Ed and I will be talking with Ezra Levant about his battle with the Alberta “Human Rights Commission“, and its’ portents for Western civilization.

Levant’s battle with the “Human Rights” police and the Canadian left (motto: “What the American Left wants to be! – ed.) foreshadow what faces every voice of conscience in a place run by the untrammeled left.

Tune in.  If you’re not outraged, you need to check for a pulse.  And if that outrage doesn’t lead you to action, you’ll need to check for a conscience.

A Japanese fleet attacks Pearl Harbor, sinking much of the US battle fleet.  They also seize the Philippines and much of the East Indies.

But they miss the aircraft carriers – which lead a devastating riposte at the head of a US response fuelled by America’s unparalleled economic and idustrial might that drives the Japanese back to home waters and, eventually, vanquish them.

History?

Well, sure.  But it’s also the plot of a work of “fiction” – the 1925 cult classic The Great Pacific War by Hector Bywater.  The book lacked some of the technological changes that affected the war that followed half a generation later – but it got the broad strokes right.

It was, of course, a work of fiction, albeit prescient.  On the other side of the world, it was a work of non-fiction, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, released about the same time, that had people around the world going “If only we’d paid attention” – long after it was too late to do anything about it.

You have the opportunity to do what the readers of The Great Pacific War and Mein Kampf couldn’t, this Saturday on the Northern Alliance Radio Network; see into our future and, maybe, given a certain amount of wisdom and a lot of energy, change things.

Ed and I will be talking with Ezra Levant about his battle with the Alberta “Human Rights Commission“, and its’ portents for Western civilization.

And unlike so much punditry about the collapse of the civilization we so treasure, it’s coming to you while you can still do something about it.

Tune in.  Listen.  Be outraged.

Let that outrage turn into something else.

Next Saturday on NARN Volume 2, we’ll be interviewing Ezra Levant. The former publisher of Canada‘s Western Standard, Levant was hounded by Canada’s PC police (they literally are that, in Canada) over…

…well, tune in.

 If you care about free speech, this will be a must-listen interview.

Next Saturday on the Northern Alliance Radio Network!

At least this White House objected to the UN’s chief nag calling the uS – which pays a vastly disproportionate share of the UN’s bills – a “deadbeat”:

White House objected Thursday to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s description of the United States as a “deadbeat” donor to the world body.Ban used the phrase Wednesday during a private meeting with lawmakers at the Capitol, one day after he met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.

Note to Mr. Ban: then try to collect on his, little fella.

That’s right.  Slink back to New York and write a resolution or something.

Dutch Supreme Court finds that insulting Islam doesn’t libel individual Moslems:

In a victory for freedom of speech the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in favor of a man who stuck a poster in his window with the text: ‘Stop the tumour that is called Islam’. The court ruled the man did not insult muslims by insulting the religion of islam.

Just when I thought the whole world was going nuts.

Speaking of which; the NARN “Headliners” broadcast is scheduling a rather prominent free-speech figure for an upcoming show.  Stay tuned to this space.

The Brits deny Geert Wilders – critic of Islamofascism – entrance to the UK because it might upset Moslems who are busy picking on Jewish kids.

US Senators jump on board for a reprise of the “Fairness Doctrine”.

And a dictator messes with a hero who’s already notched one dictatorship:

Nobel laureate, former Polish prime minister, and hero of the Cold War Lech Walesa will not be allowed to visit Venezuela ahead of that country’s referendum on extending the rule of Hugo Chavez. El Jefe told Venezuelan media that Walesa was unwelcome in Caracas, where he was set to meet with opposition student groups, and would be prevented from entering the country. After Walesa cancelled his visit, Chavez claimed that he would, in fact, be allowed through customs but would be “closely monitored” on his visit.

The left’s chattering classes around the world can not handle criticism of them or those they deign to protect.

By the way, look for Jon Stewart or Keith Olberman to start bagging on Lech Wałesa sooner than later.

GOP taps Bobby Jindal to give response to Obama’s address:

Jindal a former congressman and first term governor, was widely believed to be on then-Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s shortlist for vice president, and often served as a campaign surrogate on the Arizona senator’s behalf.

The 37-year-old son of Indian immigrants was also given a prime-time speaking slot at the GOP convention last September, though he ultimately decided not to attend the four-day event as Hurricane Gustav headed for landfall in his state.

This is good.  The GOP’s needed to pump up its “bench” for over a decade, now. 

And it’ll get the Dems started on their counterstrategy – making “Apu” jokes politically correct.

So now that Obama is President, is dissent still the highest form of patriotism?

Is “Questioning Authority” still a virtue?

Is “speaking truth to power” still a something to uphold and revere?

Just checking.

Blockbuster is selling a DVD about the life and times of..Barack Obama.

Con1 at Conservative Oasis comments:

This man just won one of the most historic elections of our Nation’s history, and we have a video on the impulse buying section of Blockbuster, with a complete educational history of “who the hell you just voted for, you damn fools…” And yes, what a perfect place for it to sit, right where people who do things on impulse, will do so again.

He’s just gotten into office, and not done really a damn thing of import, except get elected on a magic carpet ride of MSM ass kissing, softballs, and starry eyed sympathy from a voting block infused with hope driven children, and attention starved minorities.

And, all for .99 cents. A fair price, me thinks, for such a story of really, just about nothing to holler about, yet.

We’ve finally turned into the pop culture we feared we would be. We’ve American Idoled ourselves a new President, voting off the island the true survivors, the real qualified candidates, all because we “liked” the other guy more. The underdog.

The vid is 99 cents, by the way.  I’m tempted to grab one, just for comparison purposes in four years.

Oh, and if you can’t make it to a DVD player, and have $50 to spare?

You can carry your little red blue book with you!

Includes themes of democracy, politics, war, terrorism, race, community, jurisprudence, faith, personal responsibility, national identity, and above all, his hoped-for vision of a new America. POCKET OBAMA is a portable, everyday primer for readers who want to examine the substance of his thought and reflect on the next great chapter in the American story.

Be ready for the Great Change Forward!

The local chattering classes are tittering merrily; the guy who rammed his “SUV” (or was it a pickup truck?) into Saint Paul’s Baby Meat Mill Planned Parenthood Clinic was “mentally ill”:

Stop the murderers,” Matthew L. Derosia quoted Jesus as telling him, a criminal complaint said.Derosia, 32, who has a history of mental illness, faces two counts of first-degree criminal damage to property.

This blog does not endorse physical violence to curb infanticide.  Why, had Derosia driven a bigger truck, the clinic might have been put out of action even longer.  Why, who knows?  Someone – say, the next person Jesus talks to – might drive a bulldozer or a tank.  That’d really cause problems, wouldn’t it?

Still, I think it’s interesting;  Planned Parenthood represents a movement that believes the only thing separating “life” and “unviability” is a four-inch trip down the birth canal – but we call Derosia “mentally ill”.

Remember when Katherine Kersten wrote about some perceived irregularities at Tariq Ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), an Islamocentric charter school in the southeast ‘burbs of Saint Paul?

George Soros’ minions tut-tutted (when their heads weren’t bursting with ad-homina)
David Brauer snarked “Nothing to see here, wingnuts!”

Even politicians got into the act, all but demanding Kersten be dropped off a bridge in a sack full of cats.

Nothing but calumny for the uppity wingnuts who dared question the left’s “nothing to see here”.

But it’s not over.  TIZA is being hauled into court by those bitter, Jesus-clinging gun nuts at…

…the ACLU?

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis against Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, known as TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education, which the ACLU says is at fault for failing to uncover and stop the alleged transgressions. The suit names the department and Alice Seagren, the state education commissioner, as co-defendants.The department investigated the Twin Cities school last year, and the school said it had taken corrective actions in response to concerns about the practicing of religion on campus. TIZA said in a written statement on Wednesday that the school is nonsectarian and in compliance with federal and state regulations.

But the ACLU claims the school is using federal and state money to promote religion in violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The moral of the story?  Katherine Kersten is, all by herself, a better, smarter journalist than every bought-off Soros-pet “reporter” in the Twin Cities.

Hey, Chris.  Chris Steller.  Yeah, you.  Be veeeery quiet.  I have a question, and I have a hunch you don’t want anyone to hear me ask.  Right?

When you write stuff like…:

In his inaugural invocation today, the Rev. Rick Warren was subtle about shaming gay-rights protesters but explicit about his Christianity, calling on Jesus by name not once but four times, in four different languages associated with three world religions.

…you do realize that that’s what an invocation IS, right? A whooooole lotta God-talk, and generally very little “sexual orientation”talk?  I mean, that’s been kinda the norm.  But you knew that.  Right?

Just curious. 

Damn those accursed neocons for condoning, promoting and outsourcing torture:

President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for CIA director, Leon Panetta, served as White House chief of staff during the time the Clinton administration accelerated a practice of kidnapping terrorist suspects and sending them to countries with records of torturing prisoners, human rights organizations and former U.S. officials say.

Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will question Mr. Panetta, chief of staff for President Clinton from 1994 to 1997, about what, if any, role he played in shaping the policy known as “extraordinary rendition,” a Republican aide on the committee said. Mr. Panetta’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for Jan. 27. The aide asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Damn them for inventing the tolerance, practice and export of torture of defenseless, invariably-innocent suspects!

The practice — which involves seizing a terrorist suspect in one country and taking him to another without formal judicial proceedings — also occurred under the administration of President George H.W. Bush and possibly even earlier, said a former senior U.S. official in that administration. However, it took place dozens of times under the Clinton administration and rose dramatically after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to human rights organizations and former national security officials.

The issue is particularly relevant given the incoming administration’s pledge to end harsh interrogation practices and what Obama campaign documents referred to as “outsourcing our torture to other countries.”

Damn them all to HELLLLLLL!

It’s all over the news – the Campbell family of New Jersey, who infamously gave their children Nazi-linked names (oldest boy is named Adolph Hitler Campbell) has had the kids hauled off by Child Protection:

Little Adolf, who is three, was removed along with his sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell.

There must have been some signs of physical abuse or neglect, since I doubt DYFS can parchute in just because mom and dad are neo-Nazis with awful judgement in baby names.

When I interviewed neighbors of the family last month, Sally Miller, who lives down the road from the Campbells, said they had trick-or-treated at her home (not dressed as storm troopers, or anything–just regular Halloween costumes).

Adolf’s mom, Deborah Campbell, was pregnant at the time, and when Miller congratulated her, she joked about fighting a lot with her husband. Miller also said other neighbors had heard the couple arguing.

Miller didn’t discover the boy’s name until it made headlines.

But according to Fox News, Holland Township Police Sgt. John Harris said cops never saw any signs of abuse and, in fact, dad Heath Campbell seemed very good with his kids.

The chattering classes are presuming there has to be more to it – but there’s nothing publicly available (which isn’t unusual in Child Protection cases).

Of course, if it was all about the name, that should make your hair stand on end.  Let’s clarify this for you; your kids can be taken away if the authorities think you’re “too weird”).

With the approval of an awful lot of people, from comment section trolls to the mainstream media:

Obviously, if the Campbells were denying the children food that’s one thing. But is the state within its rights to remove children from a home because of the parents’ political beliefs? If indeed that’s the reason (the state isn’t saying so). That’s a tough question, but I think in this particular case most of us can agree that removing children from an atmosphere of obvious poison is probably a good thing.

Obvious poison?

Naming a kid “Adolph Hitler” is certainly a social gaffe. But worse than the parents (at least the overeducated Anglos) who name their kids “Che”?  In historical degree, maybe.

What if they’re following through; teaching the kids that Jews are subhuman?  It’s perfectly legal – indeed, protected by the first Amendment – for adults to believe that (albeit not act on it on more than a rhetorical level); should it be illegal for parents to teach their kids hate?  Wonder what the daughter that Garrison Keillor dotes on thinks about red-state Republicans.

The point, obviously, is that “poison” is a moving target.  Some consider non-cafeteria Christianity a “poisonous” environment, and they’re powerful enough to spark genuine worries that Christian beliefs could be viewed as factors in “hate crimes”.

This might be a better question for all of you who spent the last eight years worrying about John Ashcroft and Karl Rove shipping you off to camps in Idaho for voting for John Kerry; is this a precedent you want to let stand?
(Via AP at Hot Air)

1999 through today:  Hyperdramatic narcissistic anarchist fops attack Starbucks.

Today:  Palestinian sympathizers attack Starbucks.

I never go to Starbucks; it’s somewhere down below DunnBros and Caribou, when I do coffee-shop coffee at all. 

But I’m tempted to go now, just on principle.

Victor Davis Hanson,from last week’s excellent piece on the ironies of 2008, on the California gay “community’s” protests against Proposition 8. Hanson notes that not only did Hispanics and Blacks voted every bit as disproportionately against gay marriage as, say, Mormons and Evangelicals, but that in his (predominantly Hispanic) neighborhood people rarely use terms as polite as “gay” to describe gays.

But then…:

Why then did not gay groups march through the streets of West Fresno, San Jose, or South Central LA, where such opponents are concentrated en masse and could be picketed, demonstrated against, and megaphoned for their sins?Was it because it is more dangerous calling Latinos in Fresno barrios homophobes than screaming the same at Mormons in the upscale temple parking lot? Or was that to do the former questioned the fable of uniformly aggrieved groups who share a variety of racial and sexual grievances, while to do the latter attested to the easy oppression we associate with white male Christians?

Well, it does make sense – in facile, gutless kind of way…

Habitat homes in big project built by Jimmy Carter and a raft of celebs are having trouble:

RESIDENTS of a model housing estate bankrolled by Hollywood celebrities and hand-built by Jimmy Carter, the former US president, are complaining that it is falling apart.Fairway Oaks was built on northern Florida wasteland by 10,000 volunteers, including Carter, in a record 17-day “blitz” organised by the charity Habitat for Humanity.

Eight years later it is better known for cockroaches, mildew and mysterious skin rashes.

A forthcoming legal battle over Fairway Oaks threatens the reputation of a charity envied for the calibre of its celebrity supporters, who range from Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt to Colin Firth, Christian Bale and Helena Bonham Carter.

Actually, I’m not going to pile on Habitat; the right H4H project can be a very good thing.

But trying to make something worth other than what it’s intrinsically worth is a bad idea to start with; trying to do it on a large scale is like selling at a loss but trying to make up for it in volume.

One of the things that makes a conservative a conservative is opposition to the relentless dumbing-down of our culture.

Authoritarians need a dumb, compliant population, focused purely on their own material wants and needs – people who value punctual trains over liberty – to succeed.

Our education system has been failing for at least a generation to try to produce anything but that.

Jay Reding notes that even the Chinese are getting this:

The Asia Times talks about the value of classical music in forming a strong and supple mind:

Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children, but classical music does more than sports or crafts. Playing tennis at a high level requires great concentration, but nothing like the concentration required to perform the major repertoire of classical music. Perhaps the only pursuit with comparable benefits is the study of classical languages. It is not just concentration as such, but its content that makes classical music such a formative tool.

I’m not one of those people who dings on “rap” music strictly for its own sake – but there’s a great point here.

Classical music ties a lot of highfalutin’ concepts – meter, melody, harmony, counterpoint – together simultaneously. Not only does playing it require a lot of concentration, years of practice and long-delayed gratification, but listening to it takes time and effort to really appreciate – which was why colleges used to teach “music appreciation”. For people who don’t grow up around classical music (and I didn’t, although I played cello from ages 10 to 22, and can still crank out a tune, so I like to think I’m a fairly literate listener) some of those concepts are not things that jump out and grab you by the hypothalamus. It takes time, practice…education to really get it.

As contrast, I present hip-hop. No, this is not the standard-issue social conservative attack on the form; indeed, I used to be a rap DJ. There is a skill to taking a rhythm apart; there is a certain art to the wordplay that a really, really good rapper brings to the table. But hip-hop is about rhythm, which is the most immediately obvious aspect of music; even babies can perceive and completely enjoy rhythm and simple melody.

And there was a time when the goal was to master things that babies couldn’t do.
Jay writes:

The problem is that the concepts of “discipline” and “delayed gratification” are practically foreign to Americans these days. We’ve become a nation that has begun to systematically rout out the qualities that make us strong. Instead of allowing children to explore, we coddle them. Instead of teaching the classics, we teach drivel. We teach “self esteem” instead of formal logic. A classical education trained young minds to think critically, appreciate culture, and inculcated them with the values necessary for life in a democratic society. Now, thanks to the relentless dumbing-down of society, that sort of education has been cast out as being “patriarchal,” “ethnocentric” and even just plain “racist.” It is any irony that the Chinese seem to have a finer appreciation for our culture than we do.

Yes, it is.

There’s a parallel, of course.

Like classical music, conservatism is not intuitive to most people. Toddlers have a hard time with Hayek and Mahler, but can fully wrap their minds around “make people happy” and banging on pots. To embrace conservatism – the conservatism of Hayek and Buckley and Goldwater moreso than most of your single-issue varieties – takes some of the same attributes.

Anyone can figure out the First Amendment.  The Tenth Amendment?  That’s complicated.

Minnesota is famous for being…well, cold.

Of course, as has been confirmed on this site many times in the past, Minnesotans are wusses about the weather – North Dakota is colder, and windier to boot. 

But that’s not the chill I’m talking about, this time.

No, it’s free speech that’s freezing on Minnesota’s college campuses.  The Young Americas Foundation (YAF) has compiled its annual Top Ten Abuses for the past year – and two of them take place within a mile of each other, at Saint Paul’s two up-market Catholic schools.

And the scary part is, the story doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Saint Thomas comes in at #2:

2. Transgendered activists in, pro-life speakers out. Liberal administrators at the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic institution in Minnesota, censored the appearance of prominent pro-life speaker Star Parker because campus officials felt “uncomfortable” and “disturbed” by previous conservative speakers at the school. The University’s mission statement claims it values “the pursuit of truth,” “diversity,” and “meaningful dialogue.” Except, not really—or better yet, as long as the said “pursuit” doesn’t offend leftist predilections. Meanwhile, within the past year, the same school hosted Al Franken, the bombastic liberal comedian, and Debra Davis, a transgendered activist who believes God is a black lesbian. Realizing they had a public relations disaster on their hands, the head honchos at St. Thomas eventually reversed the ban on Star Parker.

Since it’s a “Worst of 2008” award, the YAF necessarily omits the larger historical context of oppression at St. Thomas during the reign of the school’s president, Father Dennis “Havana Denny” Dease. 

Father Dease has blazed a frozen trail during his tour at St. Thomas – from forbidding students to assist Cuban baseball player Manuel Chaoui’s bid for freedom when he defected to the US on a trip to play the Tommies, to actively attacking the students that booked an appearance by Ann Coulter, to turning a blind eye to the vandalism directed against the campus’ conservative student newspaper.  Some considered his (brief) banning for Bishop Desmond Tutu from campus a sign that he was an equal-opportunity oppressor; leaving aside the imbalance of the campus’ oppression, it’s fair to say that chilling one side’s freedom of speech chills everyone‘s.  Even if they don’t know it yet.

St. Thomas sits on the east bank of the Mississippi River gorge at the intersection of East River Road and Summit Avenue is one of the most beautiful campuses in the country – unless you’re a conservative activist; for them, the campus is a windswept ideological gulag, as cold, barren and oppressive as Solzenitzyn’s Kolima.

Stroll south down Cleveland Avenue about half a mile to Randolph – the icy ideological tailwind will put purpose in your step.  Hang a left.  It takes you to the University of Saint Catherine:

10. Who knew? Universal health care is actually a non partisan issue. Administrators at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota—the nation’s largest Catholic women’s college—unexpectedly blocked young conservatives on campus from hosting Bay Buchanan, a popular conservative commentator and U.S. Treasurer under President Reagan. College officials deemed Ms. Buchanan’s remarks on “Feminism and the 2008 Election” too politically charged, citing concerns about the school’s tax status. Those same “concerns,” mind you, didn’t prohibit the school from sponsoring programs that push for universal healthcare and minimum wage increases or hosting Frank Kroncke, an anti-war radical who is reliving the Vietnam days. But Bay Buchanan? Well, she’s partisan, according to St. Catherine’s administration.

Of course, the Twin Cities has other contenders for the Top Ten.  Go east on Grand from St. Thomas (or north on Fairview from St. Kate’s) maybe half a mile, and you run into Macalester College, a Presbyterian-affiliated liberal (heh) arts school that richly earned a “Red” rating from FIRE for its stultifying-yet-capricious speech codes.  Then, don your wooly (rastafarian?) cap and handmuffs to plod up Snelling a mile and a half to Hamline, which earned brickbats (or perhaps ice chunks) from FIRE for suspending student Troy Scheffler for advocating legal concealed carry on campus (for students that passed Minnesota’s permitting criteria, no less).  I give ’em both a good shot at making the “top” ten before long.

And I’m so proud.

Twin Cities’ “liberal arts” campuses – where the icy winds of repression are always leaking up under your waistband.

“Day Without A Gay” fizzles.

Perhaps “Day Without Straight Guys” would get their attention.

…that I’m going to plead “discrimination against Christians” as I’m going to assert that an awful lot of secularists and self-appointed PC cops are so very very irritating (emphasis added):

[Florida Gulf Coast University] administration has banned all holiday decorations from common spaces on campus and canceled a popular greeting card design contest, which is being replaced by an ugly sweater competition. In Griffin Hall, the university’s giving tree for needy preschoolers has been transformed into a “giving garden.”

The moves boil down to political correctness.

“Public institutions, including FGCU, often struggle with how best to observe the season in ways that honor and respect all traditions,” President Wilson Bradshaw wrote in a memo to faculty and staff Thursday. “This is a challenging issue each year at FGCU, and 2008 is no exception. While it may appear at times that a vocal majority of opinion is the only view that is held, this is not always the case.”

The mistake with this particular noxious dialect of PC is that nothing in human life, in social interaction, and in civil society is “always the case“.  No opinion, majority or minority, need or should be “always” front and center in the public view; neither should the majority be squelched because it’s not unanimous.

The majority is part of a “diverse” group, too…

A:  “Only one, and that’s not funny”

Joe Lieberman appears in an ad for a phone company.

It’s kinda funny.  Not “wet your pants” funny… 

 …but, y’know, droll.

Look for the Obama Administration to get calls for a central humor vetting office from this guy:

…this is a horrible ad, because speaking as a progressive, the last person I want to see on an ad for things that matter to me is Joe Effing Lieberman. And I really don’t want to see it with the tagline “switching is easy,” because I interpret that as an insult. See, I didn’t take Lieberman’s words on the campaign trail lightly. When he blithely suggested that a question about whether President-elect Obama was a socialist was “interesting,” I took offense to it.

Er…yeah.  I’ll bet he did. 

…And when, after the election, the Democratic caucus voted to retain Joe Lieberman as Chair of the Homeland Security committee when he didn’t offer so much as a public apology for his statements, when he so easily switched his allegiance back to the group that he had so vilified repeatedly on the campaign trail, I took offense, not only at the Democratic caucus who let him off the hook, but at him, for making it clear that his personal honor is a joke, that he never gives more than lip service to anything he claims to care about.

[Which is a bad thing with Democrats, but a good one for Republicans, apparently – Ed.]

I’m guessing that Working Assets means this as a tongue-in-cheek joke, but it’s falling flat on me right now. It’s a little too soon for that kind of humor, especially since Lieberman is in a position where he can do great damage to progressive causes if he desires…

AIRMAN CRONAUER:  “You in more dire need of a &*(#(#$*#()^^^^^^CARRIER INTERRUPTED #*$#*(#))))))++++++++  than any human ever born”. 

When I was a kid, I pretty much associated “teachers” with “women”.  My teachers in first through fourth grade were all women – my fourth-grade teacher had in fact been my father’s fourth-grade teacher as well (which used to awe me, although now I see that it’s really not that big a deal). 

But then in fifth grade, I was astounded when I got Mr. Buchholtz’ class.  Mr. B was a big, football-player kind of a guy.  He was a Navy veteran, and had spent time in Vietnam.  He told war stories, rode a Honda 500 (or a Fiat X1/9) to school, showed us karate moves, took us out to his family’s farm for a day of running around in the countryside, led the games of tag football on the playground…

…in other words, he’d probably be fired, in this day and age; he showed us how to make toy guns, he had a paddle that he used liberally if kids sassed him, he took no BS…

…and was a godsend to a bunch of 11 year old boys who’d been cooped up in classrooms all day.  Suddenly, it was safe to want to roughhouse (indeed, Mr. B revelled in roughhousing, frequently wrestling with piles of gleeful fifth-grade boys and whuppping all our butts), to run and yell and be boys in school. 

Of course, modern feminism has succeeded in basically feminizing the classroom, nowhere more than in elementary school.  It’s made school a fairly hostile place to be a boy (or at least a boy that doesn’t learn to be verbal and facially-compliant with a regime hostile to their emotional makeup), to the point where being  a boy is going to get a kid slapped into “Special Education”.  And as a result, boys are eschewing education; they drop out of secondary school in numbers that dwarf girls’; in higher education, young women currently outnumber men by a significant margin that looks likely to climb to close to 3:2 in the not-too-distant future.

Both trends – the feminization of the Educational Academy and the falling numbers of men seeking higher education – would seem to be exacerbating this problem – the dire shortage of male teachers:

At [principal Thomas DeVito’s] Ferryway School, where boys slightly outnumber girls, male teachers are a rare species, presiding over only four of the 35 classrooms.

“The district has a job fair every year, but we don’t see a lot of guys,” DeVito said.

The problem is especially acute, he said, when it comes to hiring elementary teachers at his school, which spans kindergarten through eighth grade. For those jobs, he said, “I don’t think I’ve interviewed any males in the last five or six years.”

The same scenario is playing out across the state and the nation, where the number of male teachers is dwindling despite a recent focus on drawing more men into classrooms. In Massachusetts, only 24 percent of teachers last year were men compared with 32 percent 15 years ago, according to the most recent state data. Nationally, a quarter of teachers are men, a 40-year low.

Here’s the question:  why does this surprise people?  After thirty years of making not merely the educational establishment and academy, but education itself hostile to boys and the very notion of masculinity, why would any guy go into the field?

Of course, there is [Daschle on] “concern” [/Daschle off]:

At a time of increased emphasis on improving student achievement, especially in inner-city schools, education specialists are raising serious concerns that male flight from classrooms could be hindering boys’ ability to learn.

A study by an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College, which has been gaining national attention in the debate over single-gender classes, found that boys learned better in reading – a subject in which they typically struggle – when teamed with a male teacher. Similarly, girls did better in math and science with a female teacher.

And lest you think the piece will skirt the real issue…:

Even more eyebrow-raising, the research questioned whether a predominantly female teaching force is causing more boys to be labeled as behavior problems because women may struggle in handling the sometimes rambunctious nature of boys. It also questioned whether boys may respond better to a coachlike sternness found in some male teachers.

But in an interview, the study’s author, Thomas S. Dee, cautioned against a knee-jerk reaction of simply recruiting more male teachers.

“The more appropriate avenue to explore is how do we make teachers more productive for all students,” Dee said. “I’d rather have my son with a great teacher who is female than a mediocre teacher who is male. Teacher quality often gets lost in this debate.”

…well, OK.  They sorta skirted it.  Boys are incredibly complex; they certainly deserve better than what the educational-industrial complex has dished out for them this past few decades (I’ve written about this at some length).

Of course, it’s not all structural imbalance; it’s also bigotry borne of hysteria:

Yet the shrinking number of men can be chalked up to another reason: Some men worry that overly protective parents might falsely accuse them of being pedophiles because teaching, especially in the lower grades, is still largely perceived as a woman’s job, requiring a nurturing personality that supposedly is not common among men. In other words, something must be wrong with the guy who likes working with children.

Whether by hysteria or structure, this is a self-perpetuating vortex. 

As we’ve seen in California since the election, the only really acceptable form of discrimination is against blasphemers against PC – in this case, Christians in the Castro District in San Francisco:

At first, they just shouted at us, using crude, rude, and foul language and calling us names like “haters” and “bigots”. Since it was a long night, I can’t even begin to remember all of the things that were shouted and/or chanted at us. Then, they started throwing hot coffee, soda and alcohol on us and spitting (and maybe even peeing) on us. Then, a group of guys surrounded us with whistles, and blasted them inches away from our ears continually. Then, they started getting violent and started shoving us. At one point a man tried to steal one of our Bibles. Chrisdene noticed, so she walked up to him and said “Hey, that’s not yours, can you please give it back?”. He responded by hitting her on the head with the Bible, shoving her to the ground, and kicking her. I called the cops, and when they got there, they pulled her out of the circle and asked her if she wanted to press charges. She said “No, tell him I forgive him.”

They got video.

I fully expect to see a proposal to make fundamentalist objection to the gay lifestyle declared a hate crime in the next four years.

…have apparently gotten together and tubed same-sex marriage in California:

A measure to once again ban gay marriage in California led Tuesday, throwing into doubt the unions of an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who wed during the last 4 1/2 months.

The Democrats won the election – but even in California, most Americans are conservatives, even if they don’t always vote (or know) it.