Left
1,253 pieces tagged “Left”, newest first.
On Campus, a Freedom From Speech
Yale's president, Peter Salovey, dealt with the Crisis of the Distressing Email about Hypothetical Halloween Costumes about as you would expect from someone who has risen to eminence in today's academia. He seems to be the kind of adult who has helped produce the kind of students who are such delicate snowflakes that they melt at the mere mention of even a potential abrasion of their sensibilities.
Liberals Losing the Culture Wars?
The libertine left has done a lot of boasting over the last several years about the inevitability of History vanquishing every corner of American social conservatism. Election Day 2015 was a terrible day for these revolutionaries, as so often it is when it's the American people, not liberal elites, making the decisions.
Liberals' Response to Dissent: 'Shut Up'
"'Shut up,' he explained." That's a sentence from Ring Lardner's short story "The Young Immigrunts." It's an exasperated father's response from the driver's seat to his child's question, "Are you lost, Daddy?" They also can be taken as the emblematic response of today's liberals to anyone questioning their certitudes. As with the father in the story, it's a response that indicates uneasy apprehension — the fear that they have no good answer.
Doing for Yourself
A recent New York Times headline read, "Raising Taxes on the Wealthiest Would Pay for Bold Plans." The story says that by soaking the rich "the government could raise large amounts of revenue ... while still allowing them to take home a majority of their income." Nowhere in the story, nor in the endless promises of Democratic presidential candidates, is there a single word about whether more government spending will produce the promised outcomes.
Liberal and Progressive Vision
Here's my question to you: If an evil person is guaranteed that he can inflict physical pain upon others and guaranteed to never suffer pain himself, what happens to his willingness to inflict pain?
Liberal Cynicism and Double Standards on Race
Fair people are disgusted with GQ columnist Drew Magary's vile denunciation of Ben Carson and his comments on the Oregon shooting, but it shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with leftist vulgarity and double standards. Not only did GQ print the post, in which Magary wrote "f— him," but also it titled the piece "F— Ben Carson." So much for civility, decency, tolerance, intellectual heft and — oh, yes — racial sensitivity. GQ tweeted a link to the column, which means it wants people to read it.
Liberals Are Done Debating
Not always. Not everyone. But enough. This week, for example, while thinking about the pope's take on global warming, I tweeted out this comment: "Celebrate climate change, an externality of the greatest poverty destroying program in the history of mankind." There is plenty to disagree with in my observation, I admit. Although I believe what I wrote to be true, I sent it out partly to elicit exactly the sort of reaction my tweet got — with one person calling me a psychopath (a Slate writer, not some anonymous critic) and another calling me sociopathic, among other things. I don't mind the insults (perversely, in fact, I sort of enjoy them), but I do mind that the debate is over.
Liberal Reasoning: Idiotic or Dishonest?
Many people argue that liberals, socialists and progressives do not understand basic economics. I am not totally convinced about that. Take the law of demand, for example, one of the fundamental principles of economics. It holds that the lower the cost of something the more people will take or do of it. Conversely, the higher the cost the less people will take or do something. By their actions, liberals fully understand the law of demand. Let's look at some proof. The Seattle City Council voted unanimously to establish a tax on gun and ammunition sales. Hillary Clinton has called for a 25 percent tax on gun sales. In Chicago, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle proposed "violence taxes" on bullets to discourage criminals from buying guns. Let's ignore the merit of these measures. They do show that gun grabbers acknowledge the law of demand. They want fewer gun sales and thus propose raising the cost of guns.
Liberty: Earned v. Inherited
The character deficit of inheritance-welfare liberals -- those who were raised dependent on inheritance rather than self-reliance -- is all but indistinguishable from the character deficit of those who depend on state welfare.