@McCormickProf's Threads
1/ Glassner: The Boss says it's unacceptable to lose the national popular vote again. He says "what kind of nationalist populist loses the national popular vote? It's embarrassing."
Parscale: I know, I know, but there's no way we can win it.
Glassner: We don't have to win it.
Parscale: I know, I know, but there's no way we can win it.
Glassner: We don't have to win it.
2/ Parscale: Huh?
Glassner: The Boss has an idea. We get those boobs in California—you can always count on them—to exclude us from the ballot. We massively lose there anyway, and last time it was the whole margin of victory for Crooked Hillary in the national popular vote.
Glassner: The Boss has an idea. We get those boobs in California—you can always count on them—to exclude us from the ballot. We massively lose there anyway, and last time it was the whole margin of victory for Crooked Hillary in the national popular vote.
3/ Parscale: Go on.
Glassner: Well, then we can say that since the Boss was excluded in Cal, there WAS NO national popular vote.
Parscale: Yeah, but how do we get California to exclude the Boss from the ballot. Even the boobs in California know that he gets crushed in their state
Glassner: Well, then we can say that since the Boss was excluded in Cal, there WAS NO national popular vote.
Parscale: Yeah, but how do we get California to exclude the Boss from the ballot. Even the boobs in California know that he gets crushed in their state
1/ Planned Parenthood has aborted the presidency of Leana Wen. The procedure was, according to Dr. Wen, performed at a secret meeting. Evidently she reopened an old internal controversy within the abortion movement going all the way back to Roe v. Wade. Should abortion be sold as
2/ "health care"--making it fundamentally a "medical issue"? (That seems to have been Wen's strategy.) Or should it be sold as personal autonomy/lifestyle choice, etc.? (Wen apparently thought that made it a "political issue.") Wen apparently wanted to revive the approach of
3/ Justice Harry Blackmun (the hapless author of Roe v. Wade) who came in for criticism from feminists and others who objected to his fashioning the alleged "constitutional right" to abortion as a matter of "women's healthcare" rather than "women's personal autonomy." Blackmun
1/ Imagine (if you are actually not one) that you are an Evangelical Christian. Absolutely nothing means more to you than your faith. It’s central to your identity—your sense of who you are. It’s not something you “chose”; it chose you. You would, if necessary, die for it.
2/ You experience an attack on it as an attack on you. Further suppose that you’re a student at an elite college (call it Centerbury). The campus Secular Society has invited as a lecturer a prominent scientist and public intellectual (let’s call him Reinhold Dickens) who
3/ argues that Christianity is based on obvious falsehoods and appeals mainly to ignorant or unintelligent people; that it promotes bigotry and is hostile to reason and science; and that it’s responsible for a great deal of oppression and many wars.
1/ Parents naturally—and rightly—want their kids to be financially secure and respected and to have fulfilling careers. In thinking about their kids’ college educations, they tend to focus on these things. But parents need to bear other things in mind, too, especially their
2/ children’s intellectual, moral, and spiritual development. When they do that, then college choices cannot be dictated by “prestige rankings.” In advising kids, parents need to learn all they can about the climate on the campus of any college under consideration. Are students
3/ students taught—and encouraged—to think deeply, critically, and for themselves? Or has groupthink hardened into place on campus? Is there genuine viewpoint diversity—including among the professors—or does everyone tend to think alike? Are students —all students—challenged?
1/ I have a proposal for all people who understand the vital importance of freedom of thought and expression to truth-seeking and democracy.
2/ Find an opportunity--today--to speak up for the rights of someone you deeply disagree with about something that really matters to you.
3/ Take a stand against prohibiting people from saying what they believe to be true or compelling them to say what they believe to be false.
1/ Friends of civil liberty-right and left-need to stand up to the speech police-right or left-who would forbid people saying what they believe or compel their saying what they don't believe. "Teacher refused to sign pro-Israel oath, so she lost her job": interc.pt/2BqhEpu
2/ People are commenting that speech policing happens on the left too. Yes! Of course it does. I noted that in my tweet. There are people
3/ on both sides who do it & rationalize their support for it. They condemn people on the other side for doing it while doing it themselves.
1/ The 1st Amendment protects free speech for everyone. It protects the President's critics. It protects the President himself. It protects his defenders. All should exercise their free speech right responsibly, but it is protected even when they exercise it irresponsibly.
2/ Whether we're talking about college campuses or the broader society, the way to deal with speech we disapprove of, or regard as biased or unfair or otherwise irresponsible, it to criticize it--exercising our own free speech rights. We should not try to silence the other guy.
3/ The right to freedom of speech was hard won and could easily be lost. Its importance to truth-seeking and democracy is underappreciated. We take it too much for granted. It must be defended, whether assaults on it come from the left or the right, from academics or politicians.
1/ My dear friend Fred Greenstein, a truly magisterial scholar of the American presidency, has died. Fred was an old-fashioned, truth-seeking scholar. He valued quantitative approaches to political science, but also knew that not everything could be modeled or reduced to numbers.
2/ Fred Greenstein preached and practiced the highest standards of scholarship. If one made a factual claim, he wanted evidence. If one drew an inference, he expected its logical warrant to be produced. His demands for rigor, precision, and proof massively benefited his students.
3/ Fred Greenstein's book on Eisenhower's "hidden hand" presidency made him something of an academic celebrity--which he both enjoyed and wore lightly. What interested him most was what made the presidents he studied tick and what shaped their styles of leadership.
1/ In response to my defense of the free speech and academic freedom rights of Marc Hill, some have pointed out that conservative scholars
2/ are frequently subjected to viewpoint discrimination and double standards in hiring, promotion, etc.. True! And we must fight against
3/ these wrongs with resolution and determination to win. There must be a single standard for all--irrespective of viewpoint. And we must
1/ GHWB was neither a convictional politician (like Reagan) nor a transactional one (like Trump). This is not to suggest that he lacked
2/ core beliefs or wouldn't bargain. But he was pragmatic (in that way, though not in others, like Clinton). In 1988 he accommodated himself
3/ to the new ideological realities of the Republican Party and worked from there to advance what he believed were the nation's interests.
1/ As a number of people have pointed out, it's (part of) John Roberts' job, as Chief Justice, to uphold public confidence in the integrity of the federal judiciary and in the impartiality of the judges comprising it. I get that. But it's my job, as a scholar, to tell the truth.
2/ And the truth is that many judges in the system are results-oriented in ways that compromise the principle of the rule of law. This is true more often of contemporary Democratic than of Republican appointees, but it can be found among Republican appointees (e.g., Posner) as
3/ well as Democrats. And there are Democrats (e.g., Cabranes, Garland) who are generally not guilty of this charge. But those who are guilty damage the legal system and the nation they were appointed to serve. And they damage the cause of justice under law. And they undermine
There are many judges--state and federal--who act on ideological motives, not neutral principles impartially applied. (The late Stephen Reinhardt is an egregious example.) There are even prominent theories justifying their doing it. It's no use (or help) pretending otherwise.
1/ Let's test the matter with a thought experiment. Imagine that you are an ACLU lawyer trying to get an antiabortion law (or a traditional marriage law, or a law prohibiting physician-assisted suicide) struck down. If you had a choice between an Obama-appointed judge and a Trump
2/ appointee, would you be indifferent as to which gets the case? On appeal, if you had a choice between a three-judge panel drawn from a pool of twelve Obama appointees and one drawn from a pool of Trump appointees, would you not care which you got? Of course you would care.
I've joined the editorial board of the Journal of Controversial Ideas. Some articles will offend progressives; others will offend conservatives (including me). The point, however, is not to offend but to open minds & provoke critical thinking on all sides. chronicle.com/article/Here-C…
People who like to get out ahead of things (or are just impatient) can go ahead and demand that I resign from the editorial board now, rather than waiting for the journal to actually start publishing.
Your note might begin, "I am not yet outraged, but am planning to be, and I demand that you dissociate yourself from . . . ."
FIRE is an equal opportunity defender of academic freedom--holding conservatives and liberals to the same standard. thefire.org/congressmans-o…
Here staff of a conservative member of Congress crossed the line. FIRE called them out on it and called on Rep. Fortenberry to reject it.
The Congressman is a good man and a strong defender of civil liberty (especially religious freedom). I hope he will make a clear statement.
1/ All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States ..." What is it about "all" that presidents and
2/ judges find opaque or difficult to understand? "All" means all. Legislating by executive orders, bureaucratic manipulations, and judicial
3/ edicts is unconstitutional. We are not a monarchy or an oligarchy. We are a republic. It is up to the legislature to make our laws.
1/ Fr. Martin is right. I would add only that a full independent investigation must address all abuse and cover-ups, whether or not illegal.
2/ Some of McCarrick's wrongdoing (e.g., seducing and corrupting adult seminarians) did not constitute criminal offenses. But it needs to
3/ be addressed and investigators need to find out who knew what when--and failed to stop it and hold the perpetrator accountable.
1/ Steve Bannon must be chuckling with delight. The New Yorker Ideas Festival has become liberalism's funeral. And he's center stage. The
2/ destruction of liberalism was to be achieved by causing liberals to doubt their faith and abandon their values--to go down the path of
3/ illiberalism, to become an ideological tribe, like any other. It has happened gradually, though the pace has increased in recent years.
1/ I'm as pro-life as they come. Yet I assign students an essay by a prominent colleague intelligently defending the morality of infanticide
2/ and even proposing a period of 28 days after birth for parents to decide the fate of their newborn baby. I present the author's arguments
3/ in the most positive light and engage them. I encourage my students to do the same, and not to simply condemn the author as a "nazi."
2/ wide range of viewpoints. Not only are there conservatives on the faculty, there are different kinds of conservatives, as well as
3/ professors representing different perspectives on the left. Every year I have students who are admitted to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc.
4/ I encourage them to choose Harvard for one simple reason: brilliant teachers representing different perspectives = superior education.
1/ Disinviting Bannon under pressure speaks poorly for Remnick and the New Yorker and its followers. During the campaign, after I said Donald Trump was morally unfit to be President, I went on Bannon's radio show and debated him. It's OK to engage people you deeply disagree with.
2/ It doesn't mean you endorse them or their beliefs. And you might learn something, if only why there are people who deeply disagree with you. Bannon's an aggressive debater (he accused me of supporting illegal immigration--because I want more Catholics in the country) but it
3/ was good for listeners to hear the clash of arguments and points of view. That kind of thing would, I promise, be good for New Yorkers (and New Yorker readers) too. Far too many people on the left and the right only want to hear people who share their outlook and beliefs.
1/ To review: A man who rose to be a Cardinal archbishop and one of the most influential figures in the universal Church, was seducing and harassing seminarians and sexually abusing minors for decades. It is impossible that many people, including some fellow bishops, didn't know.
2/ So who exactly in authority did know? And who failed to do something about it? How high up did the knowledge go? Did people in the curia in Rome know? Who? When? Why did they not act? Was there mutual protection going on? Blackmail? What? And while this was going on, what
3/ decisions was Theodore McCarrick being permitted to influence? Who was being influence by him? What was he doing? And needless to say--alas--the McCarrick scandal is only one (albeit the most nauseatingly spectacular) of many clergy sex abuse scandals. So what was the culture
1/ Now here's something I can agree with Tomi Lahren about. Yes, do some reading on Goldwater on abortion. You will discover an unedifying spectacle. He criticized Roe in 1973 and, when politically advantageous to him, endorsed the Right to Life amendment to overturn it in 1980.
2/ That won him endorsements from Arizona pro-life groups for his re-election campaign. Later, when opposing killing unborn babies was no longer politically useful to him, he discovered his inner Margaret Sanger. Goldwater did not distinguish himself for integrity on abortion.
3/ Many Republicans of Goldwater's era saw abortion as a solution to personal *and social* problems (such as poor people on welfare having "too many" babies). Since the child in the womb is out of view, they could pretend he or she didn't exist. Another unedifying bit of history.
1/ If you hold any of the following beliefs, please consider whether you have become an ideologue.
The Left is for it, so it must be wrong.
The Left is against it, so it must be right.
The Right is for it, so it must be wrong.
The Right is against it, so it must be right.
The Left is for it, so it must be wrong.
The Left is against it, so it must be right.
The Right is for it, so it must be wrong.
The Right is against it, so it must be right.
2/
The Left is for it, so it must be right.
The Left is against it, so it must be wrong.
The Right is for it, so it must be right.
The Right is against it, so it must be wrong.
Experience teaches us that movements are not infallible. Conservatives, consider that even Buckley,
The Left is for it, so it must be right.
The Left is against it, so it must be wrong.
The Right is for it, so it must be right.
The Right is against it, so it must be wrong.
Experience teaches us that movements are not infallible. Conservatives, consider that even Buckley,
3/ though not a racist, was not where he should have been on civil rights. Progressives, consider the history of eugenics and where progressive leaders and institutions were on the subject. No one should give allegiance to a political movement uncritically or unconditionally.
1/ Mr. Gehring is being truthful when he says that “the Catholic Church holds a view of human sexuality at odds with the shifting cultural winds.” But he goes wrong in suggesting that the Church can and perhaps will change its fundamental teaching on marriage and sexual morality
2/ to accommodate the zeitgeist. It won’t. Indeed, by its own reckoning it can’t. And it shouldn’t. Ideological fashions come and go, but the truth remains the truth in season and out. And the Church’s teachings on marriage and sexual morality, however unfashionable
3/ or unpalatable they may be to early 21st century progressives or others, are true. Moreover from the Church’s own perspective its core teachings on marriage and sexual morality are not only superior on rational (natural law) grounds to the view with which Mr. Gehring wishes to
