Leftism
February 12, 2024 — John Hinderaker
We keep hearing from the government about the grave dangers posed by right-wing domestic terrorism, but the actual threats generally seem to come from elsewhere. The most recent case in point is the shooter who attacked the Lakewood Church in Houston. Per Breitbart: The female shooter who attacked Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church has been identified as 36-year-old Genesse Moreno, who KHOU 11 noted “previously identified as Jeffery Escalante.” KHOU 11
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February 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Today the jury returned its verdict in the defamation trial of Michael Mann v. Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn. The verdict was disappointing to those of us who followed the case and thought that Michael Mann presented a pathetically inadequate case. The jury actually agreed: it found that the defendants had defamed Mann, but awarded only a token $1 in damages, since Mann had failed to prove any. But it
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February 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker
It often happens that jury trials start slowly, then finish with a rush. That happened in the case of Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg. Evidence wrapped up rather quickly, and today the lawyers delivered their closing arguments. I assume that jury deliberations will begin tomorrow, as the arguments concluded late in the afternoon. John Williams, an elderly lawyer who is Mann’s senior counsel, argued first. I didn’t
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February 2, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I would rather be writing about something else, but I spent the entire day today giving interviews and responding to well-wishers with regard to the arson attack on Center of the American Experiment and two allied conservative organizations last Saturday night. A few observations: * The national interest in this story is high. Today I was interviewed by two radio shows in Boston, one in Chicago, one in Phoenix and
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February 1, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I wasn’t entirely forthcoming in this post about why I haven’t written much the last few days. It is true that I have been in Washington, mostly to attend the Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn trial. I will write up my thoughts on the trial (or at least, those portions I have seen) when I have time. But something else has been distracting me: leftists firebombed my office last Saturday
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January 29, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Farmers across much of Europe are protesting against their governments’ anti-agriculture policies. In France, farmers are shutting down access to Paris: Farmers set up roadblocks on eight motorways around Paris today as they made good their threat to place a stranglehold on the capital. “The siege of Paris is under way,” said Damien Greffin, vice-chairman of the country’s biggest farming union, the FNSEA. He said the plan was to “encircle”
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January 28, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Left-wing activists have taken to throwing food at paintings in order to make some kind of point. The latest victim is the Mona Lisa, in Paris’s Louvre Museum: In a video posted on social media, two women with the words “FOOD RIPOSTE” written on their T-shirts can be seen throwing soup at the glass protecting Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece and passing under a security barrier to get closer to the
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January 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Private sector unions in the U.S. have been in decline for a long time. Currently, only around 6% of all private sector employees are union members. And most of those union members are not left-wing; on the contrary, they tend to vote for Republicans and especially for Donald Trump. Their leaders, nevertheless, are mostly throwbacks: socialists if not outright Communists. And in today’s world, being left-wing means being in favor
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January 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about the fact that the University of North Carolina’s Faculty Council couldn’t bring itself to condemn a speaker at a UNC event who hailed Gaza’s October 7 massacre of Jews as “a beautiful day.” But things at UNC are not all bleak. On Monday, a UNC speaker series hosted Frank Bruni and Bari Weiss, both formerly with the New York Times, for “a discussion of objectivity in
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January 21, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Birth rates have fallen across Western Europe. In France, as in a number of other countries, the birth rate is below the replacement rate. This is the reason why European countries have turned to immigration to provide workers and to support their native populations as they retire. This policy has produced mixed results, at best. So it is easy to understand why western leaders would want to encourage population growth.
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January 20, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Pollster Scott Rasmussen conducted two separate surveys, each covering 1,000 “Members of the Elites.” The results are remarkable, not to say shocking. But the starting point is, who was defined as “elite” for purposes of these surveys? The Elites are defined as those having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, and living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile. Approximately
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January 5, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Bill Ackman is a lifelong liberal whose political donations have been to Democrats. But, as a Harvard alumnus and a Jew, he was appalled by Claudine Gay’s incompetent and borderline anti-Semitic Congressional testimony, as well as her lack of any body of original scholarship. So for the first time, he stepped into the cultural and political fray. The Left responded predictably, by attacking his wife, Neri Osman, who is brilliant
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January 2, 2024 — John Hinderaker
That is obvious from the “anti-racists'” explicit precepts, which call for race discrimination extending indefinitely into the future. If most people had any idea what the anti-racists say, they would be horrified. But here is a more specific instance of anti-racist bigotry: A US anti-racism campaigner has triggered outrage after she claimed “Zionist” doctors were giving worse care to black and Muslim patients. Saira Rao, a former Democrat congressional candidate,
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December 30, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Glenn Reynolds quotes some of the same accounts of rape and sexual mutilation of Israeli girls and women by Gazans that I wrote about here. What the Arab Muslims did on October 7 isn’t just unspeakable, it is almost unimaginable. Glenn comments: It’s as if these people are a bunch of degenerate animals, which is because that’s what they are. Hamas and the — majority — of Palestinians who support
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December 22, 2023 — John Hinderaker
On December 3, a radical group hosted a “teach-in” titled “From Minnesota to Palestine.” The panelists linked America and Israel as “settler colonialist” nations–the only ones, apparently, in world history–and thus the source of all evil. This is the whole thing. It goes on for more than two hours, and I don’t recommend that you watch it. Among other things, the panelists celebrate the Hamas massacre of October 7 as
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December 19, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Environmentalists, and liberals in general, will sacrifice anything to fight–allegedly–global warming. So it makes me a little nervous to see that a scientific group in the U.K. has documented that humans contribute to “climate change” by breathing. Of course, kids used to be taught this in junior high school: humans breathe in air, burn the oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. This is
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December 14, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Minnesota’s absurdly left-wing government has undertaken to design a new state flag and Great Seal. Why? Currently, the state flag is just the seal against a background. This is the seal. It shows a farmer and an Indian with a background suitable to Minnesota, including a pine forest and a waterfall which is St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis: The current seal includes Minnesota’s motto–“L’Etoile du Nord,” Star of the North–and
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