Tag Archives: Leftist

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Mark Regnerus and the progressive war against science

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Here’s an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, written by a non-conservative professor of sociology. He writes about the recent research paper by Mark Regnerus on the effects of gay parenting on children.

Excerpt:

Whoever said inquisitions and witch hunts were things of the past? A big one is going on now. The sociologist Mark Regnerus, at the University of Texas at Austin, is being smeared in the media and subjected to an inquiry by his university over allegations of scientific misconduct.

[…]Regnerus has been attacked by sociologists all around the country, including some from his own department. He has been vilified by journalists who obviously (based on what they write) understand little about social-science research. And the journal in which Regnerus published his article has been the target of a pressure campaign.

The Regnerus case needs to be understood in a larger context. Sociologists tend to be political and cultural liberals, leftists, and progressives.

[…]Many sociologists view higher education as the perfect gig, a way to be paid to engage in “consciousness raising” through teaching, research, and publishing—at the expense of taxpayers, donors, and tuition-paying parents, many of whom thoughtfully believe that what those sociologists are pushing is wrong.

It is also easy for some sociologists to lose perspective on the minority status of their own views, to take for granted much that is still worth arguing about, and to fall into a kind of groupthink. The culture in such circles can be parochial and mean. I have seen colleagues ignore, stereotype, and belittle people and perspectives they do not like, rather than respectfully provide good arguments against those they do not agree with and for their own views.

The temptation to use academe to advance a political agenda is too often indulged in sociology, especially by activist faculty in certain fields, like marriage, family, sex, and gender. The crucial line between broadening education and indoctrinating propaganda can grow very thin, sometimes nonexistent. Research programs that advance narrow agendas compatible with particular ideologies are privileged. Survey textbooks in some fields routinely frame their arguments in a way that validates any form of intimate relationship as a family, when the larger social discussion of what a family is and should be is still continuing and worth having. Reviewers for peer-reviewed journals identify “problems” with papers whose findings do not comport with their own beliefs. Job candidates and faculty up for tenure whose political and social views are not “correct” are sometimes weeded out through a subtle (or obvious), ideologically governed process of evaluation, which is publicly justified on more-legitimate grounds—”scholarly weaknesses” or “not fitting in well” with the department.

The Weekly Standard has more on what happened to Regnerus:

As of mid-July, a month after his paper was published, these are some of the things that have happened to Mark Regnerus. Three of his colleagues in the sociology department at UT joined with a fourth to -publish a widely distributed op-ed in the Huffington Post accusing him of “besmirching” the university through his “irresponsible and reckless misrepresentation of social science research.” Led by Gary Gates, the UCLA demographer who had declined Regnerus’s offer to help design the study, more than 200 “researchers and scholars” signed a letter to the editor of Social Science Research. The letter demanded that the editor “publicly disclose the reasons” why he published the paper and insisted that he hire scholars more sensitive to “LGBT parenting issues” to write a critique for the journal’s next edition. UT’s Director of Research Integrity sent Regnerus a letter informing him that a formal complaint of “scientific misconduct” had been lodged against him. The complaint, made by a gay blogger/activist/“investigative journalist” called Scott Rose, triggered an official inquiry into Regnerus’s research methods and his relationship with the Witherspoon Foundation; he’s now preparing to appear before a panel of faculty investigators. Requests have been filed with the Texas attorney general’s office demanding that Regnerus, as an employee of a state-run institution, make public all email and correspondence related to his study. And he has hired a lawyer.

A large number of his fellow social scientists—members in good standing of the guild of LGBT researchers—would like to destroy his career.

It seems that whenever it comes to secular progressive ideology – eternal universe, naturalistic origin of life, global warming, gay parenting – that it is ok for the secular leftist bullies to attack good science with coercive force.

I really strongly recommend that young Christians seeking to have an influence consider carefully how hostile, close-minded and bigoted that the modern secular leftist university is towards evangelicals. It doesn’t matter how good your scholarship is in the non-science and soft science fields.  It’s just not a good place to make a career anymore. The only way for things to get better is to start starving out all non-productive areas of the university. These are the areas that are the most politicized. Stop doing degrees in non-STEM fields. Stick with things that are beyond the reach of the secular left, like math, experimental sciences, engineering and technology. If you must go into a non-STEM field – like law school – then I really recommend that you keep your religious views and political views close to your vest until you are out of school.

News

Do Democrats pay their fair share of taxes?

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Funny video from American Power Blog.

That’s one case, but are leftists always hypocrites like that?

Do As I Say Not As I Do

I recently listened to the audio book version of Peter Schweizer’s 2004 book “Do As I Say Not As I Do“. In that book, he profiles a number of leftist public figures, and he discovers that leftists don’t practice what they preach, because even they know that leftist ideas don’t actually work. I really recommend the book, so let’s take a closer look at it and you’ll see why you should read it, too.

Here’s a 32 minute 2011 lecture about the book:

And here’s an interview with the author from FrontPage magazine.

Excerpt:

FrontPage: Give us some of the best examples of the gulf between some liberals’ social criticisms and the ingredients of their private lives. Give us some insights, for instance, into the likes of Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Cornel West, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and Barbra Streisand.

Schweizer: Looking for liberal hypocrisy is, as they say in the military, a target-rich environment. Noam Chomsky, for example, has attacked wealthy Americans who set up trusts to avoid paying inheritance taxes. But this self-professed “radical socialist” has a tax attorney and did the very same thing. (When I asked him about this hypocrisy he said it was okay because he and has family have been working on behalf of suffering people all these years.)

Michael Moore’s hypocrisy is pathological. He has said numerous times that he doesn’t own a single share of stock and that capitalism is not acceptable “on any level.” And yet, I found that, according to tax returns filed with the IRS, he has owned shares in Halliburton, numerous oil companies, defense contractors and other multinationals through a tax shelter. When it comes he race he’s also wildly hypocritical. He says that Americans who happen to live in largely white neighbhorhoods do so because they are “racists.” But he lives in Central Lake, Michigan, which according to the U.S. Census has more than 2,500 residents and not a single black person in the entire town.

Cornel West has numerous times condemned middle class blacks that abandon the “chocolate cities” for the “vanilla suburbs” but guess what, his flavour of choice is vanilla, too.

Ted Kennedy likes to pose as the Robin Hood of the Senate, forcing wealthy Americans to pay their taxes to help the poor. But I discovered that Kennedys record of actually paying taxes is horrible. Tax the inheritance tax. He says that Americans should pay 49% to the IRS when they die in the name of “social justice.” But according to public records, the Kennedys have almost completely avoided contributing to “social justice” by placing their assets in trusts that are located overseas. The Kennedys, over the past thirty years, have paid less than 1% in inheritance taxes on more than $300 million. Ted Kennedy, like Hillary Clinton and George Soros, loves higher taxes. On other people.

And:

FrontPage: Why do you think people are drawn to leftist ideals and what kind of people are they? Self-contempt appears to be a common ingredient, no?

Schweizer: Yes, self-contempt is a big part of it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor who stood up to Hitler, wrote a book about “cheap grace.” Liberals are guilty of cheap grace in the political sense. They feel guilty and their form of penance is embracing the destructive ideas of the progressive faith. But it’s cheap grace because as I show it the book, they don’t actually change the way they live. I think that the religious comparison makes sense because in many respects the modern day left represents a religious movement. They are motivated by a sense of sin, guilt, and the need for salvation and absolution in the political sense. Socialism offers salvation to them. Of course, they don’t actually plan to live like socialists.

I would really recommend taking a look at this book.

Democrats and their unpaid taxes

One last parting shot: Democrats talk about how job creators and employees are greedy to not want to pay taxes on their earnings, but Democrats actually have huge amounts of unpaid taxes that they refuse to pay:

A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama’s executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven’t paid any share, let alone their fair share.

Previous reports have shown how well-paid Obama’s White House staff is, with 457 aides pulling down more than $37 million last year. That’s up seven workers and nearly $4 million from the Bush administration’s last year.

Nearly one-third of Obama’s aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each.

The IRS’ 2010 delinquent tax revelations come as part of a required annual agency report on federal employees’ tax compliance. Turns out, an awful lot of folks being paid by taxpayers are not paying their own income taxes.

The report finds that thousands of federal employees owe the country more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. That’s up 3% in the past year.

That scale of delinquency could annoy voters, hard-pressed by their own costs, fears and stubbornly high unemployment despite Joe Biden’s many promises.

The tax offenders include employees of the U.S. Senate who help write the laws imposed on everyone else. They owe $2.1 million. Workers in the House of Representatives owe $8.5 million, Department of Education employees owe $4.3 million and over at Homeland Security, 4,697 workers owe about $37 million. Active duty military members owe more than $100 million.

The Treasury Department, where Obama nominee Tim Geithner had to pay up $42,000 in his own back taxes before being confirmed as secretary, has 1,181 other employees with delinquent taxes totaling $9.3 million.

As usual, the Postal Service, with more than 600,000 workers, has the most offenders (25,640), who also owe the most — almost $270 million. Veterans Affairs has 11,659 workers owing the IRS $151 million while the Energy Department that was so quick to dish out more than $500 million to the Solyndra folks has 322 employees owing $5 million.

The country’s chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, has 2,069 employees who are nearly $17 million behind in taxes.

Even that leftist Warren Buffett’s company is in court for unpaid taxes. Leftists are hypocrites, and when we here them talk, we need to keep in mind that this isn’t how they live themselves. It’s just posing and preening for admiration.

News

Toronto man who is suspected in mall shooting was under “house arrest”

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How ineffective is the justice system in Canada? Well the Conservatives are trying to lock it down, but things like “house arrest” are very popular with liberal elites.

Here’s what you can do in Canada while under “house arrest” for some other crime:

A 23-year-old man was supposed to be under house arrest when police say he opened fire this weekend inside a busy Toronto shopping mall, killing one and leading to injuries to seven others.

The suspect, Christopher Husbands, is now in custody after surrendering early Monday, police said.

[…]He faces one count of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder, according to police. Husbands appeared around 3:30 p.m. in a Toronto courtroom, where he was formally charged, CNN affiliate CTV reported.

[…]The detective described Husbands as a “charged individual (who) was on house arrest conditions, not to be outside his residence” when he was out with people — including Ahmed Hassan, the 24-year-old man police say he shot dead — on Saturday at the Eaton Centre mall in downtown Toronto.

In Canada, as in the UK (and here), criminals are apparently less at risk of being put in jail than law-abiding people who defend themselves.

Excerpt:

Chen owns the Lucky Moose Food Mart in Toronto. When a career thief ripped him off yet again in May 2009, he had had enough. Chen chased down the thug, tied him up with twine and stuffed him into the back of a van, then called police.

When police arrived, however, Chen was the one charged with numerous crimes including kidnapping, forcible confinement and having a concealed weapon. The last count was added because Chen keeps a box cutter in his back pocket for work. 

[…]The senate committee also heard from Joseph and Marilyn Singleton of Taber, Alberta.

When the couple returned home to their rural acreage after a dinner in May 2010, they found a suspected thief trying to flee after he and two others had allegedly broken into their house, trashed their home and stolen their belongings.

When the suspect tried to smash through their garage door with his getaway car, Joseph feared for his wife, who was standing on the other side of it, calling police. Joseph hit the 20-year-old in the head with the butt end of an axe to subdue him. The homeowner was charged with assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm, offences that carry up to 10 years in prison. The charges were later dropped.

The repeat offender, who was on bail after threatening another homeowner with a crowbar, was given house arrest.

“One of the hardest things I have ever had to do is answer questions from my young grandchildren, trying to explain why their grandfather was in trouble for protecting their grandmother,” Joseph told the committee.

Marilyn echoed his feelings. “At the time of our home invasion, I never would have dreamed that Joe would be charged for possibly saving my life. If he did not take action, it’s possible he would have had to explain to our children and grandchildren why he did not take action to protect their mother and grandmother.”

Defending themselves against the charges cost the couple $30,000, draining their retirement savings.

I guess that the jails in Canada are meant primarily for law-abiding people or legal gun owners. Criminals apparently go free, aka “house arrest”. That’s liberal jurisprudence – all very tolerant, you know. Let’s hope the Conservatives can fix the mess the Liberal Party made.