Donald Trump

Tales From The Safe Space, Part 36 – Michael Bloomberg’s University Of Michigan Commencement Address

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

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Michael Bloomberg delivers a college commencement speech worth hearing

While it is true that a generation of university students – the product of our therapeutic culture and “you can’t say that” attitude to political debate – is now being indoctrinated into the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics with alarmingly little resistance from the educational establishment, there is at least one graduating class which has been sent out into the world with a rather more inspiring (and small-L liberal) message ringing in their ears.

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was invited to address the University of Michigan’s graduating class of 2016, and from the first word of his speech he tore into the culture of safe spaces, trigger warnings and all of the other illiberal symptoms of this new orthodoxy.

From Bloomberg’s speech:

The most useful knowledge that you leave here with today has nothing to do with your major. It’s about how to study, cooperate, listen carefully, think critically and resolve conflicts through reason. Those are the most important skills in the working world, and it’s why colleges have always exposed students to challenging and uncomfortable ideas.

The fact that some university boards and administrations now bow to pressure and shield students from these ideas through “safe spaces,” “code words” and “trigger warnings” is, in my view, a terrible mistake.

The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations — not run away from them. A microaggression is exactly that: micro. And one of the most dangerous places on a college campus is a safe space, because it creates the false impression that we can insulate ourselves from those who hold different views.

We can’t do this, and we shouldn’t try — not in politics or in the workplace. In the global economy, and in a democratic society, an open mind is the most valuable asset you can possess.

Think about the global economy. For the first time in human history, the majority of people in the developed world are being asked to make a living with their minds, rather than their muscles. For 3,000 years, humankind had an economy based on farming: Till the soil, plant the seed, harvest the crop. It was hard to do, but fairly easy to learn. Then, for 300 years, we had an economy based on industry: Mold the parts, turn the crank, assemble the product. This was hard to do, but also fairly easy to learn.

Now, we have an economy based on information: Acquire the knowledge, apply the analytics and use your creativity. This is hard to do and hard to learn, and even once you’ve mastered it, you have to start learning all over again, pretty much every day.

Keeping an open mind to new ideas is essential to your professional success — just as it’s crucial to our collective future as a democratic society.

Note the loud booing quickly drowned out by cheering when Bloomberg talks about the inherent intellectual and academic danger of a “safe space” – while his remarks were warmly received, there is clearly a very vocal group of students who did not want to hear this message, and who will step forth from the University of Michigan with very warped views about how political debate (and even ordinary interpersonal relationships) should be conducted.

Bloomberg then turns his attention to the presidential race and the state of American democracy in general:

Democracy in action can actually produce a lot of inaction, which we see every day in Washington and other levels of government, too. When governments fail to address the needs of the people, voters in both parties get angry and some politicians exploit that anger by offering scapegoats instead of solutions.

If we want to stop demagogues, we have to start governing again, and that requires us to be more civil, to support politicians who have the courage to take risks, and to reward those who reach across the aisle in search of compromise.

Here, Bloomberg is almost channelling Andrew Sullivan, who makes his incredibly welcome and sorely needed return to political commentary in the New York magazine with these words:

An American elite that has presided over massive and increasing public debt, that failed to prevent 9/11, that chose a disastrous war in the Middle East, that allowed financial markets to nearly destroy the global economy, and that is now so bitterly divided the Congress is effectively moot in a constitutional democracy: “We Respectables” deserve a comeuppance. The vital and valid lesson of the Trump phenomenon is that if the elites cannot govern by compromise, someone outside will eventually try to govern by popular passion and brute force.

(I’ll be blogging a response to Andrew Sullivan’s piece separately in due course).

Bloomberg closes with this warning:

Think about this: In 1960, only 4 to 5 percent of Democrats and Republicans said they would be upset if a member of their family married someone from the opposing party. In 2010, one in three Democrats and one in two Republicans said they would disapprove of such a marriage. In 1960, most people would never have believed that interparty marriage would attract such resistance, while interracial and same-sex marriage would gain such acceptance.

For all the progress we have made on cultural tolerance, when it comes to political tolerance, we are moving in the wrong direction — at campaign rallies that turn violent, on social media threads that turn vitriolic, and on college campuses, where students and faculty have attempted to censor political opponents.

As durable as the American system of government has been, democracy is fragile — and demagogues are always lurking. Stopping them starts with placing a premium on open minds, voting, and demanding that politicians offer practical solutions, not scapegoats or pie-in-the-sky promises.

This is a message which many students will not want to hear, but which needs to be transmitted nonetheless – and not only by commencement speakers, refreshing though it is to hear the likes of Bloomberg take up the cause.

University administrators and professors must also absorb and embrace this message and change the way they approach issues of free speech and academic freedom, for while they are not entirely responsible for the censorious and emotionally fragile nature of new students entering their institutions, they do represent the last and best hope of turning those students into robust and resilient young citizens by the time they graduate.

Michael Bloomberg delivering a crowd-riling, viral-ready commencement speech just as students are about to graduate cannot be our only firewall against the onslaught of this new illiberal movement. We must erect meaningful defences and interventions much earlier in the learning process – rather than simply bowing to the excessive demands and exaggerated sensibilities of perpetually offended students – if we wish to prevent our workplaces and government from going the same way as our university campuses.

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Federalism Is Not A Dirty Word Simply Because It Is Associated With The EU

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Towards a Federal Europe

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If political and social cohesion is fraying even in the United States, where citizens share a strong common American bond, what chance is there for successful European government?

In her latest Telegraph column, Janet Daley makes an interesting comparison between the prospects of European federal union and those of the United States (currently experiencing its own political turmoil with Donald Trump’s successful insurgency on the Right and a nearly-successful  insurgency on the Left in the form of Bernie Sanders).

Daley writes:

That ideal of the European continent as a unified entity, presenting an alternative presence in the world to the overweening superpower across the Atlantic was once the whole point – wasn’t it?

[..] But, as I say, nobody who favours remaining in the EU is talking up that idea these days. In fact, it’s the other guys – the ones who want to leave – who are most inclined to remind us of it, to the clear embarrassment of the Remainers. Could this be because the political model itself – the American success story of a federation of states joined together under a central government – seems to be going badly wrong? The nation that appeared to have found the ultimate solution to conjoining separate states, each with its own semi-autonomous authority, under one set of national governing institutions is now apparently facing an electoral choice between the demagogic and the disreputable.

I get what Daley is trying to do here, but she makes a leap too far in suggesting that the nature of federal government itself is responsible for American political woes. The federal model has served the United States well for nearly 250 years; today’s problems are indeed mirrored in Europe and America, but they are not the result of federalism, tempting as it might be to discredit federalism in order to prevent its unwelcome imposition on the countries of Europe.

On the contrary, the current political disillusionment and the rise of the insurgent outsider candidates is largely the inevitable consequence of corporatism, an unhealthy perversion of capitalism in which unaccountable and undistinguishable elites from all major parties leech off the state to unfairly consolidate their hold on power, which is common among many Western governments. And tellingly, Daley provides no evidence to back up her assertion that federalism is to blame for this.

Daley then goes on to discredit her argument further with this highly inaccurate portrayal of conservatism in America:

Most disturbingly, the US seems to be prey to the same excesses which are so worrying n the European scene. American federal elections both at the presidential and the congressional level, used to be predictably, boringly moderate. For generations, both the major parties (and there were no others worth considering) could have fit within what was, in European terms, a narrow spectrum of political possibility: roughly the middle ground of the British Conservative party. Capitalism under reasonable controls and a strong defence of individual liberty were the basic tenets of a consensus which underpinned every plausible candidacy, allowing only for differences of emphasis and intonation.

This is wrong on several counts. Firstly, it is a wholly wrong to suggest that the entire spectrum of American political thought would miraculously fit within the British Tory party. To make this claim is to overlook the numerous areas of social policy (gay rights, abortion and religion in public life are just the first which spring to mind) where the British Conservative Party has more or less completely moved on and abandoned its past conservative stances, while the Republican Party continues to exploit the culture wars as a vote-winning wedge issue.

It is also to overlook the fact that in terms of economic policy, the Tories are often comfortably to the left of even the US Democratic Party in terms of their tolerance for state involvement in political life, the scope and depth of the welfare state and – how can one forget – the British worship of nationalised healthcare. True, there are isolated Democrats who openly support a “public option”, but almost nobody in American political life thinks that the NHS is a great model to emulate, or would be caught dead suggesting its adoption by the United States.

In almost every way, the British political spectrum sits (at least) a few points to the left of America’s, with our dreary post-war collectivism standing in marked contrast to the individualism of the United States. To suggest that both Republicans and Democrats would find a comfortable home within the Conservative Party is simply false – even the most Thatcherite of Tory MPs would be laughed out of the GOP as a ludicrous socialist.

Secondly, while recoiling in horror from Trump (admittedly a demagogue) and Bernie Sanders (who this blog admires for bringing genuinely left wing conviction to the debate, if only so that it can be exposed as flawed) Daley seems almost approving when she writes of “predictably, boringly moderate” government which allowed only for slight “differences of emphasis and intonation”. But this is exactly the problem – it is when the major political parties begin to look and sound indistinguishable from one another that a void opens which is often filled by glib and unsavoury types like Trump. In many ways, Britain has been fortunate in this regard – going into the 2015 general election, Labour and the Conservatives could hardly have been more depressingly alike, and yet the worst we have to show for it is a diminished UKIP and Jeremy Corbyn.

Daley appears to be defending consensus politics and railing against demagoguery at the same time, while failing to understand that an excess of the former all but guarantees the latter. Her column also forms part of an unwelcome trend of unnecessarily problematising issues around the EU referendum. Both sides are guilty – mostly desperate Remainers, who in their desperation to win are prone to suggesting that the smallest of bureaucratic or diplomatic hurdles to Brexit is an immovable showstopper, but also many on the Leave side who are apt to grasp at any problem with the EU or any world event and seek to fashion it into a weapon to be fired at Brussels.

In this case, holding Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders up as evidence suggesting that the American federal model itself is broken may help to land a solitary punch on the European Union this once, because the EU’s inexorable direction of travel is toward federal union. But by slandering an entire mode of governance in this way, we limit ourselves when it comes time to think about how we may wish to be governed if and when we leave the European Union. Some – including this blog – actually believe that moving towards a federal United Kingdom following a constitutional convention to be held after Brexit would be a great outcome.

So a plea to everyone on both sides (but in reality, only to those on the Brexit side – for we know that the Remain camp will tell any lie and stoke any fear in their desperation to win): there are sufficient real problems with the European Union as it is now and is soon likely to become without attacking every single word or concept associated with Brussels. So let’s debate where we can win – not getting into a mud slinging contest with trumped up economic figures, and not disparaging every single thing associated with the European Union, but by focusing on democracy and sovereignty, and building a positive vision of how Brexit can be the first step in Britain’s re-emergence as a global player.

The Brexit side is already accused of being alarmist. Let’s not live up to the hype by slandering federalism – a mode of government which has worked exceedingly well for many countries, including the most powerful and prosperous on Earth – in our desperation to slander everything which is also connected with the European project.

 

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An Anti-Trump Protest In Portland, An Unbridgeable Divide On Immigration

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

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Congratulations, American leftists. By deliberately and persistently conflating legal and illegal immigration in the public discourse, it is no longer possible to have any kind of rational dialogue on the subject

I’m not normally in the habit of sharing Infowars videos other than the few occasions when I have had a chuckle at Alex Jones, but I encourage you to watch this video.

This is footage of a calm and eminently reasonable man debating with two left-wing women on the subject of immigration at an anti-Donald Trump protest in Portland, Oregon.

Background: The man’s own parents were legal immigrants, and he is attempting to get the two protesters to acknowledge that there is a difference between legal and illegal immigration, and that the former should be welcomed but the latter not tolerated.

They totally refuse to give any ground, refusing to acknowledge any difference between legal and illegal immigration and becoming ever more nonsensical as the video progresses. It’s not so much that they are deliberately conflating the two types of immigration in the way that so many cynical politicians have done. In the case of these protesters – having no doubt percolated in an ideological echo chamber where everyone thinks and says the same liberal thoughts – they are genuinely unable to discern the difference.

Key moment in the dialogue:

Man: My parents came here from Cuba, they came through Ellis Island through the proper channels and they became citizens.

Woman: Sir, it’s not about it being legal, it’s about that America — is open to help people. You’re just being closed minded.

Man: I’m not against immigration or immigrants, never was. My parents were immigrants.

Woman: But saying you’re against illegal immigrants is the same thing.

Man: It is not! Legal and illegal immigration is not the same thing.

Woman: Why does it matter if someone’s not “legally”…

Man: Of course it matters.

Woman: Why?

The two women in this film genuinely cannot see why joining the queue, waiting, paying money and taking a citizenship test is more virtuous and honourable than sneaking across the border or overstaying a visa, and they become increasingly agitated the more the man persists in trying to explain the difference. While the man is able to debate and discuss, all that the protesters can do is shout accusations and repeat talking points, so when he quickly discredits their stock responses (illegal immigration is great, just like rainbows and puppies) they have no intellectual fallback position. This is why they become so evidently distressed a few minutes into the video.

It’s worth watching this to remind ourselves of what the Left has been trying to accomplish in the immigration debate. Conflating legal and illegal immigration has long been a core goal, because not only does it then become much easier to tar opponents of the latter with the stain of racism, it also produces brainwashed young activists and voters who mindlessly parrot the phrases they are given and accept these positions without question.

And when anything – like, say, a Donald Trump Rally – penetrates their hermetically sealed ideological echo chamber? Since they cannot debate, they have only one response:

Shut it down! Shut it down! Shut it down!

And since even taking a moderate position on illegal immigration (such as granting permanent residence but not citizenship to those who have already come) prompts exactly the same vicious reaction, is it any wonder that many American conservatives are now spurning compromise themselves and gravitating toward the presidential candidate who says “screw it, just build the wall”?

Congratulations, American liberals. This is what you have wrought on the American political discourse, all in the name of tolerance.

 

Donald Trump protest

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Bottom Image: Press Herald

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Who Is To Blame For Nightmares Of Donald Trump?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Donald Trump - school

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Won’t somebody please think of the children?

Apparently American schoolchildren are being terrorised by the thought of Donald Trump winning the presidency.

Buzzfeed reports:

The presidential campaign is stoking fear and anxiety among children of color, according to a survey released Thursday of about 2,000 teachers.

The report, “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on Our Nation’s Schools” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), puts much of the blame on Donald Trump’s comments about undocumented immigrants, banning Muslims from entering the U.S., and building a wall between the United States and Mexico.

Even though the survey questions didn’t identify any candidates, out of 5,000 total comments more than 1,000 mentioned Donald Trump. Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton were named less than 200 times.

“My students are terrified of Donald Trump,” said a middle school teacher with a large student body of African-American Muslims. “They think that if he’s elected, all black people will get sent back to Africa.”

More than two-thirds of the teachers reported that children of immigrants and Muslims expressed concerns about what might happen to them or their families after the election. More than one-third reported seeing an increase in anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment.

“Students are hearing more hate language than I have ever heard at our school before,” said a high school teacher in Helena, Montana.

Another teacher who responded to the survey said a fifth-grader told a Muslim student “that he was supporting Donald Trump because he was going to kill all of the Muslims if he became president!”

But who is actually at fault here?

Is Donald Trump really to be blamed for the fact that American liberals, in their impotent anguish, have concocted all manner of exaggerated lies about Trump, and made any number of disjointed extrapolations between what Trump has actually said and what they think he would do in office?

Let’s be clear – Donald Trump has said some incredibly stupid and offensive things. But the closest he has come to announcing a plan to kill all American Muslims was his declared intention to halt all further Muslim immigration into the United States. Now, one can argue that this is a fear-based, prejudicial, unworkable and unconstitutional proposal (it is), but this still comes nowhere near suggesting that Trump plans to “kill all of the Muslims”.

So where are these terrified schoolchildren getting their ideas, I wonder?

The answer is obvious. They are not being scared by Donald Trump himself, or by any of the things which the presidential candidate has said. They are being scared by the things which other people – typically Trump’s most vehement left-wing critics – are saying about him. These are people who hold their own political views in such high esteem (and the truth in such low regard) that they are comfortable telling children lies about the intentions of a presidential candidate as a means of whipping up public opposition.

A responsible adult would reassure these children that the president lacks any constitutional power to deport African Americans anywhere.

A responsible adult would point out to these children that Donald Trump has never once suggested that he wants to deport black people or kill all Muslims.

And a responsible organisation would be more concerned that young schoolchildren are being grossly misled and misinformed by their parents and other authority figures, and make that the focus of their report rather than Donald Trump.

Unforunately, we are now witnessing a (hopefully) small number of parents and teachers effectively terrorising their own children and students with an entirely false vision of Donald Trump, a caricature even more cartoon-like than the real thing. This is not a tremendously responsible way to raise children, and all the more surprising coming from the side of American politics which perpetually claims to be so concerned for the “mental safety” of students.

So before we even get to trigger warnings and safe spaces, perhaps the first rule for protecting the mental safety of children should be that grown adults – including parents, teachers and those in the media – refrain from telling scurrilous lies in pursuit of their anti-Trump political agenda.

There are enough genuine reasons for America to reject Donald Trump without the Left waging their own psychological war of terror against their own schoolchildren.

 

Donald Trump Hat - Make America Great Again

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Top Image: slate.com

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Fighting Social Justice Warriors At Ohio University By Adopting Their Tactics

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Ohio University College Republicans - Graffiti Wall - SJWs - Identity Politics

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University Social Justice Warriors, with their victimhood culture and authoritarian tactics, are in danger of creating an equally illiberal conservative backlash

In a recent piece, Rod Dreher speculated as to what might happen if and when the usual targets of social justice warrior bullying come out of their defensive crouch and begin to fight back, playing the SJWs at their own game.

(The upshot: while an entirely understandable reaction, nothing good can from it; free speech will then be under assault from both ends of the political spectrum).

This comes in the context of Donald Trump-supporting students having their free speech right to advocate for Trump’s candidacy treated by snarling left-wing activists and cowed university administrations like some kind of grave assault on the safety of the campus community.

Dreher writes:

One likes to think that most students have enough residual dignity to restrain themselves from behaving like bully-babies.

What if that changes? What if students — whites, males, and other out-groups — decide that they’re going to fight fire with fire, and adopt Trumpian methods on campus, challenging the sacred victim status of the SJWs, and claim the mantle of victimhood for themselves, and intimidating university authorities until they get what they want? Trump has shown what you can do to acquire power if you just don’t give a rat’s rear end what people think of you. That is, if your own belief in yourself and your righteousness is so absolute that you are not susceptible to believing that it is undignified or dishonorable to present yourself in the public square as a victim. Trump’s genius is to present himself as both victim and victor, and that kind of thing is not going to work on campus. But sooner or later, the tactics of the SJWs are going to be taken up by their opponents, because that’s the only way they will save themselves from being entirely disempowered on campus, and in time, in the workplace. Trump has shown that establishments are weaker than people think, and can be pushed over. So have the SJWs. All that campuses need now are counterprotesters to the SJWs, making similar uncompromising demands from administrators, driven by nothing but their feelings of grievance. Then we can have a proper war of all against all.

Thanks, SJWs.

Unfortunately, this counterprotest is already coming to pass, with some American conservative students now adopting the same language of fragility and victimhood used by their leftist tormentors.

The College Fix reports:

The College Republicans at Ohio University say they are under siege by peers for painting a message on the campus free speech wall defending the First Amendment.

In a barrage of cyber harassment over the last day, they have been called racists, described as Klansmen, and accused of literally threatening the campus — all over a painted message that read “Trigger warning: there are no safe spaces in real life! You can’t wall off the 1st Amendment.”

“It got so much hate, I just don’t know if I have ever received so much hate in my life,” David Parkhill, 19, president of the Ohio University College Republicans, said Thursday in an interview with The College Fix.

“Granted, I knew what I was getting into, but I didn’t think it would be that much hate,” he said. “We are basically a minority on this campus. Our opinion is so put down and so crushed, it’s almost like we don’t have a say.”

While the Ohio University College Republicans doubtless have a point – one can imagine campus life not being much fun for anyone with openly conservative convictions in the current climate – what is depressing here is the way in which David Parkhill, president of the OU Republicans, uses the same whining language of victimhood and oppression to elicit sympathy for his own embattled minority.

Nobody likes a pity party, but that is exactly what will get if conservative and liberal students face off against each other not as they should, through lively debate, but rather through constant, tear-stained appeals for the university authorities to intercede on behalf of their respective sides.

And in a sense, one cannot blame the Ohio University College Republicans for behaving in this way. They have watched for months and years while identity politics-wielding left-wing students get every little thing that they demand from spineless university administrations, and shame into submission anybody who stands in their way.

It is not therefore an illogical leap when other students conclude that this is the best and most effective way of advancing one’s own agenda. If the Social Justice Warriors can mobilise support and win concessions by emphasising (and frankly, grossly exaggerating) their supposed victimhood and oppression, why should conservatives not do the same?

But this can lead nowhere good. For a start, the SJWs have much more practice at wielding identity politics as a weapon. It is their bread and butter, they do it every day. Every linguistic trick and campaigning tactic to elicit the last drop of sympathy and support from sympathetic university authorities is already known to them, while as the Ohio University example demonstrates, conservative students are still taking their first baby steps at playing the victim.

Therefore, in the short term, conservatives will not only continue to be outgunned by the SJWs, they will squander whatever sympathy and respect they otherwise deserve by lowering themselves to the same tactic of  appealing to their weakness and minority status as a valid reason to clamp down on the freedom of others (SJWs) to organise and protest.

And in the longer term, if through repeated practice young students become adept at flaunting their fragility and exalting in their helplessness, both sides will fight to a bloody draw, with nobody able to say or do anything on campus without immediately triggering a protest and counter-protest. University will truly no longer be a place for the discussion of ideas, but a sheltered place of “comfort and home” for weak-minded adult babies, an intellectual demilitarised zone protected by a field of verbal landmines laid by every competing minority group over the academic and political discourse.

In other words, this is not the anti-SJW backlash that we have been waiting for. While it is unsurprising to see Ohio University College Republicans seeking to fight back in the way they believe will make the most difference in the short term, while they still have to live on campus, their adoption of the SJW’s own weapons and tactics will do nothing to halt the longer-term slide into authoritarianism, infantilisation and ever-more restrictive behavioural codes.

All of which makes it even more vital that the adults in the room – professors and university administrators – stop being so darn terrified of their own student populations, and actually start push back against any student or advocacy group which attempts to use their supposed fragility as a reason to shut down free speech for others.

As this blog has argued, students alone cannot halt the growth of safe spaces and censorship on their college campuses. Though liberty-minded students will have to be the foot soldiers in any such fightback, they can only succeed if they are given sufficient air cover by those in positions of authority and moral leadership – and on too many campuses, this has been pointedly lacking.

Some universities – like Mizzou – are starting to pay a high price for attempting to appease the mob rule of the SJWs.

How long will it be until more universities realise that they need to fight back and stand up to the identity politics takeover, or else face a similar fate?

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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