Well-Connected Activists on the Political Left Attack Glenn Greenwald for Forming an Interracial Family Through Adoption

Interracial adoption should be celebrated.  No parent should be treated like Glenn Greenwald was treated after giving an interview about the importance of fatherhood. He discussed the joys of adopting two children with his Brazilian husband. In the video, he tells the story about what happened following this benign and joyful conversation about fatherhood.

I'm certain that my feelings about this topic are intensified by the fact that I am an adoptive parent of two children who were born in another part of the world. They are strong young women, but I will always be ferociously protective of them.  On many occasions I've written about the racist venom increasingly coming from many on the political left. I often see it on Twitter, unapologetic and bold. I've seen a ton of it in training materials leaked from schools and corporations (sometimes it goes under the name of CRT, but not always).  I'm glad that Glenn Greenwald has spoken out so eloquently in this video and I applaud the ways in which he has framed the issues.

Originally, it was right-wingers who railed against interracial families. Having apparently learned nothing at all, more than a few left wingers have taken up this deplorable cause--it's like their brains were transported 70 years back in time. The two main culprits in this case are Rafael Shimunov and Wagatwe Wanjuki, both of them intricately connected to many liberal organizations, including universities. They boldly spewed their racist poison to their online communities, presumably including many people involved in these left-leaning organizations. Shimunov issued a half-assed apology after learning that Greenwald put Shimunov's conduct under the spotlight. Wagatwe has not retracted any of her postings and has not apologized.  Part of this story also mentions deplorable tweets written by best-selling author Ibram Kendi (How to be an Antiracist), attacking Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation process. Her sin was the same as Greenwald's: she had an interracial family.  Kendi has not retracted his disgusting tweets and has not apologized.

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WP: Now that We Think About it . . . There’s No Evidence that Rittenhouse was a White Supremicist

The WP apparently trying to mitigate damages in the libel suit they are now apparently worrying about. Responsible professional journalism would have been evidence-based from the very beginning. I probably need to add that I'm no fan of Kyle Rittenhouse. He is not any sort of hero to me. I write this as someone who has seen the widespread decline in the the ability of legacy news outlets that I formerly trusted.

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Niall Ferguson Explains Why He is Helping to Create a New College

Niall Ferguson's article at Bloomberg is titled, "I'm Helping to Start a New College Because Higher Ed Is Broken: Institutions dedicated to the search for truth have ossified into havens for liberal intolerance and administrative overreach."

In Heterodox Academy’s 2020 Campus Expression Survey, 62% of sampled college students agreed that the climate on their campus prevented them from saying things they believed, up from 55% in 2019, while 41% were reluctant to discuss politics in a classroom, up from 32% in 2019. Some 60% of students said they were reluctant to speak up in class because they were concerned other students would criticize their views as being offensive.

Such anxieties are far from groundless. According to a nationwide survey of a thousand undergraduates by the Challey Institute for Global Innovation, 85% of self-described liberal students would report a professor to the university if the professor said something that they found offensive, while 76% would report another student.

. . . . The number of scholars targeted for their speech has risen dramatically since 2015, according to research by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. FIRE has logged 426 incidents since 2015. Just under three-quarters of them resulted in some kind of sanction — including an investigation alone or voluntary resignation — against the scholar. Such efforts to restrict free speech usually originate with “progressive” student groups, but often find support from left-leaning faculty members and are encouraged by college administrators, who tend (as Sam Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College demonstrated, and as his own subsequent experience confirmed) to be even further to the left than professors. There are also attacks on academic freedom from the right, which FIRE challenges.

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About Counterweight

It's time to take back the word "liberal" from a relatively small number of loud boorish illiberal people who happen to be strategically placed in our sense-making institutions. Counterweight, founded by Helen Pluckrose, is there to help you.

Helen Pluckrose:

When I say that attaching social or moral significance to ‘race’ is bad, I am told that this attitude will make me blind to racism. That makes no sense. Racism is the worst form of attaching social & moral significance to race which is the very thing I oppose.

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The Long Tradition of Dividing People Into Good People and Bad People

Matt Taibbi, writing about Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States:

No matter how interesting a book he or she is able to write, any author who admits to looking out at the world and seeing only “victims and executioners” needs psychological help. Unfortunately, Zinn in this respect turned out to be a pioneer, presaging a generation of comic-book thinkers who understand things in binary terms, forever preoccupied with cramming people in neat categories of oppressors and oppressed.

Such mental habits are the fashion now and will definitely put you in a bind on Thanksgiving. How can I eat turkey and stuffing with a smile, when Columbus massacred the Arawaks? When the English forced the Wampanoags off their land and made many convert to Christianity? When Lincoln told Horace Greeley, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it”?

How? Maybe because you’re more than three years old, and don’t need fairy tales to be real in order to enjoy dinner with family and a football game?

Taibbi's article is "Thanksgiving is Awesome: In reply to the haters. Happy holiday, everyone."

On a more serious note, I read Zinn's book when I was a teenager and it was a much needed shock to my system, given that I had, to that point, been exposed to a steady stream of textbooks and teachers who argued American Exceptionalism. I agree with Taibbi that both of these approaches are simplistic.

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