Although it's about a week old, this Shepard Smith clip from FNC still caught my eye.

The notion of being on the "right" or "wrong" side of history is one of the most pervasive and most profoundly silly historiographical fallacies thrown around by a Progressives, not to mention a good many old-timey Liberals and some Conservatives. To many, History is a stern governess who passes judgment on the unenlightened tykes who linger too long in her gaze, and who graciously bestows adoration on those wise enough to predict her course. I have found such intellectual smugness particularly common with regards to the same sex marriage issue. Doesn't everyone want to be on the "right side of history?"

The problem with passing such broad judgments through the historical narrative is that history is invariably written by those in a position to observe it. It has never been the case that history's course, if such a thing can be said to exist, has been readily apparent to everyone at the time events were taking place.

Take, for example, eugenics. It was once possible in this country to be a eugenicist and be taken seriously. It was, in fact, at one point fashionable. To many, the "course of history" suggested that the historical narrative was in favor of Social Darwinism and those who wanted to forge and protect a society of "fit" citizens. Birth control and eugenic practices were supposed to help us make the great leap forward down the shining path. In 1924, the Virginia General Assembly passed two laws in furtherance of these goals, the Racial Integrity Act and the Sterilization Act.

Three years later, the US Supreme Court heard the case of Carrie Buck, a woman who had been ruled feeble-minded and had been scheduled to be sterilized under Virginia's policy. The resulting case of Buck v. Bell, in the eyes of eugenicists, vindicated their cause. An eight justice majority that included Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Chief Justice William Howard Taft voted to uphold the law; the lone dissenter, Pierce Butler, was Roman Catholic. Eugenics was taken so seriously and was so well respected that a Supreme Court decision actually included the words "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Eugenicists probably thought they were on "the right side of history."

And then, of course, World War II happened. Forcibly sterilizing people  became something people in the western world were not okay with, and eugenics has, for the most part, been rightly consigned to the junkyard of bad ideas. Time has passed, and now eugenicists are widely perceived as having been on "the wrong side of history." I'm not saying that what is ethically right or wrong is fundamentally relative. What I am saying is that the Whig Theory, the idea that things are basically always getting better, is wrong.

The point here is not that same sex marriage, or traditional marriage, is in any way like forced sterilization or genocide. The point is that regardless of the merits to the arguments on either side of the marriage issue, history itself shows us that it is silly to suppose that it is making a judgment in a particular direction. I don't think that advocates or opponents of same sex marriage are any more or less on the right side history than were John Adams or Thomas Jefferson in 1800. History just happens, and whatever future historians make of it is quite up to them, and will probably bear little relationship to where we think it is headed today.

Jay Nordlinger nails one of the big problems with historians, or at least some of them, over at NRO: [full disclosure: I will be history grad student as of this fall]

A classmate of mine asked a distinguished historian, “Barbara Tuchman: Is she a historian?” The professor reflected for a moment. Then he said, “She’s a writer.” Some of the students snickered. At that moment, I figured Tuchman must be worthwhile. Which she is.

It's true that some historians can be perhaps a little snooty about the uninitiated treading on their turf and exceeding them in recognition. It's certainly no accident that some of the most-recognized and greatest American historians- Barbara Tuchman, David McCullough, and Shelby Foote come to mind- have been writers by trade rather than credentialed historians. The best academic historian I've ever read is probably James McPherson, whose Battle Cry of Freedom is both historically sound and very readable, as is his lesser-known For Cause and Comrades. Readability and writing quality have a lot to do with how successful historical writing is.

As with any class of academics, however, historians are rather easy to pick on. History is a bit like political punditry in that anybody with a basic understanding of sentence construction can pretend excellence at it. It is also true of history that doing it badly is quite easy, and I think this is part of the reason historians can come across as a bit snobbish with regards to "non-historians" intruding on their bailiwick.

There have no doubt been great historians who are not "professionals." There are also, however, lousy historians who are not "professionals." Take Joy Masoff, the author of the grade school textbook Our Virginia: Past and Present, for example. Masoff landed herself in hot water in October 2010 for writing a sentence including the words "Thousands of Southern blacks fought in the Confederate ranks," a phenomenon not thought to be widespread by most historians who have studied the subject.

So where did this claim come from? Internet research, and her apology was just delightful:

"It's just one sentence. I don't want to ruffle any feathers, If the historians had contacted me and asked me to take it out, I would have."

Basically, she couldn't be bothered to do much in the way of rigorous research on the topic.

Do historians need to get off their high horses periodically and remember that even those who don't sit at the cool kids table often have intelligent things to say? Absolutely. They are also, however, justifiably leery of those who tout themselves as serious history writers, yet don't really know what they are talking about. Some of the best history out there is by "non-historians," but many non-historians are more than capable of producing utter tripe.

I am blessed to have been asked to start contributing to PragerU, which is a fantastic source of conservative videos, and I just made my inaugural post.  This post regarded a conversation I had with some friends of mine at Dartmouth, and I hope it can encourage you to do the same.  While we are in college we don't have money or power to influence our peers, but we do have our passion.  If we believe that our friends are willing to engage in a conversation, then we must not wait until we have the "resources" to make a difference, but instead engage in the battle for America's future today.

Via PragerU Facebook Page:

In my fraternity at Dartmouth some friends and I were having a discussion about the merits of a progressive income tax and eventually started debating the ideas of socialism vs. capitalism. When several of my friends started saying that the selfishness of capitalism and free markets is its main flaw, the Prager U video I had just seen the day before instantly came to mind. There were roughly 15 students, and I suggested that we all watch the "Welfare State and Selfish Society" video and then finish our discussion. My friends agreed, and I played the video for them. 
Videos like this are very helpful when introducing people to new ideas. Most of my well-meaning liberal friends all derive their information about conservatism and free market capitalism from very left-wing sources and have a distorted view on what it actually means. After the video, many people said things like "They had never thought of it like that before" or "I appreciate the clarity and examples". Overall, I would say the reactions were very positive. I don't think it made anybody change their worldview on the spot, but I believe it encouraged question asking and truth seeking, which is a great starting point. The truth, after all, is on our side.
Dartmouth is certainly not a bastion for conservative thought, but over my four years here I have seen the evolution of a campus captivated by hope and change to a place where more and more students are thinking critically about the implications of a national debt crisis, economic security, and personal responsibility. This shift is only possible through the tireless efforts of conservative champions like yourselves. I have the easy job of just leading the horses to water, you are already providing the plentiful spring of knowledge. The social and cultural battles will be long and rigorous, but not insurmountable. Freedom certainly is never more than a generation away from extinction as Reagan stated. 
It is in the defense of the poor and middle class that we must fight for capitalism and return to a society that promotes charity, selflessness, and gratitude.

You've got to hand it to the members of the Occupy movement at the University of California-Berkeley. They take their philosophy of class conflict so seriously that they're now staging protests seemingly drawn from the age of feudalism. From the Daily Californian:

Protesters continued occupying and farming a UC-owned plot of land in Albany Monday and said they plan on staying as long as they can...

The demonstrators consist of community members, urban farming enthusiasts and people aligned with the Occupy movement who have come together in hopes that the land be turned into a farming space. So far, they have ploughed and tilled the land and have planted broccoli, chard, squash, beans, kale and pumpkins...

In response to the Albany occupation, the university turned off the water supply that provides irrigation to the land.

“This land is essentially an open-air research lab — it is not public land in the common sense,” [university spokesman Dan] Mogulof said. “It would not make sense to provide them with resources to continue an activity that would stand in the way of research that our university is conducting.”

According to Keith Gilless, dean of the UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources, the research that was being conducted by the campus involves plant biology.

“My concern is that the researchers who have things planted there will not be able to complete their projects,” Gilless said.

According to Haddock, the demonstrators are not concerned with potentially disrupting university research because they believe that biotech efforts do not benefit the greater community...

But Gilless said that to call the projects biotech is mischaracterizing the research, which he said studies plant pathology and disease.

Hat tip MoveOn.org:

What’s a president gotta do to get the truth told around here? Watch:

so that I would graduate with no debt.

Do tell me more about how President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney want me to subsidize those who didn't.

From the Vermont Cynic at the University of Vermont:

Art exhibit “Marriage = Death: A Transqueer Critique of Homonormativity” raises awareness about LGBTQA politics and represents queer art in the Burlington community.

In the exhibit, senior Hannah Melton combines raw, provocative text with objects to take a stance against mainstream queer stereotypes.

Chances are that most people who visit the exhibit will not have previous knowledge that mainstream queerness exists in the queer community, as well as in corporations, Hollywood and the political world.

“Homonormativity is when people who are not straight want to assimilate into hetero-institutions and are interested in fighting for rights, like marriage, that don’t necessarily benefit the queer community as a whole,” Melton said. “We need greater queer representation.”

...

The problems Melton described were magnified by the intensity of the surrounding exhibit. 

Many of the pieces presented a queer critique of not only marriage, but also gender conformity and the mainstreaming of LGBTQA politics, bodies, and practices. 

Dangling skeletons dressed in torn, rainbow colored linen announced “Just Buried” with Day of the Dead decor and dangling, crushed beer cans.

In the holy grail of Trojan pleasure, limp condoms hung precisely from a wooden board with a heart-shaped foam Valentine that read, “Want me, please me, use me, protect me.”

In case you're wondering, the 'Q' and 'A' in LGBTQA stand for "questioning" and "allies." And yes, if you read the piece closely, you'll notice a studious avoidance of any gendered pronouns -- they had to take those out after a complaint from Ms. Melton. One strains to imagine the fatigue of being so perpetually aggrieved.

The Daily Beast, in a moment of typically self-congratulatory snark, has issued a list of 13 college majors that should be avoided as "useless", complete with statistical backing. The winners:

1. Fine Arts
2. Drama and Theater Arts
3. Film, Video, and Photographic Arts
4. Commercial Art and Graphic Design
5. Architecture
6. Philosophy and Religious Studies
7. English Literature and Language
8. Journalism
9. Anthropology and Archeology
10. Hospitality Management
11. Music
12. History
13. Political Science and Government

Yes, good heavens, why would anyone study history or religion when they could be earning a degree in peace studies or sustainability?

Look, some of these critiques are fair. Getting a journalism degree is about the worst preparation possible to be a working journalist (ditto education degrees for teachers, which manage to avoid the list because, despite all their other failings, they do at least usually translate into a job). Likewise, in many cases a degree in the arts has less cash value than actually working in the arts for the same amount of time would.

When it comes to the liberal arts, however, I think the folks at the Daily Beast get a little ahead of themselves. No, English lit, political science, and philosophy aren't the right courses of study for people who are looking to spend four years in college, punch a ticket, and instantly be as employable as possible (those people should probably look at business degrees).

But the traditional conception of a liberal arts education has been to prepare individuals for their professional lives by giving them a holistic understanding of the world they inhabit, not developing a narrow, industry-specific skill set.  Now, admittedly, that line of reasoning is not going to sway a lot of potential employers, which is why liberal arts students owe themselves the honesty of at least acknowledging that a professional degree is often going to be a necessary addition to their bachelor's. But "useless"? Let's save that designation for majors like Chicano studies and critical theory.

From the Crimson White at the University of Alabama:

There are some things in life that just don’t mix well. A recently developing trend, dubbed “drunkorexia,” dangerously combines two such items: eating disorders and substance abuse.

According to a clinical report published in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education in August of 2010, the name of the behavioral pattern, which displays increased prevalence on college campuses, “was coined by popular media in 2008 to describe the practice of resisting calories so more alcohol can be consumed without gaining weight.”

In their survey of 692 first-year college students, the authors of the article found 14 percent of the sample participants intentionally limited calorie intake on days when they were planning to consume alcohol.

Delynne Wilcox, assistant director of health planning and prevention at the Student Health Center, said the possibility of saving money on grocery costs and potential for getting intoxicated more quickly are significant driving factors for the behavior, though weight gain avoidance is most likely the primary motivation.

From the NY Post:

Accepted to Harvard? Shhh, don’t tell anyone! In an attempt to ease the blow of a student’s first big rejection, New York prep schools are instituting dress codes and Facebook guidelines barring excited seniors from broadcasting their acceptance to top-tier colleges because it would hurt their classmates’ feelings. At the hyper-competitive Horace Mann School, students are not permitted to wear college apparel, including status Ivy League sweatshirts, on campus until after May 1, when most students have settled on what school they’ll attend.And at the Packer Collegiate Institute, students are instructed not to update Facebook with university news until after school lets out. “It can be bad and it can get weird,” said Darby McHugh, college coordinator at Bronx HS of Science. “We send a notice out to all faculty telling them, ‘Please don’t congratulate students in public, no high fives, no hugging, and please be sensitive so that if you see someone crying, you refer them to the college-adviser office immediately.”

What our wise school administrations seem to not understand is that failure builds character better than anything else.  Building fake self-esteem does nothing but create entitled victims.    The things in life that actually make people dig deep and work hard are rejection, trial and error, and a desire to not get rejected again the next time.  

I started seeing this my senior year in high school when in gym class after playing dodge ball, basketball, and anything where score was kept.  We were not allowed to call ANYONE a loser.  At my public school there were only winners, and 2nd place winners.  Now look at what it has progressed to.  You can't even celebrate one of the biggest accomplishments in an individual's life by wearing a shirt or updating your Facebook status.  Pathetic. 

Where have you guys seen the wussification of America happen?  Seems like it's everywhere these days. 

Exit Question: Was I hurting my friends feelings in high school when I wore a Dartmouth shirt and she wasn't accepted anywhere yet? I think I might have ruined her life and will to live that day.

Whether you think this is great news or bad news, President Barack Obama's proposal to extend low-interest student loan rates has been greeted with approval by presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney:

Obama is making a full-court press this week to extend low rates on government-subsidized student loans through next year, with stops at universities in North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa over the next several days. On Monday, Romney announced that he also supported the measure even though some Republican lawmakers have opposed it -- marking one of the first significant policies on which the two can agree...The debate over what to do about the nation’s $1 trillion in student loan debt speaks directly to all of those concerns. Many graduates have struggled to find jobs in the tight labor market -- and have fallen behind on their college loans in the process. Another study by Pew found that those debts have made it harder for many young people to buy a home and have affected their career choices. That has prompted rallies at college campuses across the country calling for an extension of low interest rates on federally subsidized Stafford loans.

This is going to be a long campaign, eh?

Hat tip Jonah Goldberg, writing on The Corner:

Yesterday at my alma mater, Vita Clamantis, Dartmouth's pro-life student group put up an exhibit of 546 small American flags on the lawn outside of one of the dormitory buildings.  Each flag represented 100,000 lives that have been aborted in the 39 years since Roe v. Wade.   Vita Clamantis explained on their blog that the purpose of the display, called the "Cemetery of the Innocents,"

is not to condemn but to ask for forgiveness and to promise hope, to promise ourselves and each other that we will do better, we will care better, we will be better. We put these flags out to ask every Dartmouth student a simple question: when your friend, your sister, your cousin, your neighbor, finds herself in this crisis, afraid and uncertain, feeling like the decision of her life weighs upon her, what will you do?

On every secular college campus, abortion is no doubt a hot button issue.  But the way the display was received by fellow students is truly disappointing.  The Dartmouth Review's Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, Sterling Creighton Beard, reports on the stunning intolerance put on display at the College yesterday.

The display has been under assault ever since it went up. The signs put up around the edge of the event explaining its purpose were defaced, though Vita quickly replaced them. Some flags were stolen. Someone planted a sign (viewable in the slideshow at the top) that reads "May the child you save be GAY." (emphasis in the original)

Nothing, however, quite prepared the Cemetery of the Innocents for the assault that was to come at approximately 1:40, when a Toyota Camry...allegedly drove through the flags before continuing down the street.

Images courtesy of Sterling Creighton Beard

Unlike Derbgate, the recent divorce of National Review Online and Robert Weissberg has gone relatively unnoticed on Ricochet. The interesting connection here is that Bob Weissberg worked in academia- that is, University of Illinois- and thus his Professor Emeritus status is facing criticism: (this is taken from what seems to be a U of I radio station's website)

Peter Nardulli, who now heads the U of I’s Cline Center for Democracy, says Weissberg spent much of his time running a retail store in Champaign.  He suggests university trustees strip him of emeritus status, calling it his only claim to credibiilty.

“That would be my basis for dissociate himself from the university,” Nardulli said.  “I mean, emeritus status does not bring with it anything but a title, but when your title is affiliated with a particular institution, that institution should have something to say about it.”

But policies from the U of I Provost’s office for granting emeritus status do not include language for removing that title. 

Note that this U of I employee is head of the U of I "Center for Democracy." Whenever I see the word democracy in the title of a group, I roll my eyes.

A question for Ricochet: Was Weissberg's sin going to the American Renaissance event in the first place, or was it the content of his speech that got him cut from the Phi Beta Cons roster?

I have absolutely no idea what to make of this from the Harvard Unbound, "the Journal of the Legal Left." Anyone care to help me out?

One of my favorite pictures to check out each year is the annual 4/20 protest at University of Colorado in Boulder.

But this year the administration is cracking down. They're literally fencing off the grounds where the protest is normally held and laying down fertilizer. And they've set up all sorts of other bureaucratic shenanigans to harsh the mellow of students. I'm a proponent of drug legalization so I support the protest, but some students say it gives the school a bad reputation among prospective employers. They're proposing a counterprotest:

More than 350 University of Colorado students had RSVP'd by Wednesday evening to a Facebook event encouraging students to wear a suit and tie to campus and around Boulder on Friday to protest the 4/20 smokeout...

The group is not meant to stand against legalization or the use of marijuana, Trujillo said, but to encourage students not to use the substance in public, which gives employers and others a negative view of CU students.

"I had a friend who went to New Zealand and she said they knew about 4/20 in Boulder, so I figure if they know, so do employers," Trujillo said.

He said wearing professional business attire is a great way to show employers and the rest of the world that CU students can be "classy" and respectable and aren't all "potheads like you see on the news on 4/20."

Meanwhile, a professor at the school defended the protest here:

The students participating in the 4/20 event are engaging in a grassroots non-violent act of civil disobedience to protest an immoral law. Laws against recreational marijuana use are immoral, because people who use marijuana aren't harming themselves, or others. Marijuana use is at least as safe as alcohol use. It's not the users but the government which is causing most of the harm, by unfairly punishing users. There are problems associated with drug trafficking, but those problems only arise because marijuana is illegal.

Moreover, there is a long and admirable tradition of non-violent civil disobedience at college campuses in this country, from the protests in favor of civil rights laws to the protests against the Vietnam War. The 4/20 event should be seen in this vein.

Perhaps the 4/20 event is not very effective in implementing political goals. To the extent that's the case, the solution is for us at CU to teach our students how to be more efficacious in their political activism. Note that teaching political activism isn't just a liberal thing to do: one can be a political activist against gay marriage, or for banning abortion. Moreover, legalizing marijuana is not a liberal vs. conservative issue: conservatives as diverse as William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, and Pat Robertson have spoken out in favor of marijuana legalization.

We'll have to see what happens tomorrow.

With a headline, like that, we've got to be talking about the University of Colorado. From the Colorado Daily:

Shutting down the University of Colorado's campus to visitors Friday thwarts the public's right to protest government policy, Mark Silverstein, legal director of the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Monday.

CU announced last week that the grassy area of Norlin Quad -- which in past years has drawn more than 10,000 people for the unsanctioned 4/20 marijuana smoke-out -- will be closed entirely, and the school will apply a fish-based fertilizer to the lawn.

The entire CU-Boulder campus will be closed to the public, except for visitors who have gained permission ahead of time.

Silverstein was mum Monday as to whether the ACLU will resort to legal action to fight the closure, saying it's his office's policy to not talk to the press about lawsuits that are not filed. But he raised serious concerns about the university's tactics.

"By closing the campus to visitors, establishing checkpoints, assigning uniformed officers to check papers and threatening arrests of visitors without proper credentials, the university does a disservice to the values that underlie the First Amendment and the constitutionally protected right to dissent," he said.

Fish-based fertilizer? Someone in the CU-Boulder administration has been nursing a grudge against the campus hippie contingent for some time.

The day I graduated from Dartmouth College was one of those hot, humid June days on which you start dripping sweat the moment you step out of the shower.  And in those conditions, the cheap, suffocating black polyester robes the graduates must sport can be used as makeshift ovens.  So enduring a multi-hour commencement ceremony was in itself no easy feat.

It was made even more difficult by a lousy choice in commencement speaker: Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.  Due to a heat stroke I was surely experiencing, and the fact that hardly a word she uttered was intelligible, I can't recall a word she said in what seemed to be the eternity she stood on stage.

So seeing a list of some of the speakers scheduled to give addresses at commencement ceremonies this year, I can't help but be a bit jealous (But not too jealous because who really needs another speech from Barack Obama?).  The following ten graduating classes all have it better than my class did.

1. Barnard College – Barack Obama
2. Colby College – Tony Blair
3. Harvey Mudd College – Bill Nye the Science Guy
4. Northeastern University – Colin Powell
5. NYU – Sonia Sotomayor
6. Princeton – Steve Carrell
7. Smith College – Jane Lynch
8. Southern Methodist University – Condoleezza Rice
9. Stanford University – Newark Mayor Corey Booker
10. Syracuse University – Aaron Sorkin

The University of Nebraska's Daily Nebraskan reports on a study co-authored by one of the university's management professors:

Three personality traits compose a dark triad in the field of psychology: narcissism, Machiavellianism — being overly manipulative — and psychopathy. Narcissism refers to being overly egotistical. And being narcissistic helps people land jobs.

A new study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology focuses on the effects of narcissism in the setting of the job interview. According to the study, people who have narcissistic qualities tend to outperform their more modest counterparts.

...

[Professor Peter] Harms defined a narcissist as someone who has “noxious self-esteem” and feels “entitled or unique.” He emphasized that narcissists not only feel overly self-confident, they also put others down. This can be problematic, though, as self-confidence is a trait employers look for in potential employees.

“What (narcissists) do on a day-to-day basis is what you are supposed to do in this context,” Harms said.

So for those of you wondering how I ended up on Ricochet's editorial staff ...

Okay, full disclosure up front: I'm not broad-minded enough to understand a lot of what passes for original thought on modern college campuses. I eat at Chili's -- non-ironically.

So when I stumbled upon this piece in the University of New Mexico's Daily Lobo about a student delivering his senior thesis in the form of a dance performance addressing genocide, my reaction was a hybrid of bewilderment and  amusement. Then, however, hearing in my head the voice of every sweet-tempered, perpetually optimistic woman in my family tree, I thought, "Hey, it's unorthodox, but at least he wants to address a serious issue." That thought evaporated as I kept reading:

[Aaron] Hooper said he was inspired to do a show about different forms of genocide after a series of suicides by boys who were bullied over the past couple years. Since then, he said the concept grew to be based on “big business” and how the government breaks down individual and clan identities.

“When I look at genocide, it can be an emotional destruction of a people,” he said. “What I was thinking of in my paper and everything is how can we analyze these major genocides that happen that I’m showcasing here, and see the similarities to what is happening in our own country.”

Got that? Darfur is the moral equivalent of feeling bad because you can't afford the stuff in the Restoration Hardware catalog.

The seats in the audience are not bolted to the floor, so Hooper had every other seat removed, so attendees have nobody to sit next to. The choreography is set primarily to Pink Floyd tracks, and as soon as the audience enters, they become emotionally involved in the performance. He said he’s had a few test audiences, a few members of which left because it was uncomfortable.

The purpose of creating this in this intimate space is to make the people in the audience feel a sense of isolation and to feel almost as uncomfortable as the person that is being discriminated against, Hooper said.

Mission accomplished, sir. I'm two states away and I'm uncomfortable reading about it.

I keep trying to figure out why the Occupy Wall Street movement hasn't had more success. I've spoken to tons of people who, in their college days, joined up with activist movements simply in hopes that they would meet girls or boys they otherwise might not. My visits to Occupy Wall Street camps have shown me that this is not an insignificant aspect in this movement. I watched as one young man, rather painfully, tried to hit on a camper by discussing leftist politics.

But my question is, why aren't there tons more people looking to hook-up at these things? The Tufts Daily reports:

Members of Tufts Occupiers on Saturday were joined by members of Students Occupy Boston at a kiss-in protest at Dewey Square.

Roughly 20 students held banners, posted letters of protest and kissed each other in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Citibank and the Massachusetts State House. The theme of the event, highlighted by the tag line “If the banks can make out like bandits, so can we,” was meant to draw attention to the issue of persistent student debt, according to Nate Matthews, a member of Tufts Occupiers who planned the event.

“We just thought it was a cheery, fun thing to do that would get people talking about it,” Matthews, a freshman, said.

If you're doing a kiss-in on a college campus and only get "roughly" 20 students to participate, just how toxic is your movement?

I hate to continuously post images and anecdotes while the rest of the members of Ricochet put their thoughts together in prose, but... hopefully I can still make a substantive

contribution to Ricochet.

Enough of my blabbering- here's a funny graphic I saw on my Facebook page. It hasn't exactly "gone viral" as they say, but it's too good to pass up. 

Even if you are for gay marriage, you have to have some intellectual honesty and recognize that for hundreds and thousands of years prior to Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook,  "gay marriage" would be viewed as an oxymoron.

That is, some people will always look at the word "marriage" and see a man and a woman at the alter. Why is that we don't hear this concession made by liberals? Why is that progressives expect their dissenters to simply nod their heads as they make up their own dictionary?

Similarly, if you were to look at what the framers of the Constitution viewed as "rights" and compare it to what progressives view as "rights," you'd see another glaring alteration.  As a libertarian looking at a social issue, you'd shrug as the term "marriage" is used to describe a union between two men. As a libertarian looking at an economic issue, you'd scoff at anyone loon claiming a "right" to health care, or a "right" to employment.

The Harvard Crimson has a great story about the organist at Memorial Church. He's only 31 but he's stepping down after four years there. We learn:

Lane grew up in Walkersville, Maryland, a small rural town that Lane has watched transform into suburbia for nearby Washington D.C. and Baltimore.
Although his family was not particularly musical, Lane says that he always gravitated towards music. According to Lane, his mother briefly studied piano while pregnant with him.
“I’ve always wondered whether that explains my musical bent,” he says.
He started to play the piano at the age of five, attending his first piano lesson on his first day of kindergarten. A year or two later, Lane had moved on to the organ.
Since Lane’s father is a pastor, Lane had access to an organ from an early age. The entrepreneurial youth used his talents to play for the church to supplement his allowance.
“I never practiced enough,” Lane says.
But although he attributes some of his technical deficiencies to his sparse practicing, he says that he appreciated the freedom to explore and develop his talents independently, developing a life long love for music and the organ.
Still, “I never set out to be an organist,” says Lane, who was involved in musical theater throughout high school and hoped to move to New York after graduation.

My dad's a pastor and my parents gave us piano lessons from a young age. You would never know that I had 12 years of lessons, however. My brother and sister, on the other hand, play beautifully. My sister is a great accompanist and my brother is one of those guys that can play by ear. Meanwhile, I ... struggle.

But I'm so thankful my parents gave us lessons. So we'll get the kids started soon and hope they end up liking them as much as Lane here.

I'm curious if any musicians here have good advice about how parents can support their children in this regard. Tips for what to do and what not to do would be most appreciated.

The best thing to happen to the Romney campaign, the Gawker Fox News Mole, has been discovered and relieved of his duties. Hat tip ABC News:

Less than 24 hours after Gawker introduced “The Fox Mole,” an anonymous columnist for the news and gossip site and current employee of Fox News Channel, Fox said it has figured out that it was Associate Producer Joe Muto who was leaking inside information, and has announced that he has been fired.

“Joe Muto is fired effective April 12. Once the network determined that Mr. Muto was the main culprit in less than 24 hours, he was suspended late today while we pursued concurrent avenues. We are continuing to explore legal recourse against Mr. Muto and possibly others,” a Fox spokesman said Wednesday.

In other news- what in the world is Gawker, anyway? In the last few days it's managed to make Mitt Romney look good and also landed the first post-Derbgate interview with Derb. Watch out Fox News!

A proposal currently floating around the University of Minnesota Senate "would allow voting in state and federal elections as an acceptable excused absence" from class, arguing that college students undying dedication to attending classes in early November is preventing them from casting a ballot. This amendment to the Makeup Work for Legitimate Absences policy is still in its early stages, and would have to go through more circles of Hell (in the form of obscure student government leadership committees) than Dante before coming into effect.

But, according to supporters of this measure, the amendment is only the first step: "...[E]ventually, we want to see it as an official University holiday for students," said Mitch Menigo, a member of the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG), which is very active on campus for progressive causes. "We got a lot of responses from students saying that they didn't have enough time to vote," Menigo goes on to say. "We want to make sure every voice is heard and everyone has an opportunity to vote."

I don't know who MPIRG, or anyone else, is fooling with this, but there's a considerable amount of them out there (including political science department Chair Raymond Duvall, who is quoted in the article). Class is not what's stopping college students from voting. Polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., so any student who is truly invested in voting would find a few minutes in that 13-hour window to do so. Sure, they may have to wake up a little earlier, show up to happy hour later, or walk a few blocks out of their way to do it, but these are efforts, or"sacrifices," worth making to ensure their "voice was heard."

Also, how would students prove that they used their "excused  absence" to vote? MPIRG would be the first organization crying out against voting rights and anonymous ballot infringement by professors simply wanting proof to excuse the absence. It'd be interesting to run an experiment with a control group versus a group that has the "excused absence" - or even the entire day off, as is coming - and see just how different the voting rates are among the student body. I'm sure it'd be a little higher for the second group, but not enough to validate the belief that droves of students aren't voting is because they're stuck in lecture. Many of the same students who don't care enough to make time now would just use it as an excuse to sleep in on Tuesday morning after Margarita Monday.

There's a couple of parallels to this amendment and the pushback to voter ID laws, which is another hot topic here in Minnesota. Organizations like MPIRG are manufacturing problems just so they can rally what they believe are their bases - students for "excused absences," and minorities in the case of voter IDs - and claim they're fighting for their "voice." They're just looking for new ways to appeal to their coalitions for fear of losing them since their policies are proving to hurt these groups of people, ultimately muffling their voices behind faux controversies.

From Reuters:

Xavier University, a Jesuit university in Cincinnati, said this week it would end birth-control coverage for its employees in July, a move that has divided faculty members and students. The move comes amid a dispute between the Obama administration and Roman Catholic bishops over contraception. The controversy prompted Xavier’s president, Michael Graham, a priest, to review the health plan. It is not clear whether Xavier officials knew contraception was covered.

I've been interviewing a number of church officials in recent weeks for a story on religious liberty. You would be surprised how many found, upon reviewing their insurance plans, that they were covering things they don't support.

When the lede in the University of Maryland Diamondback's story about an on-campus memorial for Trayvon Martin described students as being "disturbed by the statements guest speakers made near the end of the event", I thought it was safe to assume one of two things: Either someone had condemned the nation as universally racist or someone had insinuated that Martin wasn't completely devoid of blame in his own death. But I never expected this:

Crowd members booed one speaker who said Martin’s death was a byproduct of black fathers neglecting their children. Martin was visiting his father at the time of his death.

“Black boys are being raised by their mothers, taking on their characteristics,” said the speaker, a New Black Panther Party member.

This is an admittedly mixed bag. The "taking on their characteristics" line could either be a broad slap at women or a reasonable insight into what happens when young men lack the presence of a consistent father figure. It's hard to know without further context. And as for Martin's death being a "byproduct" of the breakdown of black families, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that would justify drawing such a straight line.

Still, it's amazing that you could have a member of a radical left-wing organization speak at a racially-charged event on a major college campus and make the case that the breakdown of black families is a serious concern. I suspect that a conservative making the same case would have been met with hand-drawn signs and blistering editorials in the university newspaper.

They're doing something right at the University of South Carolina. I don't know that I've ever head of a campus protest quite like this before. From the Daily Gamecock:

Students have been wearing empty holsters on campus this week — and not because they misplaced their guns.

Rather, they are taking part in the Empty Holster Protest, a nationwide movement that encourages schools to allow students the right to carry concealed weapons on campus.

The protest was brought to USC by fourth-year criminal justice student Joshua Cohen and third-year criminal justice student Cody Armstrong and has gained most of its support through Facebook and word of mouth.

...

Cohen said the recent increase in violent crime shows that although there is a large police presence at USC, it may not enough to protect students.

The protest calls for students to wear empty holsters this week, which Cohen said symbolizes that students are currently unable to protect themselves.

The protest also calls on students to write their state lawmakers to encourage legislative changes that would allow concealed weapons on campuses.

"The laws as they stand right now only serve to benefit criminals," Armstrong said.

The Daily Tar Heel reports that Ron Paul and some of the libertarian ideas he supports have gained popularity among the youth. It's not clear what this means, however:

But Georg Vanberg, a political science professor at UNC, said data showing an increase in young voters’ support for policies promoting either social or economic liberty doesn’t necessarily indicate that they share a cohesive libertarian philosophy.
“It may be that there are more and more people skeptical of extensive government involvement in the economy, and that there is an increase in the number of people who are concerned about government interference with social/personal liberty,” he said. “I’m not convinced that the two groups are the same people.”
But many liberty conferences, such as Students for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty, have seen increases in membership and participation.
“Students for Liberty had around 500 people attend its international conference one year ago. When I went this year, over 1,000 people came from 35 different countries,” said Alex Lopez, president of UNC College Libertarians.
“We have grown exponentially in the last five years,” he said.
Carla Howell, executive director for the national Libertarian Party, said that they expect an increase in membership as election season gets closer.

It's certainly true that the major parties need to reach out to libertarian voters. I'm not sure if this story demonstrates that these ideas are terribly popular (much as I wish they might be).

From the Brown Daily Herald:

BrownBares is a "subreddit" of reddit.com, a site that allows users to submit photos and comment on others' submissions under self-created usernames. While certainly not the only site of its kind, BrownBares is one of the only "not suitable for work" subreddits exclusive to a university. 

With approximately 1,000 to 2,000 unique hits every day, dozens of users and nearly 300 subscribers, "the place in which Brown bares all" has occupied a unique niche in Brown's culture of sexual positivity.

...

Users submit photographs of themselves alone or with others, nude or semi-nude, artistic or pornographic, taken in the privacy of their bedrooms or in public places on campus.

...

But some of the site's users are concerned about the amount of more obviously pornographic content as opposed to more artistic photographs.  Samantha Cheung '14 has never posted to the site but has frequented it with friends.

"When I go on it, I'm not looking for sexual gratification," she said. "I'm bored, and I just want to be entertained."

Cheung was disappointed to see "mostly [genital] pics" rather than artistic or entertaining photos, she said, but she added that the "exhibitionist photos were cool."

John — "Salomon guy" — expressed concern about users becoming "creepy." 

"When the site first started, it was really positive," he said, "and over winter break it kind of degraded."

"It's gotten to a point where it's like Craigslist," he added, noting that some users try to solicit "hooking up" with other members of the site instead of posting in an artistic or tasteful manner.

Some users have even reported being blackmailed and having to delete their photos for fear of having their identities revealed, he said.