Free speech on campus, the marketplace of ideas.

Bokbluster

 

... "In April Brandeis University cancelled altogether its offer of an honorary doctorate for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She writes and speaks about real religious liberty and the real war on women in Muslim countries. She’s also a critic of Islam itself. Condoleeza Rice was driven away from her Rutgers University speech by unhinged faculty members and their poorly informed students accusing her of war crimes. IMF boss Christine Legarde was also disinvited from her speaking engagement at Smith University.

"I’m not equating disinviting Legarde, Rice, or Ali to disinviting Satan. I’m equating academics to nuts.

"In a column about the lack of due process in college, Thomas Sowell discusses “free speech” zones on campus:" Read more...

When free speech is harassed on college campuses   "Three weeks ago, a California professor was ambling across her campus when she saw a teenager holding up a political sign she didn't like. What happened next reveals a larger problem: the steady assault on free speech at universities." ...

When Campus Intolerance Means Free Speech Gets Torn Up and Run Over, Literally

 

"Being offended is what happens when you have your deepest beliefs challenged. And if you make it through four years of college without having your deepest beliefs challenged, you should demand your money back.

"I have been saying that line in speeches on campus for more than a decade. Even though it often gets a laugh, the idea that students have an overarching “right not to be offended” seems more entrenched on campus than ever."....

Krauthammer: The sound and the fury — and the tweet

Charles Krauthammer  ... " If you do, as in the case of the Obama administration watching Russia’s slow-motion dismemberment of Ukraine, it’s simply embarrassing when the State Department spokeswoman tweets the hashtag #UnitedForUkraine.

... "That is nothing but preening, a visual recapitulation of her boss’s rhetorical fatuousness when he sternly warns that if the rape of this U.S. friend continues, we are prepared to consider standing together with the “international community” to decry such indecorous behavior — or some such.

"When a superpower, with multiple means at its disposal, reverts to rhetorical emptiness and hashtag activism, it has betrayed both its impotence and indifference. But if you’re an individual citizen without power, if you lack access to media, drones or special forces, then hashtagging your solidarity with the aggrieved is a fine gesture and perhaps even more.

#BringBackOurGirls and the Left’s Empty Moral Outrage

Bruce S. Thornton   "The outrage over the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls by the Nigerian jihadist gang Boko Haram reeks of Western hypocrisy and moral idiocy. Boko Haram has for years been slaughtering Christians – up to 2500 this year alone – and burning churches in a classic Islamic jihad against infidels. These depredations apparently weren’t enough to get the group designated a terrorist organization by Hillary Clinton’s State Department. But this indifference to what under international law is a genocide has been indulged as well by our celebrities and the mainstream media, who rarely mention that the group is specifically targeting Christians, and before the girls were kidnapped displayed little interest in the suffering of those Christians. So why this sudden attention?" ...
...
..."Just forget that none of the tweeting and “outrage” will do anything to get those girls back and punish the perpetrators. But they will distract us for a bit from one of the worst records of foreign policy failure in American history."

 

The Narcissistic Creed; When preening replaces thinking, our ability to engage in responsible self-government is diminished.

 

... "As the socialist blogger Fredrik deBoer put it:

Online liberalism, as I’ve said many times, is not actually a series of political beliefs and alliances but instead a set of social cues that are adopted to demonstrate one’s class background — economic class, certainly, but more cultural class, the various linguistic and consumptive signals that assure those around you that you’re the right kind of person and which appear to be the only thing that America’s 20-something progressives really care about anymore. ...

Breathtaking Stupidity from the Liberal Press

Hope n' Change

 

"Just when you think that liberal "journalists" can't grow any more biased or offensive, along comes someone like The Daily Beast's Eleanor Clift ...

"Clift, while discussing Benghazi on a Sunday news talk program, angrily said "I would like to point out that Ambassador Stevens was not murdered. He died of smoke-inhalation in the safe room in that CIA installation!"

"... And you know the thousands of people who died in the World Trade Center? Presumably Clift believes that they weren't murdered by terrorists either - they all just happened to die of natural causes like fire, falling, and being inside collapsing buildings...

 

"Or maybe she'd like to argue that during the Holocaust, the death camp victims weren't murdered by anyone - they just happened to die because of cyanide gas inhalation." ...

...

“New Hitler ads on Metrobuses stir up controversy”

Pamela Geller   "The picture of Hitler shows him meeting with an anti-Jewish Islamic leader during World War II. Pamela Geller heads the group who bought the ads, and assures that their goal is not to be provocative. “My intent is leapfrog over a media that is not even-handed, that is advancing the propaganda against the Jewish state,” says Pamela. "

 

... "The ads will stay on 20 buses for four weeks. CAIR says it is considering the possibility of a response ad, and is offering free copies of the Quran in response."

 

Video: Gowdy throws down gauntlet to media on Benghazi questions

Hot Air     "This video comes from a press conference given by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) earlier this week, but Real Clear Politics picked it up today, and it’s definitely worth a fresh look. As the newly-appointed chair of the select committee investigating Benghazi, Gowdy has bristled at criticisms that all of the questions have already been answered — especially when those criticisms come from national media outlets who have shown remarkably little curiosity about the collapse of American policy in Libya. In his presser, Gowdy challenged the critics to answer the questions his committee will probe — or at least to start asking them:"
 

Breaking: The “97 Percent Climate Consensus” Canard

Power Line 

tvtropes

"TV watchers will recall the familiar advertising trope of yesteryear in which we were told “4 out of 5 dentists [or doctors] recommend” using fluoride toothpaste, aspirin for headaches, or some such.  We were always left to wonder whether that fifth doctor was a moron or something, never pausing to consider that the fifth doctor might well recommend the same thing, but emphasize something else first (like flossing perhaps, or Tylenol instead of aspirin because of sensitive stomachs, etc).  But Archie Bunker was coming back on the air in 30 seconds, so most of us didn’t follow up on these puzzles.

"Likewise we ought to wonder about the favorite cliché of the Climatistas these days—that “97 percent of scientists ‘believe in’ climate change.' ”...