News

Vanderbilt University students try to get black conservative professor fired

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Dr. Carol M. Swain
Dr. Carol M. Swain

This is from the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

A black conservative professor who found herself the latest target of student protests nationwide has one thing to say to those calling for her to be suspended from the university where she teachers: “Grow up.”

Among other allegations, students accused Carol Swain, a professor of law and political science Vanderbilt University for nearly 27 years, of “unprofessional intimidation on social media” and “discriminatory practices in the classroom.”

Swain actively posts her Christian conservative view points on her public Facebook page and website called BeThePeopleTV. She has authored numerous award-winning books and has been cited by the Supreme Court,according to her resume.

But recently, her conservative values left her at odds with students on campus that started a petition demanding she be removed from the university.

[…]Swain said the students behind the protests never took any of her classes, all of which are elective.

The petition explains what exactly the black conservative has done to get herself fired: “unprofessional intimidation on social media, discriminatory practices in the classroom, and unclear representation as a Public Figure with invocations of the Vanderbilt name on her Facebook page.”

And, “Over the past few years, Professor Carol Swain has become synonymous with bigotry, intolerance, and unprofessionalism…. Swain has let her hate-filled prejudices negatively impact her work, our student body, and Vanderbilt’s reputation.”

So, this is what students are learning how to do, even in a university in one of the most conservative states in the union.

I think it’s worth recalling the last story I posted about Vanderbilt at this time.

From Public Discourse.

Excerpt:

Vanderbilt University has decided that Christian student groups that hold traditional Christian religious views are not welcome on campus. They will no longer be recognized as valid student organizations. Vanderbilt’s reason is that such groups require that their leaders be Christian—that is, that their leaders embrace certain core principles of Christianity and try to live according to these principles. In Vanderbilt’s view, religious beliefs and standards “discriminate” against those students who do not subscribe to them. Therefore, student religious groups with religious beliefs and standards are banned.

The situation would be unbelievable—were it not true. The issue came to a head this year when a student group at Vanderbilt Law School, the Christian Legal Society, submitted its “constitution” to the university. The constitution provided that the group’s leaders should believe in the Bible and in Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior; that they should be willing to lead members in worship, prayer, and Bible study; and that they should “strive to exemplify Christ-like qualities.” Vanderbilt’s Director of Religious Life, Reverend Gretchen Person, replied that such views were forbidden. Vanderbilt’s policies “do not allow” religious groups to have such an “expectation/ qualification of officers,” she wrote. Last week, the administration officially declared the policy that Vanderbilt will exclude student religious groups that “impose faith-based or belief-based requirements for membership or leadership.”

So what’s the answer?

Well, it’s important to understand that the university system, especially in non-STEM departments, is basically a place where people who cannot find work in the productive private sector get jobs indoctrinating the young in secular leftist values. They are basically secular leftist seminaries. And they often funded by taxpayers. So we need to vote for smaller government, less money for students and universities, and substitutes for higher education that are non-political, e.g. – vocational training, alternatives that focus on STEM fields like e-learning. In my case, I would recommend that young Christians try to avail themselves of free sources of learning, and learn how to program using online courses instead of attending universities like Vanderbilt. Just FYI, there are no conservative universities aside from maybe Hillsdale College and Grove City College.

You may also be interested in my earlier post about California State University professor Lopez, who is under fire from LGBT activists for promoting natural marriage. In that post I also talk about professor McAdams, who was sanctioned by Marquette University for upholding traditional marriage. Marquette is a “Catholic” university, i.e. – it’s secular leftist.

Daily Signal also had recent articles about Lopez and McAdams.

News

CBS Democrat debate: global warming causes terrorism, take in 65,000 Syrian refugees

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What difference does national security make?
What difference does national security make?

Here’s a re-cap of the Democrat debate from Saturday night on CBS News.

On terrorism:

DICKERSON: Senator Sanders, you said you want to rid the planet of ISIS. In the previous debate you said the greatest threat to national security was climate change. Do you still believe that?

SANDERS: Absolutely. In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism. And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say, you’re going to see countries all over the world — this is what the CIA says — they’re going to be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops ask you’re going to see all kinds of international conflict.

On Syrian refugees:

O’Malley proposed allowing 65,000 Syrian refugees into the country, more than the 10,000 proposed by Obama, though he said they need “proper screening.”

Clinton also argued for a higher number, adding “I said we should go to 65, but only if we have as careful a screening and vetting process as we can imagine.”

On amnesty and wages:

9: 53: Hillary is asked how she could “go further” than Obama on executive amnesty after the administration’s setback this week. She insists, according to her reading of the law and the Constitution and not the court’s, Obama has the “authority” to exercise his executive amnesty. She “any parent” would be “proud” of DREAMers and America should make it possible for illegal immigrants to come of of the shadows. No talk about the crimes committed by illegal immigrants.

9: 52: Democrats asked about immigration. O’Malley is asked if he is willing to compromise to focus on border security first to keep America face. O’Malley says that if more border/security and deportations were going to bring Republicans to the table, it would have happened a long time ago. He blasts Trump as  an immigrant-bashing “carnival barker.” O’Malley says giving amnesty to illegal immigrants would raise wages even though illegal immigrants would then be competing with Americans for jobs.

The pro-Democrat “debate” moderators were very careful to steer the discussion away from all of the Clinton scandals… nothing about the Clinton Foundation taking foreign donations, nothing about the hacked e-private homebrew e-mail server, nothing about Benghazi, nothing about Clinton’s war in Libya, etc.

Liberal moderators

CBS moderator John Dickerson is a radical left-wing Democrat.

CBS moderator Nancy Cordes is a radical left-wing Democrat.

Dickerson also met privately with each of the candidates prior to the debate.

Syrian refugees

In case you’re concerned about the refugees, in light of the Paris terrorist attacks, here’s the current Democrat plan for that:

The United States will take up to 100,000 refugees a year in 2017, a more than 40 percent increase that comes as growing numbers of people flee conflicts in Syria and other parts of the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

Secretary of State John Kerry announced the plans Sunday in Berlin, where German officials are scrambling to deal with a massive influx of migrants and where he met with some Syrians who had fled their country’s civil war. He said the U.S. cap on refugees would be lifted in stages, going from 70,000 now to 85,000 in 2016 and 100,000 the following year.

Nothing to be concerned about, nothing to see here.

News

Mark Steyn on Paris terrorist attacks: the barbarians are inside the gates

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Consider this article from Canadian writer Mark Steyn. The article’s title is: “The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates”.

Steyn writes:

As I write, Paris is under curfew for the first time since the German occupation, and the death toll from the multiple attacks stands at 158, the vast majority of them slaughtered during a concert at the Bataclan theatre, a delightful bit of 19th century Chinoiserie on the boulevard Voltaire. The last time I was there, if memory serves, was to see Julie Pietri. I’m so bloody sick of these savages shooting and bombing and killing and blowing up everything I like – whether it’s the small Quebec town where my little girl’s favorite fondue restaurant is or my favorite hotel in Amman or the brave freespeecher who hosted me in Copenhagen …or a music hall where I liked to go to hear a little jazz and pop and get away from the cares of the world for a couple of hours. But look at the photographs from Paris: there’s nowhere to get away from it; the barbarians who yell “Allahu Akbar!” are there waiting for you …when you go to a soccer match, you go to a concert, you go for a drink on a Friday night. They’re there on the train… at the magazine office… in the Kosher supermarket… at the museum in Brussels… outside the barracks in Woolwich…

Twenty-four hours ago, I said on the radio apropos the latest campus “safe space” nonsense:

This is what we’re going to be talking about when the mullahs nuke us.
Almost. When the Allahu Akbar boys opened fire, Paris was talking about the climate-change conference due to start later this month, when the world’s leaders will fly in to “solve” a “problem” that doesn’t exist rather than to address the one that does. But don’t worry: we already have a hashtag (#PrayForParis) and doubtless there’ll be another candlelight vigil of weepy tilty-headed wankers. Because as long as we all advertise how sad and sorrowful we are, who needs to do anything?

With his usual killer comedy timing, the “leader of the free world” told George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning, America” this very morning that he’d “contained” ISIS and that they’re not “gaining strength”. A few hours later, a cell whose members claim to have been recruited by ISIS slaughtered over 150 people in the heart of Paris and succeeded in getting two suicide bombers and a third bomb to within a few yards of the French president.

Now why was France attacked? France has been in the lead of all the other “multicultural” European countries at welcoming in unskilled immigrants from countries that do not like Western values very much:

Muslim population in European countries
Muslim population in European countries

Mark Steyn continues:

And then Europe decided to invite millions of Muslims to settle in their countries. Most of those people don’t want to participate actively in bringing about the death of diners and concertgoers and soccer fans, but at a certain level most of them either wish or are indifferent to the death of the societies in which they live – modern, pluralist, western societies and those “universal values” of which Barack Obama bleats. So, if you are either an active ISIS recruit or just a guy who’s been fired up by social media, you have a very large comfort zone in which to swim, and which the authorities find almost impossible to penetrate.

And all Chancellor Merkel and the EU want to do is make that large comfort zone even larger by letting millions more “Syrian” “refugees” walk into the Continent and settle wherever they want. As I wrote after the Copenhagen attacks in February:

I would like to ask Mr Cameron and Miss Thorning-Schmidt what’s their happy ending here? What’s their roadmap for fewer “acts of violence” in the years ahead? Or are they riding on a wing and a prayer that they can manage the situation and hold it down to what cynical British civil servants used to call during the Irish “Troubles” “an acceptable level of violence”? In Pakistan and Nigeria, the citizenry are expected to live with the reality that every so often Boko Haram will kick open the door of the schoolhouse and kidnap your daughters for sex-slavery or the Taliban will gun down your kids and behead their teacher in front of the class. And it’s all entirely “random”, as President Obama would say, so you just have to put up with it once in a while, and it’s tough if it’s your kid, but that’s just the way it is. If we’re being honest here, isn’t that all Mr Cameron and Miss Thorning-Schmidt are offering their citizens? Spasms of violence as a routine feature of life, but don’t worry, we’ll do our best to contain it – and you can help mitigate it by not going to “controversial” art events, or synagogues, or gay bars, or…

…or soccer matches, or concerts, or restaurants…

On Friday night, my Dad messaged me to tell me about the story. The first thing in my mind was Obama’s comments about how we Christians needed to “get off our high horse” when we tried to judge Islamic terrorism, because of the Crusades (which were intended as a defensive reaction to Muslim expansion).

Investors Business Daily explains what Obama said:

In remarks at a prayer meeting Thursday, President Obama implied Christianity, just like Islam, is filled with people who “hijack religion for their own murderous ends.” This is the progressive disease of moral equivalence at its worst.

In recent days and weeks, the world has watched grimly as the horrific barbarity of fundamentalist Islam has been put on full display.

With routine beheadings, crucifixions, tortures, mass killings of civilians, burying children alive, and, most recently, burning a prisoner alive and filming his death agony to the approving yells of onlookers, it’s clear something is horribly wrong within Islam.

And yet, apart from rather routine denunciations of the savagery, Obama used his appearance at a National Prayer Breakfast to upbraid Christians for their sins.

“Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Remember, the Obama administration describes Islamic terrorism as “senseless violence“. Democrats describe shootings my Muslims at army bases as “workplace violence“. Democrats describe attacks on Israeli civilians as “random violence“. Democrats called shooting at Jews in France “random“. Democrats describe investigations about the Benghazi terrorist attack a “sideshow“, after they lied and tried to say the attack was a spontaneous reaction to a video. And this is the party that more than half of our country votes for at election time.The trouble with the Democrats is that they don’t have the resources in their worldview to call evil evil, and good good. They just want to feel “nice”, and be perceived by others as tolerant and non-judgmental. They want to be generous to enemies with your taxpayer dollars, and risk your lives in pursuit of their goal of watering down American exceptionalism and Western civilization.

If you want to know what Democrats really think of the Paris terrorist attacks, then all you have to do is look at their position on welcoming in Syrian refugees.