Tag: political correctness

China Quietly WEAPONIZING Our Own Heritage While Hollywood Bows and Apologizes

Christopher Nolan sat down in Beijing recently to promote “The Odyssey.” But this wasn’t your typical press junket with softball questions and movie clips. A Chinese political philosophy student named Zhong Shu grilled him for nearly 20 minutes about Homer, hubris, the fall of Athens, and whether Hollywood has turned greatness into something that requires an apology.

The interview went viral for good reason. It was a masterclass — but not the kind Americans are used to seeing.

Zhong didn’t just ask about special effects or casting choices. She came prepared with Thucydides and challenged Nolan on whether he had “Christianized” Homer. She asked if the gods in his film were just projections of the human psyche. And then she cut to the heart of it all.

“We turn greatness into privileges and we demand apologies for it. That’s a fact of Hollywood,” Zhong stated before asking Nolan if he agreed.

Nolan didn’t dodge. He didn’t spin. He described it the way an engineer describes a load-bearing wall: This is simply how the mechanism works in our culture today. In a democratic age committed to equality, storytellers have to manage the audience’s built-in resistance to greatness. Do we have to apologize for that greatness?

“And the answer is yes, we do,” he said.

Think about that. The West’s most prominent living filmmaker just calmly conceded that his civilization can no longer receive a story about greatness unless greatness acknowledges wrongdoing first. And he delivered this admission in Beijing to an educated Chinese classicist who came prepared with provocations from our own civilization’s foundational myths.

This wasn’t a random interview. It was a snapshot of a much bigger conflict — a narrative cold war where each civilization is grappling with its relationship to the guiding stories of the past in an effort to determine which culture will lead the world in the future.

For years — with very little media attention — China has been quietly engaged in a narrative arms race with an American culture it believes is in decline. There’s a belief within the Chinese government that the modern West abandoned its own inheritance by deconstructing its foundational myths and values, and that now is the time to build where we have faltered. So for years, the Chinese have been mining the “classics” of Western Civilization for the insights that once gave us a civilizational advantage.

In November 2024, Beijing hosted the first World Conference of Classics: 600 participants and scholars, a congratulatory letter from Xi Jinping read aloud by the CCP’s propaganda chief, and a new Chinese School of Classical Studies established in Athens. Over the past decade, Peking University and Renmin have built classical studies programs too.

A key figure in China’s modern fascination with Western classical education is political philosopher Liu Xiaofeng, who spent the 2000s importing “Great Books education” into Chinese universities at precisely the moment Western universities were more focused on critiquing, subverting, and deconstructing these stories. Three of his students now run a classics division inside the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Here in the U.S., we’re finally starting to wake up. Even if Nolan’s interpretation of Homer’s epic myth is a matter of debate, the fact that he believed it was the right time to return to a 2,800-year-old story means something. Hollywood has been in a confused state of nostalgia for quite some time — prequels, sequels, reboots, sometimes deconstructing classic fairy tales and modern mythic heroes, other times celebrating them.

What’s undeniable is that the relationship to these stories of our past matters.

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Oregon State Mentors Face Social Justice Criteria After Ending Official DEI Program

Woke has not yet been destroyed in Oregon, where, according to a Campus Reform report, “Oregon State University requires applicants for its 2026–27 Academic Learning Assistant positions to demonstrate an ability to learn “social justice principles and concepts,” even after the university ended two diversity programs.”

In other words, its DEI is just not called by name.

Oregon State wants its Mentors trained in political correctness and Social Justice, even if not called DEI.

“Another residence-life position now makes a commitment to diversity or social-justice education, initiatives, and programs a minimum qualification rather than a preferred one.”

These requirements are absurd and unfair, but that’s come to be expected at this point at left-leaning universities.

“The university’s Academic Learning Assistant page says the live-in mentors serve one per residential community and work an average of 15 hours per week. Applicants must hold at least a 3.0 GPA. Oregon State also prefers applicants who demonstrate engagement with diversity and social-justice education, initiatives, or programs.”

“Academic Learning Assistants meet individually with residents, hold weekly office hours, conduct hall rounds, and lead two or three academic-success workshops per term. They also contact students experiencing academic difficulty, make referrals, and staff residence-hall front desks.”

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The Cruelty Of DEI

This past week ended with shock and sadness at the news that Jason Arday ended his own life in the midst of an investigation over his intellectual credibility. He was the vaunted education sociologist at Cambridge University, media darling and beneficiary of a big book contract, the toast of the town, and the subject of countless hagiographic profiles in media venues.

Plenty of people had whispered for years that he nowhere near qualified for all this celebration. He was not a genius. He was a fabulist. Saying it, however, was dangerous to one’s career. As a result, he kept getting away with it. His luck ran out when a U.S. academic pressed the issue. The tissue of lies collapsed.

The circumstances surrounding his absurd appointment to a full professorship with a named chair – the youngest black professor to enjoy such privilege – are hardly unique to him. When the full truth coming out about his plagiarism and autobiographical embellishments hit the international news, despair overwhelmed him in tragic ways.

It goes without saying that this young man had benefitted from what’s called DEI, which is the new term for what used to be called “affirmative action” but mutated into rampant privilege based on raw identity politics. Reverse racism doesn’t describe it fully. It is institutionalized discrimination that breeds deep resentment from those passed over and cultivates hidden contempt for those who ride this wave to unearned prestige and plaudits.

Something else has always bugged me about these systems that confer high titles and salaries on people solely on grounds of their race. It is deeply condescending and cruel to the point of being abusive of our fellow human beings. While it is easy to resent people who benefit from unearned exaltation, the plight of those who are its seeming beneficiaries also deserves some attention.

Years ago I had the opportunity to get to know a university administrator and his wife who occupied such a role. We met at a dinner party. He was the only black gentleman in the upper echelon of a major state university. His title was vice president for civil rights or some such made-up badge. It was a position invented to create the appearance of diversity. The position fell to him because he ticked all the boxes.

He was proud of his new position. But the more we spoke, the more he had doubts that he would express under his breath. He said that he has a large budget and staff but is rarely included as part of any serious planning team. He told me that he is mostly sent out on fundraising efforts to tell his story about how he grew up poor, overcame racism, and now has a prestigious position in university administration. But, he told me with frankness, he is tired of that story of himself.

We met up a few weeks later because I was curious to know more. He laid it all out to me. He came of age in an educational environment that was especially seeking blacks who performed above expectations which he always did. But instead of moving up a notch based on merit, he said he became aware early on that he was being accelerated and escalated beyond a level that was justified.

It became obvious in his college admissions, which pushed him into an institution far above that for which he was prepared. He found himself lost in a sea of high achievers. His privilege became a burden. He could not keep up in his classes and began to cut corners. It became obvious to him early that he was going to get away with this.

It seemed like the entire system was on his side. He tried to justify this to himself on grounds that every university has white kids on trust funds with legacy connections. They work less hard than a working-class kid who made it on his own so perhaps this is not unusual.

But, he said, he always felt burdened in multiple directions. It was sad enough that he grew up poor and black in the Deep South and was not expected to achieve. But it was far worse that he was given advancements beyond what he deserved when everyone knew it and considered him to be little more than a token of a compensatory system.

He described to me that choice he had to make. He could refuse the high grades, the advanced placements, the awards and attention that he knew were unmerited. But he was never sure what the point of that would be. Instead, he accepted them all as part of a game. He lost trust and respect in the system that he joined precisely because the system never really expected a high degree of performance from him.

He continued in this vein to tell me about graduate school and PhD studies which were more of the same. There was no point in this where he knew when to refuse, when to say no, when to call out the condescension and fakery of which he was presumably benefiting. In fact, he never saw himself as much of a beneficiary at all. He felt burdened by it all, and even robbed of what all the white kids faced: high expectations and the satisfaction of knowing that one climbed the ladder by virtue of his own efforts.

The story ends with his then appointment, which he knew to be fake at least on some level, though he believed that he truly did have something to contribute to university culture. It was that tag of having been marked by DEI that prevented it. He said he knew from childhood that in any endeavor in life, a title is easy but genuine respect from colleagues must be earned. He simply did not have that and did not know how to get it.

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Alberta Influencer launches site to report teachers pushing ideology in schools

After an Alberta teacher promoted a loophole using Edmonton Oilers Pride flags to circumvent Alberta legislation against pushing ideology in K-12 schools, social media influencer “Berta Proud Dad” has launched a way for parents and students to report instances of activist teachers breaking the law.

Lawrence Magee, who runs the social media handle Berta Proud Dad, spoke with Juno News about an initiative he started in response to parents coming to him about teachers rebelling against the elected provincial government’s efforts to prevent ideological indoctrination in schools.

Magee was alerted by parents to an Alberta teacher, Peter Mackay, who was urging other teachers to sneak pride flags into schools by exploiting an apparent loophole in the government’s efforts to remove political flags from classrooms under Bill 25.

The bill, which received royal assent on May 14, 2026, aims to ensure instruction is balanced and neutral rather than presenting a teacher’s personal political or ideological views as fact.

Mackay shared a post on Instagram pointing out that the directive to schools on which flags were permitted to be displayed includes sports flags. He endorsed using an Edmonton Oilers Pride flag to circumvent the effective ban on Pride flags in the classroom.

Magee noted that the ban is to remove all political ideology from the classroom, including Palestine flags, antifa stickers, and anything else not connected to the province or nation’s history.

In response, Magee launched reportateacher.ca for parents to report any teachers “not following the rules that the government set out in Bill 25.

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‘UK Has Fallen’: Sen. Cruz Mourns Britain Criminalizing Public For Memes

U.S. Republican Senator Ted Cruz has lamented the loss of liberty in the United Kingdom after a former police officer was convicted of a crime for merely reposting a meme mocking Islam.

The Newton Aycliffe magistrates’ court found retired police officer Stephen Gray guilty this month of violating Section 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003 over a supposedly “grossly offensive” image he shared on his Facebook account.

The meme, which was flagged to the Durham Constabulary by a non-Muslim neighbour, portrayed a man wearing a turban next to a rasher of bacon with the caption: “Fun facts about Bacon! People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9-year-old!”

While Gray acknowledged that some may have found the meme in bad taste, he said he was shocked that it would result in a criminal conviction and a £1,000 fine.

Responding to a report on the case by Breitbart London, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) remarked: “No meme is criminal. The UK has fallen.”

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The Never-Ending Cycle Of Taking Offense…

Americans should not fear the past…

I remember the first time I came across a “trigger warning.”  I was on a university campus in the ‘90s, attending the first lecture of a new history professor.  As I perused her course syllabus, I was impressed with the reading list and organization.  Then I spotted an incongruous “warning” to women and African Americans suggesting that they might find some of the material offensive.  At first, I thought it was an inappropriate joke.  I asked someone about it, and I was informed that “trigger warnings” had become increasingly common in the classrooms of America’s elite boarding schools.  I rolled my eyes because I knew right then and there that it would take decades to remedy the problem.

The idea that a history professor would implicitly warn students to be afraid of the past unnerved me.  I had always believed very much the opposite — that it was important for young minds to face the past with open eyes.  As living members of the human race, we enjoy the great privilege of being able to learn as much from those who came before us as possible.  And a person can never learn too much about the past!  Whether you take the lessons of history with you to the battlefield, boardroom, small office, or kitchen table, understanding the people, events, and ideas that created today’s world is an invaluable tool for navigating the present and building the future.

I don’t want people to be afraid of the past.  I want them to be invigorated by it.  I want them to exercise their imaginations and step into the centuries that came before us.  I want them to understand the points of view of our ancestors and to appreciate everything that we have inherited from them.  Our role as the current custodians of this material world is not to judge previous generations by today’s mores and standards.  Our job is to prevent the great lessons of history from ever slipping through our grasp.  Sometimes, grappling with the past takes courage!

But the “trigger warning” was just the tip of a much bigger and more socially destructive iceberg.  The message on that syllabus was antithetical to personal growth.  It communicated three poisonous ideas: (1) History is terrifying.  (2) It’s okay to look away.  (3) It’s permissible to rewrite history if it makes us “feel” better.  None of these messages is true.  History is treasure.  Understanding the past is the only way of glimpsing the future.  And if a person understands that seeing into the future is priceless, then that person should similarly understand that learning from the past is priceless, too.  

Furthermore, I do not believe that we should be teaching children to be afraid.  Do we want them to learn that a hot stove burns skin?  Of course.  Should we then encourage them never to sit near a fire?  Absolutely not.  Courage is a virtue.  It comes only when we appreciate the dangers before us and move carefully around them anyway.  History is not there to scare us.  It can’t hurt us.  What it can do is inform us.  It can equip us with the wisdom and strength to ably meet the real challenges of this life.

Whether printed on classroom syllabi or repeated as some modern mantra of “political correctness,” “trigger warnings” exude cowardice.  Why must leftist politicians recite “land acknowledgments” before government meetings or solemnly intone, “Black lives matter,” during public speeches?  Why must they patronize the descendants of native tribes who were here before the Pilgrims?  Why do they insist on treating black Americans as if they were children? 

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‘Biology and science is offensive?’ Watch WNBA fans get ordered to conceal their XX-XY T-shirts

America’s well-known freedom speech, which actually protects even offensive language be, uhm, darned!

A security guard at a WNBA game between the Indiana Fever and the Atlanta Dream has imposed his own, and presumably the team’s, speech code on fans.

That is, that they are not allowed to have scientific facts emblazoned on their T-shirts. Cover up or begone, he orders.

It is in a report posted by Fox that the details appear:

The report explains Kasey Thomason and daughter Annie had tickets just two rows back from the court, and they chose to wear XX-XY Athletics T-shirt to support Sophie Cunningham “and the ongoing fight to keep women’s sports and spaces female.”

Through much of the action there was no difficulty.

Then overtime, and a security guard appeared. He ordered them to cover their shirts or leave.

The report explained the guard claimed that other “fan(s)” were offended so they could wear the Atlanta Dream “Wellness & Health Night” shirts or be taken out of the building by escort.

Kasey wondered, so “biology and science is offensive?”

Mother and daughter “reluctantly” agreed to put on the offered shirts so they didn’t miss the end of the game.

Then, the report pointed out, “the Thomasons are seen on the ESPN broadcast with the tan Dream shirts in hand. They can be seen talking to fans around them, who they said loved their shirts and showed support for them and Cunningham throughout the game.”

The report said the prohibited items at State Farm Arena include, “Clothing, garments or signs displaying explicit language, profanity or derogatory characterization towards any person(s).”

Fox reported, “If State Farm Arena and the Atlanta Dream were really trying to claim the shirts worn by the Thomasons were a ‘derogatory characterization’ or ‘indecent messages’ on clothing, that would be an arbitrary way of enforcing their rules, at best. Discrimination, at the worst. But the fact remains, the security guard didn’t claim any of these things from the prohibited items list or the Fan Code of Conduct. He just said the shirts were ‘offensive.'”

Kasey told Fox she assumes a “trans rights” promoter sitting at courtside had complained.

The Fox report said, “This whole situation is discriminatory, disgusting, and quite frankly, Orwellian. In no shape, manner, or form, is a shirt that displays four prominent letters, representing a biological truth that women have XX chromosomes and men have XY chromosomes, ‘offensive.'”

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The Decline Of Higher Education Continues

During my second career teaching high school English, I noticed several darkly funny but disturbing trends in “higher” education.  They were fueled by three primary drivers: abandoning merit, the federal government taking over the student loan industry, and DEI hysteria.

It was Barack Obama who federalized the student loan industry, pushing the idea that everyone should go to college.

To make that idea a reality, it was necessary for the government to guarantee student loans.

That had plenty of unfortunate and foreseeable effects. Because Colleges no longer had any financial skin in the game, they went on a mad administrator-hiring binge, which required enormous amounts of money, which required unprecedented numbers of students. 

Combined with a faux-religious devotion to DEI, colleges admitted all manner of people who in past years would have reasonably been found to be poorly suited to do college-level work. To cover this, it was necessary to do away with any sort of predictive testing like the SAT. All that was required for college admission was a student loan, unless one was a white male applying at an Ivy League school. Those guys, regardless of academic qualification, were often denied.

Enormous DEI departments with all manner of administrators and functionaries were established, and hundreds of millions were wasted on DEI gurus imported to inspire them.

So unprepared were so many, colleges were forced to establish remedial high schools on campus. It was a great scam. Full tuition for no credit, and blame students’ lack of ability on high school teachers like me, who could have told them who wasn’t academically capable if anyone had bothered to ask.

Grade inflation was a direct result of these disasters. It was necessary to hide the scams, so professors were required not only to dumb down the content of their classes and to require far less work, but to award unearned grades. An entire generation of college students was conditioned to expect maximum grades for minimum and poor work. And God help any professor who gave a minority student the grade their lack of work deserved.

As a result, innumerable students took 6-7 years to get a 4-year degree at enormous cost, but many simply dropped out without a degree, bearing enormous debt they had no credentials or ability to pay off.

I’m certainly not arguing college should be denied to anyone. I’ve known many people who struggled greatly but managed to earn a degree and were better and more productive people for it. I am arguing for rational decision-making and fiscally sound, ethical colleges.

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Outrage! UMich offers 15-credit LGBT credentials amid grade-covering plan

In the latest manifestation of Woke Inc Campus Reform is reporting “The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor will begin covering first-semester letter grades for first-year students in its College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) in fall 2027, while the college continues to offer 15-credit undergraduate and graduate credentials in LGBTQ studies.”

This is both unfair to other students academically, as well as unfairly and immorally promoting “alternative lifestyles”.

LGBT students should not be given an advantage in academia.

The emphasis in school should be on reading, math, and history, not on left-wing agendas.

“Under the university’s First-Semester Grade Covering Pilot Program, all first-year LSA students will have their first-semester grades displayed on transcripts as pass (P) or no credit (NC). The pilot does not apply to first-year students enrolled in the university’s other colleges.”

This is outrageous and is unfair to students who earn higher scores.

“Dean Rosario Ceballo, who proposed grade covering during her 2025 State of the College address, said the change would encourage students “to try a course in a field they know nothing about” and “to embrace the joy of learning.”

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Former Police Officer Convicted of Sharing ‘Grossly Offensive’ Meme About Islam in Britain

A former British police officer has been convicted of posting offensive content on Facebook after he reposted an image mocking Islam, sparking accusations that blasphemy laws have returned to the United Kingdom.

A former British police officer has been convicted of posting offensive content on Facebook after he reposted an image mocking Islam, sparking accusations that blasphemy laws have returned to the United Kingdom.

Retired police officer Stephen Gray, 65, has been found guilty by the Newton Aycliffe magistrates’ court of breaching Section 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003 over a post he reshared on Facebook, which was deemed to be “grossly offensive”.

According to The Telegraph, Gray was reported to the Durham Constabulary for two Facebook memes by a non-Muslim neighbour of his, whom Gray had previously been in a separate dispute with.

The first post reported to the police featured the title “time for mass deportations” next to a Middle Eastern man in his 20s or 30s with the words “Children in need”. It was captioned with: “12-year-old Mohammed recently arrived at Dover. Please donate to help him move from a three-star to a five-star hotel, which has a better halal menu, free Wi-Fi, and Sky and is nearer to a girls’ school”.

This post was not deemed by the court to violate the law, as it concerned a political issue that had been debated in Parliament.

The second meme depicted a picture of a man wearing a turban next to some bacon with the caption: “Fun facts about Bacon! People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9-year-old!”

As the post was not considered to be a political message, but rather critical of a religion, it was found to be “grossly offensive” by the court. For this, Gray was found guilty of violating the Communications Act and was ordered to pay £1,000 in fines and court costs.

Gray said of the ruling: “I made a joke, an ironic joke, about Islam. That is all it was at the end of the day. A joke. I certainly never, not for one second, thought it would be deemed abusive.”

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