"New Right That Violates Itself"

" David Burge @iowahawkblog

Breakthrough at Berkeley: university grievance scientists create new right that violates itself "

Well, they merely codified what already exists: Intolerance of Intolerance:

"University of California considering recognizing a “right” to be “free from … expressions of intolerance”"

Intolerance has no place at the University of California. We define intolerance as unwelcome conduct motivated by discrimination against, or hatred toward, other individuals or groups. It may take the form of acts of violence or intimidation, threats, harassment, hate speech, derogatory language reflecting stereotypes or prejudice, or inflammatory or derogatory use of culturally recognized symbols of hate, prejudice, or discrimination.

Everyone in the University community has the right to study, teach, conduct research, and work free from acts and expressions of intolerance. The University will respond promptly and effectively to reports of intolerant behavior and treat them as opportunities to reinforce the University’s Principles Against Intolerance.

Internal contradiction is irrational.

Persistent irrationality in an individual is insanity.

Persistent irrationality in a group is Leftism.

Persistent irrationality in the form of assumed moral authority is Messiahism.

And there's this, as well:

“Intellectuals Cannot Operate At Room Temperature”

"Found via Sissy Willis, back in 2004, Thomas Sowell was interviewed by the American Enterprise Institute [full quote at the end]:

There’s something Eric Hoffer said: “Intellectuals cannot operate at room temperature.” There always has to be a crisis–some terrible reason why their superior wisdom and virtue must be imposed on the unthinking masses. It doesn’t matter what the crisis is. A hundred years ago it was eugenics. At the time of the first Earth Day a generation ago, the big scare was global cooling, a big ice age. They go from one to the other. It meets their psychological needs and gives them a reason for exercising their power.

A couple of years later, Julia Gorin made an acute observation that during the mid-aughts, global warming served as a Freudian displacement for a left that turned their backs on the Global War on Terror:

It’s a peculiar thing that as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global warming – at least that’s what some would have us believe.

Tough language is borrowed from the war on terror and applied to the war on weather. “I really consider this a national security issue,” says celebrity activist and “An Inconvenient Truth” producer Laurie David. “Truth” star Al Gore calls global warming a “planetary emergency.” Bill Clinton’s first worry is climate change: “It’s the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it.”

Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can’t deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look tough. They can flex their muscle for Mother Nature, take a preemptive strike at an SUV. Forget the Patriot Act, it’s Kyoto that’ll save you.

But while the reasoning behind such impulses change over time, they all boil down to rehashes of a century-old concept by William James: the moral equivalent of war, as Jonah Goldberg told Salon while promoting Liberal Fascism, where, needless to say, the concept is explored in depth:

What appealed to the Progressives about militarism was what William James calls this moral equivalent of war. It was that war brought out the best in society, as James put it, that it was the best tool then known for mobilization … That is what is fascistic about militarism, its utility as a mechanism for galvanizing society to join together, to drop their partisan differences, to move beyond ideology and get with the program. And liberalism today is, strictly speaking, pretty pacifistic. They’re not the ones who want to go to war all that much. But they’re still deeply enamored with this concept of the moral equivalent of war, that we should unite around common purposes"

The full quote from Sowell, and where to find it (HERE):

"TAE: At the end of Applied Economics, you explain that it's impossible for different parts of the world to have equal development. Yet economic disparities often lead to claims of "exploitation" and solutions built on controlling people's lives.

Sowell: There's something Eric Hoffer said: "Intellectuals cannot operate at room temperature." There always has to be a crisis--some terrible reason why their superior wisdom and virtue must be imposed on the unthinking masses. It doesn't matter what the crisis is. A hundred years ago it was eugenics. At the time of the first Earth Day a generation ago, the big scare was global cooling, a big ice age. They go from one to the other. It meets their psychological needs and gives them a reason for exercising their power. Many intellectuals' preoccupation with the poor is very much the same thing. The thing that gives it all away is that after they say, "We must have this program because the poor can't afford medicine, or can't afford housing," they will splutter if you say, "OK, let's have a means test so it really goes to the poor." If they were really concerned primarily about the poor, they would agree to it. But they are bitterly opposed to that, because the poor are a lever to reach other, political, goals.

Walter Williams figured out some years ago that the amount of money needed to move the poor out of poverty would be trivial compared to the amount of money that's spent on these damn programs that are supposed to help the poor but usually don't. But the poor are being used as human shields in the political battle. You put the poor up in front of you as you march across the battlefield and enemy troops won't fire, so you can expand your power, and raise taxes, and so forth.

TAE: In a recent column, you mentioned that Democrats are running out of poor people as a useful tool.

Sowell: Yes, they inflate the numbers. One way is by counting persons who don't have real problems but temporarily lack income, like students. When I first started studying poverty some 20 years ago, I was astonished to discover how many people among the official ranks of the poor had air conditioning, which I didn't have! Thousands of poor people with swimming pools? I didn't have a swimming pool! I'm sure there were years when Donald Trump was not making money because things weren't going his way. Technically, he was down there among the poor."