Comment on "Instapundit" » Blog Archive » MOB RULE ON CAMPUS: Vandalism on Ivy League Campus Attacks Conservative as ‘Racist Rape Apologist…

Instapundit » Blog Archive » MOB RULE ON CAMPUS: Vandalism on Ivy League Campus Attacks Conservative as ‘Racist Rape Apologist…

For over twenty years there has been a coordinated campaign to deconstruct The University of Chicago and turn it from a research university where nothing mattered more than truth into another left wing privilege citadel. Barack Obama was brought to campus in 1992. He was never a regular faculty member and never was subjected to a faculty hiring process and review. He was appointed directly by the then Dean of the Law School Geoffrey Stone. At the same time his wife was given a job in the office of the Dean of the College John Boyer. Later, when Obama moved from the Illinois State Senate to the United States Senate, Michelle Obama was moved from the office of the College to the University Hospitals. There her job was steering poor people with expensive conditions to other hospitals. Neither was qualified for their jobs or connected to the University in any way that could explain their positions. Both were parachuted in at the direction of Trustee Penny Pritzker, the Hyatt Hotel heiress. Ms Pritzker has since been rewarded by an appointment as United States Secretary of Commerce. This history echoes Obama's record of advancement with Bill Ayers, the son of a Chairman of Commonwealth Edison.

Both Dean Boyer, then new in his position that he has held for 22 years, and Dean Stone, who was subsequently promoted to Provost, are men of the Left. Over 20 years ago I asked John Boyer how he as a Historian could contemplate weakening the best parts of the College, the classes based on the old Hutchins era Social Science sequence. He replied that if I had the money I could fund them. Around the same time I witnessed then Provost Stone meet a group of disaffected would be Latin revolutionary students with a list of demands, from the venal to the fascistic, then novel but which have since become familiar. Stone replied by assuring them that he was of the Left and one of them. 

When Michelle Obama was promoted to her new job at the Medical Center her salary tripled.

Thirteen Years

I was there that day. It was Election Day, a Primary and I was working at a poll site in a High School in Queens. For the first time in American history we closed the polls and stopped an election. That was their first victory. Since I was already part of the Red Cross I got into HQ by 1 PM and was down by the Box by 2 PM. I remember the people standing by the West Side Highway watching us race South. I remember the cloud that still hung over Ground Zero and everything below Canal Street. We pulled up to a triage set up outside a school a block North of the site. As we pulled up I saw the doctors and nurses standing outside looking South. They were ready, they were waiting. No one came. They stood there looking South and I could see they were crying. They were there to save lives but there were none to save. I remember the flames and the smell. I remember the taste. It was a crematory and I knew I was breathing in asbestos and people. Above all I remember that I knew that I was breathing in the people.

There is a memoir today on Sean Linnane's blog that deserves to be read. This is my post from 2008. The same as above but longer. Lest we forget.

Comment on Instapundit: Blog Archive: "KYLE SMITH: Why Obama Is Concocting An Impeachment Threat: Because He Has Nothing Else."

If we survive the next two years, that being a clause bigger than Santa, we need to think of how to make two moribund parts of the American Constitution work. These are the Electoral College and Impeachment. OK, with a nod to Monty Python, make that three parts and include the Senate. OK OK make that the Senate and the House.

Fixing the Senate is the easiest part, but without this nothing else works. Repeal the XVIIth Amendment. That would probably result quickly in a 60 seat GOP Senate. Over time it would probably raise the pressure to increase the number of states, separating Crook County from Illinois and probably fragmenting other states with decaying machine cities dominating rural and suburban zones of productivity. Ideally the size of the House would also increase to bring down the number of voters per district from 200,000 to a more democratic fraction or 20 or 10,000 voters per Representative.

The Electoral College could be saved not by abolishing it but by making it a standing body with a defined membership ready to act when needed. Make the top three officers, Executive Legislative and Judicial ex officio Electors, with others as allocated by apportionment elected for fixed overlapping terms as are the Senators. The Electoral College could be given additional duties settling political constitutional questions as a Court of Judicial Review. There would be no reason to have them physically assemble to perform that task, as there would be no reason to have an expanded House of Representatives with up to 5,000 members assemble in one place except for a purely ceremonial occasion.

Impeachment could also be improved by making it more routine. Simply insert into the Constitution that every state may propose articles of impeachment and forward them to the Speaker of the House who shall annually submit them and other articles that Representatives wish considered to the House for consideration. If a majority of the House should vote to proceed then charges will be forwarded to the Senate. By making the initial process almost routine, and by allowing outside agents to prepare articles, it becomes likely that some charges against some officers if not the President will be sent to the Senate. In an emergency nothing would stop the House from drawing up articles of impeachment at any time.

Comment on "Instapundit: 'THIS SEEMS RIGHT: Israel must be permitted to crush Hamas.'"

It is tempting to urge Israel to destroy every structure in the Gaza strip and expel 1.8 million people. For over 60 years, that is for three generations, the people of Gaza have been comprehensively indoctrinated to hate and kill Jews.

The only people who have been subject to as thorough a level of control by a regime with a more dangerous and delusional perception of reality may be the North Koreans. While NorK artillery is within 35 miles of Seoul the proximity of Gaza to Israel and the concentration of hostile forces shielded by UN facilities and civilians and the billions of dollars in aid that is promptly diverted to waging war all make Gaza even more dangerous.

If the people of Gaza were not complicit in the crimes of the Hamas regime then they would be welcoming the Israelis as liberators, as did the people of Lebanon when the Israelis first invaded there. As it is the Israelis owe the civilians of Gaza no more consideration than the allies did to the people of Germany and Japan in 1944-45.

So why not clean Gaza out and bulldoze it flat? There is only one reason. The hostile dangerous and even deranged population, almost two million of them, would flood first into Egypt and then into Europe and the Americas. Everywhere they go death and destruction and tyranny would follow. The Israelis are accused of treating Gaza like a prison camp. If only they did. Unless the whole population could be moved to some isolated and deserted island it is best to keep them where they are. What is needed is for them to be reoccupied and controlled and then deprogrammed from the ideology of death. That would take at least another three generations. The only alternative is one the Israelis would reject. That would be to do to the people of Gaza what the people of Gaza would do to the people of Israel if given a chance.

These are the only five choices that Israel has.
1. Status quo. Continue playing whack-a-mole while simultaneously supplying electricity concrete medicine and other resources to Gaza followed by occasional punitive expeditions. Over time the technical resources available to the terrorists and the threat will increase. This strategy will inevitably lead to WMD equipped missiles being launched at Israel from Gaza.

2. Surrender, will lead to the extermination of the Jewish people in Israel.

3. Destroy Gaza and exterminate the Gazan people. That will not happen.

4. Destroy Gaza and expel the people. That will only spread the problem and create more chaos.

5. Reoccupy Gaza and reeducate the people over several generations.

A Garden of Stone

Today I visited Cypress Grove National Cemetery. The National Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York City. Not another living soul was there.

Most of the Civil War era markers have just a name and the home state, a rank sometimes and a unit. The more recent markers usually include dates and a cross. A few have the Star of David.

There are stories here that deserve to be told. Lest we forget.

There are couples here. This is a place of love.

This lady waited over 52 years to join her husband.

Some are to poignant to need elaboration. "Our Hero" was 16 years old.

A portion of the National Cemetery is collocated within the nearby but separate private Cypress Grove Cemetery. The Guard kindly drove me the distance from the entrance to that area. There are also old Jewish sections within the larger Christian cemetery, which is unusual. There is an NYPD memorial section adjacent to the largely Civil War government graves. Within the National Cemetery area some of the graves are for Confederates. Did they die in captivity near here during the war? Their graves and those of the Union soldiers are mingled. Those boys are far from home but now they are all together as Americans. Today perhaps some would object to honoring those who served in the CSA by placing them in a National Cemetery. What were we fighting for if not to say that they belong here?

Comment on the Belmont Club: "The Indefinite Man"

Belmont Club » The Indefinite Man

Brandeis' Core Value is "take the money." People take at face value self identified Jewish institutions and then add a set of preconceptions based on that. 

In New York we will soon have the Israel Day parade sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal and the American Jewish Committee. These are two old mainstream organizations that have raised millions of dollars over many decades from the Jewish community. Their present leadership have endorsed and advanced the Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement targeting Israel. Organizations that support BDS, such as J Street, have been invited to participate in the parade.

There is a tension between the need for certainty in the face of corruption and the need for doubt in the face of complexity. Without certainty there are no standards to be held to. Without doubt there is no need to inquire test and innovate. 

We need both 

"Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders."

and

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Those whose vision of purity admits of no imperfections, and therefor of no mercy of change can only rejoice at the death of their near rivals, as Luther did of Zwingli's, even over those of their avowed enemies. The Irish should be grateful that they only had a Congregational Calvinist to deal with.

The universities are now far down the path of pursuing money at the expense of free thought. Eisenhower was concerned by the effects of big government on academia. He was right but by considering the simple interests of the National Security State of his time the whole of the problem he did not consider the future vulnerabilities and stages involved. The universities became addicted to big projects and sponsorships, not only from government engineering and science but then also from Area Studies in the Social Sciences and Humanities. That inflated budgets and costs and bloated administration at the expense of teaching. It reduced the dependence on students and cut the bonds between faculty and the public as alumni, parents, and students. The hunt for money to keep feeding the swollen system made the universities open to influence from private foundations and foreign governments. Those interests then had a mechanism to penetrate first the universities and then the government administration and other segments of society. That is the Gramscian March.

On Instapundit: Blog Archive: "James Taranto: Justice Thomas Was Right: Citizens United ..."

As I do not wish to spend money on a new computer now I need to find a better browser than Safari for my old MacBook. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The blowback on this will be frightening. The radical homosexual lobby have done things that will convince average people that they really are part of a crazy alien conspiracy determined to destroy America and that they really are coming for your children. The result will be the political rise of fringe extremists, increased violence against and by gays and the recriminalization of conduct. For all those who wanted to tear down the safe smug Ozzie and Harriet world of 1950s America they can now look forward to something far far worse. We may all end up in Putin's Russia.

On "Instapundit » Blog Archive » THE HILL: Eleven state attorneys general slam Obama healthcare fixes as illegal."

Instapundit » Blog Archive » THE HILL: Eleven state attorneys general slam Obama healthcare fixes as illegal. The attorneys g…

The attitude of the Democrats is worse than "Laws? We don't need no stinkin laws." If you demand a law they will laugh and cough up another 3,000 page monster. They think that they have cover from a tame media and all the law they need. Buried within the ACA are hundreds of Easter Eggs saying "the Secretary may" or "the Secretary shall." Legislative power was transferred to Sebelius and Obama is Sebelius' boss so Obama can rewrite the law as he pleases. They really believe that. The ACA was not a piece of legislation about Health Care. It was a Constitutional Amendment. It should be renamed the AEA, the American Enabling Act.