Political correctness and such could well be the death of us

February 28, 2023

Colleges and universities are referred to as “higher education.” It is where many people go after they have finished high school to learn about the career they want to pursue. That is the idea, or at least, that was the original idea.

Long ago colleges and universities started sports teams as an activity for those who wanted to play on them, and for students who wanted to watch the games. Those who played on the teams were students first, and athletes second.

Over the last several decades athletics have taken on much greater importance for the institutions, athletes, and audiences. A vast number of Americans in and out of college rank college sports as one of their main interests. 

Colleges and coaches rake in huge amounts of money, and the people that make it possible for them to earn the big bucks get a free or reduced-cost education. 

This heavy influence from the sporting world has so far not affected the role that higher education is supposed to play nearly as much as the encroachment of indoctrination into the curricula.

But things are changing. As of July, 2021, “college athletes can profit from their name, image or likeness (NIL) under National Collegiate Athletic Association rules,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “It’s a new era for the sprawling, multibillion-dollar college sports industry, and in these early days it’s a messy one.” 

Looking at the current college athletics situation, The Hill offered the following: “In addition to debt-free college, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, student-athletes receive coaching and counseling that pays off throughout life,” the article said. 

“The economics literature recognizes that even a year of college has measurable benefits. Student-athletes learn the valuable life skills of discipline and teamwork,” The Hill article continued. “They learn to cooperate with people of diverse backgrounds. These activities shape character, with lifetime consequences. In addition, college athletics is a platform connecting students, academics, alums and fans more generally.”

Now there is talk of college athletes being paid outright, as if they have a job. But if you are paid to play a sport, aren’t you a professional athlete? 

Higher education has many problems: politics in the learning environment; very high and rising tuition rates; and also, recently focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

What exactly is DEI? The InclusionHub defines these terms:

Diversity: Acknowledges all the ways people differ: race, sex, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, religious beliefs, and more.

Inclusion: Is about diversity in practice. It’s the act of welcoming, supporting, respecting, and valuing all individuals and groups.

Equity: Is often used interchangeably with equality, but there’s a core difference: Where equality is a system in which each individual is offered the same opportunities regardless of circumstance, equity distributes resources based on needs. We live in a disproportionate society, and equity tries to correct its imbalance by creating more opportunities for people.

The InclusionHub also mentions Belonging and Justice.

Belonging: Infers that an equitable structure is in place and functioning to make all people, no matter their differences, feel welcome. When you reach for equity, you’re striving for a system that benefits everyone, no matter their circumstance. Belonging is when this not only works, but no one feels as if their inclusion is questioned.

Justice: Is the mission of equity, in which an equitable system works so well it eventually eliminates the systemic problems driving the need for the latter. In other words, everything is fairly and evenly distributed to people no matter their race, gender, physical ability, or other personal circumstances.

But how will DEI work as the method for forming teams? If this concept is put into effect in sports at any level, no longer will the 11 best football players, 9 best baseball players, 5 best basketball players, etc., necessarily be who is on the first team. All teams will be formed using the rules of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, balanced by Belonging and Justice.

America has experienced great success because of the idea of being the best you can be, and that the best student, athlete, company, military, or whatever wins. The best earned the prize, which is why they got the prize. They didn’t get the prize because it’s fair and right that everyone gets the same reward, despite how good or bad they are at whatever is being rewarded.

The term that should once again and forever be the focus is: merit! You get the prize because you earned the prize. Not because you entered the contest. You are the valedictorian because you had the highest GPA, not because everyone in the senior class should be valedictorian.

By focusing on everybody getting the same reward, regardless of their ability, there is no longer any reason to try to be better, to be the best you can be.

How long will the United States remain a free country before it is taken over by another country that is determined to rule the world, and focuses on that, rather than DEI?

DEI might not spell doom in small, limited circumstances. But it is the death knell if used throughout an entire country.

The Equal Rights Amendment died in 1982. But is it really dead?

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), aimed at providing legal equality of the sexes and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, was first proposed nearly a century ago, in 1923. Four decades later, sponsored by New York Democrat Rep. Bella Abzug, with the support of well-known feminists Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, the ERA was introduced in Congress. It was approved by the House in October of 1971 and by the Senate in March of 1972. It was then sent to the states for ratification, where more than 30 states ratified it within a year.

However, ratification requires the approval of three-quarters, or 38, of the 50 states to become an Amendment to the Constitution, and it fell short. At the seven-year deadline for its ratification set by Congress, and even after the deadline was extended to 1982 by Congress and signed by President Jimmy Carter, fewer than 38 states had ratified the ERA.

In 2018, nearly 40 years after the initial and the extended deadlines had expired, the Illinois legislature adopted a resolution to ratify the ERA, making 37 of the 38 states needed for ratification. 

Earlier this month the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Democrat-controlled General Assembly became the necessary 38^thstate to ratify, when the House passed the ERA. Whether this effort matters, or was just a waste of time depends upon whether the deadlines set for ratification by Congress are valid.

This situation is made even more complicated by the fact that five states which previously ratified the ERA had rescinded their approval before the initial deadline occurred. ERA advocates insist, first, that the deadlines did not end the viability of the proposal, and second, that those five states could not rescind their approval.

Logically, if Congress has the authority to pass and send to the states proposals that may become Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, it also has the authority to set a time limit for ratification of these proposals.

Advocates argue that both the initial and the extended time limits should be ignored. But if advocates thought an extension of the deadline was necessary to extend the ratification period until 1982, how can they now argue that deadlines are not valid?

Furthermore, precedent was established for Congress setting a time limit on ratification when, starting with the 18^thAmendment and continuing through the last one, the 27^th Amendment, Congress did set expiration dates for ratification.

Advocates’ argument that states may not rescind their ratification of the proposed Amendment also seems weak. If a state has the authority to pass a state constitution and state laws, does it not also have the authority to amend that constitution and those laws? If states can pass and amend constitutions and laws, why can they not ratify and then rescind ratification of Amendments to the U.S. Constitution?

The effort to pass the ERA in the 70s and 80s fell short, in part because of efforts of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly in opposition to it. But had there been truly strong sentiment for the ERA, it would have passed then. And today, decades later, the equality between men and women has substantially improved. Why, then, is the ERA needed?

Following the Illinois vote for ratification in 2018, an article in Business Insider by Daniella Greenbaum stated that “[w]e are no longer living in a time in which women don't have the right to vote or own property. The status of women in the United States could not be more different now than it was in the 1920s, when the ERA was first written.”

Jarrett Stepman, a contributor to The Daily Signal, suggests that among the many potential problems the ERA would cause today if ratified, four deserve discussion.

“Perhaps one of the clearest results of the ERA would be that it would almost be impossible to exclude women from the draft,” he wrote. “At 18 years-old, women would have to sign up for Selective Service just like men. Though the reinstatement of the draft in the near future is unlikely, in any case in which the draft was deemed necessary, women would be included due to the ERA. Given the legal push to open up all combat roles to women, this could have potentially profound societal and individual consequences.”

The second of the four is the possible abolishment of same-sex bathrooms in public buildings. This issue has already become the subject of fierce debate, and more than a few sexual assault crimes have resulted from the creation of gender-neutral bathrooms.

The end of government-funded women-only shelters and other such facilities that help battered women and women harmed by domestic violence is a third problem.

And last, but hardly least, the ERA could force the “right” to taxpayer funding of abortion into the Constitution, at least in Medicare cases where abortion was a “medically necessary procedure,” equal to a “medically necessary procedure” for men.

However, the abortion lobby will certainly seek expansion of federal money for abortions.

Abortion is rarely “medically necessary,” given that unwanted pregnancy nearly always results from voluntary actions, not involuntary actions, like rape or incest. Given that truth, there is little reason for any federal money to be used for abortion. 

Equality of results is an unachievable goal, so stop, already!

The New York Times recently published a profile piece on clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson claiming Peterson is the “pedigreed voice” of those cretins who wish to undermine efforts by liberals to promote equality.

Peterson’s excellent new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, has sold more than a million copies since its release this past January.  

But this is not about Peterson’s insightful tome, which is not primarily about equality, although that topic comes up in it. This is about the futility and great negatives of attempting to force equality of results.

Some years ago a step in that direction occurred in some schools in an attempt to save students from the negative feelings resulting from failure, or not being among the best at something. Instead of celebrating the best three or four with a trophy, some schools decided everyone deserved a trophy just for participating.

Even though one of the twenty participants in a 100-yard dash came in well ahead of the others, and four did not even finish the race, it is now the case for all participants to receive a trophy. Hurt feelings and disappointment are no-nos. But where’s the recognition for the fastest runner who beat the runner-up by a full second? First, second and third place trophies? Absolutely not! “Trophies for all” is better.

In recent tryouts for a high school cheerleading squad, one girl who tried out, but did not make the cut, was unhappy, as might be expected. So, her mother called the school and complained, and the school has since ruled that all who tried out will be accepted for the squad.

What about those that are just better at it and actually earned a position through their preparation and performance?  Does that mean the school will now accept all of those who show up for every tryout or team, regardless of their respective abilities? What if 50 girls show up next year for the cheerleading squad?

Some of the 50 will be significantly less able to perform than others. Will the squad have to do their challenging cheers badly, or just do less challenging cheers? Maybe they will just stand in a line and recite the cheers, hopefully together. What about the increased expense of outfitting 50 girls instead of 12? What if every girl in the school wants to be a cheerleader?

Regardless of their skills, preparation, or experience, every girl in the school is now deemed equal when it comes to cheerleading.

Except, of course, that they aren’t. Imposing equality attempts to equalize that which is inherently not equal.

Another popular topic is whether people doing the same job should receive the same pay. “Yes,” you may say. But it is more complicated than it appears.

Are they equally good employees that produce equally high quality work; do all have the same amount of experience; do they work the same hours? If all those are truly equal, perhaps they should receive equal pay. But that isn’t always, or even usually, the situation. Reality is rarely that cooperative.

We are all different, by design. Some of us are tall, some short. Some brilliant, some are less so, and some not at all. Some are athletic while others are not. Some are good at math, science, English, geography, art, music or other things, but also may not be good at others of those subjects. And there’s nothing liberals can do to equalize those natural inequalities.

How do you put a guy who trips on the stairs and continually drops things on the baseball or basketball team with kids who can actually play the game, and consider him equal to the others?

This trend of rewarding everyone regardless of their merit has taken hold, and has grown to a point where preventing individuals from having negative feelings is of greater importance than their learning to deal with the slings and arrows of life.

Many of us have decided that protecting feelings by giving everyone an award is more important than recognition for actual accomplishments. It is not a bad thing to compete with one another, to try to be the best among your peers, or at least work to be the best you can be. Do we no longer value excellence or achievement? Or is mediocrity the new national goal?

There is order in systems to rank people by their abilities, and forcing round pegs into square holes by imposing equality creates chaos. The effort to make all equal is chaotic, because it replaces order with disorder.

Protecting hypersensitive feelings did not get us to the top. America reached its peak of greatness by encouraging people to achieve great things and striving for excellence.

Equality – true equality in all things – is a pipe dream; an impossibility. But liberals seem determined to try, try and try again to produce the impossible. And this pretty well explains liberalism. In its efforts to achieve utopia, it makes promises that it cannot keep.

We can certainly work to improve equality of opportunity. After that, it’s up to the individual to succeed on her or his own initiative.

Is the gender pay gap fact or fiction? Depends on how you look at it

“Women all over America deserve a raise,” Hillary Clinton has said, again and again. “There’s no discount for being a woman — groceries don’t cost us less, rent doesn’t cost us less, so why should we be paid less?”

Depending upon which numbers you choose, women in America make 77 cents or 79 cents for every dollar men make. These numbers come from the U.S. Census Bureau, 77 cents to the dollar from the 2010 Current Population Survey, and an increase to 79.5 as of 2014.

What Clinton is saying in essence is that if a male family practice doctor makes $160,000, a female family practice doctor only makes $126,400. If a male schoolteacher makes $56,610, a female teacher only makes $44,722.

An analysis by Colin Combs at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) tells us; “The claim that women only make 77 [or 79] cents for every dollar a man makes is usually followed by a call for a whole new wave of regulations and pay mandates to stop this discrimination. The gender pay gap is undeniably real; men earn more than women, on average. The question is ‘Why?’”

Partly, it is in how the numbers are determined, which is illustrated by the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics determined that women make 83 cents for every dollar men earned in 2014, not 77 or 79 cents per dollar men earned. But there are other factors that must be considered in this assertion.

One of those factors is using the average pay for all men and the average pay for all women as the standard for analysis, about which Combs wrote: “What these statistics reveal is not what people are being paid for the same work, but what the average full-time working woman makes against the average full-time working man. It ignores differences in occupation. The average surgeon makes more than the average librarian, so if more men choose to be surgeons and more women choose to be librarians (which they do), this will be reflected in their average wage.” In reality, it is “unequal pay for unequal work,” Combs wrote.

The fact is that women voluntarily choose lower paying occupations, such as teaching, psychology and nursing, while men head toward computer science and engineering. Married women often reduce their participation in the job market for family reasons, and many other women are self-employed and run their own businesses. When adjusted for these factors, the results show that women do earn less than men, but only 5 to 7 cents less per dollar, not the much-heralded 21 or 23 cents.

The reasons for this smaller difference are not clear, Combs writes. Such things as salary negotiating skills or women being more risk-averse than men are suspected factors.  Since the true factors have not been determined, efforts to correct the difference will likely misfire; to solve a problem you first need to identify the problem.

The NCPA analysis quotes data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

■ Women’s inflation-adjusted wages have been increasing at a rate significantly higher than men’s, or rising even while men’s wages fall.

■ While the real wages of both men and women without a high school diploma have fallen, this decrease is three times worse for men than for women.

■ Women’s wages have been rising, even as the wages of men with a high school diploma or associate’s degree have been falling. Women are much more likely than men to interrupt their work for familial reasons, such as maternity leave.

Combs cites a Labor Department study conducted by CONSAD Research Corporation saying the 77 cent figure is misused and overshadows many real gains made by women since the 1970s. This is being done “to advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap,” the study said.

Never being one to let mere facts interfere with a good opportunity for demagoguery and pandering, Clinton charges ahead with her pledge to use government to get women a raise that they have largely already gained without her help.

“Our false preoccupation with pay equity is not costless,” said the Hoover Institution’s Richard A. Epstein, “for it leads to bad labor market regulations that hurt all workers.” Regulations imposed to achieve equality ultimately negatively affect the job market for both women and men.

Government tinkering with business elements it really knows nothing about, all to fix a small problem that it doesn’t understand is bad government. But bad government is a product that the Left produces in abundance.

This issue demonstrates how the Left is either unaware of, or simply chooses to ignore economic principles in order to pander to a special interest group to garner votes. Jobs have value based upon the dynamics of each business, and each business has its own dynamics. A government one-size-fits-all solution to this is, to be kind, highly unlikely to succeed.

An electorate that does not investigate issues and votes instead on emotion will help usher in more harmful policies like those that have prevented the U.S. from recovering from the recession that ended seven years ago.

Is being “bossy” really a serious societal problem in America?

A new crisis threatens the nation. Some women are upset at having been called “bossy” when they were young. This term is so offensive to them that they want the word banned. Yes, that’s right, they want to banish the word “bossy” from the lexicon, never again to be used in any context, even to describe a male, as so many did to Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign.

 “Bossy” is now the “B-word,” but must not be confused with another B-word, which arguably is a more serious insult to women.

In junior high, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recounts, a teacher stopped her best friend and told her: "Nobody likes a bossy girl. You should find a new friend who will be a better influence on you."

"This is a very negative experience for girls,” she said. “If you look at my childhood, if you look at the childhood of most of the leaders we talked to, they lived through being told they were bossy," Sandberg said. "And it has such a strongly female, and such a strongly negative connotation, that we thought the best way to raise awareness was to say, 'This isn't a word we should use.’”

Okay, so young girls were often referred to as “bossy” because they told others what to do. But isn’t the term “bossy” really just the reaction to a particular type of behavior?

If someone is “bossy,” doesn’t that imply that the person thinks they know better than everyone else how things should be done? Maybe they’re right, or maybe they’re wrong, but their behavior sends that message.

I have worked for and with women who were good leaders, but were not “bossy,” and I’ve worked along side both men and women who weren’t in a leadership position, but were plenty “bossy.” Being “bossy” is gender-neutral, and is not a requirement for being a good leader. Having been called “bossy” does not seem to have hurt Ms. Sandberg’s career.

So that begs the question: why would anyone be offended at having the behavior they willingly exhibit being accurately identified? Wouldn’t the offended person’s proper response be to modify their behavior so as to no longer impress others as being bossy? Or, just grin and bear it?

Ms. Sandberg and Girl Scouts CEO Anna Maria Chavez expressed the idea in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that using “bossy” to describe girls is at the center of the problem of unequal treatment of girls and boys, noting that girls who lead are more often described as "bossy" and "overly ambitious" while boys who lead are described as "strong" and "determined."

Perhaps men and women are perceived differently and receive different treatment because men and women are inherently different creatures. We know this because Time Magazine told us so after it had an epiphany back in 1992, and thought the discovery warranted a cover story. “Why Are Men and Women Different? It isn’t just upbringing. New studies show they are born that way,” the cover announced.

Since the women’s movement in the 60s there has been a strong effort for equality between men and women, particularly in the workplace.

There certainly is no reason women cannot be doctors, lawyers, accountants, CEOs, politicians, financial advisers, etc. And there is no reason that if women want to perform those traditionally male jobs, like construction, carpentry, welding, truck driving, mining, or be police officers and firefighters, etc., they certainly can.

But while women may want to have careers, just as men do, nature has placed restrictions on them. Nature has deemed that women are the only gender that can bear children and nurture them in the earliest part of their lives, and the mother’s role is a critical and important duty in our world.

Men cannot be mothers; they are not built for the job, either physically or emotionally. Which is not to say men cannot play a stronger role in parenting and taking care of the home. But they cannot be mothers, and mothers will always have a different role than fathers.

And for that reason, mothers and fathers can never be totally equal, either in the workplace, or in the home.

In Ms. Sandberg’s book Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which she called "sort of a feminist manifesto," she encouraged women to "lean in" to their careers, yield to their sense of ambition and don’t shrink when they incur challenges in their work-life balance.

Ms. Sandberg’s efforts seem designed to show women as victims who are discriminated against in the workplace.

But when you look at the studies, they show that women frequently choose lower paying careers than men, tend to prefer a better lifestyle to working the longer hours required by many better paying jobs, and they take off blocks of time from their jobs, often due to childbearing, more frequently than men, which affects moving up.

Some of us try to equalize things that are inherently unequal, due to situations that those on the short end actually have helped to create.

Advice to Michael Richards

Michael Richards said the “N” word. Over and over again. It was wrong. It was despicable. He apologized. Several times. He is either sincere, or he isn’t. End of story?

Not quite. Not in the USA in 2006, where for nearly every perceived wrong there is a deep pocket to be tapped to make people feel better. Now, two guys who were in the audience, who were heckling Richards, want money because they and other blacks were the targets of Richards’ rant, and the talk is that Richards is considering paying up. He wants to even up. He wants to, by paying these two guys, essentially say to the world, “Okay, now I’ve atoned. I’ve evened the score. Don’t be mad at me any more.”

Now, everyone who frequents Observations knows that my advice is like gold. It is wise, and it is right. Right? Of course it is. And my advice to Michael Richards is: “Don’t pay a dime.” If you do, you might buy two friends, or maybe a couple of thousand, but you aren’t going to buy what you think you are buying, and you aren’t going to buy what you want.

You screwed up, Michael. You attacked black people, and that just isn’t permissible, and it isn’t forgivable. Better to have done what Danny DiVito did and attack George Bush. Had you done that, you would be in the clear. In America today it is okay to insult the president, especially this president. You would have people taking your side. You would have the media on your side, keeping the dumb things you say low-key.

But you didn’t, and now you must pay the piper, which means that you sacrifice your career, because you focused on the wrong target. And as long as your career is in the toilet, why give away your money, too?

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