FRIDAY short TAKES.

Entirely too many leftists have mental disorders.  The time for pulling punches is over.

Indeed:  "[E]mphasize education over partying and colleges will lose half their enrollment."

Stick your "progress" where the sun don't shine!

The week's roundup of pithy reinforcements of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

1.  From AIDS to the coronavirus, der Giftzwerg failed upwards. "Unfortunately, the social harm from his irresponsible speculation was already done, and his reversed stance only advantaged his own career. His actions during the AIDS epidemic read like a masterclass in ambition and self-preservation."

2.  Yes.  Next question?  "Is Modern Environmentalism a Pagan Religion?"

3.  No sympathy for Leana Wen, M. D. "She cast her lot with totalitarianism, and she should be allowed to enjoy her decision."

4.  Communist-on-socialist fratricide!  "Biden certainly shouldn't have handed his signing pen to Sen. Manchin as a mark of honor."

5.  Is your theater on a car line?  "Transit has to be a 'walking accelerator,' with destinations people want to walk in."

6.  Reality bats last.  Any idealistic notion ought recognize that.  "Things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time."

7.  Tocqueville saw the middle-school dynamic.  "In America, the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Within these limits, the writer is free; but woe to him if he dares to go beyond them. It isn't that he has to fear an auto-da-fé, but he is exposed to all types of distasteful things and to everyday persecutions."

8.  Losing the good of the intellect.  "[O]ur colleges have simplified matters, and simply become loco."  The elaboration will reward careful study.

9.  Higher ed deconstructed bourgeois norms, and it shows up at the job meetings.  "If you’re an interviewer, and you don’t see what’s wrong with any of these, please reach out to HR posthaste."

10.  Tango Sierra, Liz Cheney.  "It seems the problem with our democracy is that citizens keep voting for people the Beltway doesn’t like."

11.  Exactly.  "Never owning the problem you largely created is the federal government way!"

12.  Shoring up base voters?  "There is more outstanding student debt in Washington than in any other city in the country."

13.  Administrative Bloat Harms Teaching and Learning.

14.  Thinking like a state.  "[Anya Kamenetz's] book is full of examples of public institutions failing, yet her answer is more public institutions with more resources."

15.  History departments should become history.  "They deserve their fate. History departments that behave this way deserve to lose all their students, and have their departments disbanded."