Category: Culture wars
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UVA Groups Are Hamas Proxies, Lawsuit Contends
by James A. Bacon Matan Goldstein, a first-year Israeli-American student at the University of Virginia, has filed a lawsuit against President Jim Ryan and Rector Robert Hardie, alleging that they stood by and did nothing while pro-Hamas groups subjected him to harassment, intimidation and abuse for his religious and ethnic identity. Goldstein drew attention as…
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The Society that Guns Have Made
by Dick Hall-Sizemore A recent event in Ohio is a vivid illustration of what we are coming to as a society in which firearms are ubiquitous. Here is an excerpt from a long article in The New York Times in which the incident is described: Mr. [Jason] Keys and his wife, Charae Williams Keys, were…
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Riley Gaines: Role Model
by Kerry Dougherty We live in a world hungry for role models for our young children. Especially girls. I met one yesterday. Twenty-four year old Riley Gaines. Champion athlete and accidental feminist. Poised, proud and witty. Listen to her speak for an hour and you’ll be convinced this smart and attractive dynamo can accomplish almost…
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The Crying Game
by James A. Bacon After President Jim Ryan ordered a breakup of their liberation zone for Gaza a week ago in what one might call a “mostly peaceful” police action, encampment veterans are posturing as victims of “brutal” fascist state “violence” and “trauma.” “I got brutalized by the police at a UNESCO World Heritage site,”…
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So Much for Empathetic Listening
by James A. Bacon Militant students and faculty at the University of Virginia — and elsewhere — often talk about having “hard conversations” about the tragic realities in Gaza. To see what those “conversations” sound like, click on the video above. It was hard alright — hard for President Jim Ryan. The students had…
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FUCK UVA Redux: The Revolution Consumes Its Own
by James A. Bacon Militant students and faculty held an online gripe session today skewering President Jim Ryan and Provost Ian Baucom, and their rhetoric — including calls for Ryan’s resignation — is more heated than ever. While I support the actions Ryan and Baucom took to shut down the UVA Encampment for Gaza, where…
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UVA Soft on Nazis but Brutal to Students?
by James A. Bacon A continuing meme in the ongoing rhetorical battle between leftists and anarchists on the one hand and the Ryan administration on the other is that University of Virginia authorities brutally cracked down on peaceful protesters May 4 while allowing White supremacists to march through UVA unmolested in 2017. For example, the…
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Team Ryan Defends Shutdown of Tent Encampment
by James A. Bacon The University of Virginia called in the Virginia State Police to disperse “UVA Encampment for Gaza” protesters because they feared the demonstration was spiraling out of control, said President Jim Ryan, University Police Chief Tim Longo, and other University leaders in a virtual town hall early this afternoon. Some protesters had…
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Intellectuals Yet Idiots on the Loose
by James A. Bacon Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the “Black Swan” and “Antifragile” author and curmudgeonly critic of just about everyone, coined the term Intellectuals Yet Idiots (IYIs) to describe the modern-day class of journalists, academics, and other cultural elitists who think they know everything better than anyone else. The term well describes professors with the…
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With the Tents Down, the Blowback Begins
by James A. Bacon Following the decision to take down the tents in the UVA Solidarity Encampment for Gaza “liberated zone” at the University of Virginia on Saturday, UVA President Jim Ryan is facing strong blowback from leftist elements in the UVA and Charlottesville communities. Pro-Palestinian protesters had rebuked the administration’s orders to take down…
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Virginia Is Not California. Or New York.
by Kerry Dougherty By pro-Hamas standards, the protests at the University of Virginia were anemic. Estimates placed the size of the “crowds” that began gathering on Grounds – as they say in Charlottesville – last week ranged from about 12 to perhaps as many as 50. The Hamas fan club was clustered near the chapel…
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Militants to Ryan Administration: “Bullshit”
by James A. Bacon Pro-Palestinian militants erected tents last night at their “liberation zone for Gaza” near the University of Virginia chapel in defiance of orders to take them down. The administration’s immediate response: engage in dialogue. “We are writing to acknowledge the document you shared with us early this morning outlining the interests of…
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At UVA, One Pro-Palestinian Protest Disperses, a Second Persists
by James A. Bacon One of two pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the University of Virginia wound down around 5 p.m. yesterday without incident. Although the rally was marked by all-too-familiar anti-Israel chants and sloganeering, protesters dispersed at the scheduled time. A parallel demonstration, a tent-free “encampment,” continues this morning. University officials set clear expectations from…
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Congress Values Names More Than Housing for Service Members
by Donald Smith “Removing the last vestiges of Confederate history from the U.S. military, including renaming nine Army posts, will cost more than $62 million, a congressional commission said Tuesday.” That quote is from Alex Horton’s Washington Post article on the recommendations of the Naming Commission, dated September 13th, 2022. “For the base names,” wrote Horton, “the changes will…
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Unmask the Death-To-America Rioters
by Kerry Dougherty It’s time. Time to burn the last foul-smelling remnant of the Ralph Northam regime. Actually, it’s long past time to once again enforce an important part of the Code of Virginia: 18.2-422. “Prohibition of wearing masks in…any public place. This law was active from 1950 until Northam the Awful – the doctor…