Signs of the Times: At left, a typical Gun-Free School Zone sign. At right, a sign at schools in Union Grove, Texas.
“Almost”?
“It’s almost turning into a nanny state,” says member Dennis Senibaldi about his Windham, Mass., school board’s decision to ban dodgeball.
What would Windham have to ban to get beyond “almost”?
Undergraduate Students Forced to Lobby for House GOP Policy on Tax Cuts
(Well, not quite. But it’s just as wrong.)
P.S. - The bum is actually boasting about this.
Second-Grader Suspended for Having Breakfast Pastry Shaped Like a Gun
The poor kid’s toast.
Be Careful What You Cite
A lot of progressives — not least of all some in the White House! — have been citing recent polls showing broad support for policies they themselves happen to favor. Such as the poll results on background checks, above, for instance.
It’s not intuitively obvious why this is supposed to be so persuasive. “Hey, lots of people agree with me!” isn’t much of an argument, except perhaps in the sense that the U.S. is a democracy, so policies favored by large majorities ought to be enacted.
The trouble with that line of thinking is that it can turn around and bite you in the keister. Take voting rights. This morning the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that, by a 3-1 margin, the public supports a Republican-backed measure requiring a photo ID in order to vote. Does that mean we should require photo IDs? Democrats sure don’t seem to think so. They loathe the idea, compare it to poll taxes, and accuse Republicans of using photo-ID measures to suppress the vote.
See also: prayer in schools. While support for prayer in school has fallen, two-thirds of Americans still support it. So, should public schools begin each day with a daily devotional?
Of course not.
Photo ID measures are tightly bound up with questions about the right to vote. Prayer in school is tightly bound up with the right to religious freedom. By the same token, gun-control measures are tightly bound up with the inalienable right to self-defense and to bear arms. And rights, as legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin put it, are trumps. They outweigh competing considerations, such as public opinion, by their very nature of being rights.
We shouldn’t automatically do what the majority wants, just because the majority happens to want it.
The University of Colorado has released a list of ways to stop rapists in light of gun control bill
“These tips are designed to help you protect yourself on campus, in town, at your home, or while you travel. These are preventative tips and are designed to instruct you in crime prevention tactics.”
- Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself.
- Your instinct may be to scream, go ahead! It may startle your attacker and give you an opportunity to run away.
- Kick off your shoes if you have time and can’t run in them.
- Don’t take time to look back; just get away.
- If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense.
- Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.
- Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.
- Yelling, hitting or biting may give you a chance to escape, do it!
- Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm.
- Remember, every emergency situation is different. Only you can decide which action is most appropriate.
Thanks to this list I can pretty comfortably say that gun control laws are sexist. Why should I have to lie, force myself to vomit, or urinate on myself? Why do I need to understand that my actions should lead to more harm? Because I don’t have a gun to immediately stop them and because I fight back they will treat me worse? Or is it considered “worse harm” that I might physically harm him and then I wouldn’t be the only victim? Perhaps the most disgusting item on this list is the advice that passive resistance may be the best option for me. I could be wrong, but are you telling me to just suck it up and take it?
Why, when I am already at a physical disadvantage and taken by surprise by someone with a plan, should I not be able to react in the most effective and least demeaning way? I should be able to arm and protect myself. What I also find disturbing is that NO weapons are recommended on this list. What about pepper spray on your keychain? The end of your key held between two fingers? A knife? A loud alarm keychain? You can even legally buy a hand-held taser (I have a pink one.)It’s completely disgusting and offensive that women are expected to just deal with the fact that their best means of defense is being stripped from them and they are now expected to piss on themselves instead.
Emphasis added in the last two grafs, to highlight their awesomeness.
Obama’s Little Fib
When it comes to early-childhood education there are lots of studies, and people on both sides of the debate emphasize the studies that prove their respective cases, while ignoring the studies that cast their cases in doubt.
President Obama might have done the same thing in his State of the Union address. Instead, he chose to cite studies that don’t exist:
Let’s look again at Obama’s State of the Union statement: “In states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children — like Georgia or Oklahoma — studies show students grow up more likely to read and do math at grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, form more stable families of their own.”
The Georgia program, for instance, began in 1996, and the Oklahoma program in 1998, meaning the oldest participants are now only 20. So how does the president know such state programs mean these children will be able to hold a job or have stable marriages?
He doesn’t. The White House could provide no studies backing up his claim, so we can only assume he is jumping to the conclusion that the results in Perry and Abecedarian would be easily replicated.
But that may be a risky assumption.
“Generalizations to state pre-K programs from research findings on Perry and Abecedarian are prodigious leaps of faith,” wroteGrover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, last month. “Perry and Abecedarian were multi-year intensive interventions whereas state pre-K programs are overwhelmingly one-year programs for four-year-olds.” He also noted that today’s students face different the circumstances than those of 30 to 40 years ago.
Maybe it would be better if someone fact-checked the president’s speeches before he gave them. Just a thought!
Victory for Free Speech: College President Fined $50K for Expelling Student Over Facebook Posting
This sort of thing needs to happen more often — to make sure this sort of thing happens less often.
From theyuniversity:
So wrong for so many reasons.
- Image source: imgur
This is why I weep for our future. And why I secretly am preparing my children to survive a zombie apocalypse.
There are no words.
I sure hope this is a spoof. Experience, however, suggests it very well might not be.
(Source: theyuniversity)
