Post: #76

I hesitated to post this because of its length, but it's relevant to this thread. It's a summary of Thomas Sowell's The Quest for Cosmic Justice, which I recommend everyone read. I tried to omit some parts but decided that it's better read in its entirety. What's crazy is that it was written in 1981!

http://tsowell.com/spquestc.html

Quote:Cosmic justice is one of the impossible dreams which has a very high cost and very dangerous potentialities.

What is cosmic justice and how does it differ from more traditional conceptions of justice-- and from the more recent and more fervently sought "social justice"?

Traditional concepts of justice or fairness, at least within the American tradition, boil down to applying the same rules and standards to everyone. This is what is meant by a "level playing field"-- at least within that tradition, though the very same words mean something radically different within a framework that calls itself "social justice." Words like "fairness," "advantage" and "disadvantage" likewise have radically different meanings within the very different frameworks of traditional justice and "social justice."

John Rawls perhaps best summarized the differences when he distinguished "fair" equality of opportunity from merely "formal" equality of opportunity. Traditional justice, fairness, or equality of opportunity are merely formal in Professor Rawls' view and in the view of his many followers and comrades. For those with this view, "genuine equality of opportunity" cannot be achieved by the application of the same rules and standards to all, but requires specific interventions to equalize either prospects or results. As Rawls puts it, "undeserved inequalities call for redress."

Presumably, the vast ranges of undeserved inequalities found everywhere are the fault of "society" and so the redressing of those inequalities is called social justice, going beyond the traditional justice of presenting each individual with the same rules and standards. However, even those who argue this way often recognize that some undeserved inequalities may arise from cultural differences, family genes, or from historical confluences of events not controlled by anybody or by any given society at any given time. For example, there was no way that Pee Wee Reese was going to hit as many home runs as Mark McGwire, or Shirley Temple run as fast as Jesse Owens.

There was no way that Scandinavians or Polynesians were going to know as much about camels as the Bedouins of the Sahara-- and no way that these Bedouins were going to know as much about fishing as the Scandinavians or Polynesians.

In a sense, proponents of "social justice" are unduly modest. What they are seeking to correct are not merely the deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos. What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for. Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man but the oversights of God or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice.

This perspective on justice can be found in a wide range of activities and places, from the street-corner community activist to the august judicial chambers of the Supreme Court. For example, a former dean of admissions at Stanford University said that she had never required applicants to submit Achievement Test scores because "requiring such tests could unfairly penalize disadvantaged students in the college admissions process," because such students, "through no fault of their own, often find themselves in high schools that provide inadequate preparation for the Achievement Tests."1 Through no fault of their own-- one of the recurrent phrases in this kind of argument-- seems to imply that it is the fault of "society" but remedies are sought independently of any empirical evidence that it is.

Let me try to illustrate some of the problems with this approach by a mundane personal example. Whenever I hear discussions of fairness in education, my automatic response is: "Thank God my teachers were unfair to me when I was a kid growing up in Harlem." One of these teachers was a lady named Miss Simon, who was from what might be called the General Patton school of education. Every word that we misspelled in class had to be written 50 times-- not in class, but in our homework that was due the next morning, on top of all the other homework that she and other teachers loaded onto us. Misspell four or five words and you had quite an evening ahead of you.

Was this fair? Of course not. Like many of the children in Harlem at that time, I came from a family where no one had been educated beyond elementary school. We could not afford to buy books and magazines, like children in more affluent neighborhood schools, so we were far less likely to be familiar with these words that we were required to write 50 times.

But fairness in this cosmic sense was never an option. As noted at the outset, the impossible is not going to be achieved. Nothing that the schools could do would make things fair in this sense. It would have been an irresponsible self-indulgence for them to have pretended to make things fair. Far worse than unfairness is make-believe fairness. Instead, they forced us to meet standards that were harder for us to meet-- but far more necessary for us to meet, as these were the main avenues for our escape from poverty.

Many years later, I happened to run into one of my Harlem schoolmates on the streets of San Francisco. He was now a psychiatrist and owned a home and property out in the Napa valley. As we reminisced about the past and caught up on things that had happened to us in between, he mentioned that his various secretaries over the years had commented on the fact that he seldom misspelled a word. My secretaries have made the same comment-- but, if they knew Miss Simon, it would be no mystery why we seldom misspelled words.

It so happens that I was a high school dropout. But what I was taught before I dropped out was enough for me to score higher on the verbal SAT than the average Harvard student. That may well have had something to do with my being admitted to Harvard in an era before the concept of "affirmative action" was conceived.

What if our teachers had been imbued with the present-day conception of "fairness"? Clearly we would not have been tested with the same tests and held to standards as other kids in higher-income neighborhoods, whose parents had at least twice as many years of schooling as ours and probably much more than twice as much money. And where would my schoolmate and I have ended up? Perhaps in some half-way house, if we were lucky.

And would that not have been an injustice-- to take individuals capable of being independent, self-supporting, and self-directed men and women, with pride in their own achievements, and turn them into dependents, clients, supplicants, mascots? Currently, the Educational Testing Service is adopting minority students as mascots by turning the SAT exams into race-normed instruments to circumvent the growing number of prohibitions against group preferences. The primary purpose of mascots is to symbolize something that makes others feel good. The well-being of the mascot himself is seldom a major consideration.

The argument here is not against real justice or real equality. Both of these things are desirable in themselves, just as immortality may be considered desirable in itself. The only arguments against any of these things is that they are impossible-- and the cost of pursuing impossible dreams are not negligible.

Socially counterproductive policies are just one of the many costs of the quest for cosmic justice. The rule of law, on which a free society depends, is inherently incompatible with cosmic justice. Laws exist in all kinds of societies, from the freest to the most totalitarian. But the rule of law-- a government of laws and not of men, as it used to be called-- is rare and vulnerable. You cannot redress the myriad inequalities which pervade human life by applying the same rules to all or by applying any rules other than the arbitrary dispensations of those in power. The final chapter of The Quest for Cosmic Justice is titled "The Quiet Repeal of the American Revolution"-- because that is what is happening piecemeal by zealots devoted to their own particular applications of cosmic justice.

They are not trying to destroy the rule of law. They are not trying to undermine the American republic. They are simply trying to produce "gender equity," institutions that "look like America" or a thousand other goals that are incompatible with the rule of law, but corollaries of cosmic justice.

Because ordinary Americans have not yet abandoned traditional justice, those who seek cosmic justice must try to justify it politically as meeting traditional concepts of justice. A failure to achieve the new vision of justice must be represented to the public and to the courts as "discrimination." Tests that register the results of innumerable inequalities must be represented as being the cause of those inequalities or as deliberate efforts to perpetuate those inequalities by erecting arbitrary barriers to the advancement of the less fortunate.

In short, to promote cosmic justice, they must misrepresent what is happening as violations of traditional justice-- as understood by others who do not share their vision. Nor do those who make such claims necessarily believe them themselves. As Joseph Schumpeter once said: "The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."

The next thing the idealist will do is character assassination. All those who disagree with the great vision must be shown to have malign intentions, if not deep-seated character flaws. They must be "Borked," to use a verb coined in our times. They must be depicted as "A Strange Justice" if somehow they survive the Borking process. They must be depicted as having some personal "obsessions" if they carry out the duties they swore to carry out as a special prosecutor. In short, demonization is one of the costs of the quest for cosmic justice.

The victims of this process are not limited to those targeted. The society as a whole loses when its decisions are made by character assassination, rather than by rational discussion, and when its pool of those eligible for leadership is drained by the exodus of those who are not prepared to sacrifice their good name or subject their family to humiliations for the sake of grasping the levers of power. This loss is not merely quantitative, for those who are willing to endure any personal or family humiliations for the sake of power are the most dangerous people to trust with power.

In a sense, those caught up in the vision of cosmic justice are also among its victims. Having committed themselves to a vision and demonized all who oppose it, how are they to turn around and subject that vision to searching empirical scrutiny, much less repudiate it as evidence of its counterproductive results mount up?

Ironically, the quest for greater economic and social equality is promoted through a far greater inequality of political power. If rules cannot produce cosmic justice, only raw power is left as the way to produce the kinds of results being sought. In a democracy, where power must gain public acquiescence, not only must the rule of law be violated or circumvented, so must the rule of truth. However noble the vision of cosmic justice, arbitrary power and shameless lies are the only paths that even seem to lead in its direction. As noted at the outset, the devastating costs and social dangers which go with these attempts to achieve the impossible should be taken into account.

Post: #77

(11-09-2015 08:45 PM)ColSpanker Wrote:  At least we'll get some fun song and dance numbers out of it:

Naw, we'll get this bullshit:

Post: #78

Mizzou And Yale Show Why It’s Time To Burn Universities To The Ground

http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/09/mizz...he-ground/

Quote:Wolfe was targeted, as one protest group put it, because he was “‘not completely’ aware of systemic racism, sexism, and patriarchy on campus.” I love the “not completely.” It reminds me of the old rule about totalitarian revolutions: first, you go after the counter-revolutionaries, then you go after the insufficiently enthusiastic. So Wolfe had to be removed for failing to show immediate and total compliance toward their political agenda.

This reaction makes sense only as a raw power play, as student agitators demonstrating that they can get rid of anybody they want to, that they run this place.

[…]

Quote:The most prescient thing said about this kind of student protest culture was an observation made by Ayn Rand back during the first go-around, in the 1960s. The purpose of all the marches and sit-ins and riots, she wrote, was to condition students to accept mob rule. Here we are fifty years later, and this is quickly becoming the openly declared purpose of universities.

This is higher ed’s time for choosing. If this is the new purpose of the universities—to nurture a crop of activists trained at whipping up angry mobs, and a generation of college graduates conditioned to submit to those mobs—then there is no longer any purpose served by these institutions. There is certainly no justification for the outrageous claim they are making on the economic resources of the average family, who sends their kids to schools whose tuition has been inflated by decades of government subsidies.

The universities have done this to themselves. They created the whole phenomenon of modern identity politics and Politically Correct rules to limit speech. They have fostered a totalitarian microculture in which conformity to those rules is considered natural and expected. Now that system is starting to eat them alive, from elite universities like Yale, all the way down to, er, less-than-elite ones like Mizzou.

They created this Frankenstein monster, and it’s up to them to kill it before it kills them.

ADDENDUM: Milo's two cents:
ONLY CONSERVATIVES CAN SAVE THE AMERICAN CAMPUS–BUT SHOULD WE?

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/11/08...should-we/

Quote:Through decades of social engineering, intellectually bankrupt courses in professional victimhood and mendacious speech codes, loony liberals have succeeded in turning American universities into madrasas. Instead of churning out intellectually independent citizens, they’re turning out wild-eyed fanatics with cult-like beliefs, whose flight-or-flight instinct resembles some of the most terrifying members of the Animal Kingdom.

Post: #79

(11-09-2015 09:27 PM)Sombro Wrote:  ADDENDUM: Milo's two cents:
ONLY CONSERVATIVES CAN SAVE THE AMERICAN CAMPUS–BUT SHOULD WE?

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/11/08...should-we/

Quote:Through decades of social engineering, intellectually bankrupt courses in professional victimhood and mendacious speech codes, loony liberals have succeeded in turning American universities into madrasas. Instead of churning out intellectually independent citizens, they’re turning out wild-eyed fanatics with cult-like beliefs, whose flight-or-flight instinct resembles some of the most terrifying members of the Animal Kingdom.

Post: #80

It doesn't fucking stop:

Meet The Mizzou Media Professor Who’s Trying To Ban Media Coverage
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/09/meet...-coverage/

Quote:On Monday afternoon, activists who had demanded Wolfe’s resignation abruptly demanded that media stop covering their activities on the public campus of the taxpayer-funded university. At the center of those demands was Melissa Click, an assistant professor of mass media within Mizzou’s communications department.
[…]
“You need to get out, you need to get out,” Melissa Click demanded of the person filming the protest. “You need to get out,” she continued before trying to grab the camera out of the videographer’s hands.

“I actually don’t,” the journalist told Click.

“Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here,” the media professor then hysterically exclaimed to the assembled mob. “I need some muscle over here!”

According to her bio on the University of Missouri website, Melissa Click specializes in “audience studies, theories of gender and sexuality, and media literacy...”

Post: #81

(11-09-2015 07:30 PM)Vanguard Wrote:  And here's the s̶t̶u̶d̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶b̶o̶d̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶s̶i̶d̶e̶n̶t̶'̶s̶ chairman of the Khmer Rouge youth organization Facebook post that started it all:

(11-09-2015 05:22 PM)MMX2010 Wrote:  What first happened was a g̶r̶a̶d̶u̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶u̶d̶e̶n̶t̶ senior representative of the Khmer Rouge named Jonathan Butler asked the football team to boycott their games.

(11-09-2015 07:21 PM)robreke Wrote:  What do they expect? They put these liberal professors in the class rooms teaching these impressionable s̶t̶u̶d̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ representatives of the Khmer Rouge that the USA is an evil, racist, homophobic country that must be put in its place.

Fixed a few of these.

Post: #82

(11-09-2015 07:43 PM)JohnKreese Wrote:  Something seems a bit, I don't know, contradictory here

Notice exhibit A... Females in charge with white nights at their disposal. Anybody get laid after this bullshit? I bet not one. These idiots didnt want anyone taking pictures of their tent city making them look like jackoffs.

Post: #83

(11-09-2015 09:10 PM)Huey Wrote:  

Quote:Whenever I hear discussions of fairness in education, my automatic response is: "Thank God my teachers were unfair to me when I was a kid growing up in Harlem."

Amen. I thank god I spent my late adolescence, and young adulthood, as an unprivileged, straight, white, male in the late 90's through 00's.

The first considered at fault in an altercation with a female. The first considered the perp in a workplace disruption. Viewed as societies number one offender for violence, theft and financial misappropriation. But unlike the ethnic component of my demographic - Scapegoat Dejour, responsible for all of western civilisation's ills and malaise, corruption and exploitation. Oppressor of females, enslaver of minorities and indigenous.

Guilty until proven innocent.

It has made me resourceful, clear, perceptive and diplomatic. I don't expect anyone to make life easy for me and am wary of people want it done for them or attempt to make it so for me.

This doesn't mean I am cynical or jaded. I'm positive, welcoming and discerning. I have broken bread with men from all walks, vagabonds to millionaires and have the time of day for anyone, regardless of their station in life.


Imagine living your life like these fuckers. Egos insecure and desperate, grasping at every slight, every perceived transgression, as a moment to signify with the emotional display of a child. To show the world there is boundary and substance to their being, where all there is is weakness.

That is no kind of existence, and I genuinely feel pity for them.

Who wants to live like that?

Post: #84

I hope the REAL movement from all of this, is the video of the assistant professor demanding the press be forcibly removed from public land, stirring up anger. It is these liberal professors, who add nothing to campus, that have caused college costs to skyrocket. Forget loser Sanders and his "free college" bullshit spiel. Go cut out these lowly college professors, that are not adding to the education system, and greatly reduce the cost for everyone involved.

That woman should be in a mental house, not making probably close to six figures and spreading her mental illness on to the next generation.

Post: #85

(11-09-2015 10:49 PM)rpg Wrote:  

(11-09-2015 07:43 PM)JohnKreese Wrote:  Something seems a bit, I don't know, contradictory here

Notice exhibit A... Females in charge with white nights at their disposal. Anybody get laid after this bullshit? I bet not one. These idiots didnt want anyone taking pictures of their tent city making them look like jackoffs.

Wow, just ....wow

The professor at the end trying to grab the dude's camera and yelling "we need some muscle". Coming from a COMMUNICATIONS professor. Great way to communicate physical threats there, Melissa Click. Now she's getting lots of "clicks". Get it? haha. http://gawker.com/professor-of-mass-medi...1741597776

Another thing, tons of people in that crowd are filming the guy. No one in the unruly mob knows who's on who's side, so ANY video taken with a cellphone can be sent to the media. How stupid is this? It's like, "we get to film you but you can't film us", yet everyone is filming everybody. The whole thing is getting filmed by 50 people! Just because they think this guy is "against" them, they have no idea the affiliation of the people around them that presumably look like students, but could very well be working for a media outlet.

So easy to manipulate unruly mobs like this and get them to do whatever. History repeats itself.

Post: #86

The main overweight blonde woman pushing the asian dude with the camera is Janna Basler

http://heavy.com/news/2015/11/janna-basl...dent-1950/

"Basler earns $67,812 a year as the assistant director in the Student Life office. In her role she is the director of Greek Life and Leadership"

67k a year? And she's in a role of leadership leading a physical aggressive mob? This is leadership at our college campuses?

Post: #87

(11-10-2015 08:50 AM)Tenerife Wrote:  The main overweight blonde woman pushing the asian dude with the camera is Janna Basler

http://heavy.com/news/2015/11/janna-basl...dent-1950/

"Basler earns $67,812 a year as the assistant director in the Student Life office. In her role she is the director of Greek Life and Leadership"

67k a year? And she's in a role of leadership leading a physical aggressive mob? This is leadership at our college campuses?

Like I said above, it is people like this that are causing college to become so expensive. I hope the real resolve of all this is a backlash against the extreme liberal agenda on college campus from the tax payers and parents and this is put to and end.

This is why the Democrats want to make college "free". They can steal from tax payers and productive citizens, and spread their liberal filth and hire on their own mentally unstable supporters.

Post: #88

The university president is a bit of a pushover to give up so easily. Being a president of anything requires a spine and strong convictions. Perhaps if he gave up so easily he didn't really deserve the position anyway.

Post: #89

Melissa Click -- the communications professor who blocked the student photographer in the above video -- made the New York Times. Here is the headline: "Need Some Muscle’: Missouri Activists Block Journalists."

This is a big deal. I knew Brietbart was covering this, but for the New York Times to run a headline like that it means she really crossed a line. The Times has framed this as a matter of impeding the media from doing its job. As SJW-ish as mainstream newspapers can be, this is one thing they have no patience for.

I wonder if the professor will feel any fallout.

From the article:

"Tim Tai, a student photographer on freelance assignment for ESPN, was trying to take photos of a small tent city that protesters had created on a campus quad. Concerned Student 1950, an activist group that formed to push for increased awareness and action around racial issues on campus, did not want reporters near the encampment...

“I am documenting this for a national news organization,” Mr. Tai told the protesters, adding that “the First Amendment protects your right to be here and mine.”

"As the video nears its end, the person taking the video, Mark Schierbecker, emerged from the scrum and approached a woman, later identified as an assistant professor of mass media, Melissa Click, close to the tents. When he revealed that he was a journalist, Ms. Click appeared to grab at his camera.

She then yelled, “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.”"

The whole story is here and this one is worth giving them a click for -- no pun intended.

Post: #90

I think the easy fix is to never send your kids to a state school.

Post: #91

(11-10-2015 10:49 AM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  Melissa Click -- the communications professor who blocked the student photographer in the above video -- made the New York Times. Here is the headline: "Need Some Muscle’: Missouri Activists Block Journalists."

This is a big deal. I knew Brietbart was covering this, but for the New York Times to run a headline like that it means she really crossed a line. The Times has framed this as a matter of impeding the media from doing its job. As SJW-ish as mainstream newspapers can be, this is one thing they have no patience for.

I wonder if the professor will feel any fallout.

From the article:

"Tim Tai, a student photographer on freelance assignment for ESPN, was trying to take photos of a small tent city that protesters had created on a campus quad. Concerned Student 1950, an activist group that formed to push for increased awareness and action around racial issues on campus, did not want reporters near the encampment...

“I am documenting this for a national news organization,” Mr. Tai told the protesters, adding that “the First Amendment protects your right to be here and mine.”

"As the video nears its end, the person taking the video, Mark Schierbecker, emerged from the scrum and approached a woman, later identified as an assistant professor of mass media, Melissa Click, close to the tents. When he revealed that he was a journalist, Ms. Click appeared to grab at his camera.

She then yelled, “Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? I need some muscle over here.”"

The whole story is here and this one is worth giving them a click for -- no pun intended.

Post: #92

It is important that we meditate on this image, as unpleasant as it is. What sort of person is this? What sort of situation is this? What emotions are these?

What is the role of this emotion and person in society? What societal structures and expectation-sets lend themselves to this mode of participation? If you are in some sort of situation, whether individually or as a group, how might the introduction of this personality- and emotion-type skew the outcome?

There is a lot going on in this image.

Post: #93

She looks positively nutz.

Post: #94

   

Post: #95

At least her name will be easy to find with a quick google search.

They should rename that shitty university Old MAOzzou.

The Lt. Governor is calling that Click Cunt out thank god.

Hopefully this bitch gets shit canned.

Post: #96

I don't understand why they are camping out in tents on the fucking quad? WTF? Hold your peace rally or whatever and then just back to your dorm or student housing. Why camp out. Isn't Missouri cold this time of year?

Post: #97

(11-09-2015 10:45 PM)Sombro Wrote:  It doesn't fucking stop:

Meet The Mizzou Media Professor Who’s Trying To Ban Media Coverage
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/09/meet...-coverage/

Quote:On Monday afternoon, activists who had demanded Wolfe’s resignation abruptly demanded that media stop covering their activities on the public campus of the taxpayer-funded university. At the center of those demands was Melissa Click, an assistant professor of mass media within Mizzou’s communications department.
[…]
“You need to get out, you need to get out,” Melissa Click demanded of the person filming the protest. “You need to get out,” she continued before trying to grab the camera out of the videographer’s hands.

“I actually don’t,” the journalist told Click.

“Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here,” the media professor then hysterically exclaimed to the assembled mob. “I need some muscle over here!”

According to her bio on the University of Missouri website, Melissa Click specializes in “audience studies, theories of gender and sexuality, and media literacy...”

Post: #98

Can't upload a screenshot but Milo retweeted a pic of an email telling anyone that receives hateful or hurtful speech to call the police immediately, getting a picture of the person if possible.

These people are out for blood, and are willing to use state violence. How long before they just take matters into their own hands without the pretenses of cooperating with police?

Post: #99

What's interesting is that certain people in that university feel like they need to 'express' themselves by hurling racial slurs and wiping shit over walls. Real classy.

Post: #100

It should be pretty obvious by now that the plan in the US, by Soros funded BLM and similar, is to turn blacks into the muscle for jewish and non-jewish third column 'revolutionaries', ready to topple those institutions which in the coming years will try to resist the attempts to put the screws to big SJW government.

The dots are becoming increasingly clear, the consistant effort to get white police officers fired, white police chiefs etc. This is so that when public uprisings begin - and that is not many years away - you will have a police force fragmented along ethnic groups which are loyal to only their corps and their masters (and their paybook).

This really seems like the powers that be are trying to speed up and attempting non-violent coups. The precedence set here is straight out of Soros Eastern Euro playbook with 'protesters' backed up by jewish owned media. Look how easy they do it, they topple university presidents, police chiefs, corporate ceos. And if they need some real violence, now the BLM can easily recruit the ghetto people.

It would be brilliant to observe if it wasn't so nefarious.