I'll Drink to That

For John, BLUF:  History is sometimes more fun when you look at it from a non-history direction.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Source for this item is the web magazine War on the Rocks. "The Geopolitics of Rum".

From a rum drinkers perspective, the prospect of an open Cuba is intriguing.  Cuba has long held an historical allure for many Americans.  We’re intrigued by our government’s strategic obsession over the island’s importance to American shipping, and many of us have heard our parents and grandparents wax nostalgic for its pre-Castro past.  Cuba’s reputation as a source of illicit contraband actually pre-dates the current embargo, and goes all the way back to the days of rum running during Prohibition.

My Father, for high school graduation, got a trip to Cuba.  But, on to the larger geopolitical and historical issues.

Originally a Cuban company founded by a Spanish immigrant in the 1830s, Bacardi’s history is intimately tied to Cuba’s, and in turn with the evolution of American strategic interests in the Caribbean.  Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory from the French secured for the United States the vast interconnected Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio river system.  In so doing, Jefferson also provided future American farmers access to a world market for their agricultural products.  New Orleans, which sits atop the mouth of the Mississippi River, was central to this strategy.

Any enemy who could capture New Orleans could cut off the U.S. interior’s trade from the rest of the world.  That is precisely what the British did in the War of 1812.  General Andrew Jackson famously defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 and, coincidentally, shipped the body of defeated British Major General Edward Pakenham back to England in a cask of rum.

Sure, I think we should replace Andy Jackson on the Double Sawbuck, but we should not forget that he fought and won the Battle of New Orleans.  Of course the war was already over, but who knew?  Not out as far west as New Orleans.

Regards  —  Cliff

Northwestern Threw Academic Freedom "under the bus."

TRIGGER WARNING:  Suggests female students being treated as too delicate to have an independent intellectual life.
For John, BLUF:  We are hurting our children at this point, not helping them.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Law Professor and Blogger Glenn Harlan Reynolds writes in Monday's USA Today, "Today's college feminists are too fragile to read".

The subhead is:

When a professor criticizes equal rights law, it is not a violation of equal rights.

Here are the first three paragraphs.  I fully agree with the lede.  I too voted for Governor Romney and see where it led.

They told me that if I voted for Mitt Romney, campus witch hunts would leave professors afraid to write about feminism. And they were right!

Barack Obama is the president, of course, not Mitt.  But Obama's Department of Education has taken such a broad view of the federal Title IX antidiscrimination law ("No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.") that we have reached the ultimate in absurdity:  Feminist students silencing feminist professors in the name of equality.

Feminist professor Laura Kipnis of Northwestern University published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February, decrying "sexual paranoia" on campus and the way virtually any classroom mention of sex was being subjected to an odd sort of neo-Victorian prudery:  "Students were being encouraged to regard themselves as such exquisitely sensitive creatures that an errant classroom remark could impede their education, as such hothouse flowers that an unfunny joke was likely to create lasting trauma. ... In the post-Title IX landscape, sexual panic rules.  Slippery slopes abound."

The danger to free speech is obvious, but it is also the cause of student costs (and taxpayer costs for state and local schools) going up (student school loan debt?).  It takes administrators to administer this sort of thing and they don't come cheap.  The students pay for this sort of rubbish, unless it is the alumni, through their contributions.

And Professor Reynolds is not the only one to talk to this.  In the Monday edition of The [Lowell] Sun columnist George Will speaks up.  His column is "A summer break from campus muzzling".

Commencement season brings a respite from the sinister childishness rampant on campuses. Attacks on freedom of speech come from the professoriate, that herd of independent minds, and from the ever-thickening layer of university administrators who keep busy constricting freedom in order to fine-tune campus atmospherics.

The attacks are childish because they infantilize students who flinch from the intellectual free-for-all of adult society. When Brown University's tranquility of conformity was threatened by a woman speaker skeptical about the "rape culture" on campuses, students planned a "safe space" for those who would be traumatized by exposure to skepticism. Judith Shulevitz, writing in The New York Times, reported that the space had "cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies."

The attack on free expression is sinister because it asserts that such freedom is not merely unwise but, in a sense, meaningless. Free speech is more comprehensively and aggressively embattled now than ever before in American history, largely because of two 19th-century ideas. One is that history -- actually, History, a proper noun -- has a mind of its own. The other is that most people do not really have minds of their own.

The only solution is to starve the beast.  If we cut the budgets, perhaps the Universities will reduce the number of administrators, which will require the remaining administrators to make better use of their time in finding real Title IX problems, and fixing them.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Expiating the Past

For John, BLUF:  How far back do we chase these things?  To the Garden of Eden?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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From Gateway Pundit we have a note on St Louis University, "SLU Removes Statue of Jesuit Founder Because He Represents White Supremacy – Will Erect Ferguson Protest Statue"

So, the University rejects its founder, Jesuit Missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J., because it believes the "statue is offensive".

If Father De Smet, SJ, represents "white supremacy", does not the University itself represent the same thing?  If that is the case, then perhaps the University should be disestablished.  Seems logical.

Regards  —  Cliff

Former NY Lieut Gov on Governor Cuomo on Rape

For John, BLUF:  Sex is a negotiation, even for married couples.  Do we want the lawyers there?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Frankly, my middle Brother thinks I am an ass for my questioning stance regarding sexual assault on campus.  He is in the camp of those who say believe the accuser, always.

I am in the camp of due process and the idea that people should not put themselves into positions from which recovery can not be effected.  For example, don't drink to excess.  Draw hard lines.  And feminism means women who are strong and responsible.

Well, along comes former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, and in an article in The Washington Examiner she is heard blasting current Governor Andrew Cuomo.  Here is the article, "Former NY lieutenant governor blasts campus sexual assault policies"

Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York under Gov. George Pataki, has taken current Gov. Andrew Cuomo to task for his “toughest in the nation” proposal for campus sexual assault policies.

“It would make campuses in New York a hostile environment for young men,” McCaughey wrote in the New York Post.  “One misstep and they could find themselves accused of ‘sexual assault,’ denied a fair hearing, expelled and unemployable.”

She also said Cuomo’s proposal, which introduces “affirmative consent” to private colleges, “criminalizes normal sexual interactions.”  Affirmative consent requires a “conscious and voluntary agreement” that is “ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time.”  This means a person must ask for consent at every step of the sexual encounter, from the first kiss through the end.  And revoking consent at any time has come to mean even after the encounter has ended. . . .

“Affirmative consent is dangerous enough, but Cuomo would also deny accused students due process,” McCaughey wrote.  “What goes on in a dark dorm room is usually one student’s word against another’s.”

She also described the bill’s use of the word “victim” or “survivor” as a “bias that the accuser is always right.”

McCaughey says the real problem on college campuses is alcohol abuse, which should be the focus of any college policy – not “stripping college men of their legal rights and criminalizing dorm-room hook-ups.”

I hear few talk about the social change that could evolve from changes in the way we deal with rape accusations on campus.  A few high profile cases could change our conduct across the fruited plain.  We need to think about where we are going.  Not that we should sacrifice women who have been sexually assaulted, abused or mistreated.  Rape is rape and needs to be prosecuted in courts of law.  What we should not do is take it out of the courts and then lower the standards for finding the accused guilty.  Further, we should ask all parties to take responsibility for their actions.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Ms McCaughey may have been the original source for the accusation of "death panels" regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, per Wikipedia.

Bush Lied?

For John, BLUF:  This issue is now locked into Progressive lore  Mr Woodward pushes back.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Over at the Althouse Blog was an item from Mr Chris Wallace's interview with Reporter Bob Woodward on Fox News Sunday.  This was the week before.  The transcript is here.

Here is the paragraph in question:

[Y]ou certainly can make a persuasive argument it was a mistake.  But there is a time that line going along that Bush and the other people lied about this.  I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq.  And lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet, the CIA director, don’t let anyone stretch the case on WMD.  And he was the one who was skeptical.  And if you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum.  The war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end, people were saying, hey, look, it will only take a week or two.  And early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months.  And so Bush pulled the trigger.  A mistake certainly can be argued, and there is an abundance of evidence.  But there was no lying in this that I could find.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Regards  —  Cliff

Trigger Warnings at Columbia

TRIGGER WARNING:  In which I call out the current collection of college students as morally weak.
For John, BLUF:  We seem to be raising a generation of morally weak individuals.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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This is from early in May, but still important, as school winds down and we contemplate the next academic year.  From Reason Magazine we have "Classical Mythology Too Triggering for Columbia Students" Here is the subhead:

Roman and Greek mythology "contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom," students say.

The poor dears.  How did everyone before them make it?  But, on to the lede:

In Columbia University's student newspaper, four members of the school's student Multicultural Affairs Advisory Board call on professors to be more sensitive when teaching provocative or controversial material... such as the Roman classical poet Ovid.

Ovid?  Ovid has been gone just shy of 2,000 years.  But, apparently he is still a threat to the sensitive.

Regards  —  Cliff

Marking A Small Milestone

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Happy 49th Anniversary!

Love  —  Clifford