Tag Archives: Political Correctness

News

Obama administration covers up political correctness that led to massacre

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From Hans Bader, at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Excerpt:

Discrimination and politically-correct blinders can be deadly. It was obvious in the aftermath of the Fort Hood shootings that the killer was inspired by Islamic extremism. Obvious, that is, to anyone but officials in the Obama administration, who continue to cling tightly to a culture of political correctness and preferential treatment that helped make the shootings possible.

Nidal Hasan shot dead 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood, while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”  But the Obama administration’s inquiry into the shootings falsely suggested Islamic extremism was not a factor in the shootings.  Its report on the Fort Hood massacre did not even “mention the words ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’ once,” referring to the killer simply as the “alleged perpetrator.” Instead, it claimed the tragedy resulted from “bureaucratic shortcomings” in the “sharing of information.”

[…]The shooter’s Islamic extremism was obvious.  Prior to the shooting, he had said that Muslims should rise up against the military, “repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers,” was pleased by the terrorist murder of an army recruiter, and engaged in hate-speech against non-Muslims, publicly calling for the beheading or burning of non-Muslims, and talking “about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.”  “In addition, Hasan openly had suggested revenge as a defense for the 9/11 attacks, defended Osama bin Laden, and said his allegiance to his religion was greater than his allegiance to the constitution.”

But the military did nothing to remove him from a position where he could harm others. Although his views were common knowledge, “a fear of appearing discriminatory . . . kept officers from filing a formal written complaint,” the Associated Press noted. Moreover, “a key official on a review committee reportedly asked how it might look to terminate a key resident who happened to be a Muslim,” as NPR noted.  Instead, the military effectively exempted Hasan from rules of conduct that apply to everyone else, in order to promote its conception of “diversity.”

As military attorney Thomas Kenniff notes, there was a climate of “obsessive political correctness” in the military. As Major Shawn Keller pointed out, in a column entitled “An Officer’s Outrage Over Fort Hood.” “There was no shortage of warning signs that Hasan identified more with Islamic Jihadists than he did with the US Army. . .But just like September 11, those agencies and individuals charged with keeping America and Americans safe failed to connect the dots that would have saved lives. Jihadist rhetoric espoused by Hasan was categorically dismissed out of submissiveness to the concepts of tolerance and diversity. . . . the leaders in Hasan’s chain-of-command failed to act . . . out of fear of being labeled anti-Muslim and receiving a negative evaluation report.”

Indeed, even after the shootings, government officials worried more about the fate of “diversity” than about the lives of their troops:  “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength,” Army Chief of Staff George Casey told NBC’s Meet the Press. “And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse,” Casey said.

Can you trust the Democrats on national security? I don’t see why.

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Commentary

Is a college degree worth the money you pay for it?

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Do college degrees really get you a better job?

It depends on what you study. If you study really hard stuff that is in demand, then it will help. But if you study easy stuff and don’t come out in the top 1% of those easy programs, then going to college is a huge waste of money. It’s also a huge “opportunity cost”, because you could have been working instead of going to college – which would get you not only a salary but a lot of experience, too. Instead of having $50,000 in debt, you could have $50,000 in savings, over four years.

Take a look at this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. (H/T Hans Bader at the Competitive Enterprise Institute)

Excerpt:

“60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the (Bureau of Labor Statistics) considers relatively low skilled — occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less.” This means that the great push to increase the number of college grads has apparently come to very little — only a minority of the additional grads are in occupations regarded as requiring a bachelor’s degree.  Of the nearly 50 million U.S. colleges graduates, 17.4 million are holding jobs for which college training is regarded as unnecessary. The number of waiters and waitresses with college degrees more than doubled from in the years 1992-2008, from 119,000 to 338,000, and cashiers with college degrees rose from 132,000 to 365,000.

We should not be taking money from working individuals and businesses to provide grants for immature students to study basket weaving. Providing money for so many people to study things that are not practical and that they are not even that good at is a waste of money. We are not getting a good return for this money if graduates just go on to do jobs that they would have done anyway. The real questions that should be asked by students is “is this worth the money? Will this help me to find a job?” And the real question that taxpayers should be asking is “do we need to stop wasting money on grants for useless degrees and leave the money in the private sector to create more good jobs instead?”.

It’s not good to be sending young people to universities that are run by leftists in any case, because it insulates them from real life and puts them at the mercy of perpetual adolescents (professors). For many students, college is wasted on partying and “studying” impractical and counter-factual areas like feminist studies, peace studies, black studies, Marxist studies, queer studies, etc. We do not need to be sending so much money into the pockets of unqualified leftists like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who bash capitalism while living off of the wealth produced by it.

Hans writes:

In “The Great College Degree Scam,” expert Richard Vedder points out that “[s]ome in higher education KNOW about all of this and are keeping quiet about it because of their own self-interest. We are deceiving our young population to mindlessly pursue college degrees” they don’t need.

Hans also talked about the problem of rising college debt here.

News

UK stores stocking almost no Christmas cards that mention Jesus

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From the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Supermarkets were accused of ‘airbrushing Christ out of Christmas’ yesterday after it emerged that less than one per cent of cards they stock have religious themes.

Many stores display hundreds of different Christmas cards yet offer just a handful featuring traditional Christian scenes.

Some had no cards at all with religious references in their extensive ranges.

The Daily Mail visited major outlets of the big four supermarkets – Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons – in seven towns and cities.

Out of 5,363 cards sold individually or in multipacks, just 45 featured Christian scenes such as the Nativity – 0.8 per cent.

The worst offender was Morrisons, which had six out of a range of 973 cards, or 0.6 per cent.

Second worst was Tesco, despite chief executive Sir Terry Leahy, a practising Catholic, writing to a customer in October to tell her: ‘We have increased the number of Christmas cards that will be available with a religious theme this year.’

[…]The Mail was contacted by a Tesco customer earlier this week who said her local store in Ely, Cambridgeshire, had just a ‘handful’ of cards with religious themes last year – and still had only three out of 67 last month, despite a personal assurance from Sir Terry.

After she had repeatedly contacted customer services, she received a letter from the company chief.

‘Sir Terry promised more cards this year,’ she said.

‘But the selection of cards with anything relating to the true meaning of Christmas was tiny, so he has not kept his word.’

Tesco said it had doubled the range of religiously themed cards this year but refused to give numbers, saying they ‘vary from store to store’.

An Asda spokesman said: ‘We sell five different Christmas cards that have religious sentiment and traditional designs.’

Morrisons said: ‘We stock types of cards that appeal to our customers.’

A Sainsbury’s spokesman said: ‘The ranges that appear in our stores reflect what our customers want to buy.’

In case anyone is trying to remember, this is the meaning of Christmas:

This makes me sad. I feel sad for Christians who are being marginalized. We are the only ones who can be mistreated and marginalized with impunity. Christianity is the religion of loving your enemies and turning the other cheek, after all. I think I know why people are doing this – because they are more interested in being liked by non-Christians than being liked by Jesus for telling the truth about him. They think that Christianity is about being nice to others first, instead of being nice to Jesus first. Well, I for one do not care what people think about my faith. I can do just fine without any earthly friends. I hope it doesn’t come to that, thought!

I am OK with not being happy and popular. I don’t mind if honor the real message of Christmas doesn’t make me happy and popular.