POISON IVY

     Very few statements coming from the Academic Mafia are worth discussing; that is, unless they pose a danger to public safety---which they frequently do. It seems that one Mark V. Tushnet, the 'William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law' at Harvard Law School and 'Guggenheim Fellowship for Social Sciences Award' recipient, has made himself notorious once again for controversial statements about American Christian Conservatives.

      Tushnet's last controversial action was getting caught in a Beltway homosexual brothel, but that's another story. He was also famous during the 1990s as a proponent of partial-birth abortion. Such sterling examples of American manhood are who's leading the elite educational institutions of today.

       So Tushnet, offering his brilliant legal insights in some appropriately-named media outlet called Balkanization opines that the American Legal Establishment has not been sufficiently aggressive in the Culture Wars. Speaking of Christian Conservatives, Tushner writes:

        "The Culture Wars are over; they lost, we won...the question now is how to deal with the losers in the Culture Wars. My own judgment is that taking a hard line is better than trying to accommodate the losers. Trying to be nice to the losers didn't work well after the Civil War...while taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945."

        Tushnet proves here that, not only is he an ignoramus on legal matters, he is a dunce on US history as well. The US Civil War ended in 1865; by 1898, former Confederate officers were fighting for the United States in the Spanish-American War. And, as we've seen recently in foreign affairs, it appears that German and Japanese Imperialists simply went underground and are rising to the surface again.

       Aside from that, the Marshall Plan was hardly a 'hard line' approach. Up until recent times, American policy has historically been quite generous to the defeated; but ruthlessness is far more appealing to the Left.

        Tushnet is a prime example of the kind of stupidity that has come to characterize the Academic Mafia. Once upon a time, Harvard University was an elite educational institution. It was established in 1638 by John Harvard, an English clergyman and dead white male whose purpose in founding Harvard was explained thus:

         "After God had carried us safely to New England and we built our houses, provided for our livelihood and built churches for God's worship and established the civil government, one of the things we longed after and looked for was to advance learning and perpetuate to our posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to our churches after its present ministers shall lie in the dust."

        And Harvard succeeded for many years afterwards. Many of the frontier ministers---whom our media depicts as simpletons and fanatics leading around a bunch of country bumpkins by the nose---were graduates of Harvard Divinity School.

        Harvard was a leading edge institution in all fields and was among the first to introduce physical education along with academic excellence. Inter-collegiate athletics---once a positive and progressive program that has since degenerated into a blot on society---started among the 'Ivy League'.

        So how did the Ivy League descend from John Harvard to the level of Mark Tushnet in just a generation or so? The answer is, as always: follow the money.

        Because once an Ivy League degree became a commodity rather than a mark of achievement; the Ivy League was doomed. The Academic Mafia---particularly at these higher levels like the Ivy League---act as a gatekeeper for prime positions in Government, Media, and Wall Street. And their Alumni show their gratitude with financial kickbacks; which in turn makes Academia more slavishly accommodating to the political, economic, and social goals of their sponsors. The vicious circle, once started, doesn't stop.

       Will Tushnet's crackpot suggestions ever be realized? Let us not forget that things like no-fly lists; national ID cards; domestic espionage; torture as legitimate police procedure; homosexual marriages legally enforced; etc... were all considered crackpot ideas when most of us were born. In fact, public officials who practiced these things were thrown in jail for it back then; today they hold Distinguished Law Professorships at Harvard.

        But back then Alumni Associations and the general public policed institutions of higher learning, today we roll our eyes and call their crimes a 'New Normal.' Standing up to the Academic Mafia wouldn't look progressive; would make one's CV less important; and besides, might interfere with the NCAA finals or your school's football team's chances at a Bowl bid. And we can't have that.

      

 The Ivy League of 2016