Watchers Council Results – Liberal Activism In Academia And Beyond

I’m still catching up on last week so here are the July 4th voting results for last week’s nominations. The top Council post was The Razor’s description of how liberal, ostensibly charitable organizations don’t seen particularly interested in actual charity:

While talking to the pickup men she learned that nothing is done to the donations; no repairs or cleanup. If they can’t sell it immediately, it gets thrown into a dumpster. She related her experiences in Africa where nothing went to waste. Broken things were mended; everything was reused and very little was wasted. Entire families combed the trash dumps looking for bits of metal or plastic that could be scavenged and resold. The people that she lives and works with in Africa are truly poor – unlike those who are ministered by charities here. The charities want cash. Why exactly? We donated everything a family of 4 would need except for parishables and the house itself. The In-laws weren’t poor. The were solidly middle class, registered Republicans who donated money to dozens of charities. Yet here we were, begging these same charities to take their stuff.

It’s a situation where liberal organizations are staffed by people who want to be seen doing liberal things at liberal organizations. Actual consequences aren’t a particularly salient concern – ergo blue state staples like organic food and fast food regulations, both of which end up making more poor people hungrier. The sheer vapidness of contemporary liberalism also came up, albeit from a different angle, in Council runner up Right Truth’s post:

People are dying for freedom in Iran while US President Barack Obama had a Hawaiian luau and Shepherd Smith is having an hour-long orgasm on Fox News following a car chase. Celebrities die young and push national news off the airways while citizens are still losing their jobs and homes in spite of promises from the One. We all have our priorities… Here in the US we have a congress voting on non-existent bills; a government spending money they don’t have and can never pay back; a government taking over private businesses, using questionable groups to skew voting districts and take the census; politicians who sell or trade their votes for favors and feel no sense of obligation to the voters who put them in office. I see a country that is split more than I have ever seen it before.

These are two more flavors of the left’s “just say stuff” approach to political argument. That’s how you get Democrats indignantly voting on non-existent bills. It’s how you get Obama’s faux sophisticated “we don’t meddle except to prop up Chavez’s allies” approach to Honduras, which was unpacked by non-Council winner Fausta’s Blog.

And it’s how you get a situation in academia where scholarship is proudly politicized. On this last point see the Chonicle of Higher Education article by Christina Hoff Sommers, where she runs down a list of anti-American fantasies of victimization that academic feminists have worked into textbooks. Seriously. They just say stuff.

References and previously after the jump…

References:
* Holiday Weasel Watching! Happy Fourth of July!! [Watcher of Weasels]
* Watchers Council Nominations – Conspiracy Theories On The Right, Ignoring Reality On The Left [MR]
* Settlement [The Razor]
* Life [Right Truth]
* Heartache: NYT Liberal Devastated Because He Can’t Afford $14 Organic Milk Any More [MR]
* Los Angeles Liberals Expanding Campaign To Make It Harder For Poor People To Get Money And Food (Plus: NYC Jewish Hipsters Expanding Campaign To Be Insufferable) [MR]
* Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship [Sommers]
* Coup in Honduras – Correction: This is NOT a coup [Faustas Blog]