It’s a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.
Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop (1919).
Categories
Christopher Morley
Categories
Truly Antifascist
The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by philosopher Benedetto Croce in response to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals by Giovanni Gentile, declared the unreconcilable split between the philosopher and the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, to which he had previously given a vote of confidence on October 31, 1922.
The manifesto was published by Il Mondo on May 1, 1925, which was Workers’ Day, symbolically responding to the publication of the Fascist manifesto on the Natale di Roma, the founding of Rome (traditionally celebrated on April 21). The Fascist press claimed that Croce’s manifesto was “more authoritarian” than its Fascist counterpart — a typical leftist dismissal of what used to be called “liberalism.”
Banning DEI doesn’t necessarily end DEI.
So-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies mandate guilt-inducing collectivist indoctrination about race and sex and/or impose race and sex quotas. The Texas legislature rightly concluded that DEI indoctrination is pernicious and required that it be removed from public universities in the state.
Suspecting that the law would not be obeyed with perfect grace, the organization Accuracy in Media (AIM) has been doing undercover work to gather evidence on whether university staffers formerly determined to propagandize for DEI and impose DEI-based requirements are now backing off.
Many are not.
Two of the renegades recently caught on video:
“Rest assured, the work that we do is still the same. It’s just classified differently,” bragged Melissa Cruz, an academic recruiter at the University of Texas at Arlington at the time the AIM investigator talked to her. “The intention is still the same. The research is still the same. The practice is still the same. It’s just called something different now. Our job is to push back and to cause some good trouble and all of those things.”
At the University of North Texas, Paige Falco, gave the same explanation. “Our class might be titled something a little different to just not specifically have DEI as the class name,” she told the AIM investigator. “But it’s still an element that’s taught. It’s definitely still a focus.”
These two have been fired.
Thankfully.
But while these two were caught in the sting, many more no doubt exist, breaking the law of the state that employs them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Grok Imagine
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Categories
Alice Sheldon
What if a person is sure of his identity but it isn’t his identity?
Science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr. — the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon — in the short story “Beam Us Home,” Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (1973), p. 305.
Categories
Adolf & Eva & the End
According to official records and all the respectable historians, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun — after being married for less than 40 hours — committed suicide on April 30, 1945. Nevertheless, rumors about Hitler’s survival in South America, until the 1960s, continue.
Julian Shapiro-Barnum is the host and creator of Recess Therapy, where he regularly records conversations with kids. Recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) joined his program to discuss healthcare policy.
“The children agreed with AOC,” a Washington Post editorial noted, “and brought the same level of sophistication to political and economic questions that Americans have come to expect from the four-term congresswoman.”
AOC and the youngsters shown think healthcare should be free, which The Post used as a jumping off point to have an adult conversation about government-run healthcare, specifically the National Health Service in the United Kingdom.
“Despite the government funding and running a universal health care system, private hospital admissions in the United Kingdom reached their highest level ever in 2024,” readers were informed.
“The number of people opting to buy private health insurance rose to 6.5 million in 2024, the highest number in a quarter-century, according to the Association of British Insurers.”
The Brits “have learned the hard way that the promise of ‘free’ care is only as good as their ability to get an appointment,” wrote the editors.
The editorial further explained that “government systems can only stay afloat when they are rationed, often with backlogs that can leave people waiting months for serious procedures.”
“America’s health system is a mess,” The Post concluded, “but the belief that a full government takeover would lead to better outcomes is just childish.”
One of the nation’s largest newspapers appears to be growing up.
AOC?
Not so much.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Nano Banana
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Categories
Larry Niven
The moral of this story is, anything you don’t understand is dangerous until you do understand it.
Science fiction author Larry Niven, “Flatlander” in Neutron Star (1968).
On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops of the Seventh Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp.
A federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center, last week, on 11 counts including wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The Department of Justice claims that the organization deceived donors and banks about its use of charitable contributions from 2014 through 2023.
Now, the shocking accusation that “the SPLC’s paid informants (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the National Alliance” is not what the SPLC is being prosecuted for. Neither is the SPLC’s distribution of over $3 million to such secret agents. Like the SPLC’s public strategy of lying and calumny, undercover support of infiltrators (as the SPLC defends its agents) isn’t illegal.
Of course, those same agents encouraging crimes does implicate the SPLC in conspiracy to commit acts of terror, but that’s not the crime being prosecuted.
The charges come, instead, from the methods allegedly used to keep these disreputable methods secret.
Not everyone’s impressed with the case; the DOJ may lose. So the bigger question becomes, will the progressive media continue to exalt the SPLC?
And for the SPLC itself, will anti-racist benefactors still give money to an organization shown to gin up hatred the better to soak in donations?
Upon learning that the organization you funded to fight the evil, violent racists turned around and funded the evil, violent racists, would you continue to donate?
Yet the lines of ideological loyalty remain clear. In normal fraud cases, it is the defrauded who feel the most aggrieved. But here it is their political enemies who express the outrage that the defrauded should be feeling.
That may be the saddest element of this sick situation.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Grok Imagine
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Categories
Robert A. Heinlein
I learned centuries back that there is no privacy in any society crowded enough to need IDs. A law guaranteeing privacy simply insures that bugs — microphones and lenses and so forth — are that much harder to spot.
The character Lazarus Long, from Robert A. Heinlein’sTime Enough for Love (1973), Prelude I.