Erin O’Connor excerpts an article by National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood on higher education and its relationship with the larger society, and adds some thoughts of her own.
Civil Society
Monkeywrenching socialism – Introduction
I always thought that if we every got within shouting distance of a tipping point where we would become a socialist country somebody would start up an extended discussion on monkeywrenching socialism. Nobody else seems to have done so (feel free to educate me on other efforts in comments) so I thought I’d put in my two bits with a blog post series.
Let me be clear as to what I am talking about. This is not about felonious conduct. It’s not a mirror image of left-wing monkeywrenching. It’s about exploiting a simple fact of life, that socialism doesn’t work and the socialist ideology makes headway only when the long-term effects are hidden or obfuscated. Monkeywrenching socialism is about improving society across the board from politics to economics to culture by introducing moments of clarity and insisting that there is no moral or ethical high ground for a wrong system that has caused as much damage in the world.
Peacefully adopted socialism depends on people feeling a misplaced sense of loyalty to the corpse of the system that socialism is usurping. People know that something is wrong but they ‘play fair’ long after the socialists have started their long march through the institutions and played dirty pool to tear the guts out of the old order before anybody notices.
More soon.
When even the police are starving, you realize that the country has serious problems.
A truly sad story about conditions in Zimbabwe. There is something particularly sad about people forced to eat their own protected wildlife. Of course, no one can blame them. No one could blame them if they ate all the elephants.
Remember when Mugabe was the darling of the Left? Remember how they all supported his redistribution of land as post-colonial justice?
I think I’ll go find a random leftist and punch him.
A Vacuum of Will
Significant piracy has been so long gone from the world that the very word “pirate” evokes only images of 17th-century sailing ships armed with blackpowder weapons. Now pirates have returned to the choke points of the world’s oceans. What has changed? Why could we deal with pirates 150, 100 or 50 years ago but we can’t deal with them today?
I think that, as with terrorism, the return of piracy indicates the collapse of international law and the liberal order it establishes. It tells us how dysfunctional international law has become.
Cowardice is Eternal
Glenn posts about an interesting case.
Two subway workers in New York called the police when they witnessed a rape in progress, but didn’t do anything to physically stop the crime. A case brought against them was thrown out of court, the judge saying that calling the cops is all that is required of witnesses.
Glenn isn’t any too happy about the ruling. He says….
“In a previous day, in a different culture, such men would have been afraid of being called cowards for failing to help a woman under such circumstances.”
I don’t think Glenn remembers Kitty Genovese. That particular incident might not have occurred in another culture, but it certainly happened in a previous day.
Look at it this way. At least the New York residents who saw the crime called police this time around. That is certainly an improvement over past performance. Maybe, after another four or five decades, people who live in New York will even become as brave as those of us who hail from flyover country.
Those who follow the links above will no doubt note that two of the three examples are where people who were legally carrying concealed weapons confronted a crazed killer. Since New York effectively bans that sort of thing, we really can’t expect them to have the same level of civic concern. This is, I think, one of the points that Glenn was trying to make.
But also note that the last link leads to the story of two unarmed vacationers who tackled a rifle wielding gunman who was shooting at the White House. Neither of them were from New York.