Bookworm Room

Back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, when political correctness first floated into the realm of mainstream culture, everyone thought it was the same as being nice or having good manners.  It’s not.  Good manners, to my mind, means assuring that the people around you feel comfortable.  Political correctness means controlling people’s thoughts and actions.  [...]

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American universities pay lip service to multiculturalism and inclusiveness, but one of their despicable secrets is that, while conservative and Jewish speakers are ignored or shouted down with no push-back whatsoever from the university administrations, pro-Palestinian speakers are given a bully pulpit.  The worse their rhetoric — the more anti-inflammatory and antisemitic — the more [...]

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Do you have any spare change lying around?  Yes?  I thought you might. My dollar coins say “In God We Trust.” My dollar bills say “In God We Trust.” My quarters say “In God We Trust.” My dimes say “In God We Trust.” My nickels say “In God We Trust.” My pennies say “In God [...]

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Ted Rall, who is to the left of Left, reveals today’s dirty little secret: It feels a little weird to write this, like I’m telling tales out of school and ratting out the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. But it’s true: there’s less room for a leftie during the Age of Obama than there was under Bush. [...]

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Everyone should read this speech. Everyone. While the media swooned about Obama’s Cairo speech (in which he lauded veiling women and ignored thousands of years of Jewish ties to Israel), and Obama’s race speech (in which he insulted white people), and Obama’s recent immigration speech (in which he demonized people who fear the risks to [...]

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There is much breast-beating amongst the usual suspects about the fact that an Orthodox Jewish newspaper deleted all female images from the Situation Room picture the White House issued after bin Laden’s death.  Hillary was one of those deleted. The deletion was technically a violation of federal policy, but given the way in which people [...]

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Barry Rubin sounds a tocsin at Pajamas Media about the way in which political correctness is slowly but steadily eroding free speech in America, leaving us to speech norms more commonly seen in repressive Middle Eastern countries.  As he explains, there’s a reason “the authors of the American Constitution forbade limits on freedom of speech:  [...]

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I agree completely with Michael, who blogs at Political Commentator and is a Watcher’s Council member: He’s a very solid speaker, sounding more controlled and stable than the gal interviewing him.

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If you’re old enough to have lived through the 1970s, you recognize my post title:  Gilda Radner’s famous character Roseanne Roseannadanna would let loose with a foolish tirade, and then wrap it up by saying “It’s always something — if it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”  Someone needs to resurrect that character, or at least [...]

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If you feel like a little good news amidst the worries about fallout from Egypt, this might do the trick.

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The Enlightenment was born in Europe and, clearly, will die there too: Hat tip:  Small Dead Animals

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I really enjoyed the beginning of this opinion piece from the Guardian: When Barack Obama addressed a shocked nation in Tuscon, Arizona, yesterday, he deployed the only weapon left to a crippled presidency: the power of rhetorical cliche. He deployed it brilliantly. “Together we thrive,” he cried meaninglessly. “For all our imperfections, we are full [...]

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Is there a cause and effect between hate speech and violence?  These tweeters are certain there is, and they believe that Palin should be tortured, given loathsome diseases and killed for having the temerity to engage in (unidentified) hate speech: Hat tip:  The Jawa Report

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I’ve been reminding people on facebook that censoring speech doesn’t censor ideas, it just allows governments to abuse people.  That’s a point that’s worth remembering. Garry Hamilton makes another excellent point about the relationship between speech and action.

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In the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque, the Left’s trump card has been the language in the First Amendment stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”  All of us correctly understand this to mean that government cannot create a state faith, nor can it dictate the religious tenets of [...]

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The mosque debate in America has been instructive when it comes to Leftist rhetorical tactics.  Ordinary Americans make an argument — “the mosque is inappropriate on secular sacred ground.”  The Left then responds, not substantively, but with personal attacks — “you’re racist, Islamophobic, xenophobic and stupid.” If you think this approach to debate is limited [...]

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Sometimes, to their creator’s dismay, ideas take on a life of their own.  In the wake of Comedy Central’s decision to censor a South Park episode that didn’t actually draw Mohamed, but merely suggested the possibility of doing so, Molly Norris came up with the idea of “everybody draw Mohamed Day.” Then, terrified by the [...]

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In 1931, Nancy Langhorne Astor’s son Robert Gould Shaw III was arrested for committing a homosexual act (in a park, I believe).  This was a continuation of a long-standing British public policy of prosecuting “sodomists.”  Arguably the most famous prosecution was that against Oscar Wilde, for public indecency.  The trial, scandal and imprisonment destroyed the [...]

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In the early television era, one of the most innovative and imaginative shows around was Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone.  Certain episodes were so compelling that they entered the popular imagination, and are familiar to anyone over 30.  One of the most brilliant episodes, shown in 1961, was It’s a Good Life, based upon a [...]

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Unless you’ve been visiting some other planet somewhere in the universe, you already know about Comedy Central’s South Park debacle.  That’s the one, of course, that saw Comedy Central, the oh-so-hip-and-edgy (meaning often offensive) television station brutally censoring a South Park episode that implied that Mohamed was walking around wearing a bear suit — when [...]

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Here’s a list of the biggest spenders in California politics for the past decade: These 15 groups spent more than a combined $1 billion over the past 10 years to influence public policy: – California Teachers Association: $211.8 million – California State Council of Service Employees: $107.4 million – Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: [...]

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I’m working on a post, but thought you all would find this interesting in the meantime: From AJ Strata, something that’s not just interesting, but is also terrifying:  the terrorists are out there and, having gotten the measure of our new president and his administration, they are massing for war. If you needed a reminder [...]

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Alan Grayson, last heard of when he accused Republicans of backing a health care plan that told sick people to die, is at it again: Not everyone thinks imitation is the best form of flattery. In fact, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando took such offense at a parody website aimed at unseating him that [...]

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You remember Prop. 8, don’t you?  That was the successful California ballot initiative that said that, in America, marriage is between a man and a woman.  Immediately after November 4, gay rights activists sued.  So far, the courts are being helpful.  A court in the Northern District of California just ordered the Prop. 8 backers [...]

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Twenty-four hours after the fact, the AP finally figured out that, maybe, just maybe, it’s worth reporting that the White House tried to freeze out a news organization that challenges it, and was stopped only because other news organizations realized that, if they let this one pass, they would forever be barred from voicing any [...]

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