wokeness

To whom it may concern

Featured image The Dean of the University of Minnesota Medical School has just circulated an advisory to faculty (partial screenshot below). We covered the school’s new white-coat ceremony in “Beyond the Hippocratic oath.” Reporting on the absurd oath foisted on incoming students at the ceremony has apparently raised public interest. If you are among those who help defray expenses at the University of Minnesota and would like to express your views, you »

The compleat Tulsi

Featured image Tulsi Gabbard’s announced exit from the Democratic Party via Twitter this morning was only a small slice of the larger video below she has posted on YouTube as episode 1 of The Tulsi Gabbard Show. The whole thing makes for a thoroughgoing denunciation of Democrats and the Democrat Party line. At the same time she sketches out her agreement with key Republican and conservative positions. She is a highly persuasive »

At the struggle session

Featured image Over at the University of Minnesota Medical School, one probably shouldn’t be seen with books such as Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon or Fan Shen’s memoir Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard. It might reflect an inclination to think for yourself and other such bourgeois indulgences. I’m thinking that they missed a few strokes at this year’s white-coat ceremony for new students. The video below is a »

Judge Ho’s Yale boycott

Featured image Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho gave the keynote address at the Federalist Society’s Sixth Annual Kentucky Chapters Conference last week. Judge Ho gave his talk the title “Agreeing to Disagree—Restoring America by Resisting Cancel Culture.” Nate Hochman obtained a copy of the text and broke its most newsworthy aspect in “Federal Judge Vows to Stop Hiring Law Clerks from Yale Law School.” We followed Hochman’s account in “Bravo, Judge Ho.” »

An evening with Garrison Keillor

Featured image At the American Conservative Peter Tonguette recently reflected on seeing Garrison Keillor perform in Newark, Ohio. Tonguette’s column was published as “An evening with Garrison Keillor in exile.” Prudence Johnson performed with Garrison. Last month I included Prudence in my series on the Minnesota music scene in “Wash my eyes” (singing a song by Greg Brown). Tonguette covers some of the same ground I did this past December in my »

On being a serious country

Featured image The Center of the American Experiment hosted Wilfred McClay this past Friday over lunch in Bloomington to speak on the abomination of Minnesota’s social studies standards in process. It was not only a great event, thanks to John Hinderaker letting me join him at the head table, the lunch gave me a chance to catch up briefly with Professor McClay. Professor McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical »

Guest Post: Emina Melonic on “No ‘Batgirl’ Power”

Featured image The news that “Batgirl” has been canceled by senior executives may be a significant sign that the rebellion against suffocating wokery is gaining steam, or maybe it is just a case of entertainment management finally figuring out sunk-cost fallacy. In any case, I asked Emina Melonic to bring her astute powers of cinematic perception to bear on the news: Variety reports that Warner Bros./Discovery CEO David Zaslav has decided to »

Woke Hollywood, Broke Hollywood (UPDATED)

Featured image Buzz Lightyear (voiced by the great Tim Allen, one of the few right-leaning stars in Hollywood) became an iconic character in the Toy Story series of films, but the new standalone Buzz Lightyear movie, with Buzz voiced by Chris Evans instead of Allen, has bombed at the box office, perhaps because it decided to go fully woke by prominently featuring a lesbian relationship. As Kyle Smith puts it, “today Hollywood’s »

“Democracy Dies in Dumbness”

Featured image Bill Maher nails it again this weekend, with this complete humiliation of the Washington Post and the wokerati that have brought it low: Memo to Maher: Look, dude, we appreciate that beating up on wokism has become one of your most prominent themes these days, but if you really want it to end, you know what you have to do: vote Republican. It’s the only way the left will learn »

Speaking of Edmund Burke

Featured image Reading Edmund Burke’s writings on the French Revolution as a college freshman helped open my mind and turn me into a conservative. Steve’s American Mind column on Burke is brilliant, but you have to have read Burke. The French Revolution was of course Burke’s great subject, yet just about everything he wrote is worth reading, if only to learn from his high style. Burke’s great subject also comes to mind »

Why Left-Wing Organizations Are Crumbling

Featured image This liberal video podcast is sponsored by The Hill. I’ve never seen it before, but a friend sent me the link to this episode. It is titled “Elephant In The Zoom: Meltdowns Inside Progressive Organizations Are CRIPPLING The Left.” It addresses the question: why are liberal nonprofits crumbling and ceasing to function? Because they are under attack by young wokester employees who essentially have ground things to a halt. There »

Learning from Euthydemus

Featured image I’ve been studying Xenophon’s Memorabilia with friends over the past few months. Xenophon was a student and friend of Socrates. His memoirs are devoted to an account and defense of Socrates following the trial that resulted in his death. It’s an interesting and classic work. We have used Amy Bonnette’s translation in Cornell’s Agora series as our text. It comes with an excellent introduction by Christopher Bruell and annotations by »

Waking up to Wokery?

Featured image The biggest political question of the next year is whether, assuming Democrats lose badly in November, the progressive left that is the ballast of the Democratic Party will be able to pivot back toward the center as Bill Clinton did by degrees after the 1994 mid-term upended 40 years of Democratic hegemony on Capitol Hill. Never mind Biden, who has neither the feral intelligence nor retail political skills Clinton had. »

Have We Reached a Turn Against Wokism?

Featured image As noted here yesterday, the Washington Post decided to boot out an entitled Millennial, which comes in the same week that San Francisco voters booted out a woke prosecutor, and we know that Netflix has told its own staff that anyone who doesn’t like offerings like Dave Chapelle or Ricky Gervais might want to seek employment elsewhere (and then cancelled a planned children’s show based on the “work” of Ibram »

Only the Woke Need Apply [Updated]

Featured image From the Telegraph, a story that sums up much that is wrong with the West. Calvin Robinson has been studying at Oxford for the last two years to become an Anglican priest. Robinson was scheduled to begin a curacy at a parish in London, but the post was denied him and he was told the church did not have a role for him. Why? Mr Robinson submitted a subject access »

Today’s Satire Is Tomorrow’s Woke Dogma

Featured image A reader sends along this article, supposedly by a real estate professional, about the sales terms that you should no longer use to promote a house on the market. I can’t tell if this story is deadpan satire, an earnest attempt to adapt to our wokerati, or a prophecy about the future. You decide: Some of my clients’ multiple listing services flag questionable words and phrases, while others do not. »

Let’s end political litmus tests in education

Featured image “Diversity statements” are the latest device the left has come up with to impose and enforce woke conformity in education. Stanley Kurtz explains how they work: Let’s say you’re applying for a teaching job at a university. In addition to submitting a CV and a description of your academic research, many universities now require you to answer a series of questions designed to prove your commitment to the ideology and »