Universities and Government Bureaucracies: The Left’s ‘Chokepoint Charlies’
Then there are the far more pervasive chokepoints that come courtesy of government. Almost inevitably, the left takes something that started out as something desirable and develops it into a political or statist tool to assert control.
For an extreme example, take the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the early 1970s, the idea of doing something about legitimately problematic pollution was a good one. But going after lawbreaking polluters and protecting the air and water supplies was hardly enough for the radical environmentalist movement. Their minions have worked tirelessly and relentlessly during the EPA’s 40-year existence to morph it into the $10 billion command-and-control center it is today. Along the way, they received substantial help from Congress, which conferred automatic “standing” to their “public interest” groups in litigation, and the courts, which ultimately and incredibly decided that what humans and other living things exhale is a pollutant. Now, if Congress is able to pass cap and trade, the agency will be well on its way to possessing its Holy Grail of chokepoints: the ability to dictate financial consequences for virtually any human action that is somehow seen in their eyes to have some imagined potential to negatively impact Dear Mother Earth.
The nation’s health care system is another key weapon in the statists’ chokepoint arsenal. Of course, the idea of protecting seniors from catastrophic health care costs had considerable appeal in the mid-1960s. Too bad that this is only a small portion of what Congress passed. Medicare led instead to government dominance of over-65 health care. How interesting, and unsurprising, that Medicare has the worst record in the key chokepoint area of rejected medical claims.
Decades later, having gained additional beachheads in children’s health care and prescription drugs (one of the saddest examples of opportunistic capitulation by alleged conservatives in our history), health care’s Chokepoint Charlies are on the cusp of achieving control over the entire sector. If the recess-appointed radical whom President Obama has placed in charge of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid gets his way — a man who believes that spending 8% of GDP on health care is quite enough (currently it’s about 17%) — the term “chokepoint” may take on a whole new meaning for seniors and others needing lifesaving or life-improving treatment.
In the two examples cited and in so many other areas, the government’s Chokepoint Charlies have taken decades to build up their powers, and will of course fiercely resist relinquishing it. Reining them in will more than likely also require decades. A prerequisite to reversing their constantly hardening tyranny is getting enough voters to wake up to what has happened already, and to recognize how much worse it could really get. Despite all the premature end-zone dancing, I’m not at all convinced that we’re there yet.
I think one of the greatest chokepoints in the government has been the DOJ-civil rights division specifically the EEOC. Kneeling at the altar of Affirmative Action/Diversity they have caused many untold lives to be ruined by the denial of a job. They have birthed a grievance-lifestyle for minorities in the form of “protected minorities.” They have further separated the nation into white and black. That disparate impact crap has hurt our nation. And because most companies must employ a “diversity” (queen) person a lot of money is wasted.
The left controls other chokepoints as well in ostensibly non-government areas. The MSM is all radical left. They control what is and is not divulged to the public-as in the case of the Journal-List. The left has controlled most Human Resource Depts of private companies and they have the power to control lives through hiring.
I hate the left; I just wish there were more who felt the same.
Blotto, those are great examples.
I would say that a lot of HR people are reluctant PC enforcers advised by legal departments and outside attorneys to be careful to a fault in the face of the civil rights and diversity regime you cited.
Well done sir! The list of these chokepoints is becoming endless. I guess “red” tape is a very apt name.
If I was redesigning the university system there is a lot I would change but I would have a branch of the system that had dorms and buildings for sure. Much of what is learned at college is learned outside of class when bright young people get together and discuss things. I think this happens best in an intellectual environment that many small liberal arts schools provide. As for the stadiums, I would not design the stadiums in theory but in practice I would have to consider it. For many students the extra curricular opportunities are more important to their choice of where to attend than the curricula.
In all honesty I am not sure if technology as currently implemented has done more harm or good to education so far.
All of these organizations are simply life-support for Leftists. About 5-10% of Americans have the IQ to do college-level work. As such, most of the ‘pupils’ in college today are there only to justify paying Leftists a comfortable wage, while leaving most of their days free to organize demos and write propaganda. The time they do spend in the classroom is useful in brian-washing character-deficient youths in the Leftist catechism. Although the examples of carrying programs far past the advertised goals, the author doesn’t make clear that this is the reason why the government was never given authority to do any of it. The guv has no authority to do anything about health-care, pollution, or education — none! The ‘slippery-slope’ isn’t a possible argument against government programs, but a 100% certain description of their operation. Rightists have to go beyond conservative opposition to further usurpations, but on to abolishing them. Unions are illegal conspiracies to commit extortion. Illegal at Common Law (it’s in our Constitution), they were exempted only as part of Ol’ Rubberlegs’ New Deal. Undo their exemption. End all govt support to education — cut off the profs’ life-support. You have to behave like a man. Attend to your friends, in case they need help or advice. Observe your enemies for any chance to cripple or kill them. This, basically, is life.
As long as our fellow Americans vote for Democrats, our self-evident freedoms will continue to be lost. It worries me greatly that there are large numbers of our fellow citizens who lack the self-respect and dignity required to reject an oppressive, suffocating nanny (and bully) state that promises to take care of them. Until we, as a society, regain the courage to take care of ourselves, all is lost.
Colleges and universities have gone from using facts and knowledge to more subjective criteria, there by placing the ‘proctor’ in full control, as his “opinion” determines what is correct, rather than sound metrics.
Once you have placed yourself in the position of asking if your performance meets ‘his/her’ expectations instead of meeting measurable land mark criteria, you enter the realm of opinion. Not knowledge.
Obviously, indoctrination is the result (being told what to think). Not learning HOW to think.
The problem that the EPA was created to solve, were for the most part, created by govt interference in the first place.
It used to be against the law to pollute someone else’s stream, lake, or even air. But then govt decided that such primitive laws interfered with economic growth (a more accurate interpretation is that they interfered with the ability of political contributors to build factories where and when they wanted.) so govt passed laws that individuals could no longer sue to prevent pollution, only govt had that right. Then govt just never got around to suing anyone who was paid up in their donations to the right politicians.
Look up riparian rights.
And then the Clean Water Act
Choke off their funding, and all the chokepoints disappear.
While I agree it’s dumb for “… the courts, which ultimately and incredibly decided that what humans and other living things exhale is a pollutant.” I can’t agree that carbon dioxide is a non-pollutant because humans and other living things exhale it. We excrete shit, too, and people are agreed that, in the wrong places, *that* is a pollutant. In their proper place, both of the aforementioned are good for plant life.
“Natural” is not our friend, nor our enemy. It’s where we live.
Oh Ellen! I’m afraid you don’t know sh*t from Shinola. You’re in danger of having the effluent come out of the wrong end.
Good article. I wholeheartedly agree that extremists have built “chokepoints” to control society. This is even more evident in Germany where extreme socialists have entrenched themselves in the Universities and the all important government agencies. Students are not allowed to write papers on topics such as the prevalence of left-wing anti-semitism because their thesis advisors won’t allow it; and don’t even think about starting a business! The apparatchiks will swarm like locusts and attempt to derail any and all attempts at economic activity. The last time I checked, the owner of a business has to obtain nearly 40 different certifications before they can provide coffee and tea to clients, including courses on the safety hazards of ground meat. That’s right; apparently you have to learn about the effects of bacteria on raw hamburgers before you can serve a cup of joe.
These articles are great, but I’ve read literally hundreds of them over the years. They’re all correct, the examples they give are horrendous. But nobody ever does anything. Me included unfortunately. You don’t know what to do, a letter to your congressman gets a sappy reply and nothing happens. It’s like Gulliver’s Travels where the giant public is immobilized by thousands of these tiny strings and a thousand petty and stupid people.
In the build-up to the Pacific War, Admiral Yamamoto
cautioned the Imperial Japanese Government against
‘Waking the sleeping Giant of America.’
It is still good advice; Our problem
will be _limiting_ the response
when the Hard Times arrive.
Freedom is racist and the ignorant unwashed proletariat must be ground into submission for their own good and the left/liberal elite’s gratification! (If left/libtards were honest.)
Yes, yes, everything was fine till the Liberals screwed it up.
Did your mommy show you how to make strawmen?
Here’s your push-pop, go to the other room and let the grownups talk.
Nice strawman you’ve got there Downie.
1) We have to eliminate Federal funding of schools.
2) We have to go to school board meetings and identify the communists and root them out of the school boards at the ballot box. This might even mean running against the bastards.
3) We have to approve a serious voucher system so that our schools will become competitive in order to attract students.
4) We have to get the damned labor laws changed so that the membership of the NEA and other unions are not protected against competition for their jobs. We also need to eliminate tenure for teachers. What qualifies a teacher for this, in any event?
5) We have to eliminate research grants to universities which involve spending our tax dollars.
6) If none of the above can be done, it is because the collectivists are completely in control already, which I suspect is the case.
A friend of mine has a daughter in nearby Montana State University. The lefty party line about global warming is parroted in many classes like a mantra. Some of the students roll their eyes when the sermon begins, but they know better than to dispute the professor. Their grades will suffer if they disagree. Pathetic.
“In university systems, the most obvious chokepoint is tenure … leftist-dominated universities have used denial of tenure as a principal means of culling promising conservative professors … from their faculties’ ranks.”
I’ve been in the university faculty biz for 35 years and you can take it from me: Politically speaking, faculties are indeed nearly all monochrome, but denial of tenure is almost never the mechanism used to purge those who aren’t on board with the program. In fact, among the universities’ many modern failings is that it’s become too easy, if anything, to be awarded tenure. Quality control just isn’t what it was supposed to be. No. There are two reasons for the small and seemingly ever-shrinking number of university faculty members with any political views to the right of those that have become stereotypical in the “academy.” One is that there are a substantial number of fields in which newly fledged BAs with conservative views find the idea of graduate study highly unappetizing. And rightly so. The culture of those areas — both as regards both what is directly political and the atmospherics more generally — are highly off-putting to a young people who have an intellectual need for rigorous and reasoned argumentation. And if a conservative-minded student does for some reason go to graduate school in one of these fields, but does an imperfect job of concealing his or her positions, ostracism and a lack of support from the faculty is all too likely. Without strong backing from the faculty of the degree institution, in turn, appointment to a faculty job elsewhere is impossible. Finally, even if all this is somehow managed, a new PhD will simply not be hired in the fields I’m talking about if it’s apparent that he or she has political, social, and cultural views that are too unlike what is so uniform among the very people — i.e. the faculty of a department with a job to fill — who have essentially 100% of the say in appointing a beginning assistant professor. It’s at the entry level, in other words, that the choke point is effectively placed. But there is almost nobody to filter out anymore even at that comparatively early stage — at least not, as I keep saying, in a substantial number of fields of study.
I give it a decade till the chokepints are eliminated.
Then the leftist will move into full on treason and will agitate for surrendering US sovereignty to the tranzis.
It was a sad day (year? century?) when conservative parents persuaded themselves that it was OK to send their children to liberal/radical colleges and universities. All their wasted money could have created alternative institutions.