Be Careful What You Wish For on Social Programs
Nathan Glazer, the last of a group of famous neocon social scientists, died at the age of 95 on January 19 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. (He resisted the label “neocon.”) Glazer consistently warned that vast government plans to improve the lives of the poor often come to grief or create new problems of their own. “The evaluations of the specifics of the first ten years after the launching of (the War on Poverty) confirm that nothing worked and in particular, nothing in education worked.” He concluded that the family was the key institution to positive social change and that rights are inherent in individuals, not groups. The article here by Howard Husock of the Manhattan Institute ran in 2011 when President Obama planned an extension of the War on Poverty.
You, Too, Can Turn in Your Classmate
The campus police of the University of Illinois have issued calls for students to report “acts of intolerance” to the schools Bias Assessment and Response Team. It said, “acts of intolerance create an unsafe and unwelcoming environment for campus community members. Please let us know if you feel unsafe.” According to BART, bias is defined as “actions or expressions that are motivated at least in part by prejudice against or hostility toward a person or group because of that person or group’s perceived age, disability, status, ethnicity, gender, identity-expression, national origin, race, religion/ spirituality, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, etc.” Those reported to BART may be required to participate in mediation or other educational conservations.
More Evidence of Professorial Political Bias
University of North Carolina business professor Michael Jacobs polled 40 Republican students at his school and found that all but two believed they would be penalized for not expressing the professor's politics in a test answer. The professor claimed that faculty should pledge to respect ideological diversity and that chancellors who are too afraid to promote tolerance for ideological diversity should be fired. “One of my top MBA students, who I would categorize as moderate, recently told me that she will no longer participate in class discussions that involve social or political issues for fear of being branded by the ‘progressive police,’” the professor said. Read the story at Campus Reform.
More Risible News From Yale
As you recall, the campus exploded in outrage in 2015 when Prof. Erika Christakis challenged a Yale diktat warning students not to wear offensive costumes for Halloween. (“If you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away,” she wrote in a campus-wide email. Her husband Prof. Nicholas Christakis, threatened by a group of offended students, quit as master of Silliman House after getting zero backing from Yale. In a review of The Coddling of the American Mind in the American Interest, writer Aaron Sibarium says Christakis' successor at Silliman, psychology professor Laurie Santos, has a program for happiness that includes this advice:
- Avoid binding attachments and obligations; these will stress you out and make you sad.
- Focus on cultivating your own mind and mental habits so that you can be happy regardless of your external conditions, a self-reliant ray of sunshine.
- Prioritize instrumental knowledge that helps to achieve your goals; in particular, learn how to manipulate others to your advantage.
Columbia’s Comedy of Errors
A comedy act by a former member of Saturday Night Live was shut down in mid-performance at Columbia University Friday night because students felt the humor was racist and anti-gay and made them feel unsafe. Nimesh Patel was performing for the campus Asian American Alliance’s charity event. One joke referred to being black and gay as a double vulnerability. So, a complaining student wrote in the Columbia Spectator, “If you’re black and gay, you don’t need a straight South Asian guy to point out that your life is hard because you’re black and gay.” You can read more at Reason.com.
“Balanced Representation!”
What’s not to like??
Don’t we apply that rule to ordinary life… in all ways….at all times? And aren’t the results of “balanced representation” always superior to outcomes which are demographically unbalanced? Of course they are!
I used to prefer good, well-trained dentists….dentists who were good at dentistry….but then I read this study from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which told me: “The underrepresentation of Blacks, Hispanics or Latinos, and American Indians or Alaska Natives among dentists raises concerns about the diversity of the dental workforce, disparities in access to dental care and in oral health status, and social justice.” And now I am convinced that social justice and diversity (which flow only from “balanced representation”) are vastly more important than being good with cavities and teeth. Huzzah!
I used to think that being a Basketball Wizard was and should be the primary qualifier for being in the NBA, but I have seen the light and have come to despise those incredibly unbalanced and unrepresentative teams which are filled to overflowing with really good players who all — dare I say it — look the same and display, always, the same incredible level of talent. Where are the short, uncoordinated Hispanics and Native Americans? Where are the fat White Guys who can’t dribble? Where — for God’s sake — are the women??? Women comprise 50% of the population and yet there’s not a single one on any NBA team? Can’t we trade a Stephen Curry to get, say, a Nancy Pelosi or a Kim Kardashian in the Golden State uniform? And just wait until that “balanced representation” team plays Houston next year!
And what about plumbing? Every time I hire a plumber, they all look like they grew-up in the exact same Plumbing Family (they all certainly buy the same gap-waist pants)! What’s up with that? Of course, they all have done a great job with all those plumbing things, but c’mon! What’s really important here? Great, cost-effective plumbing solutions installed by expert plumbers….or balanced demographic representation among all those who drive plumbing trucks? All I know is next time a pipe bursts, I’m gonna wait until I get a trans-gendered Black immigrant (I just hope he knows something about plumbing) before I accept an unrepresentative solution in my flooded basement.
And sadly, as I look back at all the women I dated, they were — in retrospect — pathetically unrepresentative of all the various demographic possibilities which are out there. I just hope my wife understands as I seek to — belatedly — make that population sample significantly more balanced.
“THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.” That totally balanced, totally representative, totally equal future — it can’t get here fast enough. Vonnegut would be so proud!