Glenn Harlan Reynolds laments the way campuses (or campi, really) have reacted to the lachrymose response to Trump's victory: The response to the shock has been to turn campuses into kindergarten. The University of Michigan Law School announced a ”post-election self-care” event with “food and play,” including “coloring sheets, play dough [sic], positive card-making, Legos …
You Like #Calexit? So Do We
Now that the tables have turned, the people who want secession have also: Since Donald Trump’s electoral victory was first announced, #Calexit has been trending on Twitter, with distraught Californians looking to form their own state. Liberal Californians who are serious about this should take comfort: you've got many conservative friends east of you who …
The Student Evaluation Problem Comes Back to Haunt Hillary Clinton
Back in January, I made the following observation on a study which showed that American female students tend to give male professors better ratings: Too much extrapolation is always a danger, but if American female college students can’t bring themselves to bump up their faculty counterparts, how are they going to bring themselves to vote …
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Blast From the Past: Bring a Suitcase Full of Money
I saw an Facebook friend repost a prophetic piece relating a 2001 prophecy to this election. The following isn't exactly prophetic, but it dates from February 1999, when this site wasn't even two years old. It was written in the wake of Bill Clinton's unsuccessful impeachment. The impeachment trial is over with. The current occupant …
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Saying One Thing, Doing Another: The Way of Our Elites
...and there's nothing new about it. Consider this, from Philo Judaeus' The Worse Plotting Against the Better, XXI, written about the time Our Lord was on the earth: But it is the nature of sophists to have for enemies the faculties which are in them, while their language is at variance with their thoughts and …
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Maybe No One in the U.S. Really Likes Democracy Anymore
Jeet Heer thinks that the right has given up on democracy: Public-opinion polling shows that Trump’s low opinion of American elections has practically become Republican Party orthodoxy. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, Republicans have an “unprecedented” level of “concern and mistrust in the system.” Roughly 70 percent of Republican voters believe that …
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We Should Challenge the Legitimacy of Our System's Outcome
Donald Trump's mushy statement about his acceptance of the outcome of the Presidential election has many up in the air. Such a knee-jerk reaction--driven by a system which has been so successful for so long that people take it for granted--needs to be tempered by a reality check. First: it's not the first time the …
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NC Political Firebombing Not a Recent First
It's scary, all right: Gov. Pat McCrory Sunday called the weekend firebombing of a North Carolina Republican headquarters “an attack on our democracy,” while one GOP official called it an act of “political terrorism.” In a tweet, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump blamed “Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina.” Hillsborough police said …
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A Little Lesson in Subsidiarity
One of pot shots that Hillary Clinton and her operatives made at conservative Catholics is that they used terms like “subsidiarity” that no one understood. Since they may be right about that, I think an illustration is in order. Many of you know that I teach Civil Engineering. Six years ago, my department head (who …
Americans Aren't the Only Ones to Choose Between "Bad" and "Really Bad"
All of the blubbering and whining going on about how Americans (and especially Christians) are somehow criminal to vote for a certain candidate needs to be put in this perspective, from a 2013 post: A few months ago, when the Iranians elected themselves a new president, I asked an Iranian friend what he thought of …
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Positive Infinity 