E-Pluribus | May 3, 2021
Here is a round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
John Ellis: Sorry, Professor, We’re Cutting You Off
A society’s institutions form a framework that helps hold that society together. John Ellis writes at The Wall Street Journal that America’s institutions of higher learning have strayed from their covenant with the country to produce informed, educated thinkers, instead choosing political indoctrination. In the face of the refusal of many of these college and universities to reform themselves, the only solution left to those concerned with this untenable situation is financial — cut them off, a solution Ellis conceded is easier said than done.
Higher education had a cluster of related purposes in society. Everyone benefited from the new knowledge it developed and the well-informed, thoughtful citizenry it produced. Individual students benefited from the preparation they received for careers in a developed economy. Yet these days, academia has decided that its primary purpose is the promotion of a radical political ideology, to which it gives the sunny label “social justice.”
That’s an enormous detour from the institutional mission granted to higher education by society — and a problem of grave consequence. For the purpose that academia has now given itself happens to be the only one that the founding documents of virtually all colleges and universities take care to forbid pre-emptively. The framers of those documents understood that using the campuses to promote political ideologies would destroy their institutions, because ideologies would always be rigid enough to prevent the exploration of new ideas and the free exercise of thought. They knew that the two purposes — academic and political — aren’t simply different, but polar opposites. They can’t coexist because the one erases the other.
[…]
The only remaining disputes about this illicit repurposing are therefore not among campus people, but between academia and the society it supposedly serves. And that should concern everyone. What can we do when a social institution is created for a particular purpose but abandons it? What should we do when an institution decides that it, not the society that created it, will determine its own purpose? What shall we do with an institution that has decided all these things but also expects to hang on to the funding that was provided for the original purpose?
The obvious thing to do is to take back the money and redirect it to its proper use. That will be more easily done with some institutions than others.
Read the whole thing.
Ross Douthat: When Wokeness Becomes Weakness
To Ross Douthat’s way of thinking, “wokeness” in crime and education policy may be the downfall for Democrats if current trends continue. Dealing with the current round of calls to reform (defund?) police and how schools and politicians handle reopening COVID-impacted schools may prove damaging if Democrats overplay their we-know-best hand.
If the new progressivism becomes truly politically disastrous for Democrats, on the other hand, it will probably involve not just off-putting or elitist rhetoric, but a dramatic policy failure linked to social justice politics.
The two places where that seems most likely to happen are crime and education. Crime is the more urgent case: 2020 saw a major spike in the homicide rate, back to late-1990s levels, which so far is carrying over into 2021. Biden’s speech to Congress last Wednesday made a vague connection between ongoing “bloodshed” and the liberal-friendly debate over an assault weapons ban, but it isn’t AR-15s doing most of the damage in the current murder wave. Instead, police demoralization and withdrawal in the aftermath of protests and riots seem like a crucial factor — along with (more speculatively) coronavirus school closures, widespread masking, and the general Covid-era suspension of normality.
Maybe we’ll revert to pre-2020 trends as normality returns. If we don’t, though, the Democrats’ problem won’t be the off-putting rhetoric of police abolition; it will be the reality of a rising body count as liberal politicians struggle to negotiate between activists, protesters, progressive prosecutors and cops. And that kind of failure could take what is, for now, the modest trend of some conservative-leaning Asian, Hispanic and African-American voters drifting rightward and make it an existential problem like the white-ethnic abandonment of the Democrats under Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Read the whole thing.
Andrew C. McCarthy: Due Process Matters
Several recent police shootings and the resulting protests may be having an unwelcome impact on attitudes on due process, at least when it comes to those we have hired to protect and self our communities. Andrew McCarthy writes that anger at perceived injustices are no excuse for violating the rights of the accused, no matter who the accused may be.
As is customary in police shootings, Potter was immediately placed on administrative leave as an investigation of the incident began. Naturally, the fact that she was no longer performing police duties, and was unlikely ever to perform them again, was not good enough for the angry Left. Brooklyn Center mayor Mike Elliott proclaimed that Potter must be fired instantly, notwithstanding that she was a civil servant entitled to various legal protections prior to termination — what is quaintly known as “due process.”
At the time, city manager Curt Boganey, a longtime, well-regarded public employee, demurred to the mayor’s demand. All Brooklyn Center employees, Boganey said, “are entitled to due process with respect to discipline.” He continued, “This employee will receive due process, and that’s really all I can say today.” An utterly unremarkable statement, right down to the no-further-comment coda, which itself was emblematic of the due-process principle that government officials should not make gratuitous public remarks that could undermine the integrity of a legal process.
Mind you, Boganey was not implying that the suspended Potter was ever going to work as a cop again. He was merely honoring his responsibility to follow the legal procedures that a government is obliged to follow before terminating a public employee.
[…]
There was no need to fire Officer Potter. She had promptly resigned after the incident, as had the department’s chief. It does not minimize the incommensurable sorrow of Daunte Wright’s family to observe that Potter’s life is shattered. The home of the 48-year-old mother of two adult sons, who is married to a retired police officer, has been barricaded by concrete blocks and iron fencing — like other attractive rioting targets in the Minneapolis area.
The resignation, of course, was not enough. With the mob baying for blood, Potter was swiftly taken into custody, charged with second-degree manslaughter, and not released until she had posted a $100,000 bail bond. “Protesters” made sure to march in the vicinity of the home of Washington County Attorney Pete Orput, demanding that he charge Potter with murder. The prosecutor dutifully vowed to proceed aggressively, though so far he has not upped the ante, maintaining that second-degree manslaughter is the right fit.
It’s not. The criminal-justice system is designed to address intentional and malicious wrongs — crimes, not torts. Accidents, no matter how grievous, are almost never fit for criminal prosecution. When they result from negligence by police or other public officials, they are grist for terminating the wrongdoer and for immense civil payouts.
Read it all here.
Around Twitter
A memoir by North Korea’s founding father Kim Il Sung is raising free speech issues in South Korea:
A decision comes this week on Donald Trump’s future on Facebook and Instagram:
Michael Tracey on the left’s truth-to-power conceit:
Liz Cheney picks up the gauntlet just to throw it down again in front her party, challenging the commitment of the Trump wing to the rule of law and democracy itself:
