If You Have Time, Read This Review of Corey Robin's Book, The Reactionary Mind, at the New York Review

It's a great piece, from Mark Lilla, "Republicans for Revolution."

I'd never heard of Corey Robin until last week, when progressives online were touting his piece on the death of Hitchens, "Christopher Hitchens: The Most Provincial Spirit of All."

Lilla's review of Robin's book will make you chuckle. He writes, for example:

Robin, who teaches political science at Brooklyn College, has been writing thoughtful essays on the American right for The Nation and other publications over the past decade. The Reactionary Mind collects profiles of well-known right-wing thinkers like Ayn Rand, Barry Goldwater, and Justice Antonin Scalia, and some deserters who turned left, like John Gray and Edward Luttwak. There are also a few that look beyond our borders, including an excellent piece on Hobbes as a counterrevolutionary thinker. But the book aims to be more than a collection. It is conceived as a major statement on conservatism and reaction, from the eighteenth century to the present. And this is where it disappoints.The problems begin in the opening paragraphs, where Robin lays out his general picture of political history. It is not overly complex:

Since the modern era began, men and women in subordinate positions have marched against their superiors in the state, church, workplace, and other hierarchical institutions. They have gathered under different banners—the labor movement, feminism, abolition, socialism—and shouted different slogans: freedom, equality, rights, democracy, revolution. In virtually every instance, their superiors have resisted them, violently and nonviolently, legally and illegally, overtly and covertly…. Despite the very real differences between them, workers in a factory are like secretaries in an office, peasants on a manor, slaves on a plantation—even wives in a marriage—in that they live and labor in conditions of unequal power.

This is history as WPA mural, and will be familiar to anyone who lived through the Thirties, remembers the Sixties, or was made to read historians like Howard Zinn, Arno Mayer, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Christopher Hill at school. In their tableau, history’s damnés de la terre are brought together into a single heroic image of suffering and resistance. Their hats are white, immaculately so. Off in the distance are what appear to be black-hatted villains, though their features are difficult to make out. Sometimes they have little identification tags like those the personified vices wear in medieval frescoes—”capital,” “men,” “whites,” “the state,” “the old regime”—but we get no idea what they are after or what their stories are. Not that it matters. To understand the oppressed and side with them all you need to know is that there are oppressors.

Exactly.

And this is no doubt why Robin is gaining traction with the idiots of the progressive fever swamps.

But Lilla has some props for Robin as one who takes conservatives seriously. I'm more interested in what Lilla has to say than what Robin does, actually, especially since I think "reactionary" is a utterly misused term in political discourse.

But continue reading the review. There's some excellent clarification of what conservatives are and what they stand for. And Lilla is another author who cites the isolationist trend among the GOP base that could well emerge as a more welcomed position for the party in the months ahead, especially depending on how things turn out in the primaries coming up in a few weeks.

I'll try to come back to this topic. It's Christmas though, and it's going to be a busy morning, with perhaps a little more sleep fitted in here somewhere among other things.

Niccolo Caldararo, Lecturer in Anthropology, San Francisco State, Hails North Korea as 'Ripe for Capitalism'

Well, I was waiting to see something like this. The U.S. leftists are falling in behind the Communist Party of Canada in support of the Kim regime in totalitarian North Korea --- and publishing their pro-communist agitprop at the anti-Semitic hate blog Daily Kos. See NewsBusters, "Daily Kos Comes to Defense of North Korea; No Worse Than South Korea, USA."

Following the link takes us to the diary at Daily Kos, "North Korea & Hysteria, Madness." I love this passage:

We have to realize that much of what is written about North Korea is for popular digestion regarding potential invasion. Let's face it, North Korea is ripe for capitalism, there are millions of potential workers who will work for near nothing. The hope is that the regime will crumble like the Soviet Union and give way to massive investment opportunities.

Right.

Millions of potential skeletons, but check the post. I can see where Professor Caldararo is coming from. He cites some political science literature on Cold War international politics, and he places North Korea in the framework of a besieged state surrounded by hostile powers. This is something of a realist take, but realism has been perverted by the academic left to demonize Israel as a detriment to U.S. security interests. This Caldararo piece is another application of such abstract analysis in furtherance of the far-left agenda. In particular, this piece is noteworthy for its extreme moral equivalence between North and South Korea, and thus their respective patron systems, communism and capitalism. But while Caldararo is quick to point out the authoritarian politics of the South Korean state, he omits that today Seoul is a democratic regime and perhaps the most successful developing economy in the world today. He also leaves out the enormous human rights abuses and North Korea's threats to international security and regional order, such as state-sponsored terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Inconvenient facts, I guess.

In any case, see Doug Bandow at American Spectator, "Otherworldly Defense of North Korea":

There is much to complain about South Korea under military rule. But, in case the professor didn't notice, the South Koreans escaped repression and achieved freedom. It turns out that nasty dictator Park Chung-hee (and he was nasty!) followed economic policies which allowed his people to avoid famine and escape poverty. And dictator Chun Doo-hwan responded to mass protests by holding an election. Silly fellow. He was later convicted and originally sentenced to death for his crimes. His successor, a former general and ally named Roh Tae-woo, allowed another election in which former dissident Kim Young-sam was elected. Roh also later was convicted and sentenced to prison.

These guys were amateurs compared to the Kims.

See what I mean?

But this is the progressive left for you. "No enemies on the left," and all that. It's the evil U.S. imperial system that's the real problem, to hear it from these idiots. And of course, the hate trolls of the progressive fever swamps won't be inundating the administration at San Francisco State with demands that this guy be fired. No, that's reserved especially for people who dare to indicate a believe in God and moral decency.

It's pretty messed up. But this is just one more example of the upside-down world we live in where good and decency are deemed as evil and real evil is championed as the saving grace of humanity.

Discovering Autism: Wrap Up

I got busy and missed a chance to wrap up the L.A. Times series on autism. My previous posts are here and here. And more from the Times, "Part 3: Families chase the dream of recovery," and "Part 4: Finding traces of autism in earlier eras."

One of my readers e-mailed to say that she started to comment on my second post on "Racial Disparities in Autism Services." Her comment was in fact an full-blown essay (and too long for the comments), and I'm posting it here for the wrap-up, "Your blog post re ASD and more money agenda":

False [about the racial disparities]. There is no difference between socioeconomic status or race and support. The only difference between parents is gumption. Are you willing to have a "teacher" look you in the eye and tell you they are the "expert" when you as the parent spend more time with your child on a daily basis? All the material for a sped [special ed.] parent to be "fully informed" is free, they may represent themselves in court for free, and every state has a parent center just to help due to IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act]. While it has always been the squeaky wheel that gets the oil in local education agency (LEA) terms from PTA to sped, the one factor that explains this disparity is parent literacy. Think about it. A layman (or translator) can do it but it takes concerted effort.

More importantly, however, is not what the (greedy) parents negotiate for but what works best. The aides, o/t, speech, etc. are all irrelevant if the parent is not focused on the student always having access to regular education material, and finding the proper reading methodology at an early age to become proficient by 3rd grade. Otherwise, it is all an academic catch-up game fighting the entrenched school system path of sped student tracking for behaviour modification warehousing to age out of the system.

Also, this is not a matter of more funding. Sure, the teachers union is pleased to build the agenda for more money and staff, and there are, sorry to say, numerous parents happy to delegate their parental rights to self professed "experts" but it is the exact opposite of what any sped student needs to make their time matter just as a typical student's education block time would and graduate, irregardless of diploma or certificate of completion, to independent living. Lofty goal you might say but if that is not the desired path for every typical AND sped student, then someone, at some point in that student's academic career, denied them of the opportunity to further try and achieve learning milestones. (Granted, some students with mental impairment will plateau, but as a parent, don't you want to be in on that decision?) You must ask yourself, is this task a functional life skill? Reading, writing, basic math, following directions, etc. all apply within a curriculum discipline. (Tragically, many a parent and student find this out too late, hence the academic catch-up game, tracking, and excessive dropout rates.)

The one thing that could make all the difference right this moment: parental rights. We all know they don't end at the schoolhouse gate but if schools opened up and allowed parents to be their child's aide it would diminish school retaliation and an informed decision can be met for the academic/behavioural path choice that will have to be faced (with no regrets) for every student. Sadly, teachers are loath to agree to have someone around their classroom who will hold them accountable. After all, the expensive seminars and training the teachers get that the school districts pay for to accommodate sped students can then be their calling card to extra cash on the side for their home based sped "expert" business during the summer months and holiday closures. No double dipping money to be made off parent experts.

Bottom line, if you have an ASD child, homeschool. Focus on proficient reading and giving them the background knowledge to jump into the system in 6th or 7th grade, or even 4th if they are reading proficient by 3rd grade. Homeschooling will eliminate the distraction that socializing brings until they mature. Homeschooling is easy, inexpensive, and fun. I promise. However, if you can not, then I can not stress this enough: You simply MUST shadow your child for the day. You should be able to show up and do it but if the school insists on your making an appointment to do so, then by all means accommodate them, we don't want to start off antagonizing too much above and beyond the initial request, but do insist it be within three days or so. One day the MOTHER, and a separate day the FATHER, must shadow the student for the entire school day. Speak not and take notes. Volunteer to be an aide. Enter the rabbit hole then visit WrightsLaw.com

P.S. Once you have your PhD in IEPs, and you'll know, then volunteer to become an IEP advocate for foster kids. It is not very time consuming, and can make all the difference in smoothing a kids home groove if any problems or concerns with school/sped are able to be delegated with continuity until everyone is up to speed.

P.P.S. Regarding the article, what is to be learned specifically is that the tragedies are of the parents own making. Gissell's parents speak no English but expect their autistic daughter to after being placed in a special education classroom, tracked for behaviour modification with no access to regular education material for 8 years? Her mom doesn't work but never incorporated supplemental homework let alone homeschooled. (If the school is teaching her only Spanish, I would consider it abuse to raise a disabled child in America who speaks no English.)

Jese's mother was content to have him suffer in silence for six years before an ambulance chaser found her through a group of non-English speaking parents with ASD children. (Six years in LA and his mom can't speak English?) Must the school district and PTA do everything in duplicate or triplicate or more to accommodate other languages other than the one in which they do business, English?

I bet the oft noted 30 minutes a week during school of speech therapy for each student are two 15 minute group sessions a week. Useless. This is the IEP standard operating procedure across the nation for sped. Period. Furthermore, there have been studies showing institutionalized behaviour is learned, and some of the remediated students can make considerable progress. We haven't even touched on restraints. That we allow civil servants this power is shameful.

However, I think you missed the real reason this gem of "racial inequality" was brought forth, Mr. Douglas. The "wealthier parents" are the evil 1%. So much of this article's emphasis is on the fact the white parents are using, and paying for, lawyers to secure services despite the fact (and never mentioned) the IDEA law allows parents to represent themselves at all levels; IEP, hearing officer, mediation, administrative law judge, appeal, etc. For parents, there are no special legal points or advantage in procedure or law background to having a costly education attorney as legal representation. So why do they do it?

Parents rarely win vs. school administration. Look at the DOE stats across the nation and it is systemic bias. In some districts parents never win. Go to the mattresses. Parents have had to bring in the law community heavy hitters to give any grievance oxygen, and then network to force procedural change on civil servants to bring them into compliance with federal law. These white parents are paving the way and literally paying extra for it too boot. The Latinos, blacks, and illegal aliens will now have easier access to sped services upfront, but would it kill anyone to appreciate the financial drain and time sacrificed by the evil wealthier white, English speaking parents?

As a nation, we our $15 trillion in debt. It's not personal. It's business. Let's have the conversation regarding personal responsibility, parental rights, and lack of minority intellectual curiosity.

Claire Potter, Radical Lesbian History Professor at Wesleyan, Can't Comprehend Shot of 'Veritas' Between the Eyes

This lady broadcasts her proud lesbianism, which is used to explain how she failed to "comprehend" this epic one-liner from Althouse's comments:

The commenter who wins the prize (trigger warning for real this time!!!) also lets you know — in case the others on Althouse allow you to forget — why we still need feminism. Here goes: “There is the question of whether one would want someone like Claire Potter for a friend, unless of course there’s a prospect of sex as a reward for mutely enduring the unendurable. The solution is to wait for the full and complete BJ then give her the unvarnished veritas right between the eyes.” It took me a minute to comprehend this, me being a gold star lesbian and all, but this commenter is fantasizing out loud about taking a money shot in my face. Nice, Althouse. Nice. Love your friends.

Now, what's interesting is the post is published at the "Tenured Radical" blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education. I didn't know they had a "Tenured Radical" blog! And boy, they don't kid around with their radicalism! Here's the biographical info for Professor Potter:

I am Claire B. Potter, Professor of History and American Studies at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. My specialties are feminism, political history and cultural criticism.

Translation: "My specialties are racism, sexism, post-colonial gender studies, Marxism, and cultural relativism." It's a wonder if any Wesleyan students actually learn American history. (And a quick Google search confirms it.)

Althouse has the response, and she's not pleased with this "sister": "'But why would anyone — much less a law professor — leave a comment like that up on her blog...'"

And here's Althouse's original post with the offending comment, which she has now removed: "'Feminist blogging is definitely not for wimps, which is why the vast majority of us do it pseudonymously'."

And note something: Althouse hadn't read the ostensibly offending comment, but she removed it when she found that Professor Potter thought it offensively sexist. And that's because Althouse is a good and decent woman. Progressives, on the other hand, are not decent. These sick f-king racists routinely attack conservatives with the most vile bigotry, and they twist contortions to deny the patently obvious racism spouted in their own comments. They sponsor racism, hatred, workplace harassment and intimidation, and make personal threats against those whom they despise. Yeah, progressives suck like that, and the news is spreading.

'The Israel Lobby' Continues to Poison Leftist Politics

(Note: When I place "The Israel Lobby" in quotes like that, I'm referring to the Mearsheimer and Walt smear thesis of a Jewish interest group section that dominates U.S. policy making toward Israel. I thought I'd put this up at top so there's no misunderstanding about my meaning at the title.)

There's a ferocious backlash against Thomas Friedman's latest New York Times column, "Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir."

Instapundit has the link to Jennifer Rubin's essay hammering Friedman, and see also Power Line, "Tom Friedman Goes Mearsheimer and Walt."

And still more from Jonathan Tobin at Commentary, "Thomas Friedman and the New Anti-Semitism-Part One":

The notion that the only reason politicians support Israel is because of Jewish money is a central myth of a new form of anti-Semitism which masquerades as a defense of American foreign policy against the depredations of a venal Israel lobby. This canard not only feeds off of the traditional themes of Jew-hatred, it also requires Friedman to ignore the deep roots of American backing for Zionism in our history and culture.

Friedman goes on to embarrass himself by contrasting the reception Netanyahu received on Capitol Hill to the one he might get at a center of leftist academia such as the University of Wisconsin. There’s little doubt he would not be cheered there. But the same would be true of most American politicians or thinkers who deviated from leftist Orthodoxy. The notion that liberal campuses are more representative of opinion about Israel than Congress is laughable. It is the sort of whopper one has come to expect from the liberal chorus on the Times op-ed page and shows Netanyahu may have a better feel for what Americans think than Friedman.

And continued here: "Thomas Friedman and the New Anti-Semitism-Part Two."

Meanwhile, check yet another installment of Mondoweiss thanking God for Mearseimer and Walt, "Why did it take 6 years to talk about the Israel lobby?"

My good friend Norm tells me that these people hate, that progressive especially hate Israel, and that it's not going away. But I can't stop shaking my head at the enormous chasm I see whenever I read this stuff. Mondoweiss (and I mean Phillip Weiss) argues that "The Israel Lobby" smear has now gone mainstream and that it's "safe" for journalists like Chris Matthews to come aboard the good ship anti-Semitism. I guess that it's just that I'd not realized how exterminationist is the left-wing project. So, I shake my head partly out of my own naïvity. There's a war going on, and it's fully enjoined on the question of the defense of Israel. Game on, I say. And give no quarter to these f-kers.

Anyway, more from Elliott Abrams, "Mr. Friedman’s Diatribe Against Israel."

Professor Paul Derengowski Resigns from Tarrant County College After Muslim Students Launch 'Terroristic Act of Jihad'

Wow, this is one heck of a story.

At Fox News Dallas-Fort Worth, "Professor Calls Student Complaints “Terroristic Act of Jihad”."

And see The Blaze, "TX PROF. RESIGNS, THEN ASKS FOR JOB BACK, AFTER MUSLIM STUDENTS COMPLAIN HE CALLED ISLAM A ‘CULT’."

And see the professor's essay here: "Tell them the truth." And Derengowski emailed Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch, "Muslim students threaten, force resignation of prof who quoted from Islamic texts":

My name is Paul Derengowski, and I was hired by Tarrant County College in 2008 to teach Great World Religions, Bible History I & II, and Introduction to Philosophy.

On November 8, 2011, I gave the second of a two-part lecture on Islam, as I've been doing Spring, Fall, and sometimes twice in the Summer, dealing with Islamic history and doctrine, and more particularly Muhammad's move to Medina. A question had been raised by two Muslim students in the previous the lecture concerning the sources I used to discuss the raid at Nakhlah. At the start of the second lecture I provided my sources (The Life of Muhammad by Haykal and the Qur'an), which included reading Sura 2:216-217. That is when all hell broke loose.

Both Muslim students, for an hour, berated me, my sources, and my credentials. When other students in the class attempted to ask questions or make comments, then the Muslim students would interrupt them as well. Finally, toward the end of the class period, a student made a comment on how "scary" the person of Muhammad seemed to be. That's when the male Muslim blurted out "you ought to be scared," and then bolted for the door in a fit of outrage. I subsequently filed a campus police report on him out of concern for the safety of students and myself. The female followed suit as well, claiming later in a libelous email she passed around unbeknownst to me—that is, until one of the students forwarded the diatribe to me later—that she was not going to sit there and listen to me slander her religion, even though all I did was quote from Islamic sources.

It was the libelous email that really started the wheels in motion leading up to my resignation. The female Muslim student not only stealthily sent around the email to all the rest of the students in the class to (1) defame me behind my back, but also to (2) try and gather support for her reckless behavior.

Continue reading.

No doubt Walter James "Occupy" Casper III would be down with that "female Muslim student." The dude called for an investigation of Pamela Geller and berates conservative counter-jihad bloggers as racist. For pro-terror progressives like Racist Repsac3, the professor had it coming and he obviously deserved to be out on his ass, pounding the pavement for a job. See: "W. James Casper's Demonic Band of Progressive Totalitarians."

Growing Campus Anti-Semitism

From the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

At the clip, that's Lydia Mazuryk at UCLA, the lead organizer of Bruin Republicans. Lydia's close friends with Barbara Efraim, my former student at Long Beach City College. They published a letter to the Daily Bruin last month, "Letter to the editor: Horowitz ad wrongfully attacked."

Conservatives Must Recapture American Universities

I was thinking about this when Pepperdine's Professor Gregory McNeal sent me the link to his essay on drone warfare. There are a lot of conservatives in American higher education, and not just professors. I've been reading my students' term papers and most of them are so full of common sense and reasonable analysis. I sometimes wonder how instead that college campuses have becomes such intellectually violent places, inhospitable to the robust exchange of ideas. I think conservatives on campus often aren't as mobilized as are partisans on the left, and of course given the radical left orientation of the unions, there's good incentive not to be.

In any case, take a look at the piece from Ed Driscoll, "Dropping the A-Bomb on History" (via Instapundit):

If conservatives ever want to recapture the high ground of culture, just creating an alternative news media is nowhere near sufficient. they have to — somehow — recapture academia, where culture is ultimately created. And destroyed as well.

RELATED: From Bruce Kessler, at Maggie's Farm, "Jews Confront The Gentlemen’s Agreement On Campuses."

More on the John Mearsheimer Anti-Semitism Controversy

One of the better, more concise discussions I've read on this, at Counterpoint, "From the Editors: On the Controversy of John Mearsheimer" (via Instapundit).

And from Pejman Yousefzadeh, "It Is Time for John Mearsheimer to Go."

I wrote on this here: "The Tragedy of John Mearsheimer."

Progressive Islamofascism and Campus Indoctrination

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Michael Coren & David Horowitz on the Left & Islamofascism":

RELATED: From Stephen Schwartz, at the Weekly Standard, "What Is 'Islamofascism'?"

The End of Occupy Wall Street

From Jacob Laksin, at FrontPage Magazine:

NEW YORK – It turns out that Occupy Wall Street is not too big to fail.

The left-wing protest campaign that started with such a media-assisted bang two months ago ended with a whimper yesterday morning, as New York police shut down the protestors’ latest attempt to make a scene and generally to be a nuisance in lower Manhattan. Evicted from its base of operations in Zuccotti Park earlier in the week, Occupied Wall Street, or what remained of it, tried to improve on its former stunt by attempting to invade the New York Stock Exchange to shut it down. Instead the protestors’ so-called “Day of Action” came to little of consequence when police easily repelled them. It was just the latest setback for a self-styled movement that has fizzled out in recent weeks as public and official patience with it has worn thin.

While yesterday’s events highlight how ineffectual the campaign has become, Occupy Wall Street long ago became a parody of political cluelessness. The protestors’ grievances, while hailed by a sympathetic mainstream media, ranged from the confused to the contradictory. They raged about tax breaks to the rich “1 percent,” even as that one percent shoulders the largest share of the country’s tax burden. They denounced government bailouts for big banks, even as they demanded government bailouts for student loans and demanded that Americans “resist austerity.” They charged that “banks steal homes,” apparently oblivious to the role that the country’s biggest banks had in subsidizing countless risky mortgages that extended “equality” before ultimately collapsing the housing market. Occupy Wall Street did not so much bemoan America’s political and economic realities as invent them, with the result even the more reasonable aspects of their agenda – ending government bailouts for banks for instance – became impossible to take seriously.

Much of what Occupy Wall Street stood for would be meaningless, if it weren’t often menacing. In recent weeks especially there has been a surge in militancy among the protestors. Pollsters found that over one third of the protestors support violence to advance their agenda, a fact confirmed by the mounting violence originating in Occupy Wall Street encampments. In Oakland, protestors vandalized local businesses, set fires, hurled objects at police and shut down the local port. In New York they clashed with police and threatened to “burn New York City to the f—ing ground.” In Washington D.C., protestors laid siege to a conference by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, knocking a 78-year-old woman down some stairs in the process. Given the protestors’ penchant for violence, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that the deranged gunman who fired an assault rifle into the White House this week was initially able to avoid police by blending in with the Occupy D.C. protestors. When there are so many violent radicals in the crowd, it can be difficult to tell them apart.

Continue reading.

Then compare Laksin to James B. Stewart, at New York Times, "An Uprising With Plenty of Potential":

In the wake of this week’s eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York and other urban campgrounds around the country, it’s tempting to dismiss the Occupy Wall Street movement as little more than a short-lived media phenomenon. The issues that spawned the movement — income inequality, money in politics and Wall Street’s influence — were being drowned out by debates over personal hygiene, noise and crime.

By Wednesday morning, when I dropped by the park, about 20 people, including some who looked disheveled and homeless, shared food and barely listened to a speaker with a graying ponytail who denounced New York as an “illegitimate police state.” Thursday’s “Day of Action” led to some more arrests, but it didn’t spawn the mass demonstrations some local politicians had predicted, let alone attract the throngs that the Tea Party mustered for a march on Washington in 2009.

But critics and supporters alike suggest that the influence of the movement could last decades, and that it might even evolve into a more potent force. “A lot of people brush off Occupy Wall Street as incoherent and inconsequential,” Michael Prell told me. “I disagree.”

Mr. Prell is a strategist for the Tea Party Patriots, a grass-roots organization that advocates Tea Party goals of fiscal responsibility, free markets and constitutionally limited government. He’s the author of “Underdogma,” a critique of left-wing anti-Americanism, which includes a chapter on the Berkeley Free Speech movement of the 1960s, which may be the closest historical parallel to the Occupy movement.

“They claim to stand up on behalf of the ‘little guy’ (the 99 percent), while raising a fist of protest against the big, rich, greedy and powerful 1 percent,” he said of the Occupy movement. “The parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement are too clear to ignore — right down to the babbling incoherence of the participants. The lesson from Berkeley in the 1960s and the protest movement they spawned is: it doesn’t matter that they don’t make sense. What matters is they are tapping into a gut-level instinct that is alive, or lying dormant, in almost every human being. And, when they unleash the power of standing up for the powerless against the powerful — David vs. Goliath — the repercussions can ripple throughout our society for decades.”

That's definitely taking the long view, and the comments by Prell are interesting, given that he's a tea party organizer. I'd add only that the occupy movement is just the latest manifestation of the post-Cold War resurgence of radical left-wing politics, and hence whatever impact we're seeing today will reside as the country returns to a full-employment economy. That could be as soon as the 2016 presidential election cycle. What will remain is the hardline anti-Americanism and campus-based radicalism that's always looking for a crisis to foist its revolutionary agenda down the throats of everyday Americans.

Police Pepper Spray Protesters at Occupy Davis

I saw this earlier, from Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, but here's The Lede, "Video of Police Pepper-Spraying U.C. Davis Students Provokes Outrage":

And from Professor Bob Ostertag, at Huffington Post, "Militarization of Campus Police."

There's lots more at Memeorandum, for example, "Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi."

The Political Blogging A-List

From the new book by Rutgers Speech Communications Professor Tanni Haas, Making It In the Political Blogosphere: The World's Top Political Bloggers Share the Secrets to Success:

While more than a million people have political blogs, a select few wield enormous inl uence within the political blogosphere and in politics. Variously referred to as the “political blogging A-list,” the “influentials,” or even the “kings and queens of blogland,” these bloggers attract the majority of political blog readers, set the agenda for the many smaller blogs, are widely read by mainstream journalists and, as I describe in the next section, exert a strong impact on politics.

Political blog readership isn’t evenly distributed as the top blogs attract most of the readers. One study revealed that the top 10 blogs account for 48% of readers.

The 20 bloggers featured in this book, all of whom belong to the political blogging A-list, have a combined daily audience of 2–3 million readers. The top blogs aren’t only read by a large and ever growing audience; they also inl uence what the rest of the political blogosphere blogs about. This becomes clear when one considers how political bloggers link to one another. If there were no agenda-setters in the political blogosphere, all political blogs would have roughly the same number of incoming links from other blogs. Yet, research shows, a few top blogs receive the bulk of incoming links. A study of more than 400 political blogs found that, while the top 12 blogs attracted 20% of all incoming blog links, the top 50 blogs attracted 50% of all such links.

h e inl uence of the top blogs goes beyond the mass of smaller blogs. Mainstream journalists — political reporters and columnists in particular — regularly read political blogs, often several blogs daily. h ey do so to gather ideas for future stories, hear what’s being said in the political blogosphere about their reporting, and to gauge public reactions to major news events.

But journalists don’t just read any political blog they happen to encounter. Like political blog readers, their reading is also focused on a few top blogs. A study of 140 journalists employed by national and local news organizations in the U.S. found that the ten most widely read blogs accounted for 54% of those mentioned. Among journalists working for national news organizations, this bias was even more pronounced: the ten most widely read blogs accounted for almost 75% of those mentioned.

Journalists’ blog reading behavior is quite logical. Since the top blogs attract the majority of political blog readers, and set the agenda for countless smaller blogs, journalists only need to read these blogs to get a relatively accurate impression of public (and blogger) opinion with respect to certain issues.

Haas interviewed 20 bloggers for the book. Here's this, from the e-mail she sent to me:

Dear Donald,

I am writing to let you know that my book, “Making it in the Political Blogosphere,” has just been released by Lutterworth Press. For your information, I have attached an electronic version of it.

The book features profiles of and interviews with 20 of world’s top political bloggers. These include (in alphabetical order) Rogers Cadenhead, Steve Clemons, Juan Cole, Cheryl Contee, Tyler Cowen, Kevin Drum, Eric Garris, Nick Gillespie, Taegan Goddard, Jane Hamsher, John Hawkins, Jim Hoft, Arianna Huffington, Thomas Lifson, Andrew Malcolm, Eric Olsen, Heather Parton, Lew Rockwell, Ben Smith, and Mathew Yglesias.

The book focuses on two central questions: what these bloggers have done to become so successful, and what others can do to achieve similar blogging success.

A book such as this one – aimed at political blog readers and writers – can best reach its targeted audience with your help. I hope you will publicize it on your blog and encourage as many of your fellow political bloggers as possible to do the same.

I'm more than happy to.

The Amazon link is here, and friends can email me for more information.

'Down With Capitalist Education!' — California Faculty Association Strikes at Cal State Dominguez Hills

Okay, as promised, here's the follow up to my earlier entry, "Faculty Members Strike at Cal State Dominguez Hills." The protest at Dominguez Hills was pretty subdued, especially compared to the violence and indecency taking place across the country on Thursday. But the communists were out in full force, which is the way public education is headed in this country.

Here's one of the big protest signs as I walked over to the entrance of the university:

The organizers had set up at the intersection of East Victoria Street and Tamcliff.

Cal State Chancellor Charles Reed was the focus of protest. The guy holding the sign ducked his head whenever I raised my camera, as did a lot of the other protesters. Freakin' cowards. I guess folks weren't so proud about standing up in solidarity after all:

Buses were pulling up periodically to drop off protesters. The crowd was an amalgam of faculty members, some from other campuses, union organizers, and student protesters representing the fringe of radical left-wing extremism. Below you've got this Yasser Arafat wannabe with the keffiyeh and blank stare of indifference. What a loser. Also below is apparently a CFA member with his obligatory "racist" protest sign. Idiots, all of them:

Here's a kid just off the bus with his "Down With Capitalist Eduction!" poster. He was cruising around with activists from the International Communist Workers Party:

More activists:

Here's some union solidarity with the AFL-CIO:

These two had "99 Percent" headbands, freakin' hippie wannabes:

Class warfare:

"This is what democracy looks like!"

Protesters blocked the entrance to the university to oncoming traffic. This public bus waited to enter until after the traffic signal changed:

Protesters droned on about making the rich pay more in taxes:

I guess it's all about "righteous justice," or something. The woman here is enthralled with her copy of the ICWP's Red Flag. Bunch of commie bloodsuckers:

More coverage at KABC-TV Los Angeles, "California State University faculty members demand raises, stage 1-day strike."