Best Column Ever (An Excerpt and Link)

Just a bit of one of the best columns I have read in a long time. This puts in a nutshell everything that many of us have been saying for a long time. I'm just putting an excerpt, but use the link below and read the entire column. And please, share it.


"...One of the strangest things about the modern progression in liberal thought is its increasing comfort with elitism and high style. Over the last 30 years, the enjoyment of refined tastes, both material and psychological, has become a hallmark of liberalism — hand in glove with the art of professional altruism, so necessary to the guilt-free enjoyment of the good life. Take most any contemporary issue, and the theme of elite progressivism predominates.

Higher education? A visitor from Mars would note that the current system of universities and colleges is designed to promote the interests of an elite at the expense of the middle and lower-middle classes. UCLA, Yale, and even CSU Stanislaus run on premises far more reactionary and class-based than does Wal-Mart. The teaching loads and course responsibilities of tenured full professors have declined over the last half-century, while the percentage of units taught by graduate students and part-time faculty, with few benefits and low pay, has soared.

The number of administrators has likewise climbed — even as student indebtedness has skyrocketed, along with the unemployment rate among recent college graduates. A typical scenario embodying these bizarre trends would run something like the following: The UC assistant provost for diversity affairs, or the full professor of Italian literature, focusing on gender and the self, depend on lots of graduate and undergraduate students in the social sciences and humanities piling up debt without any guarantee of jobs, while part-time faculty subsidize the formers’ lifestyles by teaching, without grading assistants, the large introductory undergraduate courses, getting paid a third to half what those with tenure receive.

The conference and the academic book, with little if any readership, promote the career interest and income of the trendy administrator and the full professor, and are subsidized by either the taxpayers or the students or both. All of the above assumes that a nine-month teaching schedule, with tenure, grants, sabbaticals, and release time, are above reproach and justify yearly tuition hikes exceeding the rate of inflation. The beneficiaries of the system win exemption from criticism through loud support of the current progressive agenda, as if they were officers with swagger sticks in the culture wars who must have their own perks if they are to properly lead the less-well-informed troops out of the trenches."

Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/07/08/liberal_apartheid_119115.html#ixzz2YSjPuxpz
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Liberal Dogma: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

This is a personal observation based on years of dealing with people who say one thing, but do another. This type of behavior is far more prevalent in the more liberal individuals and businesses than conservative ones because of the hurdles and litmus tests required for the type of ideological purity demanded by the far Left. Although they claim to be open to differences, in reality some of the worst and most biased individuals and businesses are the biggest offenders when it comes to such ideas as free speech, honesty and fair treatment. Years ago I worked for a very chic, well known home products company. They regularly make it on local and national "best places to work" lists. I beg to differ. My experience was that they would add responsibilities without promised compensation. I also saw people who were in common terms "suck ups" who pandered to the political and personal biases of the people in charge on a social level get promoted over people who did the heavy lifting. And while this company likes to pat itself on the back, I still here stories of people hired to work there and expected to work off the clock, not take lunches and work on holidays where most other stores are closed. So we more onto a more personal view. My son worked for more than two and half years for a very well known store that catered to the skating crowd. He was, in fact, for two years running, in what was called "The 100K" in that they sold more than $100K in merchandise during the years. That's alot of tee shirts and jeans. My son was doing well and in October was asked to move "temporarily" to a store thirty miles from home. They promised him a promotion and a raise in January. So he worked his tail off. He even went in to do inventory right after his car was totaled in a driving rainstorm. He worked more than forty hours a week, took hours for people that couldn't work and even helped after not one but two break ins. He was the top salesperson. But he had a hotshot manager who had always been a top salesperson who just could not handle that she wasn't top sales. So she made up complaints, and despite the fact that his sales were helping the store make goal, fired him. Needless to say, in this economy, finding an entry level job is not easy. But what is grating is that when he talked to company brass at 100K in January, they were big on "we are a family, we care about our employees." Evidently not because the regional manager didn't even have the common courtesy to return calls and the rest of the managers he has worked with are mad as hell because they were counting on having him work as first assistant manager when they got stores. So to all those folks who shop at Zumiez, look carefully at what you buy. Because you aren't supporting a friendly, liberal, casual skating store, you are supporting a corporation monolith that thinks employees are disposible and customers are chumps.