John Corkins, vice president of the Board of Trustees of the Kern Community College District Board, has a simple solution for those faculty who question diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs: take them to the slaughterhouse. Corkins has since apologized but the Board conspicuously failed to address other glaring problems with his extreme rhetoric.At the meeting, Corkins responded to students and faculty complaining about a racially hostile environment. Faculty opposed to DEI policies were referenced as part of this threat. Corkins declared that there are “abusive” faculty that “we have to continue to cull.”He added: “Got them in my livestock operation and that’s why we put a rope on some of them and take them to the slaughterhouse. That’s a fact of life with human nature and so forth, I don’t know how to say it any clearer.”
“My intent was to emphasize that the individuals who spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting have my full support…several African-American faculty, students and statewide representatives … bravely shared their feelings of fear based on the actions of a small group of faculty members and their feelings of disappointment in the district for allowing these actions to continue.”
Notably, however, the video of the Dec. 13 meeting does not give details on the specific racial incidents. There is reference to an ongoing investigation. However, there are references to faculty who have opposed DEI measures.
That would likely include a group called the Renegade Institute for Liberty with history Professors Matthew Garrett and Erin Miller, who teach at Bakersfield College. The group filed a federal lawsuit against the district after they were allegedly threatened with termination for questioning the use of grant money to fund social justice initiatives at their college. They are both tenured.
The opposition to DEI measures has led some to object that the group makes them feel unsafe on campus. That reportedly included calls to terminate faculty who oppose DEI to create a safer environment.
While apologizing for calling for the killing of such faculty, Corkins does not address why faculty should be targeted if they oppose DEI measures. The hearing and the statements made against these faculty members creates a chilling environment for academic freedom. The message is clear that these professors are viewed as a dangerous element on campus.
The Board has an obligation to address this uncertain line. Corkins apologizes for calling for the killing of critics but not why criticism of DEI itself is a matter for action. There may be conduct that is threatening or violent. There is no indication of any criminal complaint, but there is a need to preserve an open and tolerant environment. However, that also includes tolerance for opposing views on issues like DEI.
There is no major campaign to remove Corkins. I am less inclined for such removal as I am interested in greater clarity on the rights of free speech and academic freedom. Everyone makes dumb comments in unguarded moments. I accept that Corkins was carried away by the emotion of the moment. Moreover, Corkins was referencing “abusive” faculty and not necessarily putting all DEI critics in that category. That is precisely what should be clarified.
However, it would likely be a different story if a board member called for the “culling” of DEI supporters or groups on the left. There remains a double standard in how such controversies are handled in academia.
The support enjoyed by faculty on the far left is in sharp contrast to the treatment given faculty with moderate, conservative or libertarian views. Anyone who raises such dissenting views is immediately set upon by a mob demanding their investigation or termination. This includes blocking academics from speaking on campuses like a recent Classics professor due to their political views. Conservatives and libertarians understand that they have no cushion or protection in any controversy, even if it involves a single, later deleted tweet. At the University of North Carolina (Wilmington) one such campaign led to a professor killing himself a few days before his final day as a professor.
I have defended faculty who have made similarly disturbing comments on the left, including “detonating white people,” abolish white people, denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements. I also defended the free speech rights of University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis, who defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. (Loomis was later made Director of Graduate Studies of History at Rhode Island).
Even when faculty engage in hateful acts on campus, however, there is a notable difference in how universities respond depending on the viewpoint. At the University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.
When these controversies arose, faculty rallied behind the free speech rights of the professors. That support was far more muted or absent when conservative faculty have found themselves at the center of controversies. The recent suspension of Ilya Shapiro is a good example. Other faculty have had to go to court to defend their free speech rights. One professor was suspended for being seen at a controversial protest.
The message from this hearing could be viewed by some as affirming that criticism of DEI is now viewed a threatening language. For conservative, libertarian, or contrarian faculty, it is not clear if such views will now be tolerated or viewed as grounds for termination (or a barrier to hiring).
This comes at a time when many faculties have indeed “culled” their ranks of conservatives. A new survey of 65 departments in various states found that 33 do not have a single registered Republican.
In a recent column, the editors of the legal site Above the Law mocked those of us who objected to the virtual absence of conservative or libertarian faculty members at law schools. Senior editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” based on the fact that liberal views reflect real law as opposed to junk law. (Patrice regularly calls those with opposing views “racists,” including Chief Justice John Roberts because of his objection to race-based criteria in admissions as racial discrimination). He explained that hiring a conservative academic was akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism (or that the sun orbits the earth) to teach at a university.
It is that easy. You simply declare that conservative views shared by a majority of the Supreme Court and roughly half of the population are invalid to be taught.
It is not limited to faculty. Polls now show that 60 percent of students fear sharing their views in class. Various polls have shown the same fear with some showing an even higher percentage of fearful students. There is a growing orthodoxy taking hold on our campuses with growing intolerance for dissenting faculty and students alike.
There are faculty who have raised concerns over DEI initiatives, land acknowledgment, and other policies. Even with the apology, the Board has allowed the underlying threat to linger. It should state why the opposition of faculty members, including filing in court, could be deemed as threatening or unacceptable viewpoints.
“Academics”, that can not cogently argue for policies they support, should be ridiculed and laughed at. This clown, like most progressives, is an idiot and he should be treated as such. Do not waste time trying to engage people that can not and will not engage in an intelligent debate.
Why the fuss? All he did was say the quiet truth out loud. We are in denial to think that a growing cadre of residents of this country understand America’s constitution, bill of rights, due process or anything else.
It is about winning a seat at the table and denying by any means necessary your opponent’s chance to reclaim it.
Shared power is a fairy tale only baby boomers believe in anymore.
After being told that they should be culled from the herd, these DEI dissenters most certainly felt the love from the board as they wished everyone a Merry Christmas. [sarc: off] Nothing defines diversity, equity and inclusion better than being threatened to no longer exist. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess those several African-American faculty, students and statewide representatives … bravely shared their feelings of fear based on the actions of a small group of faculty members weren’t threatened with violence, but rather the loss of funding for pet projects and/or status within the DEI framework.
Totalitarianism is creeping in on the backs of “safety,” “racial justice” and “DIE.”
To be fair, I don’t think Corkins was actually calling for the killing of opponents of DEI on the faculty. He was using the metaphor of “culling the herd” to advocate dismissing these academics. As Turley notes, that itself is wrong, but it is not the same as advocating actual slaughter.
As Turley notes, that itself is wrong, but it is not the same as advocating actual slaughter.
Daniel, reasonable people would likely come to the same conclusion. Unfortunately, there exists a percentage of the population that are not so reasonable.
He was using the metaphor of “culling the herd” to advocate dismissing these academics.
You failed to use the whole quote. Standard tactic for attempting to defend the indefensible.
“culling the herd” has a very specific definition. Remove from the herd non productive members. This educated twit is doing that by sending them to the slaughter house.
In fact calling for their murder.
You failed to include the full quote. Standard for person defending the indefensible.
“Got them in my livestock operation and that’s why we put a rope on some of them and take them to the slaughterhouse.
I am done with the left hiding behind metaphors for their language, while taking anything a conservative say literally.
The left demands they be taken seriously, not literally. While at the same time takes the right literally, not seriously.
But the left if forced into their double standard, because the facts never support their agenda.
As in, there are no facts to support DEI. The left constantly shuts down any diversity it fears.
“[I]t is not the same as advocating actual slaughter.”
Unless stopped in its tracks, today’s metaphorical threat (“off with their heads”) becomes tomorrow’s reality (the Reign of Terror).
But let’s focus on today and ignore metaphors: DEI activists are destroying the careers, livelihoods, and reputations of dissenters. A reign of terror does not need guillotines.
I confess that I am something of a fossil, but I was surprised in a case I am handling while reviewing correspondence from medical school professors to see them including in their signature blocks “their pronouns” such as “he, him, his.” Pronoun guidance from the LGBTQ+ Center at Washington State University tells us, “[t]he pronoun sequence, he/him/his/himself, is most commonly attributed to those who identify as men. However, we cannot guess an individual’s gender identity by knowing their chosen pronoun, even if society assumes those who use this sequence identify as men.using such pronouns.” When I was young, I suspect that if I had a question about my gender, my doctor would have told me to look between my legs. Obviously, some medical schools today do not accept this age-old gender test.
honestlawyermostly,
Thank you for that amusing, yet spot on observation.
I think that goes to show the levels of absurdity we have reached.
As the US reached our own the king has no cloths on moment?
And how do we cure this insanity?
UpstateFarmer– thanks for your comment. At some point I think collectively we will realize that these public policies are driven by the demands of 0.5% of the population, policies that are demanding huge expenditures of public funds and radical changes in our culture. We also will realize that inflicting transgenderism onto children is very harmful. Recent, credible studies have shown that if children who think they are transgender are allowed to grow into puberty and teenage years, the vast majority will revert to their birth gender. If things like this do not make us change course, we, as a nation, are in serious trouble.
And how do we cure this insanity?
That’s an interesting choice of words, Farmer. This, from Luke 4:23 comes to mind: Physician, heal thyself. The question for me then is what temptation have these doctors succumbed to that would have them deny the medical science that licensed them?
honestlawyermostly, and OLLY,
That is just it. At what point do we (talking in general, no one specific) reach where the absurdity/insanity is so . . . absurd/insane that we say, enough?
Some of this denies logic and or common sense.
honestlawyermostly,
Concerning the transgenderism of children and I would say the sexualization of children, “If things like this do not make us change course, we, as a nation, are in serious trouble.”
I agree.
At what point do we (talking in general, no one specific) reach where the absurdity/insanity is so . . . absurd/insane that we say, enough?
I believe that point passed awhile ago. We’ve been saying enough is enough, but that clearly is not working. I don’t believe we’re asking the right questions. For instance, what would make a medical doctor defy their years of scientific education and training to suddenly endorse the notion that men and women are physically interchangeable? The answer is likely found in the answer to what would make a medical doctor believe it’s normal to turn human skin into lampshades, harvest organs from healthy human beings, or euthanize physically healthy teens because they are “terminally” depressed.
Fear for many, having no interpersonal skills for others. Academic physicians do poorly in private practice. They are coddled in academic medicine. Everything is guaranteed paid for academic physicians: salaries, staff, costly medical equipment, office space, medical supplies, financial services built into the clinic, pharmacy is right next door, ditto for medical services like radiology, children services, psych, drug rehab, weight loss programs, etc. To ask academic physicians to leave these is inviting them to compete in the market place. Additionally, in my experience, few academic physicians have a grip on reality as to what patients and medical professionals confront in the rural setting never mind a setting of scarcity. Mind you these are the same folks who virtue signal, subscribe to WOKE religious dogmas, and sign online petitions to force masks on children, close schools, push mandated vaccines, etc all of which harm the poor, the marginalized, etc.
OTOH, when a physician works in the rural setting or a setting of scarcity (poor regions), the chain of custody firmly rests with them: prescribed medical devices may remain outside the access of their patients (e.g. diabetic supplies) so the physician navigates how to get those devices in the patients hands, access to pharmacies or medical services (e.g. physical therapy) are a barrier, and when it involves the uneducated or the legal immigrant, lack of reading comprehension (e.g. medical instructions, following prescription instructions) or outright lack of English speaking skills, these test the mettle of all physicians. This is where medicine as a vocation is necessary. Few academic physicians would do any of these particularly for Medicaid patients which pays nada. The rural docs take the Medicaid payment or lesser fees because they did not go into medicine for money.
Visit a university health care system if you have a complex medical illness in the hopes they are practicing evidenced based medicine, which is no guarantee. Visit a nonacademic physician if you seek the physician-patient relationship and run of the mill illness.
Estovir– I’ve spent some time in the world of doctors in private practice. In a case challenging workers’ compensation reimbursement rates, I visited the office of one of my expert witness doctors. It was a one story, two-wing building. Other than storage closets, the right side had the reception area, his office, a nurse’s station and patient examination/ treatment rooms. The left side (equal in size) had numerous cubicles and was devoted entirely to billing and collections. On another occasion a surgeon friend invited me to observe carotid artery surgery (on the condition that I told no one my profession). The surgery took about an hour. He spent the rest of the morning in a room reserved for doctors to call insurance carriers and argue with them so they could get paid. I was told that many carriers insisted on talking to the doctor and not his or her staff. I can see why academic medicine has some appeal.
You accurately sketched the real life of what a physician must do to get reimbursed by third-party payers. Time was when a physician could open an office, hire a nurse (RN), relative or knowledgable person would run the office and interrupt the physician for out of the ordinary events, and that was that. No longer feasible. Nurses are cost prohibitive and accounting clerks are largely untrained in accounting principles, so the physician does not stand a chance against third party payers (health insurance plans)
State and private health systems run by “Shmuckatelli University Health”, the so called “not for profits”, have admins making 6 sometimes 7 figures. Yet the quality of patient interaction has been tanking across the nation for years. As to financial health of third party payers and retail pharmacy chains, the data speaks for itself
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CVS/cvs-health/gross-profit
CVS Health gross profit for the quarter ending September 30, 2022 was $30.794B, a 6.99% increase year-over-year.
CVS Health gross profit for the twelve months ending September 30, 2022 was $123.683B, a 9.28% increase year-over-year.
CVS Health annual gross profit for 2021 was $116.308B, a 11.06% increase from 2020.
CVS Health annual gross profit for 2020 was $104.725B, a 6.8% increase from 2019.
CVS Health annual gross profit for 2019 was $98.057B, a 157.15% increase from 2018.
Honestlawyermostly, the hell physicians are being put through today, also mentioned by Estovir, is significantly their own fault. Physicians are professionals who represent the patient’s interests first.
One has to ask themselves why physicians accepted Medicare and many of the restraints of HMOs’?. It started with a few, and the government kept pushing because the physician community permitted a relationship that would destroy the profession. As more physicians got in line, the government saw to it that they put the screws to the rest. Today almost everyone accepts Medicare. Did the physicians think that private insurers wouldn’t do the same? Did physicians think that to save money, Medicare and private insurers wouldn’t enter the examination room and have a share in the decision-making of what tests to provide and what treatments to offer?
That is what it is “The Realization of the Difference”, your cognitive conscious state becoming aware of the “Difference”, You have “aWOKEn” and recognized and acknowledge the “Difference” [e.g.: Human Cognition], That “Separation” which makes us ‘Individuals”.
How you see it, isn’t the way They see it (or anyone else), We all see it “Different”, even if ever so slightly.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211220194031if_/http://www.englishbiz.co.uk/images/difference.jpg
Ref:
https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/cctp-748-spring2015/2015/03/25/all-about-that-binary-transmission/
This is it [Woke], Thomas Jefferson had it, James Mason found it, and its America as can be.
People through out History have come to this conclusion, this Epiphany.
It is the Separation of the cognizant Individual from that of the Church and State, of which the Constitution seeks to maintain and protect the Freedom therein, with it’s decree of Law. Freedom my Friend -Our Freedom-
Just Epistemologically Say’in
honestlawyermostly: Your good post reminded me of something that happened in court years ago. I was representing an employer sued for sex (not gender) discrimination. During oral arguments on motion day, the judge–right in front of God and everybody, read out loud (with a chuckle) from my submitted brief, which, in relevant part, read “pubic institution” instead of “public institution.” The whole courtroom broke into an uproar (including a shocked me, since I hadn’t read what my secretary had typed). We prevailed on the motion, but I left with my tail between my legs, -so that’s what I would have seen had I looked.
lin– thank you for making me laugh out loud. That is what I love about trial work. You never know what will happen, even if it is of your own doing. In closing argument in one of my appointed federal court criminal trials, I challenged the jury who believed my client was innocent to “stand by your guns”, oblivious to the guns seized in the raid of my client’s hotel room that the prosecutor had leaned against the jury box. The snickering court reporter could not hold it in.
Honestlawyermostly: Ha, ditto on the laugh! Thanks for sharing.
(p.s. good comment by you at 11:28 AM)
Much like in the motion picture ‘Riddick’, the serpents have been waiting in underground hibernation for the rains. These came in 2016 and have not ceased since. What one finds most astounding are not only their numbers, but that they were concealed next door.
“I don’t know how to say it any clearer.”
That’s pretty clear, Mr. Robespierre.
Jon, I don’t agree with the notion there are more consequences for those on the right getting lazy, and biased, with their words. It seems we’re just taking the next national step to realize the base of the nation is changing and the power structures that were held in place (mostly by mores) is shifting. The academy will not be dominated by white males being able to say whatever they want anymore if for no other reason than there are those on the left who feel emboldened to say what they want now, as evidenced each and every time you put up one of these compare and contrast pieces…
Of course the right hates this, hence book banning in Florida and Texas and CRT uproar. But even with that, the right’s go to tactics of censorship and squashing of differing viewpoints in an official way are weakening.
Interestingly enough, those mores were exponentially rattled by the right getting behind a political leader that smashed any mores that got in the way of his own desires. And here’s the fallout.
Anon. – “a political leader that smashed any mores that got in the way of his own desires. And here’s the fallout.” So, not only does Trump collude with the Russians, he is also responsible for the violent fanaticism of the Left. This guy can do anything. He is probably also behind Global Warming.
As Ben Wittes said, Trump’s malevolence was tempered by his incompetence. Small mercies.
Anonymous——Trump, incompetent? LOL! Everything he said or did about Covid turned out to be true…….including scoffing at the ill-advised “lock down”. He thought and said that everyone should return to normal lives on Easter of 2020! His assessment of the ridiculous and unfair Paris climate change arrangemnt was true. His dealings with Korea……seeing the absurdity in giving Iran, $$$$……. his turning the U.S. into the leading exporter of oil and gas in the world….et cetera! Compare all of that to what the Biden Administration has done/destroyed in a brief time. Talk about INCOMPETENCE.
Biden and Dems are leading a MAGA movement all their own:
Making America Gawd Awful!
“Everything he said or did about Covid turned out to be true”
You’re deluded.
Among the false things that Trump said just about Covid:
Feb. 25, 2020: “they’ve [China] had a rough patch, and I think right now they have it — it looks like they’re getting it under control more and more. They’re getting it more and more under control. So I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.”
Feb. 26, 2020: “when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
March 6, 2020: “we did an interview on Fox last night, a town hall. I think it was very good. And I said, ‘Calm. You have to be calm.’ It’ll go away.”
Also March 6, 2020: “Anybody that wants a test [for Covid] can get a test.”
March 10, 2020: “it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
March 12, 2020: “It’s going to go away. It’s going to go away.”
April 3, 2020: “It is going away.”
May 8, 2020: “This is going to go away without a vaccine. It’s going to go away.”
And that’s only a sample of his lies about it.
Anonymous……..Johns-Hopkins and other studies: the lockdown not only spread the virus but made it worse.
Do your homework. I’m sick of the Left’s lies and laziness.
I said nothing about a lockdown, so don’t move the goalposts Cindy.
You falsely claimed that “Everything [Trump] said or did about Covid turned out to be true,” and I gave you a lot of evidence of him saying things about Covid that were wildly false. It did not go from 15 to close to 0. It did not go away in 2020. It still hasn’t gone away. Most of the people who wanted tests in March of 2020 couldn’t get them.
But apparently you can’t admit that you were wrong.
ATS, when anyone places your statements in context, you sound like an idiot.
Until very recently China did have it under control.
None of his remarks were Wildly off the mark.
Trump was wrong about Covid – less than say Fauxi but still wrong.
Everyone has got something wrong regarding Covid.
By far the biggest mistake was believing there was anything that could be done about it.
We have never successfully stopped the flu.
We do Generally deal with the flu correctly – seeking to vaccinate those who would suffer the greatest harm – not everyone.
But the flu comes, and lots of people get sick, and there is nothing we can do about that.
And the Flu has a transmission rate of half that of the Wuhan strain and something like 1/15th that of the latest strain.
Some people were LESS wrong than others – Trump was among the less wrong about Covid.
Cindy they are paid to post their comments. Remember that their means of engagement always adhere to Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” particularly…
The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself
The trolls represent less than a handful of online individuals who purposely use multiple aliases to give the impression their presence is ominous in line with the above rule. Observe their errors, monosyllabic word utilization, juvenile sentence structure, timing of their upvotes and replies to “each other”, often using the same exact juvenile verbiage (e.g. Svelaz and Gigi). Same. exact. person.
As the regulars know Gigi was Natacha who also was accused of engaging in online identity theft of an attorney in Indiana. That level of lying should give readers all of the proof needed to conclude that the trolls lie 25/8 for their income. Dont give them a second of your life
I can’t speak for anyone else, Estovir, but I’m not paid to comment. I doubt anyone here is paid to comment. I think some of you just prefer to believe that.
Thank you, Estovir…..I appreciate that.
Corkins’ statement was wholly inappropriate, and he should resign. Anyone who calls for slaughtering people has no business on a school board.
That said, Turley allows similar comments here without calling them out. For example, Upstate Farmer said “ Just like in Orwell’s 1984, a child will rat out their own parents to the government/Big Brother. Stupid people like McIntyre [another commenter] are programming their own children or grandchildren to do the same. Our only hope is to stop them in their Mao like obsession. Just might come from the gun. I hope not. But we might have to resort to that.”
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/31/sen-cardin-hate-speech-is-not-protected-by-first-amendment/comment-page-2/#comment-2250601
Darren hasn’t removed it, much less given Upstate Farmer a warning.
Turley needs to tend to his own blog.
In 1984, do you recall what brainwashed little girl did?
She turned her own father in to Big Brother.
Add that to the numerous references we have seen here on this blog of the parallels of Leftist wokeism to Mao’s Culture Revolution and Nazism, we may have to resort to the gun to defend not only the Constitution, but ourselves.
Again, I hope not.
You explicitly identified Dennis as one of “them” who you may feel you need to take up a gun against.
Dennis has never threatened violence. You’re the one doing that. You can’t even bring yourself to admit you were wrong.
If you think that Dennis has said something wrong, the way to defeat him is with a cogent argument, not with a gun. WTH is wrong with you?
You explicitly identified Dennis as one of “them” who you may feel you need to take up a gun against.
What is wrong seeking constitutional solutions to problems?
Nothing is wrong with me.
What is wrong with you?
Apparently Turley thinks that your comment to Dennis was inappropriate. He’s now removed it.
has said something wrong, the way to defeat him is with a cogent argument,
If this know-nothing professor could do what you advocate, he wouldn’t be threatening murder. So go preach the to leftist, that are actively censoring anything the disagree with.
To fill in the holes in you understanding of the Constitution. The second amendment is for when the first amendment isn’t allowed.
Apparently you missed my first comment, where I called for Corkins’ resignation.
The First Amendment is allowed unless you commit perjury or a few other exceptions, and the Second Amendment does nothing to combat perjury or the few other exceptions.
Your desire to take up a gun against a fellow commenter is sick.
BTW, Corkins is not a professor. He’s a member of the public who is on the board.
This looks like a perfect example of John O’Sullivan’s Law: Any organization that is not explicitly right wing will become left wing over time.
As I understand O’Sullivan’s rationale, he says that decades ago conservatives began bringing liberals onto boards, trustees, and other governing entities to get diversity of thought and better represent the ideals of the nation as a whole. Over time power shifted from conservatives to liberals. Now when new openings arise, the liberals have enough power to prevent conservatives from gaining seats. And they use it. It happened first in academia and media, and now it has spread to corporate board rooms, the Pentagon and military general officer corp, and even traditional religious hierarchies.
In this case, somehow a small fraction – maybe 5% according to Corkins – slipped through the screening process and hold dissenting views. For him, that’s too many and they need to be removed. He compares them to brainless, diseased livestock. But liberals have won the culture war. Corkins is now scouring the battlefield for enemy survivors to summarily execute.
Meanwhile here in Doublestandardstan we have the White House Press Moron calling anything and everything a “threat” whenever there is the slightest bit of criticism leveled at a Democrat as left wing goons can actually use the terminology of the Third Reich with impunity.
Watch as Svelaz and Anonymous come here to bring up Trump, Fox News and a few other non-sequiturs in a lame attempt to obfuscate the left’s violent hatred and fascist tendencies.
John Corkins meant exactly what he said. The stupidity was he said it in public. Maybe someone should point out that this was exactly the path that Adolph Hitler followed. First to win election with a minority vote (parliamentary democracy) then never another election. It was proceeded by a war against the communists who were even more left wing than Hitler’s National Socialists, Then later the homosexuals in the SA including Ernst Rohm (who he perceived as a threat also). Then the Jews, then some trade union officials, then some Catholics, psychiatric patients, then the “feeble minded” and then everyone else who opposed him. Having lived a long time and around the world, I lived in Germany in the 1954-1956 era.
We had a housekeeper who had lived in the US and became a citizen and was visiting family in Germany when WW2 started and she was never able to get back to the US. She sat and talked to us of the successive waves of the gestapo and police coming to her village, just outside Mannheim, as more and more groups of people just disappeared from the village never to be seen again.
We actually visited her beautiful little village and could not believe what had happened. You listen to that and then see all the ruins that were still manifest in major German cities 9 years after WW2 (although reconstruction was going strong) and it gives you a perspective that almost no one else still has. You also don’t forget what leads to that destruction. Otherwise you sit in your cozy little chair and say “it cannot happen here”. Well it can.
It helps to have a father who fought across France through the liberation of Paris, the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge and then did an encore performance in the Pusan perimeter 5 years later in 1950 while we were being evacuated from Japan and back to the US.
We were also just down the road in Germany when the Hungarian revolt occurred in 1956. We had a propensity for hotspots. An interesting childhood. rarely dull.
“Maybe someone should point out that this was exactly the path that Adolph Hitler followed.”
I noticed that you didn’t say that this is what Hitler ‘said’.
“It was my imagination, and in my mind, I believed it. Even now, I believe it.” ~Herman Rosenblat
The underlying problem is adopting the woke language. DEI – god like. DIE would be more appropriate. We tend to confuse things with what we call them. Accepting the woke framing of god like instead of death like prejudices the discussion. Reframing the terms of discussion are fundamental to changing the outcomes. DIE wokism DIE.
. . . tolerance for opposing issues on issues like DEI.
I believe this is a typo and you meant opposing views.
Honestly, it’s DIE – diversity, inclusion, equity. For those who strenuously engage in this practice, DIE is the kiss of death for whatever institution its lips touch. If someone is a DIE-er who’s incompetent, like the White House spokeswoman or the transportation secretary, their inadequacies are their most outstanding characteristic, far outshining the DIE reasons each was selected. As Ecclesiastes assures all, this too shall pass away. Not, however, without leaving significant damage.
It seems that every time I turn around I am reading a story of this sort in a reputable publication. It is clear and has been for awhile that the educational system in America, K through college, is controlled by the left, and a rather extreme left at that. They have the industry by the throat and will continue to churn out woke voters. What to do? The only thing I can think of is to regain control of the local school boards so these people become afraid of us for a change.
I formed my opinion a while back that, after observing the prog/left, there is no accommodating, coexisting with, nor total appeasement of them. Theymust, like all members of an ideology that demands unwavering conformity to their beliefs, be only dealt with in extreme measures. My closest comparison to them throughout history is to the Islamist fanatics whose goal is total world domination. We either take a stand against this unreasonable dogma or we succumb to it in the same manner that most of the Near East, Central Asia and North Africa did, and I do hope that Western Civilization has enough gas left in its tank to fight against the oblivion that is headed our way should we not stop this ill-conceived notion of progressivism as it is built on a false understanding of human nature.
Again I see this differently.
That Clown was not speaking as a private person…..he was speaking as a Member of a Government Board during the conduct of official business.
Thus he is the government speaking….not a Joe the Rag Man from off the street.
There should be a very quick and easy investigation…..as there is a video tape of the meeting and what was said.
If he said what he is described as saying, and he admitted saying it (as evidenced by his public apology), then the result should be clear cut.
The Board should Censure him, hold a vote re his dismissal, and then do so upon a majority vote.
He. has brought embarrassment and dis-repute to the Board by his misconduct.
In a just society he would be gone in less than Seventy-Two Hours.
The Woke Religious Police is fine with murdering heretics. By 2030, I expect them to be burning Conservatives at the stake.
Fascist use it as a wedge issue. Time to end all federal aid and loans to colleges and cities. Also any non-profit that gives anyone more than a $100k…should be TAXED…like EVERY SINGLE COLLEGE and Hospital.
One of the worst problems in developing a taxing scheme to fund government is that you must take care not to distort peoples decisions.
This is why flat taxes and no deductions or flat taxes with fixed deductions are less damaging.
If you are going to tax businesses, you can not tax individuals – otherwise you end up with occasional double taxation.
If you tax individuals you can not tax business – for the same reason.
There is a separate reason we should tax individuals.
Ultimately taxes are paid for by individuals. The more directly you do that the better decisions people make.