Majority of American Universities - Propaganda Institutions

 

American Universities Have Lost Their Prestige

4/30/2021 - Victor Davis Hanson Townhall.com

Nothing is stranger than the contemporary American university.

Not long ago, Americans used to idolize their universities. Indeed, in science, math, engineering, medicine and business, many of these meritocratic departments and schools remain among the top-ranked in the world.

Top-notch higher education explains much of the current scientific, technological and commercial excellence of the United States.

After World War II -- won in part due to superior American scientific research, production and logistics -- a college degree became a prerequisite for a successful career. The GI Bill enabled some 8 million returning vets to go to college. Most graduated to good jobs.

The university from the late 1940s to 1960 was a rich resource of continuing education. It introduced the world's great literature, from Homer to Tolstoy, to the American middle classes.

But today's universities and colleges bear little if any resemblance to postwar higher education. Even during the tumultuous 1960s, when campuses were plagued by radical protests and periodic violence, there was still institutionalized free speech. An empirical college curriculum mostly survived the chaos of the '60s.

But it is gone now.

Instead, imagine a place where the certification of educational excellence, the Bachelor of Arts degree, is no guarantee that a graduate can speak, write or communicate coherently or think inductively.

Imagine a place that requires applicants to submit high school grade-point averages and standardized test results but doesn't require its own graduates to pass a basic uniform competency test.

Imagine a place where after an initial trial period, a minority of elite employees receive lifetime job guarantees.

Imagine a place supposedly devoted to equity where only 30 percent of the faculty are privileged enough to be tenure-tracked. The other 70 percent are second-class, categorized as part-time or "contingent" faculty. And they receive a fraction of the compensation per hour of instruction as their more elite counterparts.

Imagine a place that cherishes student interaction and criticism of the "establishment," yet the ratio of instructors to administrators is about one to one. The money devoted to non-teaching administrative costs is now about equal to the money devoted to classroom instruction.

Imagine a place where "diversity" is the professed institutional ethos, while studies reveal that liberal faculty outnumber their conservative counterparts by over 10 to 1.

Imagine a liberal place where in 2021 race can still be used as a criterion in selecting and rejecting applicants, choosing prospective dorm roommates, organizing segregated dorms and restricting access to special places on campus.

Imagine a progressive place that once renounced unconstitutional "loyalty oaths" but now rebrands them as "diversity pledges" and requires reeducation and indoctrination training.

Imagine a place with non-taxable endowments that restricts free speech and expression. Nonprofit universities make it impossible for some speakers to lecture, and often suspend constitutionally protected due process for students facing particular allegations.

Imagine a place loudly devoted to income, capital and marketplace equity measured against the reality that 800 of the largest colleges and universities hold more than $600 billion in endowments. Yet just 20 elite universities account for half that total. And just four -- Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Princeton -- account for almost a quarter of all endowment funds.

Imagine a liberal place that has upped its tuition and total costs far beyond the rate of inflation, with its graduates now collectively owing $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. There is little hope that many of these student debtors will ever pay back their obligations, which average more than $30,000 each.

Imagine a place that has institutionalized human rights but welcomes nearly 400,000 students from human rights-violating China -- a great many of whom are the offspring of elite Communist Party members who provide a lucrative source of university income.

Imagine a place where faculty and students now selectively change the names of campus streets, centers and buildings that honored supposedly illiberal, long-dead donors, graduates and former heroes. Yet curiously, universities never alter their marquee founding brand names. Were founders or original funders such as Leland Stanford, Elihu Yale and Lord Jeffery Amherst not as illiberal as Father Junipero Serra, Earl Warren and Woodrow Wilson, whose names have been canceled on some college campuses?

As long as universities produced highly educated and open-minded graduates at a reasonable cost and kept politics out of the lecture hall, Americans didn't care much about peculiarities such as tenure, legacy admissions, untaxed endowments, rebellious students and quirky faculty.

But once they began to charge exorbitantly, educate poorly, politick continuously, indebt millions of people and act hypocritically, universities turned off Americans.

Just as a sermonizing Hollywood grates when it no longer can make good movies, a once-hallowed but now self-righteous university seems hollow when it charges so much for so little.

 

Democrat Run Cities - Woke Hellholes

 

Woke Democrats Broke American Cities

By Jeff Crouere www.americanthinker.com

Almost all of the largest cities in the United States are governed by hard-left Democrats.  In fact, there is only one Republican mayor among the top 15 cities in the country and only three among the 30 largest cities.

All of the problems in our urban areas today are almost exclusively the result of the failed Democratic Party leadership.  While previous generations of Democrats might have tried to find bipartisan solutions to longstanding problems, the party's leaders in 2021 are woke leftists interested only in pushing their radical agenda.

The result has been outmigration, soaring crime rates, a drug epidemic, broken families, failing public schools, an increasing number of blighted properties, high poverty and unemployment rates, an obsession with a race-based agenda, and rising antipathy toward law enforcement officers.  No wonder people are fleeing our cities in hopes of finding safety and a better quality of life.

Recent headlines show the absolute, ongoing destruction.  In New Orleans, there was another shooting early Saturday morning on Bourbon Street, in the French Quarter, the city's premier tourist destination.  In this case, five people were shot.  Sadly, this type of carnage is becoming a regular occurrence in the Crescent City.  New Orleans is suffering from a shortage of police officers and an abundance of criminals.

In Philadelphia, police department leaders are lamenting a shortage of officers as few new recruits are coming forward to replace the large number of retirements.  Currently, the department is already understaffed, and the problem will only grow worse.

In Los Angeles, crime is skyrocketing while George Gascon, the new woke district attorney, is pledging to dismantle his office's Hardcore Gang Division.  This decision is baffling to many citizens, as statistics show that gang violence has contributed to approximately 60% of the murders in the first 110 days of the year.

Portland, Oregon has been a cesspool of rioting and looting ever since the death of George Floyd made national headlines last Memorial Day.  Incredibly, it has never stopped.  Last weekend, stores were set ablaze and burglarized.  On Friday, a large mob of anarchists spray-painted storefronts with graffiti, broke windows, and terrorized diners in a restaurant.

After the latest incidents, the far-left mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, asked citizens to "call the police" if they see protesters "dressed in all black."  It is much too little, much too late for Wheeler, who has been punched and ridiculed by Antifa-affiliated thugs.  He has not been able to enjoy a meal in a restaurant or even live peacefully at his home.  Protesters, dressed in black, staged a sit-in at Wheeler's condo building and even hurled "bags of rubbish" and other objects at him as he was walking down the street.

The chaos is also continuing in Seattle, the epicenter of Antifa-related violence.  In this city, the far left created an autonomous zone, attacked a police precinct headquarters, and basically declared war on law abiding citizens.  The craziness never stopped due to incompetent and fearful leadership.

This week, Motion Church, based just south of Seattle, was forced to cancel a speech by Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA.  After the speech was announced, a Seattle Antifa organization threatened to destroy the church.

This threat forced the church's Pastor, Roger Archer, to make his decision.  According to Archer, "cops don't have the manpower to protect the several properties used by the church."  He claimed, "The soft targets of churches, the elderly, women, children, and law-abiding citizens are vulnerable to anarchists who live free of the fear of reprisal."

Archer also correctly noted, "What recent history has taught us is there's an apparent lack of interest at the state level of leadership to protect decent, taxpaying citizens.  Those terrorist mobs know that there is no consequence for their lawlessness.  They have nothing to lose and nothing to fear."

Archer is right: while the FBI and Department of Justice are busy arresting and prosecuting all the individuals who entered the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, there have been few, if any, repercussions for those involved in approximately 275 riots that have occurred in Seattle and other cities across the country since last summer.

Americans can thank the woke mayors and the woke Department of Justice for contributing to the anarchy and destruction on the streets of America's cities.

This is especially true in New York City, led by hopelessly left-wing Mayor Bill de Blasio.  During his tenure, New York is being decimated by not only the pandemic, but also rising crime.  In 2020, shootings increased by almost 100%, while murders increased by 44%.

One factor in this increase is that New York police officers do not feel any support from the mayor.  There have been multiple incidents, many captured on video, of police officers being viciously attacked by criminals, who face almost no penalties for their actions.

It is no surprise that in 2020, an astounding 5,300 police officers retired or quit.  This is a 75% increase from 2019.  As more police officers leave, the crime rate will continue to rise, and taxpayers and business will continue to flee.  In response, Mayor de Blasio has continued to pander to the far left and failed to address the concerns of police and terrified citizens.

In Minneapolis, weak, woke leftist Mayor Jacob Frey has turned over his city to protesters demanding "justice for George Floyd."  However, the no-go zone created near the intersection where Floyd died has seen an enormous reduction in customers, mostly hurting local black American business-owners.

One area restaurant proprietor, Alexander W., told the New York Post that city leaders "left me in danger."  He said, "They locked us up ... left us behind ... left me with no food, no water, nothing to eat."

Hopefully, the citizens in these woke hellholes will eventually realize that the best way to improve their plight will be to stop voting for Democratic Party politicians, who deliver only poverty; misery; violence; and, ultimately, failure. 

Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian, and his award-winning program, Ringside Politics, airs nationally on Real America's Voice Network, AmericasVoice.News weekdays at 7 A.M. C.T. and from 7 to 11 A.M. weekdays on WGSO 990-AM and Wgso.com.  He is a political columnist and the author of America's Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on Crouere.net.  For more information, email him at jeff@ringsidepolitics.com.

 

 

 

DC Statehood - A Power Grab Pure and Simple

 

The DC Statehood Power Grab

4/27/2021 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

"How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?" asked President Abraham Lincoln, who answered his own question:

"Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg."

And Congress' saying that D.C. is a state would equally contradict truth and reality, as our nation's capital lacks all of the attributes of a 51st state of the Union.

Whence came our capital of Washington, D.C.?

The city was carved out of Maryland and Virginia in 1790, which voted to cede 100 square miles on the Potomac for a capital city of the United States to become the domicile of the federal government.

In 1846, Virginia's share of the land, some 32 square miles, was ceded back. What was left was today's Washington, D.C., of 68 square miles.

Is that sufficient for a state of the Union? Only if one wishes to change the character and composition of that Union.

Consider. The smallest state for 230 years has been Rhode Island. At 1,214 square miles, it is still 18 times as large as D.C. If D.C. were to become a state, it would be a microstate, smaller than every one of the 24 remaining counties of the state, Maryland, from which it was carved.

The Maryland counties that border D.C., Montgomery and Prince George's, are eight times the size of Washington, D.C., and each has a million people, dwarfing the 700,000 residents of D.C.

Directly across the Potomac in Virginia is Fairfax County, also eight times as large as D.C., and with hundreds of thousands more people.

Supporters of statehood say D.C. has more people than Wyoming.

True, but Wyoming is also roughly the size of the United Kingdom, and more than 1,000 times the size of Washington, D.C.

Even by the standards of American cities, Washington ranks no higher than 20th in population.

Texas -- with Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Fort Worth -- and California -- with Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego and San Francisco -- both have four cities larger and more populous than our aspiring city-state of D.C.

By the terms of its admission to the United States as a state, the Republic of Texas was ceded a right to split into as many as five states of the Union, which it was joining. FDR's future vice president, the Texan John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner, was all for it.

"An area twice as large and rapidly becoming as populous as New England should have at least ten Senators," Garner told The New York Times in April 1921, "and the only way we can get them is to make five States, not five small States, mind you, but five great States."

Statehood for little D.C. could start a trend where mega-cities like Chicago and New York, with five and 10 times the size and population of D.C., secede from their respective states and seek full statehood as well.

What is at the root of this drive to make D.C. a state?

The answer may be found in the political character of our capital city.

Since the 23rd Amendment was ratified, 60 years ago, D.C. residents have voted in 15 presidential elections. In all 15 elections, D.C.'s three electoral votes have gone to the Democratic nominee.

Even in the 49-state Nixon and Reagan landslides of 1972 and 1984, D.C. went four- and five-to-one Democratic. In eight presidential elections since 1990, the GOP nominee has failed to win 10% of the D.C. vote.

Since the mid-1970s, D.C. has had home rule and, in every election since, has chosen a Democratic mayor and a Democratic city council.

How irredeemably Democratic is D.C.?

Voter registration statistics in the city as of last December was 403,000 Democrats and 30,000 Republicans, a ratio of 13-1.

Which brings the question: What is D.C.'s grievance that America must somehow rectify by making it a state?

Answer: Democrats want D.C. to have two senators to cement their control of the U.S. Senate, as they pack the Supreme Court by expanding the number of justices from nine to 13.

This is a naked national power grab -- pure and simple.

If the real concern were the inability of the D.C. electorate to vote for members of Congress, that could be remedied -- by returning the residential portions of D.C. to Maryland, whence they came, or by allowing D.C. residents to vote in Maryland's congressional elections.

Making D.C. a state would send two Democrats to the Senate indefinitely. But it would violate the constitution and compact under which the nation was founded. And it would start a stampede for other disfiguring alterations, like packing the Supreme Court by adding four new justices.

Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and American Samoa could soon follow and enter claims to become states of the American Union.

And a second unraveling of the republic would begin.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."