Apr
26
2025

The Only Correct Separation Criteria Are…

… apparently restricted solely to those specified by AOC and Bernie.

Doesn't AOC catch even a glimmer of a logical problem here? Both (1) damning demagogic division but (2) neatly dividing Americans into "us", pitted against a shadowy "them"? Within the same sentence?

If you watch the short video, you'll see Bernie Sanders doing the exact same thing.

And I hate to mention this, but, gosh, her voice is irritating. Screechy and strident. At least Bernie comes off as avuncular. Meshuga avuncular, but what are you gonna do?

Christian Schneider reassures me that the reaction of that Idaho crowd isn't a bellwether of our cognitively dissonant future: Social Media Politics Is Killing the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party of old was like a farmers’ market: a place where a bunch of people with wildly different interests came together in a spirit of cautious cooperation. Union workers, environmentalists, feminists, professors, animal rights activists, civil rights leaders, and Hollywood glitterati could all coexist under one big political tent. It was almost like if you majored in progressivism, you had to minor in one of its sub-ideologies.

These disparate Democrats didn’t necessarily like one another, but they tolerated the strangeness of the coalition because it won elections. Everyone knew that the path to power meant compromise, so you ignored some of the more pungent aromas at the produce stands next to yours.

But that was before social media made it impossible to ignore anyone.

It’s Democrats who pay the price. Today, one public school teacher with a TikTok account, green hair, and a septum piercing can hijack a political movement. Six college students with a bullhorn and a drum can become the face of a party they don’t even belong to. Ragtag speakers at a climate rally demanding the end of capitalism become stand-ins for every Democrat running for office in a red or purple district.

(Sorry, I'm out of my NR gifted links for April.)

Also of note:

  • Now, if only Trump would pay attention to Robert F. Graboyes… He has a very good takedown of trade fallacies: Trade Winds 2025—Seriously and Literally. Just one small excerpt, perfectly on target:

    “Globalism” (a.k.a., free trade) is to those on the political right what “trickle-down economics” (a.k.a., free markets) is to those on the political left. Both are vacuous pejoratives that translate loosely into English as, “Somewhere on Earth, buyers and sellers are engaging in voluntary trade and minding their own business AND WE HAVE TO STOP THEM.”

    At least "shipping our jobs overseas" seems to have gone into decline. That was real tiresome.

  • And it wasn't even a bumpy road. John O. McGinnis recounts The Road to Campus Serfdom.

    It seems remarkable that seemingly antisemitic protests by undergraduates, such as those at my own university of Northwestern, could threaten the biomedical research funding of its medical school. But the structure of civil rights laws as applied to universities has long allowed the federal government to cut off funding to the entire university based on the wrongful actions of particular units or departments.

    Ironically, the left, now alarmed by the federal government’s intrusive reach, bears direct responsibility for crafting the very legal weapons wielded against the universities it dominates. Almost four decades ago, progressive legislators demanded sweeping amendments to civil rights law, expanding federal oversight over higher education. The sequence of events reveals a cautionary tale of political hubris: progressive confidence that state power would reliably serve their ends overlooked the reality that governmental authority, once unleashed, recognizes no ideological master. Today’s circumstances starkly illustrate how expansive federal control over civil society, originally celebrated by progressives, returns to haunt its architects. The left’s outrage ought to focus not on this particular administration but on its own reckless empowerment of the state.

    John tells the sad tale of Grove City College, and how its legal woes in the 1980s put a mighty anti-university weapon in the hands of Donald J. Trump.

  • So let's switch to something "really good." At the NR Corner, Roger Clegg says: President Trump Signs Three Really Good Executive Orders on Civil Rights.

    President Trump today signed three really good executive orders, the common denominator of which is an aversion to decision-making that is race-based rather than merit-based. The first targets the “disparate impact” approach to civil-rights enforcement; the second promises the reinstatement of “common sense school discipline policies”; and the third is aimed at college and university accreditation that has “improperly focused on compelling adoption of discriminatory ideology, rather than on student outcomes.” It’s nice to have the federal government on the right side rather than the wrong side on all this, which it will be now and wasn’t before, as the orders spell out carefully and well.

    So: (1) good for him and (2) it's about time.

    The left is, of course, freaking out. James Freeman says it's Another Bit of Revolutionary Common Sense. And demonstrates why, when reading the Washington Post, you should stick to their more reliable columnists (Will, Geraghty, McArdle), and avoid the news stories (I've bolded the problematic "news"):

    A Washington Post report on the executive order sloppily claims:

    Trump’s order directs federal agencies to “deprioritize enforcement” of statutes and regulations that include disparate-impact liability, which has long enabled courts to stop policies and practices that unfairly exclude people on the basis of protected characteristics such as race, gender and disability. The order also instructs the U.S. attorney general to repeal key components of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bar any program receiving federal financial support from discrimination based on “race, color, or national origin.”

    But the whole point of disparate-impact analysis was precisely to be able to turn the force of government against people without evidence that they had unfairly excluded people. Also, the Trump order does not instruct the attorney general to repeal parts of a law, something only Congress can do. The order instructs the her to change administration policy and regulation while stating that the order “shall be implemented consistent with applicable law.”

    The comments on the WaPo story are filled with people making the mistake of believing what the news story claimed about "repeal". Sad!