant was that if India didnt bow to the wishes of its minority, the minority would alienate itself further and become a grave internal security threat.

This statement encapsulates, perfectly, what the British have had to suffer courtesy their intellectuals and politicians.

The truth, of course, is that this sense of alienation predates the Taliban by two centuries. In fact, it is the Taliban that is a product of such alienation, and not the other way around (so eerily similar to those who bombed the London Underground or stabbed innocents near London bridge).

This, allied with vote banking, is what has prevented the Muslim community from joining the mainstream so far be it in Britain or India. (Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, doesnt count. He first made his name by defending a 9/11 terrorist, and then his fame, as a darling of the left-liberal brigade, by infamously exceeding his remit to oppose Donald Trump.)

This is the problem Indian politics is trying to solve, one that countries like Britain will have to tackle soon if they are to cleanse their electoral systems of identity politics alienation, pampered and promoted by an indulgent liberal mindset, only perpetuates division, aggravates strife, and sustains a two-nation theory.

So, we see that the problem is not so much in Afghanistan or Pakistan, as it is in parts of Britain, like Sheffield, Bradford, or Manchester, where elections are won or lost by the identity vote and terrorism is kept away by appeasement.

The grim inference, in political terms, is that countries like Britain are now a full decade or two behind India. The grimmer implication, in geopolitical terms, is that India must not expect much assistance from the West as it gears up to tackle the stiffest national security challenges it has faced in centuries.

The actual failure of the global war on terror lies not on the desolate battlefields of the Hindu Kush, but in the well-heeled, well-paved constituencies of countries like Britain, where identity politics, vote banking, and minority appeasement have ensured that the very threats these nations went to war against have now been legitimised on their soil.

These are the true wages of defeat.

Read more:

Britain, Islamism, And The Wages Of Defeat - Swarajya