Anthropology professor Joseph Manson announced his retirement this month with a broadside blog post that detailed the loss of academic freedom and integrity at UCLA. Manson describes many of the things that I have previously addressed as standard measures used to force out dissenting or conservative voices, including the isolation and investigation of colleagues to get them to resign. He is now among that lengthening list of such faculty who have decided to cut their academic careers short rather than work under such intolerable conditions.
Manson was a tenured professor in the UCLA Anthropology Department, who described in detail how the school made life insufferable for those who raise dissenting voices in research on subjects like racial justice or crime patterns. He wrote “I’m a professor, retiring at 62 because the Woke takeover of higher education has ruined academic life. ‘Another one?’ you ask. “What does this guy have to say that hasn’t already been said by Jordan Peterson, Peter Boghossian, Joshua Katz, or Bo Winegard?”
Manson described how the anthropology department was a healthy and diverse intellectual environmental until the 2000s when things began to change dramatically. It is the same time period identified by others when a critical mass seemed to form on many faculties of professors who began to almost exclusively hire liberal colleagues and shun those with opposing views.
Among the examples of the intolerance on campus, Manson gave a detailed account of the “defenestration of a colleague,” P. Jeffrey Brantingham. His colleague created software to predict urban crime through simulation models. The research was immediately denounced as being racist and anti-Black.
“In Spring 2018, the department’s Anthropology Graduate Students Association passed a resolution accusing Jeff’s research of (among other counter-revolutionary sins) ‘entrench[ing] and naturaliz[ing] the criminalization of Blackness in the United States’ and calling for ‘referring’ his research to UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Research, presumably for some sort of investigation. This document contains no trace of scholarly argument, but instead resembles a religious proclamation of anathema.”
What caught my eye was Manson’s description of the shunning by his colleagues:
“Not only was Jeff ostracized, he was unpersoned. None of the faculty talked about him, if they could possibly avoid it. Meanwhile, our department chair opened most faculty meetings by solemnly intoning that our department was a community, a family, and that ‘we’re here for each other.’ In private conversations, I was able to elicit from some of my colleagues an embarrassed acknowledgment that the Woke faction had treated Jeff abominably, and that we strongly resembled a dysfunctional family in denial.”
It is an all-too-familiar account.
I recently wrote how universities can use course assignments and other collateral means to isolate dissenting professors in an effort to get them to resign. This is particularly the case with tenured faculty.
For many of us in teaching, these cancel campaigns have become a constant, looming threat. There have been drives to fire or discipline faculty who hold dissenting views on issues ranging from racial justice to police abuse to transgender identification to gender statements to pronoun usage to native-land acknowledgment. This includes a recent campaign at Georgetown that successfully secured a law professor’s resignation over a tweet.
Today, a palpable level of fear and intimidation exists among many faculty members that they could be the next target of one of these campaigns. Most professors are not protected by tenure, and universities can cite other reasons for not renewing their contracts.
The percentage of tenured professors has been declining for half a century. Roughly three of four faculty today are what are called “contingent faculty,” or faculty who work contract to contract.
The problem is that this contingency often seems to depend upon an adherence to a new orthodoxy on racial justice, police abuse, gender identification and other issues. It is the subject of my recent publication in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. The article entitled “Harm and Hegemony: The Decline of Free Speech in the United States.”
Most faculty do not want to face the legal or social costs of directly seeking to strip colleagues of tenure. They recite values of academic freedom while working to make life as hard as possible for dissenting colleagues by shifting classes, keeping professors off academic panels and committees and subjecting them to public ridicule, including citing them as examples of intolerance. Few faculty stand up for colleagues who have been tagged by the mob in fear that they could be the next subject of such a campaign.
University of North Carolina criminology professor Mike Adams spent years in university proceedings and litigation successfully fighting for his right to express conservative views. The investigations and attacks never stopped. Indeed, they resumed with new fervor after he condemned Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC) for his pandemic rules with a tweet that compared eating in cramped quarters with a slave ship. It was a stupid and offensive tweet. But we’ve seen extreme comments on the left — including calls to gas or kill or torture conservatives — tolerated and even celebrated at universities. Adams was hammered incessantly over the tweet until he finally relented and took a settlement to resign. He killed himself a few days before his final day as a professor.
For Manson, he had enough despite a distinguished career that could have continued for many years. He wrote of his reluctance “But I strongly suspect that mainstream U.S. higher education is morally and intellectually corrupt, beyond the possibility of self-repair, and therefore no longer a worthwhile setting in which to spend my time and effort.”
That is a loss for UCLA but it is also a loss for the entire teaching academy. Manson is the latest example of the not-so-noble lie that pervades our institutions of higher education. We mouth principles of academic freedom and free speech while allowing colleagues to be hounded and harassed. Most faculty members remain silent as their colleagues are isolated and ostracized. Their departure is silently welcomed because there is less of a reminder of what we have lost in higher education.
“But I strongly suspect that mainstream U.S. higher education is morally and intellectually corrupt, beyond the possibility of self-repair, and therefore no longer a worthwhile setting in which to spend my time and effort.” If they exist to “teach” but instead indoctrinate, their existence is no longer needed. But aren’t they just a mirror of the Democratic Party? Hoping for another Reagan revolution via DeSantis. I am sure the press will be just as friendly.
The root problem is government control of education. As Herbert Spencer wrote: “What is the education for? Clearly, to fit the people for social life – to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge.” {Social Statics 1851.] American students and faculty are being molded to fit the image of the morally upright citizen, as seen by the Dept of Education, the teacher unions, and the Democratic Party, who form a powerful political alliance. They cannot be shamed into reform, even though the efforts of Prof. Turley are commendable. When there is an actual separation of government and schooling, then the air of freedom will be breathed again.
Paul Schulte…..I agree.
.Great to see you.!
This is an opportunity for those universities who offer excellent education not indoctrination to employ these educators who seek truth and excellence in education. They should gather together and create a Mecca for excellent, truthful and open discussion education.
So you want open debate with people who promote the status quo of discrimination, misogyny and anti LBGTQ of the past and consider that great education? I’m not for giving hate an equal say in education.
Yes, it’s called freedom of speech and opinion. There is no such thing as “hate speech”.
Whatsamatayou,
Back when I was in college, both times, I do not recall any status quo of discrimination, misogyny and anti LBGTQ.
Back then, there was something called respecting the person based off their intellect, their character, and their values.
Race, sex, religion, lifestyle choice was never a consideration.
Nope, you guys are always calling and labeling commenters as misogyny, anti this or that, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t like the content it is always your fall back excuse to label someone without even a consideration for their thoughts. It is pathetic .
“I recently wrote how universities can use course assignments and other collateral means to isolate dissenting professors in an effort to get them to resign. This is particularly the case with tenured faculty.
For many of us in teaching, these cancel campaigns have become a constant, looming threat. There have been drives to fire or discipline faculty who hold dissenting views on issues ranging from racial justice to police abuse to transgender identification to gender statements to pronoun usage to native-land acknowledgment. This includes a recent campaign at Georgetown that successfully secured a law professor’s resignation over a tweet.”
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A little guts might cure this problem but alas Nixon was right: “Education strengtens the mind but weakens the backbone.” And it seems Churchill was marvelously observant about people under pressure when he exposed that icon of moral cowardice and ever-changing politcal convictions of his day, Ramsay MacDonald, as the greatly anticipated “boneless wonder.” The speech excerpt always bears repeating:
“I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder.’ My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye, and I have waited 50 years to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.”
~Winston Churchill, January 28, 1931, Address to the House of Commons
Anonymous: And there’s nothing more mediocre than all those woke “studies” departments where inferior faculty depend on their activist creds rather than any intellectual pursuit. Getting a degree in a women studies or ethnic studies department is as easy as attending a protest and writing an essay about it. And the bonus: you can feel good about yourself all semester.
giocon:
“Getting a degree in a women studies or ethnic studies department is as easy as attending a protest and writing an essay about it.”
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That’s “womyn’s studies” not ‘woMEN’s studies” you mysoginistic, homophobic, racist, morally bankrupt, LGBTABCD+/- – hating, white (or some version either inside or out) devil. Did I miss any ? LOL
It is a safe bet that any program that ends in the word “Studies” is not a real field of academic study.
Maybe public colleges (legally bound by the First Amendment) should mandate Debate Clubs and Civics Education? One consequence of cases like this is that it points out how irreverent a college education is these days.
The next generation may be better off attending technical schools teaching plumbing, electrical, auto mechanics, etc. If public colleges (a government entity) legally bound by the First Amendment are so intolerant, why would parents want to send their kids there?
Today plumbers, electricians and auto mechanics seem to be better educated on the U.S. Constitution than students at our best public universities (a government entity prohibited from violating the First Amendment).
I suspect that in the near future regardless of which comes first, a full exchange with Russia, or an home based civil war, we are going to need all the Tradesmen we can get to rebuild after the ensuing destruction. I don’t foresee a great need for Social Media Influencers, or (Insert X) Studies graduates.
No Doubt
Professor Turley: “Few faculty stand up for colleagues who have been tagged by the mob in fear that they could be the next subject of such a campaign.”
Professor, I honestly believe you’re giving the faculty lounge more credit than they deserve. For many, the internal dialogue is, “I would never do that to somebody, but I could understand why others might.” Their silence is usually driven by willing collaboration. They’re not going to rise up. The moral epiphany will never dawn on people like this.
This is how communists roll. It starts with ghosting and ends with gulags. It’s the voters (and parents) who have to push back.
Public universities that suppress 1st Amendment Rights should be penalized and defunded if non compliance persists. The penalties should increase the greater the abridgement. As the WSJ has reported in several exposes over the past year, the American Academy is a highly corrupt institution. The irony is that despite the hard core leftist political views that dominate university administrations and faculty lounges, universities operate more like Ponzi schemes with their corrupt sports programs, bloated bureaucracies, and overpaid administrators. As reported in the WSJ, They use private firms to convince students to take out huge loans to study useless majors and graduate programs such that the student will be burden for life or be bailed out by the taxpayer as Biden is now seeking.. They care only about keeping their bloated non teaching overpaid faculty in employment and could care less about the welfare of their students. Many universities have the morality of Enron. This description might not be true of all colleges but it is certainly no representative. I would not give a dime to any of the so-called elite universities I attended 40 years ago.
This document contains no trace of scholarly argument, but instead resembles a religious proclamation of anathema.”
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I think it was Voltaire who reminded us that “if God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent HIm.” I think he really was talking about religion. Our academic tyrants here have eschewed any notion of adherence to traditional religion and denounced new age spiritualism. So it seems that they have invented a new religion: the Religion of Woke. Prickly, antagonistic, dogmatic and ever fearful of heretics or just passive nonbelievers, its a perfect belief system for the nihilists they so obviously are. They are fast becoming like those guys you see in the park screaming “The End Is Near, Repent!” Or maybe more like pirates – hostis humani generis – enemies of all mankind.
I am going to go off topic for a moment and I ask everyone’s indulgence:
In LA the people are trying to use Democracy to get rid of the radical pro-criminal DA by method of a recall effort. The proponents are required to gather about 550,000 ballots to get the recall put on the ballot and they have gathered about 750,000, much more than enough. HOWEVER, the election board has started to go over signatures and so far has thrown out about 28% of them for various reasons which will make the actual amount left standing very close to enough to get it on the ballot. Now I ask you all, does anyone remember any signature checks regarding Joe Biden’s close election in a myriad of states? Of course not. This is the far left in LA DESTROYING DEMOCRACY, something they always claim Republicans are doing.
I was stunned when you first commented on this, hullbobby. Their hypocrisy is mindboggling. More independents need to hear about this. Thanks for keeping this alive.
Hullbobby: This is not surprising. The left inches forward incrementally. What was not tolerated a few years ago is today, and that toleration concentrates strength on the hard left. Each incremental change makes it that much more difficult to reverse course.
Yes, the 2022 elections will bring in Republicans, and there will be a slight reversal, but only slight. Republicans, in general, are self-serving and do not always act in the best interests of the country, but at least they don’t act to destroy the nation, which is what Democrats have been doing.
The right has got to adopt some of the tactics of the left. People have to stop listening to promises and look for results. We need to stop worrying that Trump tweeted too much because his actions and policies made our country stronger, and the people better off.
S. Meyer,
I wrote, “The right to private property is absolute” and “Private property is distinctly not public property or under the control of any level of government.”
You wrote, “Amendment #5 “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” “We both agree that private property is of utmost importance. Half a dozen SC cases exist on this subject, most making sense, but the last major case, Kelo v. City of New London, was a travesty.”
____________________________________________________________________________
The right to private property which has not been taken is absolute.
🙂
OK George, but I don’t want to let it rest.
Kelo is a decision blamed on the justices on the right, but the left side of the court neither provided just compensation nor made sure the eminent domain was for the public.
The intention was to improve the city by forcing a private entity to sell to another private entity. It succeeded in making sure that the original owners didn’t get a fair market price giving the property to the elites at a discount.
Yes, signature checks were used in all 50 states, because you are unaware of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Signature checks were used disproportionately in urban areas, far more minority votes were thrown out than rural farmers, exactly as if it were on purpose?
Enigma, signature checks were not done in a bipartisan method and the Democrat led states changed the rules just prior to the election and did so against the actual Constitutional regulations. But hey, you do you.
Diogenes, thanks for agreeing with me and the support for my argument. The left cries about suppression as they cheat their you know whats off.
S. Meyer, the maybe it is incrementally but it is inexorable. Near my hometown about 10 years ago there was a city that wanted to ban water bottles, the left wanted the ban, and they had a vote and it lost. They had a second vote and it lost. They had a third vote and it passed…and that was the end of the voting. The left wanted gay marriage, I in fact agreed with it as well, and they happily got it, but then they needed another fight so they went for trans bathrooms (remember the boycott of NC over this issue?) and then it is Trans reading days for children and men in woman’s sports. The latest is a man being nominated for Woman College Athlete of the year. The left never stops. They need to be stopped at the polls once and for all.
We can agree voter signature checks weren’t done in a bipartisan manner. You imagine (without any documentation) that it’s the sole province of Democrats when it’s mostly Republicans.
Enigma, you really are either delusional or a liar. The issue with signatures happened in PHILADELPHIA, ATLANTA and a few other cities that are controlled by DEMOCRATS. Name one state that was close that Trump won. Name one state that had Biden ahead only to be caught by Trump. Name one state where Republicans kept Democrat poll watchers out as happened in the reverse.
Cities aren’t in control of voting, states are. In Georgia for example, a Republican-controlled legislature made the laws that each County has to follow. The truth is because large urban areas tend to vote Democratic, there was only a focus on those communities because the goal was to change a result, not combat fraud.
Trump lost the popular vote, he lost the majority of states. If by close you mean by percentage, he won mostly low populated states by a high percentage but not by a huge number of votes. The nature of the way votes are counted, same-day vs. mail in meant that Trump was always likely to start the counting with leads in some states and then give ground as all votes were counted. All his people knew that, why don’t you?
SIgnatures were verified in all 50 states, stop lying and saying it was only an issue in urban areas.
It is and has only been republicans pushing for signature checks, voter ID, election integrity.
While your claim about republicans is wrong – honestly I do not care.
Get rid of mailin voting entirely. and use government issued voter ID to vote in person.
You can get rid of voter registration entirely. You can get rid of signature checks.
The entire fight over signature checks is because they are the means to pretend to meet voter ID requirements for mailin voting.
The obliteration and weakening of signature checks in 2020 – something accomplished by Lawfare by the democratic party and democratic interest groups, i just a means to make voter fraud even easier in mailin elections.
“It is and has only been republicans pushing for signature checks, voter ID, election integrity.”
I was willing to let go your claim that it is only Republicans pushing for “election integrity”. When you said it “has only been Republicans,” you disavowed much of American history.
It used to be Democrats that pushed for numerous means to control who voted elections, using many of the same tools in use by Republicans today; Gerrymandering, redistricting, poll watchers, access to voting locations, election police (see DeSantis). Of course, they went further and included lynchings, literacy tests, and more. Republicans gave us robocalls and the Southern strategy.
When Democrats did all that they did, it was to keep the people they didn’t want to vote from voting. They were pieces of sh*t for doing so. When Republicans do it, it isn’t election integrity, it’s only about winning elections. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous. Republicans benefit from mail-in voting, they just don’t want Democrats to do it. With few exceptions, they were only concerned about so-called election integrity in states they lost. They double-down on signature verification in communities they don’t do well in in order to win elections. That’s their only goal.
I am not talking about the past.
I am talking about NOW. Maybe the past decade.
Virtually any claim you make about political parties is time dependent.
The prior spate of censorship – the HUAC and Sen. MacCarthy was republicans.
Addressing your issues.
1). Restricting voting is NOT inherently wrong. Countries with high votger turnout are always unstable.
The currently incredibly high voter turnout in the US is BECAUSE things are so contentious.
That is BAD.
The goal is to have government so constrained that people do not vote – because it does not matter who is elected they do not have much power.
That also constrains political corruption.
Easy voting is a BAD thing – it encourages people to beleive they can do great things through government – which is ALWAYS bad.
Government is not a tool for good. It is a tool to constrain evil at best. Doing good is the business of individuals, or charities – not government.
If I could I would schedule a huricane throughout the country on election day so that only the most serious voters would vote.
This addresses another problem with voting and with polls and government in general.
In the free market – each of us has different values – and we vote those values all the time. We vote by chosing to buy or sell, or not buy or sell and bu the price we are willing to buy or sell at.
This inherently means that the value of pretty much everything is fairly accurately assessed in the market place.
Most pollsters as an example know that if you ask voters is college should be free – they will nearly all say yes,
But if you ask them if they will pay $10/year extra on their taxes for everyone to have free college – suddenly few want free college.
Everything has a cost. The value or something is ALWAYS determined by what we are willing to pay for it.
Voting and polls hide us from the true cost of our choices and that is BAD.
That is the gist of the quote
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC WILL ENDURE UNTIL THE DAY CONGRESS DISCOVERS THAT IT CAN BRIBE THE PUBLIC WITH THE PUBLIC’S MONEY’?
Restricting voting is NOT inherently evil.
Many things that those of you on the left think are automatically good are often quite bad.
Many of the things you think are bad are actually good.
I beleive it was “StarShip Troopers” that constructed a hypothetical world where everyone had equal rights save one.
The right to vote was ONLY for those who had served honorably in the military.
Restricting voting is only bad when it violates the 14th amendment – when it is based on race or creed.
“Restricting voting is only bad when it violates the 14th amendment – when it is based on race or creed.”
Most of the restrictive voting, currently led by Republicans IS based on race with a small portion dedicated against youth. Too bad you can’t see it.
Nope.
This is the core to the nonsense your UoF profs were pushing.
Racism is not defined by your emotions. It is not defined by your views of others. It is not defined by what a few people say.
It is defined by ACTUAL impact.
On issue after issue where YOU and the left cry racism – there is no consequential racially disparate impact.
The evidence on ALL the things you call racially motivated voter suppression is No Impact.
If Hitler says something that is true, that does not make it false or racist – even if HIS intentions are racist.
The intentions of those who passed the original minimum wage laws were RACIST,
The actual impact of MW laws – in the past AND today are RACIST.
Many, possibly even most blacks today support MW laws – yet they are STILL racist.
The good motives of people in the present do not make the laws any less RACIST.
Your claims about the motives of Some of those pushing election laws – even if True – does not make those laws RACIST.
The lack of actually racist impact means they are NOT racist.
You confuse YOUR feelings with facts.
This is also why you can not make an as applied challenge to a law until the law has been applied and has an unconstitutional impact.
A facially constitutional law is not unconstitutional because you “guess” it will have an unconstitutional impact.
I can claim that most anything is racist.
It is near certain that someone someone has said something racist about nearly everything.
The idiotic left is not merely purging people like Thomas Jefferson – but Margret Sanger and Robert Muir and anyone who has ever said or done anything of merit – if they have once uttered something that today is perceived as racist.
If nothing can ever be accomplished – except by those who are perfect in everyway – nothing will ever be accomplished.
Your claim that some law is racist, because some person who likes that law or advocated for that law is in your view racist – makes it trivail for the right to thwart everything you wan to ever accomplish.
By your claims – all I must do to destroy whatever the left seeks to accomplish – is to get Richard Spensor or David Dukes to advocate for it.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
Matt 25:34-36
Where in the above does Christ ask those he judges what they SAID ?
Whether you are christian or not, this is TRUTH.
A truth about which you are clueless.
Worse you do not understand that your standards are self destructive.
Here is a long but excellent article in the Intercept – not some Right wing source.
https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/
I do not care much about Gerrymandering.
There is no such thing as an actually correct way to create congressional districts.
No matter how Bad “Gerrymandering” is – it is far less of a problem than university professors spraying nonsense about how to create congressional districts.
There are two forms of Gerrymandering.
The first is to create safe districts – usually for powerful congressmen.
This ALWAYS comes at the expense of the parties overall power in congress.
The more safe districts the more competitive districts must be created.
If a state is split 51:49 and you want to create ONE safe district – say 55:45 – that means you made 5 other districts dead heats – or you had to create a safe district for the other party too.
The other alternative is to take that 51:49 2pt advantage and make every district in the state a 2pt advantage for one party.
The result is that if voters swing 2 points – you go from winning every seat to losing every seat.
There is no mathematial magic for redistricting that is not a tradeoff between securing a few seats and trying to shoot the moon to get alot of seats at the risk of losing alot of seats.
Put simply Gerrymandering is NOT a problem. As political corruption goes it is inconsequential and self punishing.
What is far more dangerous is getting the courts or independent commissions involved.
Politicians are answerable to voters. If they act corrupt it is the elected that will pay.
When you transfer the problem to the courts or independent commissions – you corrupt the courts.
Or you push the problem to people who are not accountable.
Both parties gferrymander states they have majority control of.
The impact is inconsequential.
It is not a problem worth worrying about.
While election rules are set by the state legislature, the operations of elections are the responsibility of local election officials.
If you do not have “access to the polls” – take that up with your local officials.
I am not even slightly interested in nonsense that Republicans (or democrats) are denying people access to polls when the logistics of elections is local.
The fundimental problem with “access to the polls” is LOCAL political corruption.
I live in an almost rural area. I have to drive several miles to the polls. I never have a problem voting – because local election officials are not corrupt,
And because if they were – local voters would run them out on a rail.
Elections in my district are not expensive operations. There is only one scanner at my polling place – to scan all the local votes – and the tally from that scanner is made public and reported to the county.
There are not rooms full of people counting hundreds of thousands of votes. The opportunity for large scale fraud is small.
When I go in to vote – the precint is small and the election officials know me and everyone else.
I have to present ID to vote – but neither it nor my signature is checked thoroughly – because they know who I am.
Everything I described above makes fraud highly unlikely, and is possible everywhere in the country.
There is no reason that in Atlanta or Detroit. Precincts could not be a city block or two, That in the poorest districts in the country that no one would have to walk far to vote and that they would not have to wait in long lines.
The reason that you see long lines with large polling places in cities is not because there are so many people.
It is because there is money and power in making things big and complex.
And where there is money and power in govenrment – there is corruption.
The people screwing the poor – are their own politicians – not republicans.
333
Poll watchers and election police – Absolutely !
Please sir can I have more.
I want absolutely everything conducted out in the open with anyone who wants watching.
While the best solution is to reduce the scale such that there are no places where large scale operations occur.
There is absolutely no good reason we should ever have some place where hundreds of thousands of ballots are handled or votes are counted.
But if we must have that – it must be open to the public and press – not just Poll watchers and poll police but ANYONE – especially the media.
We VOTE in secret – we COUNT the vote in public.
Again in my precinct I place my own ballot in the scanner. When it is scanned, my votes are counted and at the close of polls tallies are reported – to the public, to the state, and the ballot drops into a locked box with me watching it. Whenever that ballot is handled in any way, including moved 3 people MUST be present.
One republican, one democrat and one election official. Without signatures from all every time the ballot is moved – the contents of the ballot box become invalid. In my precint that does not happen.
In 2020 – Every single one of the contested states has hundreds of thousands of ballots with no chain of custody.
Had the law been followed every one would have been discarded.
Those laws exist to prevent FRAUD.
When those laws are not followed on a massive scale – it is reasonable to conclude that was to fascilitate fraud.
You have this fixation on “the southern strategy”.
AGAIN, It is a myth. Republicans did not convert white southern racist politicians, Thy DEFEATED them.
Absolutely – starting BEFORE nixon and Atwater Republicans concluded that conservatism was a message that could appeal to southern voters.
Just as LBJ sold Black voters on Great Society nonsense that has NEVER done anything for blacks.
Just as starting with the Tea Party which was co-opted by Trump – republicans have successfully appealed to blue collar voters that USED to be democrats, and now minorities.
Several polls are showing Republicans and democrats splittin the hispanic vote evenly. Republicans still have a long way to go with Blacks, and asians but they have made double digit gains with both.
You rant about Republican racism – but we are not far from Democrats being the party of the wealthy, of the white elites. and republicans bein the party of the middle class and working class and minorities.
Put simply EVERY PARTY looks to build a constituency that will win elections.
The short term political future belongs to Republicans. But democrats WILL eventually adapt.
They should have done so in 2017. Instead they jumped the shark on the collusion delusion nonsense, and that has resulted in greater polarization and greater temporary power for the Far left and even more defections from moderate democrats and the working class to republicans.
That will make it much harder for democrats to build a new majority constitutency.
Now they will lose the left if they try to recoup losses from the center.
They had placed themselves in a lose-lose.
But they will eventually get out of it.
You are under some odd delusion that political parties are moral actors. they are not.
They are all about power.
If Republicans today are champions of the working class – that is to get power.
Democrats incestuous relationship with business is about power.
The parties will realign as necescary to get and maintain power.
I have told you repeatedly – I am libertarian – not republican.
At this time – Democrats and the left are the grave dangers the country faces.
I do not expect that will change in my lifetime – but it will change.
Republicans used to own the north – even in my lifetime.
And democrats the south. that has flipped.
Today the battle for political control is mostly being fought in the midwest.
I would further note – that though Democrats have put themselves at a disadvantage.
It is also inevitable that the country will remain close to evenly divided.
Because Republic politicians are no more adept than democrats.
Because any working tactic of one side can be adopted by the other.
Because it is very hard – nearly impossible to hold a supermajority without pissing off one group or another.
Democrats are hemoraging minorities.
Republicans are losing NeoCons.
There is nothing wrong with keeping people you do not want to vote from voting.
Obama did it very successfully in 2012.
Elections are always about – getting YOUR voters to vote AND getting your opponents to stay home.
That is politics.
The core purpose of negative campaign adds is NOT o get people to vote for you.
But to get them to NOT vote for your opponent.
Hillary did not lose in 2016 because russians duped numnuts to vote Republican – but because Trump got all the voters Obama supressed in 2012 to Vote for him – that was over 2M people who had sat out 2012.
More dangerous for democrats is he got them to vote – and they did so again in 2020 and they will again in 2024.
The point is that all parties engage in “voter supression” – everytime you see a nagative add you are seeing “voter supression”.
You almost never see negative adds outside of politics – because businesses do not win by persuading you not to buy their competitors product – if you do not buy at all.
What is NOT permissible is for Government to participate in efforts to encourage voting.
Government MAY impose anti-fraud measures that negatively impact voting. But they MUST really be antifraud measures.
For the upper echelon’s in politics – Winning is everything.
Absolutely Republicans – both at the top who mostly care about winning – and republican voters beleive that election integrity will result in their winning elections.
I have understood since the 2000 election – that we as a nation were in trouble, that it was inevitable that we were going to have more and more close elections. And that we had certainly gotten to the point where the margin of victory was frequently going to be smaller than the extent of fraud – even in relatively fraud free elections.
In 2009 Franken beat Coleman in an election just barely closer than Trump’s losses in GA, AZ and NV in 2020.
Coleman was ahead when all the votes were counted by about 2500 votes. Over the course of the next 9 months about 6000 ballots for Franken were “found” and the courts universally decided to count them – despite laws requiring them to be invalid.
I do not care who won the senate seat.
But the Franken Coleman election created a distinct impression that the courts were politically corrupt.
Following the law is ALWAYS the right choice – even if you do not get your prefered outcome.
We can change the law. We can not fix it when politics not law and constitution determines the outcome.
I do nto know if there was significant Fraud in the Franken Coleman election, but I do know that the courts choosing to NOT follow the law, sent up a Giant neon message telling fraudsters how to cheat to win an election.
I do not beleive that Repubicans are inherently less likely to committ election fraud than democrats.
A house race in NC 2018 was nullified because of small scale ballot harvesting by a republican.
What is true is that TODAY the ability to shift state wide and national elections through fraud is easier for democrats than Republicans.
It has ALWAYS been far harder to committ consequential election fraud in rural and suburban districts.
Philadelphia has a multi-century reputation for election fraud – atleast some of that was Republican.
You think past democrats were POS – why do you think that has changed ?
The Collusion delusion was a massive hoax on the american people – with Clinton, and worse still “the deep state” particupating.
It is increasingly evident that the whole Biden family is corrupt liars, personally profiting from Joes government roles.
We are seeing numerous other scandal emerging now – with Pelosi, and Waters and … – not that this is the first Pelosi scandal.
So WHY is it that today you trust people with both a past and present history of lying and cheating and corruption ?
Are there corrupt republicans – certainly.
But you went after Trump with everything in the book and got nowhere.
Trump is not someone I would want as an enemy or a competitor. He is shrewd and brutal.
But he is not corrupt or a crook – atleast not anywhere close to the extent that the Biden’s and Pelosi and Clintons are.
I honestly like Joe Biden.
I do not like Trump.
But governance is not about likability.
It is however about Trust, and credibility and competance.
I do not care who benefits from Mailin voting. Though your claim that Republicans will is nonsense.
Every state that has shifted to mailin voting has gone from red or purple to blue.
Republicans DO benefit from absentee voting – which is radically different – except in those states that call mailin voting absentee voting.
Regardless any means of voting in which Ballots are not always under the control of election officials WILL result in Election Fraud.
And potentially MASSIVE election fraud.
There has been a fight here and elsewhere about 2000 mules. While the lefts criticisms are poor,
They have a more fundimental problem.
The “fact check” arguments are not – the Fraud 2000 mules alleges was not possible, the argument is that it was not proven.
Proving fraud is a requirement to overturning an election.
Conducting elections where significant Fraud is not possible is a REQUIREMENT of government.
You can argue (badly) that 2000 mules did not prove election fraud in 2020. But it is inarguable that they PROVED that large scale election fraud was POSSIBLE.
They PROVED that mailin voting CAN NOT be secured – ever, by any means.
Large Scale election fraud is unlikely in solid blue or solid red states.
While there were some significant clues that there was large scale election fraud in CA in the Newsome Runnoff.
There was no impetus for serious investigation because Newsome avioded recall by millions of votes.
Some basics as you are clueless.
The larger the scale of the fraud – the more likely you will get caught.
The larger the scale – the more people must be involved – the more likely you will get caught.
The best argument – one the left has NOT made against 2000 mules is that fraud on the scale alleged by 2000 mules would involve to many people to keep hidden.
But fraud of that scale HAS occured in the past in the US. So it is possible.
By far the most important anti-fraud measure is NOT measures to prevent fraud. It is measures to insure that you WILL get caught.
In AZ there were almost 50% of ballots found by the audit that violated election laws – about 900K ballots. By law this should not have happened.
And if it did, it should have been small and those ballots discarded.
But no one was going to throw out 900K ballots – the vast majority of which are unlikely to be fraudulent.
But the problem is that ballots that had violations of election laws – made it impossible to detect many forms of large scale fraud.
Ballots are like currency – and have anticounterfeiting measures – yet we KNOW that many precincts printed blank ballots on copy machines, destroying a very effective anticounterfeiting measure.
The rules for secret ballots require that ballots NEVER leave the supervision of election officials.
Is this because we trust election officials ? h311 no!.
It is because if ballots – whether blank or filled are never outside the supervision of election officials – we know exactly who to blame.
This is why Costco checks receipts as you leave the store. It is not JUST to catch shoplifters. It is also because costco employees know that everything going out the front door is checked, so if something goes missing – the employees are at the top of the list of suspects.
Retail businesses lose alot through shoplifting – but even more through employee theft.
Measures to prevent shoplifting are also about preventing employee theft.
The purpose of many election laws is NOT to prevent fraud directly – but to assure that ultimately fraud will be found and caught.
2000 mules PROVED that it was possible to commit large scale election fraud in 2020 and not get caught.
You can NEVER conduct a mailin election securely.
Even the Carter Report more than a decade ago said that boldly.
You seem to think that Signature verification is only required in some communities.
Bzzt, wrong. The only place signature verification is done poorly or no at all is in Democratic precincts.
In PA every red precinct did signature verification and about 6% of ballots – the historical NORM for mailin ballots were rejected.
But not in Pittsburg or Philadelphia.
I voted in person in 2020. My signature was verified, and my ID was checked.
I expect EXACTLY the same in every part of my state. Red or Blue.
You do not seem to understand that Election fraud is harder and rarer in rural and suburban areas.
Partly because they DO follow the laws.
Partly because people ARE watching.
And partly because there are no large scale processes that are far easier to corrupt.
My state had ballot dropboxes in 2020. There was ONE in my entire county and there was a sheriff watching it all the time.
In Philadephia there were myriads of ballot drop boxes, With no one watching and no security cameras that were required.
“They need to be stopped at the polls once and for all.”
The leftists were stopped by Trump, but what happened? I understand reasons not to like Trump, but he was the leader, and the left needed to be stopped. Did they stop the left? No. Many piled on against Trump and remained silent, so we had four years of progress inhibited by impeachments and constant compromise on fundamentally classical liberal ideas. So much was possible, and we could have reversed a good deal of leftism.
Who do we blame? Congressional Democrats? No, we know their position and that they act in lockstep. We have to blame Republicans and remove every Republican that didn’t stand up for Liberty and important classical liberal ideas. Do we? No, and the proof is that the same people remain in Congress.
I am extremely pessimistic about the future. We are smart with many intellectuals, but few are willing to fight.
Disclosure: I am not a Republican but will vote for anyone other than a Democrat because breaking the power of the left is essential for this nation to remain free.
HullBobby,
Seems to me, the Dems are getting desperate.
Their policies of wokeism is turning both the Latino, and Asian voting block away.
Long time Dems are rejecting wokeism.
The Jan6 hearing is a dismal failure, as a recent poll of ten issues, the Jan6 hearing ranked last and was the only one that more saying it was a low priority. All the other issues had more high priority than low. The top three were inflation, the economy, and crime. All real world things that impact Americans everyday. The cost of food and fuel impacts me everyday.
More and more people are beginning to question the value of a college degree, namely if it is woke studies.
More and more people want some say in their children’s education.
Upstate, there is always a point that can be reached where voting no longer counts.
Hullbobby- Thanks for the FYI, keep ‘em coming friend.
Welcome to the Soviet States of America. You are either a revolutionist or a reactionary. If you question the insane rhetoric, you will be sent to a gulag. Our colleges and universities were trending left for decades, well before the Woke era. Our public schools are filled with pathetic little “teachers” who overcome their feelings of unimportance by donning their capes of activism. So many of our establishment politicians have embraced the insanity, recognizing its promise of unlimited power and riches, no matter the ultimate self-destruction. They will ride the wave for all its worth and hope to jump off just before it crashes.
Probably but I think its 1989 and the walls look a tad teetery.
What I never understand about the college issue is, why is the market just complaining about it and not responding to a void to what is being offered? This has gone on long enough to present a perfect opportunity for conservative or “center” colleges to spring up. Like this professor stated, “But I strongly suspect that mainstream U.S. higher education is morally and intellectually corrupt, beyond the possibility of self-repair,” So, it would seem, it is time for the banished to collect themselves and form an alternative. Or, do we just have the (as in politics too) college system we have asked for?
Jim
Look up the new university found in Austin by Bari Weiss and others.
Jim22,
The University if Austin or UATX as they are calling it, is the response you are mentioning.
I recommend reading Bari Weiss speech at the opening of Summer semester called The New Founders America Needs on her substack page.
Thank you both for pointing this my way. Hopefully they are successful and can make UATX into an actual college.
Those who can. Do.
Those who can’t. Teach.
Those who can’t teach. Teach teachers.
Those who live on lies. Live at universities.
Unfortunately those who would most benefit from your column are the least likely to read it because they have closed their minds while marching in lockstep with the progressive ideals. If their minds were so convinced of the rightness of their cause then they would welcome the openness of debate and discourse in order to spread their gospel. Nothing good comes of the absence of open debate. Democracy teeters when sizable numbers of individuals get disenfranchised from having their voices heard. Loosing elections is one thing because one can always modify approaches, change your presentation, alter some of your views (or better organize them) but having your voice heard while you change is essential. If that open debate is stifled then people increasingly feel that have nothing to lose and they resort to other means. If the predominant thought tries to stifle the minority thought and expression (either right or left) then violence becomes the other means. The USA has tended over the centuries to swing left and then right and then left again in almost predictable cycles. We best keep it that way of we will lose it all.
Just look at the mainstream media with a correspondent recently decrying the lack of trust in the the news and not being able to understand why it was happening where upon she then launches into a spiel about the entire Trump presidency being a scary and dark time and that some views are just not worth the time to discuss them. Totally incapable of understanding why people of the other side felt the same about the Obama and Biden administrations. They have a total non comprehension of context, history, politics, and mainly people, especially who think differently. Their arrogance may be their undoing.
“If their minds were so convinced of the rightness of their cause then they would welcome the openness of debate and discourse in order to spread their gospel.”
—
GEB: What makes you think their minds are convinced of anything noble? Why open the mind when one’s personal future is at stake. Fear is the major driving force in what is happening. Do you see people running to their defense? Not many.
“Their arrogance may be their undoing.”
I don’t think so. We are heading for a non-Constitutional oligarchy by the elites. Without countervailing force, entropy rules.
I wonder if any of the woke academics have noticed this little something that once you see it, you can’t un-see it:
Men dressing up as hyper-sexualized women is gender appropriation. It’s really only the 2020’s version of an Al Jolson Blackface Minstrel show of the 1920’s.
Nothing to be proud of.
“his pandemic rules with a tweet that compared eating in cramped quarters with a slave ship. It was a stupid and offensive tweet.”
Can someone please explain to me why Mike Adams’ tweet is considered to be stupid and offensive?
What type of worldview or system of beliefs and values would lead to the judgment of this tweet as being stupid and offensive?
I see this tweet as a humorous poke at the authoritarianism of the leftist-liberal-progressive ideology, which I believe is the true threat to Western Civilization at this time in history. I consider it to be the new form of mental “slavery” that is analogous to the Spanish Inquisition.
I saw it the same as you.
Prof Turley I think needs to realize those he’s calling Leftist or Liberal are neither & they are nothing less then hard Authoritarian Marxist or a hybred Commie/Nazi type works just as well, completely incompatible with an sort of Liberty.
*********
“No man survives when freedom fails, the best men rot in filthy jails, And those who cry ‘appease, appease’ Are hanged by those they tried to please.” Hiram Mann
Oky1——great quote! Good to see you.
Scott J,
I agree with you about leftist-liberal-progressive ideology being a threat to, well, I would say the US.
Some other West countries are looking at wokeism in America and want nothing to do with it (article I read about France).
Others are just plain laughing at us. I mean, come on! When you have a SC nominee who cannot define what a woman is because she is not a . . . biologist, I’d laugh at your country too.
Lefty academics are winning.
But universities are full of greedy people – just look at tuition increases.
And they will destroy themselves as the smaller schools lose students.
Eventually we will be left with rich private universities and public schools where parents (voters) can make a difference.
“Lefty academics are winning”
Glad to see you’re feeling better. You had me worried when you tried to use your other words.
Hi Enigma
I use “lefty” because it is succinct and most readers know exactly what I mean.
Read the posts by the lefty Anonymous and you see that verbosity (great word) makes him a bore (bile is not wit).
The same magic word is all-encompassing, used to describe any action/individual/group you disagree with.
Don’t you just love these open minded liberals. They’re so open minded they don’t want anyone else to be heard.
Hopefully his retirement has kicked in. I wish him well.