Category: folly

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education and schooling folly ideological culture moral hazard

Through a Lens, Darkly

Matthew A. Sears, SJW, Social Justice Warrior, University, dialectic, truth, argument, protest

The “best debates” are ones in which one side shouts down the other side and threatens violence.

Well, that is what a Washington Post essay implies. In “Why ‘social justice warriors’ are the real defenders of free speech on campus,” Matthew A. Sears, an associate professor of classics and ancient history at the University of New Brunswick, offers a bizarre take on current campus controversies.

After two years of bizarre antics from leftist student bodies in colleges and universities all over the country, academics as diverse as Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson, and Camille Paglia have denounced the intentionally disruptive and even violent tactics of student mobs. We need to go back to the Socratic method and “the disinterested pursuit of truth,” as Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Righteous Mind, put it.

Sears counters this by defending the “social justice approach” as better than a “disinterested pursuit of truth.” Instead of “constituting an attack on knowledge, the social justice lens reflects new ideas generated by academic disciplines and experts within them, and generally encourages expanding our knowledge and opening up subjects to new perspectives, much like Socrates advocated.”

Conflating Socratic “dialectic” with the screaming matches and overt force used by the social justice students who have shut down lectures, seminars and fora featuring non-leftist figures such as Ben Shapiro, Heather Mac Donald and Charles Murray, is more effrontery than enlightening.*

And about that “social justice lens”? Lenses refract, mirrors reflect — and Sears’ argument, you will notice, defends bad behavior out of his classroom by focusing on how he teaches in class.

We don’t need mirrors or lenses to see the deflection here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was heartening to read most commenters on the page engaging in a merciless “dialectic” against the author.

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Accountability folly government transparency local leaders moral hazard porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Babylon Goes Broke

California, pension, crisis, canary, cage, coal mine, spending, taxes

A few Babylonian, er, California cities going bankrupt — Stockton, Vallejo, and Bell — should be seen as more than dead canaries in a coalminer’s care.

Indeed, you don’t need special prophetic gifts to see the dangers posed by over-promising cushy pensions to government workers. Californians are coming around. And the state’s governor, Jerry Brown, appears to be “calling for reductions in gold-plated, unsustainable public-sector pensions,” as Nick Gillespie informs us at Reason.

But statewide reforms will not be easy. The problem is huge, presenting grave costs. “Absent the ability to alter pensions, states and localities have to devote more and more of their taxes to simply covering the costs of retired workers,” Gillespie explains. “Worse still, they often raise taxes to cover rising costs, typically at the expense of providing basic services such as police and road maintenance.”

Yes, over-promising defined-benefit pension packages effectively distributes wealth away from basic government services and into the pockets of the people with whom politicians work most closely.

Unfortunately, the courts long ago decided that politicians’ promises to employees outweigh basic government duties. That is, the courts determined that “public-sector employees at all levels of government had an inviolable right to the pension benefits that existed on the day they were hired.”

But the courts seem to be lightening up on this “California Rule,” and the governor has dared mention that, come “the next recession,” some headway might be possible.

No matter what you may think of this rather desperate hope, the writing is on the wall. And it is in red ink and numbers, not Babylonian.*

As America’s Babylon is finding out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* And not “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.”

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

The Ninth and the Tenth of It

marijuana, constitution, intrastate, rights, legalization, decriminalization

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Obama Administration enforcement guidelines regarding the states that have legalized (in their 29 different ways) marijuana, last week, supporters of freedom expressed some worry.

But we had to admit, one excuse for Sessions’s nixing of the mostly hands-off policy seemed to make sense on purely legal grounds. If we want to liberalize drug laws, then our Cowardly Congress should do it.

Definitely not the Executive Branch.

And yet, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Will Baude argues that “the rule of law” does not require “renewed enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act.”

If anything, he argues, it “requires the opposite.”

Baude mostly rests his case on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which does not authorize regulation of intra-state trade. An issue on which the AG does possess a duty to weigh in.*

This rubs against FDR-Era constitutional theory, of course, which treats all commerce as regulate-able interstate trade. But this makes no sense. The Tenth Amendment declares that states possess powers not given to the federal government. An interpretation of the Constitution cannot be justified if it effectively nullifies other parts of the Constitution. (If all trade is “inter” state, what’s left for the states? Powers to do what? And how could there be any constraints on federal power?)

And then there is the Ninth Amendment, which states that the people retain rights not listed in the Constitution.

When citizens assert rights — such as the option to cultivate, sell, buy or ingest a common and quite hardy plant — in their states (largely through ballot initiatives), the federal government should butt out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “Members of the executive branch have their own obligation to interpret the Constitution,” Baude writes, “and if a federal law is unconstitutional in part then the executive branch, no less than the courts, should say so. It is the Constitution, not the Court, that is the ultimate rule of law in our system.”

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Categories
Accountability folly

Win On the Field

College Football Playoff National Championship, University of Alabama Crimson Tide, University of Georgia Bulldogs, Central Florida Athletic Director Danny White, Peach Bowl

Tonight, the College Football Playoff (CFP) National Championship Presented by AT&T will pit the University of Alabama Crimson Tide (12-1) against the University of Georgia Bulldogs (13-1). Millions of Americans will tune in to see the game’s winner declared “national champion.”

Regardless, University of Central Florida Athletic Director Danny White, after UCF won the Peach Bowl to finish the season 13-0, stated emphatically, “National champs. Undefeated.”*

What’s going on here? Well, UCF wasn’t ranked in the top four or chosen for the four-team championship playoff. Coming from the American Athletic Conference, UCF’s strength of schedule was far below that of Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Oklahoma — all representing major conferences.

But strength of schedule is not everything; it should not trump what takes place on the field. Alabama, Georgia and UCF all played Auburn University. Alabama lost to Auburn. Georgia lost to Auburn, too, but then played again weeks later in the Southeastern Conference championship game and beat Auburn. On the other hand, the UCF Knights defeated Auburn on New Year’s Day, 34-27.

The whole point of the College Football Playoff is to have the champion decided on the field of play — not in a backroom by computers and politics.

As happened this year.

The CFP should go to an eight-team playoff, which would allow any undefeated team, even from less prestigious conferences, to be included.

Isn’t this awfully reminiscent of U. S. presidential campaigns? There, so-called “minor” party candidates are prevented from appearing in the debates — and thus removed from competition not by votes but by private poll results. Often before most voters have heard anything about them.

Let winners be decided on the field and at the ballot box. Not by backroom experts limiting opportunities.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Apparently, UCF is putting its money where its mouth is: paying out $325,000 in contracted bonuses to the coaching staff for winning a national championship.

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crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism too much government

Beaver State Bliss

gas, Oregon, freedom, invisible hand, law, pump, control

The Great State of Oregon is not at DEFCON 1. Nor are Beaver State residents gnashing their teeth over a new law that went into effect earlier this week.

News reports proclaimed: “People in Oregon are freaking out about the thought of pumping their own gas under a new law.” But don’t believe everything you read.

For starters, Oregon’s new law doesn’t actually force anyone to do anything. It merely allows “retailers in counties with a population of less than 40,000 . . . to have self-service gas pumps.”

But a Facebook post by KTVL CBS 10 News in Medford took it an apparently frightening step further, asking, “Do you think Oregon should allow self-serve gas stations statewide?” The post went viral nationwide because of responses such as this:

I’ve lived in this state all my life and I REFUSE to pump my own gas . . .

This [is] a service only qualified people should perform. I will literally park at the pump and wait until someone pumps my gas.

Oregon is one of only two states — New Jersey, the other — where gas stations are banned from permitting customers to put gas in their own cars. Folks in the other 48 states have managed, as one Facebooker explained, “to pump gas without spilling the whole tank and triggering a Star Wars-style explosion.”

Still, if Oregonians so revere their regulatory regime, protecting them from the indignity of pumping gas, why change the law even partially?

Well, for economic reasons. As you might expect, gas stations across rural Oregon were closing at night, stranding many motorists.

Freer markets offer greater protection for real people . . . those not too perplexed by the prospect of pumping their own petrol.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly ideological culture local leaders media and media people national politics & policies

Where Have You Gone, Al Franken?

Al Franken, apology, resignation, exit, sexual, misconduct, disgrace, excuse, guilt

Today, finally, is the day. Barring some last-minute hijinks in the extended resignation ritual announced almost four weeks ago by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), the comedian turned cad turned politician turned pervert leaves his U.S. Senate seat.

And hopefully keeps his mitts off other people’s seats to boot.

Even without deadline hijinks, the Franken saga has been strange. After hearing Franken’s resignation statement on the Senate floor, CNN’s Chris Cizzilla wrote, “He didn’t believe he had done anything for which he should have been forced to resign.”

But note: No one “forced” Senator Franken to step down. As my Sunday Townhall.com column reminded, he did so voluntarily. 

Why?

Peer pressure. Three-quarters of fellow Democratic Party senators demanded Franken leave, to clear the way for election-year attacks on Republican sexual sleaze-balls without partisan distraction.

And now some cry crocodile tears. They want the no-longer-amusing Franken out. Sure. But they also wish to continue the pretense that Franken is a wonderful fellow just the same.

“His voice will be stronger than ever,” argued fellow Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar—ridiculously. A Vox article was headlined, “Al Franken resigned amid sexual misconduct allegations, but Democrats aren’t making him leave in disgrace.”

Is it a paraphrase of the old joke: “Don’t go away in disgrace, Senator, just go away”?

But Franken is leaving in disgrace. Should be.

Eight women have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. The senator’s response has been to publicly apologize, profusely, and then, later, claim that “some of the allegations” are “not true.”

Others he remembers “differently.”

Not good enough, ex-senator.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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