I Want a New Left

Those Wonderfully Moral Baby-Boomer Professors and Their Future Reputations

Given that there’s a jobs crisis in academia with lots of younger would-be professors hoping for and not getting a job, one would assume that older liberal and leftist professors would understand that they need to retire when they get to retirement age. But no, they do not understand that at all. See here for a survey on the matter. Is there a single left-of-center professor who is willing to retire because it would help younger people? The survey linked to suggests otherwise. They all seem to be interested in hanging on indefinitely. I know at least a couple of professors who plan to delay retirement, and neither is giving any thought to what younger scholars think about the situation.

Today’s professors are comfortable with the reputation they now have of being highly progressive, but the trouble is that one’s reputation in the future depends on the young, and the young will outlive them. Their reputation thirty or fifty years from now is not so assured as it may seem to them now.

A Surprising Item in the "Chronicle of Higher Education," and How It Relates to Global Warming

An academic named Robert Deaner (an associate professor of psychology at Grand Valley State University) wrote in the Chronicle for June 7 about a colleague who submitted an article to a certain (unnamed) journal. The journal initially said it would send it out for peer review, but after a few months when nothing more was heard, the colleague began sending emails wondering when she would hear more. Finally, after eight months of silence, the editor responded by saying that the article wasn’t suited for their journal and that it thus hadn’t been sent out for peer review. Since this woman was trying to get tenure, wasting eight months in this way was terrible for her.

Deaner next suggested that there be crowd-sourcing regarding this kind of high-handed behavior on the part of journals. Would-be authors could share their experiences and so avoid journals that treated authors in this way.

None of this is surprising in itself. What is surprising is that it was printed in the Chronicle, because the Chronicle, as I have come to understand, is basically the preserve of what I call Rich People’s Leftism (see here), and Rich People’s Leftism is devoted to the status quo in academia. Accordingly, challenging that status quo is simply not to be tolerated. Moreover, any close examination of peer review would reveal that some people got articles published via connections or in some other way that had nothing to do with actual peer review, and that would show that their very jobs had been obtained (or retained) under false pretenses; once again, that cannot be tolerated.

All this relates to the belief in global warming because, especially at this point in time, those who believe have little to bolster their belief except the fact that it was “peer-reviewed science” that told us that global warming was happening. (Both actual warming and good predictions by climate scientists are in short supply.) The liberal left establishment in academia insists that peer review works and is reliable and in addition has told us that global warming is happening (and is caused by us). So, it was surprising that this article was in the Chronicle at all.

Mining in Northern Minnesota: Jobs vs. the Environment

An article in today’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune (here) talks about a big dispute between mining companies and environmentalists in northern Minnesota near the town of Ely. There’s loads of copper and nickel (and other metals) there waiting to be mined. In fact, I’ve been hearing about this since the early 1960s; our family owned property on the eastern edge of the area in question, so I was interested in what was going on. For a long time, it was just talk, but now the talk has turned to action as mining companies are beginning to explore the possibilities.

The question, however, comes down to which is more important, jobs for the blue-collar worker or preserving the environment. The environmentalists all say the same sort of thing, that mining companies cannot be trusted, that they will spoil this wonderful and beautiful area, and anyway there are jobs created by tourism.

On the other side, mining companies insist that their new technologies will make the acidic runoff that environmentalists are worried about much less likely, plus there will be plenty of good-paying jobs for locals and others, jobs that will be year-round and not seasonal.

What’s distressing in this debate is the extent to which the terms are set by the environmentalists. They say that mining companies cannot be trusted, and they don’t seem too interested in jobs for locals. The mining companies are accordingly forced to explain that their processes will not harm the environment, while the environmentalists do not seem as compelled to talk about the jobs that won’t be created. Maybe someday this will be reversed. After all, environmentalists engage in wild exaggerations and so cannot be trusted, and they have a history of not caring about jobs for poorer people.

As a former mayor of Ely put it, “It would be easy to conclude that this effort [by the environmentalists] is really the 1 percent trying to prevent the 99 percent from having a fair shot at a fair share.” Exactly right.

Why People on the Right Aren’t Anything Like the Left’s Stereotype of Them

“Maybe the greedy businessmen now running the Republican Party should talk with their Hispanic maids sometime.” That statement comes not from someone on the left, but from Ann Coulter, who is on the right. See here. Yet, the left’s stereotype of the right is that everyone on the right is a greedy businessman or else supports them.

We’re Home!

We’re finally home, not just from Europe but from a long series of trips. Here are some final thoughts on latest trip.

What is it with U.S. officials about stamping passports? Yesterday, the guy handed our passports back to us without stamping them, but agreed to stamp them when we requested. On another occasion I asked the agent, “You’re going to stamp it, aren’t you?” And he said, “I have to.” I pointed out that some agents didn’t do it, and he didn’t seem to believe me.

More on British freeways: I forgot to mention that the signs on their freeways, and in fact their roads in general, aren’t as frequent as what I’m used to. On a freeway or a highway, we have signs every so often telling you what road you’re on, but in Britain that is rarely the case. I also forgot to mention that there are also fewer semis on British freeways.

Mass transit: Despite the left’s belief that everyone uses mass transit in Europe, they don’t. Plenty of people in Europe have cars. The vast majority of vehicles on the roads are private cars, not buses.

Paradoxes: Why does socialist Europe insist on requiring people to pay for public bathrooms, while here in capitalistic America we provide them for free? Why does Europe balk at having shops open on Sundays, when they are so secular, whereas here in religious America we have many things that are not only open on Sundays, but are open for 24 hours.

American vs. British Freeways

Our trip is nearly over and I will be back to normal blogging on Friday. Meanwhile, I want to share some thoughts on the freeways I've been driving on here in Britain. In America, a freeway is at the very least a four-lane affair, while here it is only occasionally so. Mostly it is two lanes, and when the road finally becomes four lanes, many people take advantage of the situation to zoom by all the slow people who have been annoying them for the last ten miles. Alas, the four-lane portion of the freeway ends all too quickly.

In Britain, there are also roundabouts on the freeway where one has to slow down and perhaps even stop. They don't seem to like building bridges here; it's cheaper to put in a roundabout. In addition, there are places where pedestrians can cross the road and where little roads feed into the freeway (directly and without an entrance ramp).

The result is a very different driving experience. In America, you get on the freeway, and it seems you can drive forever at a fast speed. Here in Britain, there are many ways that you can get slowed down: by slow traffic when it's just two lanes, by roundabouts, by people entering from one of the little side roads, and by pedestrians.

On a slightly different note, on the two-lane portions, there are many signs for asparagus, which I've never seen in the U.S. (it's usually corn or tomatoes that I see advertised). And last but not least, the road kill here is different. I'm used to raccoons, skunks, and deer, but here it has been foxes.

I'll be glad to get back to American freeways.

A Thought Experiment for the Multiculturalists

Here's a thought experiment for the multiculturalists. Imagine it's the 1930s except that America is allowing immigrants from Germany. Some of these immigrants will be people fleeing the Nazis, while others will actually be Nazis, who are coming over to wreak havoc.

What would multiculturalists here in America say about this situation? Now I don't want multiculturalists to use knowledge gained after WWII to tell us what they would say. I want them to imagine themselves back in that era with the knowledge typical of that era, and what we know about that era is that leftists were comfortable enough with the Nazis that they made a pact with them in 1939.

Accordingly, I say that multiculturalism if it had existed back then would be more worried about Germanophobia than about the Nazis. Multiculturalism as it is practiced today just seems incapable of acknowledging that immigrants can be dangerous and a threat, not just to America but also to the left itself. It focuses on mainstream Americans and their prejudices, while ignoring prejudices of the immigrants.

If the multiculturalists were to expand their focus so that they were just as hard on prejudiced immigrants as they were on prejudiced Americans, then things might work better. Enough immigrants would find the situation so annoying that they would up and leave, while those remaining would, for the most part, blend in with the rest of us and would cause no problems.

A Thought Experiment for the Multiculturalists

Here's a thought experiment for the multiculturalists. Imagine it's the 1930s except that America is allowing immigrants from Germany. Some of these immigrants will be people fleeing the Nazis, while others will actually be Nazis, who are coming over to wreak havoc.

What would multiculturalists here in America say about this situation? Now I don't want multiculturalists to use knowledge gained after WWII to tell us what they would say. I want them to imagine themselves back in that era with the knowledge typical of that era, and what we know about that era is that leftists were comfortable enough with the Nazis that they made a pact with them in 1939.

Accordingly, I say that multiculturalism if it had existed back then would be more worried about Germanophobia than about the Nazis. Multiculturalism as it is practiced today just seems incapable of acknowledging that immigrants can be dangerous and a threat, not just to America but also to the left itself. It focuses on mainstream Americans and their prejudices, while ignoring prejudices of the immigrants.

If the multiculturalists were to expand their focus so that they were just as hard on prejudiced immigrants as they were on prejudiced Americans, then things might work better. Enough immigrants would find the situation so annoying that they would up and leave, while those remaining would, for the most part, blend in with the rest of us and would cause no problems.

Obama and Self-Critical Leftism

On a recent Ask Reddit, liberals were asked what they thought of all the Obama administration scandals. (I can't provide a link since I'm using my Ipad, which isn't conducive to doing that sort of thing.) Surprisingly many professed disappointment with Obama, though naturally a few holdouts insisted that nothing was wrong.

Obama's problem is that he is like nearly all other leftists in being half-critical; that is, he is critical of his political opponents but not of himself or other leftists. This sort of thinking leads one to believe that one's political opponents are genuinely evil, so it won't matter if they are treated terribly. Yet, a little thought will remind those who are sensible that the Republicans are nowhere near the level of evil that the world saw in the 20th century in Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union. People like Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush left office when they were supposed to and occasionally did things that leftists approved of.

The other side of this lack of self-criticism is thinking of yourself as so good that whatever you do is justified, just because you are doing it. Keeping Gitmo open, using drones, and the scandal of Benghazi all seem to fall in the latter category.

I'd like to think that, had Obama been self-critical, he would not have gotten himself into these messes. On the other hand, if he had been self-critical, he may not have had the following he had, so he may never have been elected.

A Note on Mass Transit

Liberals and leftists love the idea of mass transit, because it will use less fuel than cars and because it works best in dense cities, which they prefer.

But it doesn't work so well in the suburbs, and in rural areas it's hopeless. My mother tells me that when she was a girl, she would sometimes travel from her home in St. Paul to a small town in northern Wisconsin (Port Wing, if you're interested). This involved a train to Duluth, a bus that would take her to within twenty miles of her destination, and a mail truck for the last leg. This was during the best period for mass transportation in our history (just before WWII), yet even then it was difficult to get to some areas.

Today, I drove many miles through rural England so my wife could look at old parish churches. One or two of these were in the centers of towns and so were potentially accessible by bus, but the others were not near anything. It's hard to imagine using buses to do this project. We initially thought that we could use buses since England is supposed to be more interested in buses and trains than America is, but we quickly realized that this would not be easy or even possible.

I used to think that mass transit was better than cars, and I generally enjoy taking trains in Europe. But I've reluctantly come around to the idea that it just doesn't work very well. We have to face it, rural areas are too spacious to be covered by mass transit, and yet people do need to travel in such areas in order to live their lives. Cars are generally the better alternative.