THAT'S YOUR BED, NOW LIE IN IT.

Tom Knighton effectively tells the woke leftists that if they want to exercise their second amendment rights in service of their revolution, they're on their own.

No, you don’t get to vilify millions of Americans, insulting everything from their intelligence to genital size, and then expect us to save you from the aftermath of your own decisions. That’s not how it works. That’s not our line in the sand.

Sure, some will take issue with what the feds are doing. Others will applaud it. Many others will be somewhere in between. None of that matters, because none of them are going to lift a finger to grab their guns and put their lives at risk over your own stupidity.

On the other hand, bring your woke stupidity into Normal neighborhoods at your own risk.

ON MY WORKBENCH.

As long as there's noplace to go, there's a backlog of small projects to work off, and the hot spells are simply more reason to head down cellar where it's cool.

The latest effort has been making rail worthy a string of vintage metal freight cars that have come from a variety of sources over the years.  In the early days of O Scale there were all sorts of ideas about how best to mount trucks on freight cars.  I'm partial to a captive 4-40 nut, but soldering those into tight spaces is a bit of a challenge.

It might have been doing things the hard way to leave the frame soldered together rather than drill the holes, unsolder the end parts, mount the nuts, and put the whole works back together on the one closest to the camera.  Note the two cars behind, it's somewhat simpler to drill the holes (Number 31 clearance drill) and attach the nuts, then attach the whole works to the channel section that is the frame.

It was relatively easy to put the diagonal bolster braces in place, getting those captive nuts in was a two hour exercise involving some burned fingers and language you don't want me to repeat.

Here's the string, some still awaiting an improvised coupler installation (my standard is Kadees, drill and tap 2-56 or add more captive nuts as required) and a trip to the sink to remove flux and tarnish, and then to the paint booth.  Yes, there are collectors who would prefer to run 'em in their brass state.  Keeping track of what car goes to what industry, though, is not so easy.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY.

I'm not sure how much of a thing that is, although July 25 is the most logical date to assign to the event itself.  If you've been good and kept your health, there are a few summer pleasures that are available, within limitations.

Today, for instance, the Illinois Railway Museum is again open to the public.  Those long interurban trains they are able to roll out are just the thing for social distancing.  Tickets are by reservation only.  Some of the highlight trains will be kept in the barns, as frequent sanitizing of vintage fabrics might be ineffective as well as bad for the upholstery.

On Tuesday, the DeKalb Municipal Band will commence a shortened schedule of concerts.

The concerts will take place at 7:30 pm on July 28th; August 4th, 11th, and 18th. Although the concerts continue to be free to the public, all concert-goers must book their reservation online in advance. Seats will be limited and will be assigned to maintain safe distance between visitors. This will allow concert organizers to keep control of the number of people gathering in one place. The area around the Hopkins Park Band Shell will be fenced off, with three entry points for visitors to check-in.

Face coverings must be worn in the bandshell area until concert-goers are seated and anywhere social distancing cannot be maintained. The band will be set up differently and perform with fewer players to accommodate social distancing and ensure the safety of the performers. Due to the popularity of the concerts, and the safety restrictions in place with Phase 4 guidelines, the public is discouraged from sitting in groups in the grassy areas surrounding the bandshell and to respect the ticketing process.

I wonder if that precludes bringing your own lawn chairs or picnics, as some people have done.

Here's a look at what turned out to be longtime band director Dee Palmer's final concert.

We'll see if weather permits any excursions to one of these shows, or to the museum. The humidity this weekend is making me about as energetic as an entrepreneur during the Obama presidency.

TODAY IN TECHNOCRATIC FOLLIES.

Andrew Cuomo, serial screwup, is the gift that never stops giving.  "He's governing a state of more than 19 million people. He's trying to contain a COVID-19 outbreak. He's classifying which foods are substantial enough for a meal."  A bar that has the nerve to sell hot wings in order to qualify as a restaurant, and thus be allowed to stay open under the latest set of ukases from Prince Andrew, is engaging in a subterfuge to evade Proper Order.  That's clearly Twitchy material.  "Eating a sandwich will keep you from getting the coronavirus, but chicken wings will not."  The ukase is not playing well in Buffalo, or with the chains that offer wings and beer to go with all the televised sports.

That might all be in good fun, but for the fact that the governor made a series of decisions based on bad modelling.

In light of these findings, it’s difficult to determine which is more of an affront to the families of the thousands upon thousands of victims of New York State’s handling of COVID-19. Is it the shameless self-aggrandizing and celebration by Cuomo, whose policies led to the devastation of the elderly in long-term care facilities? Is it Dr. Anthony Fauci’s commendation of those policies? Or is it the legal protection of the entities that abetted such widespread demise?

Ultimately, there is plenty of blame to go around. But one thing is certain: the deep human costs of this virus and its corresponding policies have been exacerbated by blind hubris and unfounded pride––which, to no small extent, saw their expression in the conceit of rule by models. Though it might be too little too late, diligent reflection and readjustment in future pandemic combat efforts will be the only way to honor those who were lost so unnecessarily.

With the ever-more Maoist and ever-more desperate mandarins in Pekin casting about for new plagues to let loose on the world, that reflection and readjustment ought be top of mind.

EUROPE'S LIONEL FREIGHT CARS.

European loading gauges and axle-load limitations sometimes lead to design compromises.

Unattributed photograph retrieved from Railway Gazette.

Doesn't that look like the kind of foreshortening Lionel used to do with freight cars to make them work on O-27 track around the Christmas tree?  Here's its job, in the forests of the Great North.  "Arkhangelsk Pulp & Paper Mill’s transport business Arkhbum has taken delivery of an additional batch of Type 13-6852-02 flat wagons from United Wagon Co for timber traffic, taking its fleet of wagons produced at the Tikhvin factory to 319."  It's prudent to stand well back from trains hauling logs, as, stakes and chains notwithstanding, every so often a log can bounce off.

SHAKING OUT THE EXCESS CAPACITY?

The budgetary nightmares continue at the University of Akron.  The public radio affiliate at Kent State has details.  There's analysis in a predictable vein from World Socialist Web Site, complete with news of carnage nearby.

On the same day as the Board of Trustees vote at Akron, faculty at Youngstown State University (YSU) overwhelming voted in favor of issuing a strike notice. The faculty at YSU, which like the University of Akron is part of the University System of Ohio, have expressed frustration with the sudden shift to remote learning and decision to lay off over 50 classified and professional staff this summer.

It's not a good time to be a penguin or a kangaroo, and the ominous signs might apply to the Mid-American Conference more generally.

Akron is a particular flash point because it is cutting so deep, and because of intense and very public faculty opposition to its plan. That opposition includes the faculty union’s contention that the administration is privileging athletics over academics, to the detriment of students.

“For years, the university has disinvested in academics while simultaneously losing millions on its athletics programs,” Akron’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors wrote in a position paper about proposed cuts earlier this month. “In the spirit of shared sacrifice, we believe that it’s time to move to a responsible and sustainable model of funding for athletics.”

While the vast majority of university revenue comes from academics in the form of student tuition and fees, the union wrote, its athletic programs are another story. According to the AAUP chapter’s accounting, Akron has been losing an average of $21.5 million per year on athletic programs for the last 10 years, topping $215 million in lost revenue during that time. Among other options, the AAUP advocates leaving Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Such losses, paired with the cuts of academics, are “no longer defensible,” the AAUP wrote in its report. This is “not fair to our students, who are subsidizing athletics at a higher rate than students at other Ohio public universities.”

Akron only recently replaced the vintage Rubber Bowl stadium with something newer.

Maybe it's time to consider a few fallen flag railroads, and ask whether restructurings might include some abandonments.  Consider one of the short lines that became part of what is now Norfolk Southern: Akron Canton and Youngstown.  It ran between Akron and Delphos, but those other cities were just outside yard limits.  Likewise, readers with long memories might recall James Michener's references to train traffic disrupting downtown Kent: a real ferroequinologist could tell you that those were Erie-Lackawanna trains getting into or out of the yards in Akron.  (We can relate in DeKalb, when things jam up in Chicago there are freight trains all the way west to Creston.)  In like manner to people in Wisconsin politics wondering about campuses at Eau Claire, Menomonie, Stevens Point, and River Falls, there might be people in Ohio politics wondering about that cluster of campuses at Kent, Akron, and Youngstown.

MAKE THEM PLAY BY THEIR OWN RULES.

Last night, insurgent broadcaster Tucker Carlson signed off by raising the possibility that a human-interest story New York's Times was preparing might have been an attempt to make the location of his house public.

So why is The New York Times doing a story on the location of my family’s house? Well, you know why. To hurt us, to injure my wife and kids so that I will shut up and stop disagree with them. They believe in force. We’ve learn that. Two years ago, a left-wing journalism was publicized our home address in Washington. A group of screaming antifa lunatics showed up while I was at work. They vandalized our home. They threatened my wife. She called 911 while hiding in a closet. A few weeks later they showed up again at our house. For the next year, they sent letters to our home threatening to kill us. We tried to ignore it and felt cowardly to sell our home and leave. We raised our kids there the neighborhood and we loved it. But in the end that’s what we did. We have four children. It just wasn’t worth it.

I don't know whether his signoff included the contemporary equivalents of "wounds my heart with a monotonous languor" or "John has a long moustache."

So, how would Murray Carpenter and his photographer Tristan Spinski feel if we told you where they live, if we put pictures of their homes on the air? What if we publicized the home address of everyone of the soulless robot editors at The New York Times who assigned and manage this incitement to violence against my family? What about the media editor, Jim Windolf? We could do that. We know who they are. Would that qualify as journalism? We doubt they’d consider it journalism. They’d call it criminal behavior if we did it and that tells you everything.

Whether that was a signal to the insurgency, or not, the insurgents are mobilized.  "Within hours, an army of conservative Twitter accounts started publicly posting the address and personal information of the reporter Carlson identified as the story’s writer. Many encouraged people to harass the reporter."  Pitchforks and torches.

Because as we’ve seen from the [Southern Poverty Law Center] inspired shooting at the Family Research Council and the shooting of Steve Scalise and others by a Bernie bro, the political left is mostly composed of emotionally broken and mentally unstable people who will literally try to kill you because of your politics.

That said, if this nonsense is going to end it is only going to end by our side upping the ante. We have to make it painful for The New York Times and douchenozzles like Andrew Kaczynski to operate.

We'll see what's on insurgent television tonight.

CONFESS YOUR SINS.

Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg offers a second riposte to the casual gaslighting of the woke scolds.

“If You’re ‘On The Fence’, You’re Complicit.”

Nein, nyet, no, pound sand.  We're not eight year olds at catechism.

SHE'S GOT NATURALLY CURLY HAIR.

That's part of the traditional costume of Irish step dancers these days.  But what happens when that naturally curly hair has African roots?

At some point in May [Morgan Bullock] started posting videos of herself dancing in traditional Irish style to non-Irish music by artists like Beyonce and Michael Jackson. Those videos got a big response from people around the world, some were viewed over a million times. Most of the reactions were positive but because Bullock is black a subset of scolds also began saying what she was doing was cultural appropriation of Irish dancing.

There's a cheerful ending to this story: she got a touring gig with Riverdance, and the Embassy of Ireland noted, "No, this is cultural appreciation. One of the great qualities of our culture is its dynamism. We’re blessed to have artists as brilliantly talented as Morgan engaging with, & enriching, traditional Irish art forms."

Well, good.  Little by little, the woke scolds will be pushed back.  I hereby use whatever authority I have as the Burgomeister of Gloucester to allow anyone who wishes to attempt a Schuhplattler to give it a go.

EXPORTING THE GLADIATORS TO CHINA.

Yesterday, I suggested that classicist V. D. Hanson missed an opportunity to draw parallels between the gladiator academies of Rome and today's professional basketball.  He's still thinking about professional basketball, today about the reluctance of the managers or players to call out the Han supremacist state run by the mandarins in Pekin.

This growing NBA–China nexus couldn’t come at a more embarrassing time for the league.

During the COVID-19 epidemic, the national quarantine, and the demonstrations, violence, and cultural revolution that has followed the death of George Floyd, the NBA has not been shy about political activism. Players, coaches, ex-players, and obsequious sports writers have all virtue-signaled the nation about America’s supposed sins.

Indeed, part of the NBA woke/hip/cool/edgy brand is to trash the “establishment” that has ensured the foundations of its multibillion-dollar-empire. In scary marketing fashion, NBA players, current and retired, and their acolytes in popular culture have veneered their 1950s-style corporate fealty with woke talk about BLM, the “Jews,” eugenics, Farrakhan, and the usual totems of “resistance.”

Their basic message for young consumers is that you can hate the man and still wear $400 sneakers — the same way that you can wear a jersey with an edgy logo during the game and then retire at night into your Malibu compound. In the spirit of medieval indulgences, paid to help the sinner enter heaven, the more that the players become corporate cut-out pitchmen, the more they voice left-wing boilerplate to square the circle of being privileged rich people who nonetheless cling to street cred for the sake of advertising.

No one knows how long this 30-year disingenuousness can continue. It may come to a head this fall, when the league will soon deal with some players’ plans to kneel during the national anthem next season. The NBA has approved of individual players wearing politicized slogans on their jerseys — politicized in the sense of trashing the U.S., but not offering an ill word about Chinese Communist atrocities. The message is, “Ridicule your own democracy all you want, but censor your incorrect thoughts about racist and totalitarian China.”

Read on, though, and the possibility that the penny will drop comes to my mind.

The NBA is one of the most elite, exclusive, and coveted professions in America, where players de facto become multimillionaire celebrities — on the theory that pure merit, not race, determines who wins these most-sought-after billets. Again, that is nearly the opposite mindset from that of an Asian-American straight-A, 800-SAT student assuming that by merit she should get into Yale, and thereby “overrepresent” her race in the Ivy League, at the “expense” of other “excluded” groups.

So add up all these divergent facts, and there emerges an inconvenient NBA modus operandi. The hyper-rich players occasionally moan that a mostly white ownership controls mostly black players, while their supporters often invoke plantation imagery, channeling Bryant Gumbel’s now decade-old jibe that, during a player lockdown, former NBA commissioner David Stern acted as if he was a “modern plantation overseer.” A few years later, former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s overt racism, at least in one case, bore out Gumbel’s rant.

The mostly white owners nod that they must do something someday about this owner imbalance. No one dares to say that the progressive players themselves do not care much for the progressive admonition of “looking like America.” And then everyone lives and lets live, to make lots of money.

Money is certainly at the center of these contradictions. For the NBA brand, it seems to make much better business sense to routinely damn democratic, diverse, and free America, but not the racialist, Communist, and outlaw China. The former’s audience is changing, touchy, and shrinking; the latter’s is uniform, predictable, and growing.

Wokeness has lost some market share inside the U.S., but such perceived anti-Americanism helps to win it back — and more — in China. Beijing, of course, sees anti-American-sounding American athletes as high-profile useful idiots — a fact no doubt known to the receptive players and coaches of the NBA who willingly and sincerely play their parts.

I submit, dear reader, that there's a great deal of social waste in identifying the finest basketball players (who have a relatively short service life and are subject to injury) and that the A student who doesn't make the cut at Yale still has a pretty good chance studying chemistry at Michigan or Wisconsin or the University of Spoiled Children (or even Marquette) and sooner or later the wokeness machine will turn its attention to the industrial reserve army playing some pretty good basketball in prison yards, and parallels to the Spartacus Academy, with or without the understanding of classical history.

WHAT THE COMMISSARS MEASURE, THEY GET MORE OF.

We'll open today with what looks like light reading, courtesy of National Review's John O'Sullivan.

A regional commissar in the Union of Soviet Writers was delivering his annual report on the rising production of literature in his province.

“I am proud to announce,” he said, “that this year’s literary output has been outstanding. We have no fewer than 385 novelists working full-time for the proletariat whereas in backward Czarist times, we had only one.”

"Leo Tolstoy."

But you'd better read the whole thing. It starts with Sidney Hook bringing Bertolt Brecht up short over "The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to be shot."  There's a corollary proposition, and it summarizes in one sentence the category error of privilege checking.  "The more talented they are, the more they deserve to be silenced."

I'll change my mind when I see Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes give up their prime-time slots to Rising Stars who have the same world view but less of a following on a regular basis.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.

Sparks from steam locomotives can cause forest fires.  (That's the sort of tort that induced the Coase Theorem.)  If a railroad owns a wide right of way, and it trims the brush on that right of way in order that it not catch fire, has it committed an environmental crime?

Of recent issue is the fire mitigation logging that the railroad has undertaken on its right of way, which the Forest Service has told the railroad to stop work. Also, I understand that the Forest Service has stepped in to prevent the railroad from repairing a washed-out bridge. Given that the Forest Service has sued the railroad for the 2018 416 fire, claiming that its locomotives set the fire, I find a bit of missing logic in telling the railroad to stop fire mitigation efforts. Perhaps if their efforts are not being done as your office prefers, instead of stopping them, your agents could take a helpful stance and advise the railroad on how to proceed. As for the washed-out bridge, I see no role for the Forest Service unless the railroad needs to exceed its right of way.

That's what happens when the government offices are a long way from the affected territory. A few years ago an attempt by the Environmental Protection Agency to mitigate toxic waste in an abandoned mine led to all sorts of toxic waste in the Animas River, which is the waterway the Durango and Silverton follows.  Is government the name for all the things the authorities are incapable of doing for us?

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE PRO SPORTS LABOR MARKET.

Rush Limbaugh, who recently missed an opportunity to make a serious point about pro sports, whiffed on another easy one recently.

Look at the NFL. The NFL is literally afraid of a Marxist, communist organization, literally afraid of it, literally doing anything it can not to make that bunch of people mad at them. The NFL has made it clear that they are no longer the institution and value set that we always thought they were.

You got Drew Brees, quarterback of the New Orleans Saints who tweets his support and love for the American flag and the fact that he will never do anything to disrespect it, and he’s practically drummed out of the league, he’s practically destroyed. He had to apologize four times, his wife had to apologize two times, had to give a bunch of people a bunch of money. All he did was stand up for the flag.

The Philadelphia Eagles have an abject idiot wide receiver named DeSean Jackson, who just tweeted a bunch of things he thought Hitler said, and he said the Jews are gonna come for the blacks, the Jews are gonna wipe out the blacks, the Jews are gonna do this, he thought Hitler said it. He tweeted it. Nobody’s upset. Nobody’s insisting DeSean Jackson be sent someplace to get his mind right.

That's a predictable lapse for a talk radio populist with a background in sports marketing, his fear apparently being that when league officials cater to the political currents of the moment in a way that antagonizes fans, it's not going to turn out well.  As a business analysis, he might even be right: file it under "get woke, go broke."

WHITE GUILT AND BLACK RAGE ARE A TOXIC MIX THAT HELPS NOBODY.

A year ago, we noted criticism of an allegedly inclusive discipline policy in Madison's government schools from a variety of sources that might otherwise be sympathetic to the so-called progressive initiatives.  The policy is still in place, and the predictable consequences follow.

The source of the title quote, though, is yet another so-called progressive experiencing a mugging by reality.  "One of the policy’s sharpest critics is Peter Anderson, a highly regarded Madison liberal who is leading a campaign to toughen classroom discipline."

Apparently, more than a few Madison teachers are taking their pensions or looking for school districts where they can do their jobs.  With the continued spreading of the Wuhan coronavirus now giving school administrators excuses to get paid without even pretending to work, and parents looking for informal ways to set up neighborhood homeschooling centers, perhaps we'll see some of those teachers becoming independent contractors, and that might boost the labor force participation.

CASUAL GASLIGHTING.

Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg has the polite response to claims that silence is violence.

No. It’s not.

Silence – if you catch me silent at all – is me keeping my mouth shut while I figure out what I think, to say nothing of what I’m going to say. Your freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to tell me what I’m going to say.

If your response to that is “there is only one thing to say”, and that’s to agree with your point of view – then most likely you’re trying to logroll and shame people into knocking off all that pesky thinking, and just acquiescing.

Perhaps that's the real reason for ascribing a racial component to logic or the scientific method.  If people are cowed into acquiescing for fear that using logic or evidence is racist per se, it's easier to rule.

That is, in the absence of the less polite responses, including but not limited to profanity, fisticuffs, or buckshot.

THIS IS WHAT I'M GRIPING ABOUT.

At the beginning of the year I posted a generalized gripe about eleemosynary institutions carrying on like spoiled children whose Christmas haul wasn't as big as they would like.  "I'm considering reviewing my donation habits, in particular to reduce funding or end it completely, for any cause, no matter how meritorious, that engages in this form of official-looking begging."

Here's a specific example of the "emulate the utility bill" approach.  "Our records show Habitat for Humanity has not yet received a contribution from you in 2020."  No, and sending a quasi-invoice complete with a menu of "suggested gifts" to choose among, isn't going to expedite anything their way.  Never mind that for $20 or better they have a stuffed toy as a thanks.

What's up, by the way, with the inducements?  I have enough address labels that if I did run a mail order business, I'd never have to have any printed up.  I have enough scratch pads that I'll never have to go to the office supply store to keep the household in grocery lists or project lists for the railroads.  Getting subjunctive, if I had a nickel for every solicitation that includes one, and a time machine, I could do a lot of streetcar riding.

Presumably the people who run the charities are of the view that more people are induced to contribute rather than, as I am, are put off by the evidence of administrative excess all those labels, cards, note pads, nickels, and stickers represent.

DEAD RAIL AT SCALE.

A few weeks ago I showed off the beginnings of a battery-powered remotely controlled diesel set.  Word has reached the Superintendent of something similar that will soon be roaming the rails.  "Wabtec has started conducting factory testing at its Erie plant of a prototype 4 400 hp battery locomotive, ahead of trial operations with BNSF that are planned to take place in the final quarter of this year."  I suppose if I can get used to Macy's operating Gimbel's I can live with the successor to Westinghouse building locomotives at what was General Electric's Erie Works.

Unattributed photo retrieved from Railway Gazette.

That's an interesting compromise to permit rearward visibility whilst providing additional space for the batteries (and ballasting?) rather than build a cowl unit.

Testing is to be undertaken on a 560 km route in California. The battery locomotive will operate in multiple with conventional diesel-electric locomotives between Barstow and Stockton, where a charging station will be installed at BNSF’s Morman Yard.

While the fixed charging station will provide an initial charge, the locomotive has been designed to capture kinetic energy through dynamic braking every time the train slows. The locomotive will use an advanced version of Wabtec’s train energy management software to look at the route ahead and calculate how to best use the available power to reduce the train’s overall fuel consumption. Operation on battery power in yards will also enable the other locomotives to idle or be shut down, reducing local emissions and noise.

In ferroequinology terms, these test runs are going to be over Tehachapi Pass, offering lots of opportunities for electricity to keep its own books; and perhaps on the flatlands between Bakersfield and Stockton the battery motor will suffice to keep the train moving.  In addition, there's no call for overhead catenary or any lugging a diesel engine along the way the hybrid locomotives do.

Now for my Christmas in July wish list: the proof of concept is sufficiently successful that battery electric freight trains become a thing, without any diesels along to help out; and that somebody come up with a regeneration module to extend battery charges in O Scale.

UNDERMINE THEM WITH MOCKERY.

One of the Smithsonian museums posted a silly graphic purporting to identify the elements of "White culture."  They got hammered for it, and they've taken it down.  The image exists in lots of other places, should you want to find it.  As far as I know, nobody broke any windows, tore down any statues, or called for any curators to be fired.  "We have listened to public sentiment and have removed a chart that does not contribute to the productive discussion we had intended."

As far as that "dialogue and discussion" the curators would like to encourage, perhaps they will be receptive to a few reasoned arguments.  Some of the notions the now removed graphic push about identifying features of "whiteness" have long standing among the identity politics vanguardists; there's a passage in Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education where he's asking students to identify elements of "white culture" and when somebody suggests something resembling awareness of consequences he responds "not in my experience."  More to the point though is Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg's observation,

These are traits of Western Civilization – which sprouted in the West, which happens to have been almost entirely white until a few hundred years ago, but could hypothetically have happened anywhere the ideals of individual worth and the value of the individual’s work have caught on. For all the left’s yapping about “historical accidents” and “lotteries of history”, this was the ultimate one, in human terms.

It's like every other evolutionary process: there's mutation, selection, and adaptation, and people who figured out how to balance deferring gratification with not starving, and looking for cause and effect, secured evolutionary advantages over those who did not.  (That's not always easy.)  We've seen enough of the wokesters' strong men in the past couple of months that I'd just as soon not be subjected to their rule.

Likewise, Rush Limbaugh demonstrated once again that simply saying what people in his audience intuited to be true was why his show has been on the air for thirty years.

As I say, these are not white values. They are normal human values. They are the values of Western civilization. They are the values of time-honored decades and millennia of human behavior, the result of the attempt to find a way to live harmoniously, productively, successfully, and happily. That’s what these values are. They are not exclusive to any race. They are exclusive to Western civilization and anti-communism. They are exclusive to societies who wish to be free.

And I am so sick of this stuff being demonized. So let me just start with the list. Some aspects and assumptions of white culture in the U.S. that you are to oppose and be wary of: Rugged individualism, self-reliance. In white America, individual is the primary unit. Independence and autonomy are highly valued and rewarded. Individuals are assumed to be in control of their environment, which leads to you get what you deserve.

Those four things under the topic rugged individualism are opposed by Marxists, communists, and Democrats, and they are considered a threat. Another aspect of white culture and behavior is competition. And if there is anything the left despises, it’s competition, ’cause competition leads to losers. Competition leads to sadness. Competition leads to disappointment. Competition leads to winners. Competition leads to differences. Competition leads to all kinds of sadness and disappointment.

In white culture in the United States, you are to be number one. You are to win at all costs. You are to master and control nature. You must always do something about a situation. You can’t just sit there and do nothing. You have to do something. This is a threat. Decision-making. You are told to make decisions. This is threatening. This is something that’s exclusive to white culture, is decision-making?

Yes, there's a lot of Rush being Rush in there, and yet, he gets to the political economy lesson eventually.

This is the result of human beings living in freedom for a long time and deciding what values and behavioral norms lead to the most productive, the most happy, the most content, the most worthwhile life. The best way to raise kids. These are not things that some single person decided and forced on everybody. This is what society and culture discovered itself living in freedom.

Emergence is messier than that, and yet, his argument is not wrong in the large.

It's enough to make Rod Dreher angry.

I can’t get over this. If you assume that everything these curators say below is true, then you can explain a great deal of the chronic problems within black America. What kind of neighborhood would you expect to have if most of the people in it devalued hard work, rejected the idea that they needed to be on time, refused to defer gratification, did not respect authority, sought out conflict, laughed at politeness, rejected the traditional family model, and so forth? You’d have communities that were beset by crime and generational poverty, without the cultural tools to overcome the chaos. There are plenty of white people in this country who live by similar rules — and they’re chronically poor too.

You can claim the institutions are social constructions, but social construction ought be purposeful, and ineffective constructions ought fall down.  Is that too adult a concept for the people at the Smithsonian?

ALL LIBERAL THINGS DISTORTED.

That's long been a snide characterization of the evening drive time show on public radio, and it's apparently as true today as it was back in the day.  Of course a news service that exists to make degreed listeners whose level of understanding of political economy is that of the typical college sophomore is going to push stories about right wing nationalists hijacking riots allegedly induced by police brutality.

The NPR piece did not take into account the threat to life drivers find themselves in when surrounded by rioters (the name Reginald Denny should ring a bell to any driver who finds themselves in these situations). Instead it classifies such incidents as right-wing extremist attacks.

This is not journalism. It certainly should not be funded by the public. It serves no educational purpose. It’s time for courageous politicians to stand up and demand the elimination of NPR’s public funding.

Dear reader, if you're not receptive to the argument that the use of public money for radio programming is censorship per se, at least consider the possibility that public subsidies for information services aimed at an upscale audience constitute a regressive transfer.

What's funny, though, is that there are apparently people who use public radio as their drive time entertainment.

Broadcast ratings for nearly all of NPR's radio shows took a steep dive in major markets this spring, as the coronavirus pandemic kept many Americans from commuting to work and school. The network's shows lost roughly a quarter of their audience between the second quarter of 2019 and the same months in 2020.

People who listened to NPR shows on the radio at home before the pandemic by and large still do. But many of those who listened on their commute have not rejoined from home. And that threatens to alter the terrain for NPR for years to come, said Lori Kaplan, the network's senior director of audience insights.

Those drivers must have a higher tolerance for boredom than I. The typical public radio segment is soporific as well as sophomoric.  I require something livelier, particularly late in the day.

REAL AMERICANS BUY WHAT THEY WANT.

Or do without when it serves. China Covered Up the COVID Pandemic. Here's How Angry Americans Respond.  "U.S.-China relations appear to be reaching a breaking point. America needs to hold Beijing accountable for its coronavirus malfeasance, its foreign aggression, and its oppression of its own citizens. It seems the American people are already voting with their feet on this issue."

Look, my professional training was as an economist, and I'm intellectually as favorably disposed to the free movement of goods and people as anyone else who has ever helped supervise a dissertation performing a computable general equilibrium analysis of China's accession to the World Trade Organization.  On the other hand, the point of that dissertation, and the second-best-optimality cases for trade wars, have as the unstated assumption that Chinese entrepreneurs will behave like entrepreneurs in markets more generally, something that appears not to be the case where the behavior of the mandarins in Pekin, whether dealing with their national minorities or with the rest of the world, is concerned.

MARQUETTE IS A PRETTY GOOD BASKETBALL SCHOOL.

Dear reader, if you're familiar with Paul Fussell's Class (yes, that's about forty years old now) you'll recognize that calling an institution of higher education a "basketball school" is not a compliment.

In Milwaukee, though, the place enjoys a lot of local esteem, enough so, indeed, that the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, which currently serves more Wisconsin residents than any of the other state campuses (including Madison, once again a safe space for agitators from other states) at several times during my nephew's graduation ceremony mentioned that the university was among the 130-odd R-1 research universities, and the only other one in Wisconsin was "their friendly rivals in Madison."  I thought the man protesteth too much, but it's clear that his remarks were aimed at the corner of Sixteenth and Wisconsin.

But if Marquette can't play the research game, they can play the wokeness game, including calling an enthusiastic matriculant before the Holy Inquisition for daring to question Received Orthodoxy in a Tik Tok video.  The good news is, the Grand Inquisitor did not have her excommunicated, although the Pope, er, Marquette president Michael Lovell, gave Power Line's Scott Johnson the image of a "bland institutional weasel."  Power Line colleague John Hinderaker performed a secular exercise in mortification to expand on the story.

Lovell misleadingly portrayed [matriculant Samantha] Pfefferle as “dar[ing] people to report her to the ‘Marquette board of directors’ while wearing a Marquette shirt,” when in fact she was responding to a threat to have her blacklisted from the university by reporting her to the “Marquette board of directors.” He either never saw the video, or deliberately mischaracterized it. Further, his claim that “In response [to that video], some people examined her other social media posts, finding examples of what they have deemed ‘transphobic and racist’ posts” is false. It reverses the order of events, most likely in order to try to obscure the fact that many Marquette students and others associated with the university attacked Pfefferle viciously simply because she posted a pro-Trump video.

Somebody must have been telling lies about Samantha P., because one fine morning she was called in for a little chat.

Note that neither here nor anywhere else does Lovell identify anything done by Pfefferle that was even remotely objectionable. I have watched all of the videos on her TikTok page–a painful exercise for one who is well outside TikTok’s intended demographic–and there is nothing there that any sane person would characterize as “racist” or “transphobic.” These are just the usual liberal smears against a teenager who dares to hold opinions different from theirs, and is not afraid to express them.

At best, though, l'affaire Pefferle gives the Gannett organization an opportunity to engage in another misleading fact checking exercise. "Marquette University threatened to rescind student’s admission over pro-Trump TikTok video."  Here's how the secular Jesuits cover for the real Jesuits.  "The pro-Trump post was not at issue. Marquette and the people complaining to the university were examining comments on topics like sexuality and immigration in other social media posts."  That fact checking got going because Donald Trump the Younger called Marquette out, and an investigation of prodigious silliness ensued.

One Instagram user launched a campaign to get Pfefferle’s Marquette admission revoked by creating a form letter for people to send to the university’s admission office. That campaign stemmed from another social media post Pfefferle made about not believing a biological man can claim to be a woman, Pfefferle said.

Let the black smoke issue from the Sistine Chapel stove.  "Putting that all together, we are left with a statement that contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. That’s our definition of Mostly False." I suppose that's a better outcome than the national U.S.A. Today fact check that established "some people claim an eagle on a Trump campaign T shirt looks like a Nazi eagle."  (You'll have to check that yourself, dear reader.)

But Marquette are still not home free.  Embattled political science John "Marquette Warrior" McAdams (somebody who Michael Lovell tried to excommunicate, but failed) has been following the fallout, which continues to not put Marquette's administration in a favorable light.  Just keep scrolling.  It's likely there are some supernumeraries among the deanlets, deanlings, and scribes there who are praying most fervently for the plague to subside in order that basketball might resume.

ON SOME WORKBENCHES.

Illinois Railway Museum have restored Ingersoll Rand boxcab diesel 91, one of the first commercially successful 300 horsepower switching locomotives, to its original trucks.  There's still more to do for a proper cosmetic restoration, although having it running again isn't outside the realm of the possible.

Some years ago I posted a comparison of museum projects and home modelling projects, most of which are at about the same stage then as they are now.  There's an Ingersoll-Rand boxcab in a similar status.

That's a rudimentary form of the "China drive" with each can motor turning one axle and the second axle chain driven off the first.  I've tested it, it runs, and everything is synchronized.  There is room for a contemporary command control module in there.

Those are the radiator headers and cooling pipes, and, yes, I intend to build them up.  I did get a picture of the roof of 91 to compare notes.

WILDING, WOKENESS, AND WELFARE DEPENDENCE.

You'd think that if the Democrats and the members of the Permanent Bipartisan Establishment (there is a difference, but sometimes that's not obvious) saw the firing of Donald Trump as desirable, they might do something responsible.  Roger "Tenured Radicals" Kimball sees in their actions anything but responsible behavior.

And that is chiefly for two reasons. First, there are those 63 million voters—perhaps it will be 66 or 68 million this time. Voters whose voices you don’t hear in the pages of the New York Times and whose rigged Google searches and Facebook hot spots somehow leave out of account. They’re sitting at home watching their cities burn, watching monuments to Columbus, to Washington and Thomas Jefferson be defaced or toppled. They see that, and they hear a nonstop litany telling them how racist they are and how evil America is.

And just about now, a great chasm is opening up. The choice, they see, is not so much between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It is between the America they love—that Donald Trump celebrates—and the out-of-control forces of anti-American hatred that, though he does not understand them, Joe Biden manages to blink and nod and gibber around.

Everything that is happening between now and November 3 is about November 3. But the fundamental choice is not really Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It is civilization and America on one side, anarchy and woke tyranny on the other. The Democrats thought they could ride the tiger to victory. Instead, they will be consumed by the monster they created but could not control.

All Democrats had to do is not be crazy, but somehow that Coalition of the Ascendant has become what Rush Limbaugh has long claimed: clients to be kept dependent.  I mean, when the perpetually gloomy J. H. Kunstler writes this:

I didn’t vote for [Our President] last time, but I would vote for him this time to keep the Democratic Party out of power. There’s a lot to not love about Mr. Trump in his persona and manner. There’s a great deal more to fear about the prospect of Democratic Party control of government. Their enmity to free speech cannot be doubted after a decade of promoting cancel culture. Their appetite for coercion is at odds with the Bill of Rights. Their bad faith and dishonesty have been on display through all the concocted melodramas of RussiaGate and its offshoots. Their economic program is a mashup of all the failed central planning regimes from the bygone 20th century and is wholly inconsistent with the new imperatives to downscale and re-localize the real productive activities of daily life in this country.

Beyond Mr. Trump’s deformities of personal presentation, I am more in favor with the blunt outlines of his policies. I’m for strict control of the nation’s borders and frankly for reduced immigration. Globalism is clearly winding down and Mr. Trump’s drive to produce more of what we need here in America is in step with that reality.

I believe he's voting in New York, which is probably not in play, giving him the option of a protest vote and yet relying on local production while limiting immigration isn't exactly what a Libertarian or Green manifesto offers.

YOU'D BETTER GET TO WORK ON THOSE BEAM TRANSPORTERS.

Some years ago, Canadian National purchased the Elgin Joliet and Eastern Railroad as a way of tying together their former Soo Line, er, Wisconsin Central; Illinois Central; and Grand Trunk Western properties, the better to through-route cargo from origin to destination without handing it off to a transfer railroad in Chicago.  The project worked at least as well as expected, enough so that CNR have wanted to add trackage to the formerly single-track line, the better to move trains, as well as to hand off interchange to the likes of Canadian Pacific southeast of Elgin, or Union Pacific at West Chicago.  That's not playing well in the likes of Barrington (where CNR crosses a less heavily used Union Pacific line) or Hoffman Estates.  "The group FARE (Families Against Railway Expansion) contends that the double tracking will result in additional, longer, and faster trains, and will create more opportunities for locomotives to idle near homes. This will mean a significant increase in noise, vibration, air pollution and safety hazards, the group says."  Um, the point of the second track is to have trains spending more time moving and less time waiting at the end of the existing sidings to advance to the next siding.

The proposed second main track runs just to the east of Shales Parkway, which begins on the south side of Hoffman Estates and runs to the Grant Highway expressway on the east edge of Elgin.  But the alternative to the freight train is not welcome there, either.

Property owners want the city of Elgin to turn a portion of Shales Parkway, between East Chicago Street and U.S. 20, into a local-traffic-only roadway to cut down on excessive truck traffic.

“The heavy truck traffic is noisy,” said Robert Sumoski, who’s owned property on East Chicago Street for 27 years. “It’s dirty, from their cargo and emission, it’s dangerous to the local people and it’s detrimental to the roadway.”

People who live and work in the area don’t want to hinder businesses along Shales Parkway, but want restrictions to limit the road to just local traffic and local deliveries, Sumoski said. “We hope that with this restriction, it’s a start.”

“I’ve seen the traffic along Shales Parkway and East Chicago Street transition from a quiet, slow-paced, mostly automobile traffic to something that resembles a busy highway,” he said.

Some of that truck traffic is diverting to get around construction (I'm trying to remember when there last wasn't any construction along the Grant Highway, and there was a nasty project on Illinois 59 paralleling Shales to the east until recently) and some of that has to be supporting the package deliveries the locals want to keep coming.

As that neighborhood is pretty far from any commercial waterways, if the trains can't run and the trucks can't run, it's going to be a lot of work for bicycle messengers or wagon drivers until that beam transporter is working.

I ABJURE CANCEL CULTURE, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS I ABJURE PUBLICLY AGREEING WITH HIM.

Just when you thought 2020 couldn't get any weirder, you get a bunch of people who think their credentials alone (note: they don't, not any more than having a house makes you middle class) give them Moral Authority to stand up for what used to be bourgeois conventions with a public letter in Harper's (once upon a time the Very Holy Writ of Boston Culture) which worked just fine until some of the signatories notice that some of the other signatories were guilty of Wrong Think.  Then it became stuff for Twitchy.  "It seems as though some of the cool kids didn’t know some uncool kids, like the notoriously transphobic <sarc> J.K. Rowling would be signing too. So in a piece about the open exchange of ideas, signatories are getting called out for allowing the open exchange of ideas by other signatories."  The good news is, a few people understand that an open exchange of ideas is more productive when there is disagreement.

New Yorker staff writer Malcom Gladwell, another signee, also responded to [J. F.] Boylan, [of New York's Times, of course she's going to carp, if she doesn't want to be the next one purged] observing that he “signed the Harpers letter because there were lots of people who also signed the Harpers letter whose views I disagreed with.”

“I thought that was the point of the Harpers letter,” he added.

That's obviously a repressive form of tolerance, and it must be suppressed.  Note, though, it's Vox, where the soy- and estrogen-fueled virtue signalling is causing dissension in the office.

Vox editor and cofounder Matthew Yglesias is drawing public backlash from colleagues after signing an open letter endorsing free speech and pushing back against the "stifling atmosphere" in some corners of the media.

Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff tweeted a letter she said she had sent to Vox editors stating that Yglesias's decision to sign the letter—which she said was also signed by several "anti-trans" critics—made her feel "less safe" at the publication.

In Woke World, words are violence, therefore words appearing to concur with the words of people this critic feels largely criticized by suffice to make her less safe.  Than what?  Having the statement appear without any endorsements, in which case she could gripe that silence is also violence, in this case the silent concurrence of office mates (or whatever you use to describe conference calls these days) that might quietly agree with J. K. Rowling?  Undermine them with mockery.  Read Ed "Captain Ed" Morrissey for the details.

Reason's Jesse Singal, who also signed the letter, and is not backing down, offers a defense of the statement, whether as an endorsement of traditional norms of discourse, a rebuke of the notion of liberating tolerance, or simply to tell the crazies to get a grip.  "The people furious at this letter largely have genuine ideological problems with liberal norms and laws regarding free speech." Yes, which is why you have a populist insurgency in the first place.  Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen, on the other hand, suggests that the letter might be better understood as an attempt by remnants of that Credentialed Class to exert their authority.  "So in the Straussian sense it is actually a letter about the limits and impotence of true free speech, and the need to be constrained by social consensus."  Ultimately, consensus is emergent, and mob authority or Expert Authority ultimately runs into reality.

The best thing to do might be what Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg suggests, "Part of me thinks that if we just step back for a bit, the American left will just destroy itself and leave the rest of us alone."  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

STUDENT CAREER SUCCESS BEGINS ON THE HARDWOOD.

The season might have ended unambiguously for the Northern Illinois women's basketball team (any team still active in conference tournaments when basketball led the way on social distancing can think of itself as a champion, right?) and yet two of the senior honor students will continue to play, this time for pay.  "Former Northern Illinois University women's basketball student-athletes Courtney Woods and Ninni Salmi have signed professional contracts to play overseas in Australia and Sweden respectively." That gets both players closer to their home towns of Brisbane, Queensland; and Kauhajoki, Finland. Well done.

TIME TO RESTORE A STATE OF GOOD REPAIR IN HIGHER EDUCATION.

Let's start with some risible nonsense from the aptly-named Derisa Grant, who has enough special ed credentials to be a regular advise columnist for Inside Higher Ed.  Wade through a lot of the usual stuff about identities, and the continuing obsession with cultural competence, until you hit peak foolishness.

For example, in my conversations with STEM faculty members, I often hear that their disciplines are evidence-based and identity-free. But when prodded, those same instructors might admit to not assigning readings with women as the lead authors, to assuming a level of prior knowledge in introductory classes that favors students from upper-middle-class high schools or to having group projects in which female students often assume a housekeeping role (e.g., note taker). In other words, these instructors eventually admit that underrepresented students do not introduce identity into the classroom, but rather identity is always present in the classroom. Identity is enacted through readings, assignments, classroom structures and classroom norms -- choices made and identities prioritized by faculty members.

Why the chromosomal makeup of the lead authors of readings matters so much I've never understood.  That a good professor might help an inquisitive student of any ancestry irrespective of who is writing the articles or chapters is simply proper practice.  The real crime, though, is in the failure of the common schools to inculcate the proper habits of mind in neighborhoods that aren't upper-middle-class in attitude (it not being hard to find well-to-do-neighborhoods with as little respect for learning as the author apparently senses in those nontraditional students: is anybody else as impatient as I am with this easy equation of first-generation-nontraditional and unprepared?)  The essay gets even sillier from there, finally cancelling that lead author argument thusly.  "[Properly conditioned faculty] wouldn’t just believe, for example, that including a sole Toni Morrison text to represent Black writers in a literature class or asking gender pronouns in a science class will make these courses more inclusive."

Minding the Campus's Robert Weissberg spells out the path toward repair.

Today’s political brainwashing must be replaced with good, solid, plain instruction. The kind with an emphasis on discipline and hard work, which were once standard motherhood and apple-pie virtues in American schools. Teach American history without a litany of identity politics grievances. Teach grammatically correct English without the drivel about it being a form of white oppression. Our schools should teach literacy and numeracy, not wokeness.

While the status quo is not good for American K-12 education, it does, however, present opportunities for hundreds of financially troubled colleges and universities. They can create an alternative universe of traditional schools of education whose clear-thinking graduates will be snatched up by those school districts whose parents are tired of, for example, third graders “discussing” their personal pronouns in anticipation of gender transition.

That's hyperbolic, and yet, there's likely a marketing opportunity for colleges of education and for school districts, that is, if they can break the tyranny of the accreditation cartels. But in a world of teacher shortages, which Mr Weissberg suggests is the current reality, perhaps colleges of education that aren't pushing potted political economy, and school districts that aren't enabling disruptive behavior and calling it equity, might have hiring advantages.

HOW LITTLE THINGS HAVE CHANGED.

Power Line's Scott Johnson suggests "President Trump has taken the side of the United States."  Pray that V. D. Hanson is correct when he speculates, "So each day, ill-defined groups of Americans silently drift into the 'I can’t take this insanity anymore' camp."

That appears to be implicit in Mr Johnson's thinking.  "We can infer several things: 1) Trump was effective. 2) 'Dark' means he spoke about things the Left would prefer that voters not focus on. 3) The Left thinks it will lose the culture war."

But, as Steven Hayward notes in a separate Power Line post,  "The elite intelligentsia of the country are turning against the country—in science, in politics, in the fundaments of patriotism. How can we not pay for this?"

Blunt is not incorrect.

COMING TO GRIPS WITH ADMINISTRATIVE USURPATIONS.

Tenure is dead, according to John Warner.

Tenure as policy is primarily a byproduct of the corporatized university, but in my view it is also the consequence of generations (literally) of tenured faculty failing to exercise their tenured muscles by resisting policies -- such as administration arbitrarily classifying some instructional jobs as ineligible for the supposedly necessary protections of tenure -- in a way that asserted their power and checked the growth of the corporatized university.

Given the strength and power of the forces aligned against faculty, I am sympathetic to the notion that it’s possible they couldn’t have done much to change the tide anyway, though it’d be awfully interesting to go back 30 or so years with the knowledge we have today and see if we could convince enough tenured folks to hold the line when there was still some hope.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to find a cohort less disposed toward collective action than college professors. The work is almost literally done sprinting side by side, not always in competition, but definitely not in cooperation. Those who sacrifice for the greater good are those least likely to earn the perk of tenure. The incentives just don’t align.

That's one possibility.  Tenured faculty had an opportunity to hold the line fifteen years ago, but virtue signalling at the expense of education was the more popular course, as well as apparently harmonizing with this greater good.

DON'T BE A USEFUL IDIOT.

Brad Polumbo reminds readers that a policy position is not necessarily evil because people who might have evil intentions are among those advocating it.

Many conservatives insist Black Lives Matter is a Marxist, anti-police, radical organization that wants to tear down America. Meanwhile, most liberals simply view Black Lives Matter as a heroic movement and powerful slogan signaling support for racial justice and opposition to police brutality.

Both are right. There is Black Lives Matter™️, and there is “black lives matter.”

Purity tests among true believers, or among people who spend lots of time in their social media silos, are probably not constructive.

It may well be true that in particular conservative circles, everyone is well aware of the obscure history of the Black Lives Matter founders’ Marxist roots. But the average person on the street and the average person who shares the hashtag are most certainly not. And the movement itself has become something much bigger, broader, and more benevolent than the original organization.

However, it’s by no means just conservatives who err in their approach to Black Lives Matter. For one, many on the Left fail to acknowledge at all the Marxist roots of the official Black Lives Matter organization, and thus, paint anyone who objects to the organization as racist, unthinkingly inveighing: “How could anyone not support black lives?” This kind of clever naming of a controversial movement, similar to “Antifa” supposedly standing for “anti-fascist,” makes it easy to baselessly paint critics as extreme and immoral. Yet this is a reductive oversimplification that serves only to divide.

So, too, much of the blame for the Black Lives Matter perception gap lies with liberals, Democrats, and others who support the movement for failing to adequately distance themselves from the radical organization.

Perhaps, though, the true believers, irrespective of faction, are behaving as if the disutility of policy differences from one's preferred policy portfolio is quadratic in distance.

YES, YOUR PERMANENT RECORD IS REAL.

The ledger in Sister Mary Hermann Göring's office served the temporal purpose of recording grades and demerits, and the Holy Purpose of reminding the possibly fractious students in her charge that Saint Peter was also compiling a list.

In real life, the Permanent Record is emergent, and anyone can read and interpret the entries, something that a foolish young lady called Claira Janover recently learned the hard way.  Not surprisingly, Twitchy is having a good wallow in "Make them play by their own rules."  Victory Girl Kim Hirsch discovers a teachable moment.

Janover will pay the price for the brainwashing she received at Harvard, if not during her previous schooling. She has learned to regard people with whom she doesn’t agree with contempt — in fact, she despises them. She thinks she’s better than they are, and that they shouldn’t be allowed to express their opinions.

Yes, Claira Janover is the one who will have to learn the repercussions of her actions — not the college professors who taught her to loathe America. Nor will the media who cheer on indoctrinated radicals like her. The question is — how long will it take for kids like her to learn that such actions often come with dire consequences?

There are limits to sheer entitled Harvardacity, and Ms Janover hasn't yet caught on, apparently preferring to blame conservative cancel culture for finding her post.  That's too much for Fox News columnist A. B. Stuckey, who is otherwise disposed to be forgiving.

The best outcome would be for Janover to learn a valuable lesson—don’t trivialize violence, and definitely don’t post about it online—and for her to move on with her life. We shouldn’t hope the worst for her. Everyone makes mistakes. Where leftist cancel culture refuses to offer grace, we should extend it.

Unfortunately, from what we can see, Janover isn’t interested in self-reflection. Her subsequent TikTok videos blaming Trump supporters for her woes demonstrate a stunning lack of self-awareness and an unwillingness to take responsibility for her words. In my view, she doesn’t owe the mob of faceless internet users an apology, but she would do well to show more respect to her former employer than to call them cowards. It’s hard to imagine that kind of attitude bodes well for future job prospects.

It seems Janover’s disposition is characteristic of many members of the elite left who believe even the most intensely aggressive speech is appropriate and without need of real-life accountability—as long as it’s for the “right” cause. Viral videos of predominantly female protesters screaming profanities in the faces of police officers show that many believe that the standards of decency and respectfulness don’t apply to people who take up the noble fight for wokeness.

Rod Dreher would also like to extend Christian charity.

Mostly, I don’t care. She is a typical bully: she can dish it out, and didn’t care if the lives of others — Wrongthinkers — were ruined, but when her methods are turned on her, she sobs her eyes out. She says that she feels sorry that Deloitte could not tolerate some like her, who “is going to make an indelible change in the world, who is going to have an impact.” What self-righteous hooey. You might be able to get away with that rot on Harvard Yard, but the real world is not college, for once.

I must say, though, how much I hate cancel culture. This horrible brat did not deserve the foul language and threats of violence she received. Nor did she deserve to lose her job over her idiotic, racist TikTok. I don’t believe that most other people on the other side do either, though. I think we’re better off learning to tolerate as much garbage social media as we can, because there will be no end to the trench warfare if we don’t. But as long as these Social Justice Warrior monsters use their power to ruin the lives of others, I support pressure to hold them to the same standards that they inflict on others. You can tell that it never, ever occurred to this privileged Ivy League snowflake that she might face accountability for her vicious, violent, racist rhetoric.

They're not going to like the new rules, indeed.  Mr Dreher concludes, "Can you imagine what the office would have been like with this toxic person in it?"

Sister Mary maintained that ledger to spare the fractious students in her charge a nastier comeuppance in adulthood.

THE MISEDUCATION OF TONY NORMAN.

He's a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist still grappling with the persistence of Dixie iconography.  He starts with a song most famously covered by Joan Baez and maunders into melancholy.  "How many times does the Confederacy have to fall before everyone agrees it was a lost cause? How many times must Lee go down to defeat before the bugle sounds?"  Virgil, look, come see, there goes the Robert E. Lee (the first of which was commissioned a year after they drove old Dixie down).

It's what he doesn't see that is particularly sad.  "Where are the statues of the abolitionists?"  There was one of Hans Christian Heg in Madison, Wisconsin, until recently, when some of the people who would probably agree with much of what Mr Norman is arguing, decided to toss it into Lake Monona.  Abraham Lincoln can no longer urge freedmen to kneel only to God, as that is the latest thing to be banned in Boston.

You won't see an Acela nosing into Boston and Providence's Park Square terminus behind, as the five platform tracks proved inadequate, within ten years, for the growing commuter traffic.

That's not all he missed.  "Where are the tributes to the Black Union soldiers who helped turn the tide of war?"  The 54th Massachusetts memorial in Boston was also a casualty of the wilding.

Perhaps he and I could make common cause on the proposition, Howard Zinn is crap.  "Why can’t we find honest accounts of slavery chiseled in stone instead of banished to unread chapters of high school history books?"  Or, perhaps on the proposition that controversial topics are controversial for a reason.  It's fifty years since the release of Time on the Cross, and researching pirates is probably safer than researching slavery.

HER POWER DERIVES FROM THE CONTINUED MISERY OF HER BASE.

So it always is with ward-heeler politicians.  "A ward-heeler cannot call out the constituents for engaging in self-destructive behavior, nor get re-elected in a district in which constituents discover, or re-discover bourgeois habits."  Stephen Miller notes the ward-heelers have willing accomplices.  "Renaming a plaza in Washington DC or painting giant yellow letters down 5th Avenue in New York outside Trump Tower is the perfect kind of shiny object for the media to focus on. Just keep ignoring the Democrat politicians who have failed these communities over and over again."

On the front lines, Second City Cop sees rookie Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, true to form.  "When you can't defend the behavior of your voting base, blame the inanimate object [a pistol] and not the morally-bereft person wielding it."

Can't have the lakefront liberals turning on her, can she?

MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE.

Proclaim Liberty unto the land, and all the Inhabitants thereof.

Badger Battery, Baron DeKalb Volunteer Light Artillery, salute the 245^th Year of American Independence.