Why the Left loses: we see their vision of a new America

Larry Kummer, Editor

12 years ago

Summary: Left and right are engaged in a never-ending struggle not just for control of America’s politics, but for its soul. Since 1980 the Right has been winning, slowly rolling back the essential aspects of the New Deal. Today we have another chapter explaining why the Left loses. Their weakness is self-inflicted. Let’s hope they find it within themselves to change; we need at least one sane wing of the political spectrum.

The Left takes us to their vision of a new world

“Rape Happens Here“, Simon van Zuylen-Wood, Philadelphia Magazine, 24 April 2014 — Opening

For 150 years, leafy, progressive Swarthmore College tried to resolve student conflicts in the best Quaker tradition — peacefully and constructively. Then came 91 complaints of sexual misconduct. In a single year.

Read it in full; you’ll find astonishing stories on every page. It’s a story of crazy by both students and administrators (and I wonder about the writer as well). Dumb (often inexplicable) behavior by all, including apparent amnesia about the existence of police, intense “claims of victimization” by all sides, elevation of personal feelings over facts, use of campus disciplinary machinery to punish heterodox ideology, and confused thinking (e.g., what is rape, beyond feeling “scared, powerless, and traumatized”?).

It’s another story of modern America’s inability to handle a problem adequately managed by the other developed nations. We’re exceptional!

More about this article:

Read the comments, many from students at Swarthmore.
Note that one-third of 91 complaints of misconduct (from harassment to rape) in 2013 concerned incidents from previous years. So the number of complaints of 2013 incidents were roughly equivalent to 7% of Swarthmore’s women students (Swarthmore has 1,600 students, 51% women).
See the statement in the next section by Swarthmore’s police chief about rape reports and convictions (the author didn’t quote either the campus or local police).

Swarthmore provides a living example of why many Americans feel reluctant to turn the management of America over to the Left. Swarthmore’s operational and moral culture displays deep, multi-level, dysfunctionality. These people shouldn’t be running a college, and should be kept far from America’s levers of power.

For additional evidence, see those of America’s great cities run by long-term Democratic governments. It’s not a pretty picture.

Unfortunately the right-wing is equally crazy (imo, more so). The common factor: of Left and Right they’re both Americans. There’s something at work here, affecting both politically active groups on the ends of our political spectrum. Both sides clearly see the crazy in their opponents, and laugh. But the Right appears to have the last laugh, as they’re winning.

About Swarthmore, police, and rape

(a) About the Swarthmore Department of Public Safety, inexplicably absent from this article:

The department is comprised of a director, lieutenant, two sergeants, two corporals, and six full-time and three part-time patrol officers. All full-time patrol officers undergo a thorough background check, psychological screening, and physical examination. Patrol supervisors are sworn in as Special Police Officers after completing a recognized Pennsylvania State Police Training Academy course for Municipal Police Officers.

These officers may exercise full police powers, including authority to arrest on Swarthmore College property. This law enforcement authority is granted by the Court of Common Pleas in Delaware County under 22PA CSA Section 501.

… Local jurisdiction is shared with Swarthmore Borough Police Department, with whom a close working relationship is maintained. Pennsylvania State Police and/or the Delaware County Criminal Investigation Unit will assist Swarthmore Borough Police in most serious campus investigations. The Department of Public Safety typically plays a supportive role in these instances.

(b) The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) asked Swarthmore Police Chief Brian Craig about the epidemic of sexual assaults on campus (29 April 2013):

In the last couple of years, he told me Friday, his department has investigated about five cases of sexual assault on campus, including one actual rape that was successfully prosecuted.

(c) “The Campus Rape Myth: The reality: bogus statistics, feminist victimology, and university-approved sex toys“, Heather Mac Donald, City Journal, Winter 2008

(d) “A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast — Unsubstantiated accusations against my son by a former girlfriend landed him before a nightmarish college tribunal“, Judith Grossman (attorney), op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, 16 April 2013:

Title IX, that so-called guarantor of equality between the sexes on college campuses, and as applied by a recent directive from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, has obliterated the presumption of innocence that is so foundational to our traditions of justice. On today’s college campuses, neither “beyond a reasonable doubt,” nor even the lesser “by clear and convincing evidence” standard of proof is required to establish guilt of sexual misconduct.

These safeguards of due process have, by order of the federal government, been replaced by what is known as “a preponderance of the evidence.”