Category Archives: Liberal

A Liberal preselection candidate who wrote a book about hissexual exploits titledAroundthe World in 80 Babeshas withdrawn from the race.

In revelations that reignited concerns about the Liberals' vetting process, former self-described "dating coach" NigelGohlcame under fire on Friday after the contents of his book resurfaced ahead of next month's preselection battle for the state seat of Prahran.

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'Around the World in 80 Babes,' a fictional dating guide, has landed an aspiring Liberal candidate in hot water ahead of next month's preselection battle for the state seat of Prahran.

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Angry rainbow-clad protesters waited in vain for tennis legend Margaret Court at a Liberal Party fundraiser in Melbourne on Thursday night.

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Nearby residents said they felt their homes shake after a tanker and car crashed in Tyabb. Vision courtesy: Seven News.

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Dozens gather at a Liberal fundraiser in Melbourne to protest against Margaret Court who is expected to attend the fundraiser.

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Motorists and commuters face 16 days of pain during the school holidays as work ramps up on the Metro Rail Tunnel.

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Colander wearing John McKenzie has a different take on the Jesus bikes warning of a fiery afterlife, so he's been pasting over them with a more upbeat message.

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Motorists are being warned to brace for huge delays throughout July as the state government embarks on a 16-day "construction blitz". Vision: Victorian Government.

'Around the World in 80 Babes,' a fictional dating guide, has landed an aspiring Liberal candidate in hot water ahead of next month's preselection battle for the state seat of Prahran.

The book is the story of a modern Casanova who spends his days pursuing women around the world,"from European princesses, to Englishslappers, to American cheerleaders".

Its blurb explains that "chicks, babes, women and nudity" were among MrGohl'sfavourite things.

It also warns that the content may some offend women, but most men will be throwing "high fives" at the end of each chapter of this "true story".

From its first sentence, the bookboasts of bringing a woman to "her third orgasm during an intense 40 minute session".

Much of the book follows in a similar fashion, with graphic details about dating conquests, sexual positions and eventhe ability to "fart freely in bed".

While the book was published in 2005, several party members raised concerns in recent weeks about the way it depicts women an issue that is likely to prove particularly sensitive in Prahran, a diverse electorate with high numbers of young people,LGBTIresidents, and families.

And after seeing The Age's story, Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy was reportedly furious, making it clear, according to sources, that Mr Gohl "would never be part of his team".

The Liberals are keen to regain Prahran after losing the seat to the Greens in 2014, but the revelations only hours after a candidate for the electorate of Sandringham held a controversial fundraiser with Margaret Court have come at a difficult time for the party.

The preselection battle is now a two-way contest between Rory Grant (a staffer to federal minister Christopher Pyne) and Professor Katie Allen (from the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute).

Mr Gohl, now 42 and married, declined to comment to The Age, other than to confirm he had withdrawn.

However, it is understood that he has previously defended the book on the grounds that it is essentially a story about finding love.

After it was published, he appeared in various media segments and YouTube videos providing relationship advice and espousing his views on women.

For instance, in a short chat show, hosted in 2007,he declares that the business world is still a "masculine world because that's where the best decisions are made".

When told by the presenter some of the best managers are women, Mr Gohl says "but they act masculine to do so. And they're not found attractive by other men because they've got too many masculine traits".

Fairfax Media understands that Liberal Party state director Simon Frost had spoken at length to Mr Gohl about the book, but the former author had not been asked to withdraw.

"Unlike Labor, Liberal Party members have the right to preselect our parliamentary candidates. Every party member is free to nominate. It would be inappropriate to comment further," Mr Frost said on Thursday.

On Friday, Mr Frost did not comment other than to confirm that Mr Gohl had pulled out of the preselection contest.

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Would-be Liberal candidate for Prahran pulls out of race after sex book storm - The Age

For the better part of 16 years, the BC Liberal government has been fond of lecturing its NDP Opposition about the importance of operating on a foundation of discipline and principle.

It was the Liberals stringent focus on the bottom line that set them apart from the New Democrats, and latterly the Greens, they argued. Premier Christy Clark and her colleagues often enjoyed chastising the opposition parties in the legislature over their left-wing economics and focus on poverty reduction measures the Liberals insisted would bankrupt the province.

But as we learned from Thursdays Throne Speech, the base upon which the Liberal governments fabled principles was built wasnt that solid after all. In fact, it appears to have been erected on nothing more than sand.

Read more: How B.C.s Liberal minority government could fall, and what happens next

Read more: BC Liberals pack Throne Speech with NDP, Green Party policies

Even in a province known for its bizarre and often unexpected politics, the events of the past week are unprecedented. Never before has a sitting government abandoned its policy positions in such a widespread and flagrant manner, in such a short period of time, all in a desperate attempt to stay in office.

Premier Clark has admitted her government has essentially ripped off her partys new initiatives from the policy playbooks of the NDP and the Greens. In many cases, they are ideas the Liberals once cheerily mocked and criticized as being too expensive.

But that was then and this is now.

After an election that left B.C. with a hung Parliament, the NDP and Greens are preparing to join forces to dump the governing Liberals from office. If that is to be the case, the Liberals are going to ensure their opponents defeat them on a vote on the Throne Speech, which includes many measures on which the two opposition parties campaigned.

You name it $1-billion for daycare, campaign-finance reform, hikes in welfare rates, transit funding, a referendum on electoral reform, removal of bridge tolls the Throne Speech was rife with announcements at odds with almost the entire Liberal election platform. It is the Oprah-ization of government: You get a car, and you get a car, and you get a car But it is clear they are hoping the moves ingratiate them with the public.

The Liberals have said the Throne Speech will effectively form their campaign manifesto should there be an election in the near future. And there might well be.

Should the NDP take over in the coming weeks, there are concerns that the traditions of Parliament may be compromised by the 43-43 saw-off that would exist in the legislature. This would force a Speaker from the NDP, who is supposed to be neutral, to vote in favour of the government every time a piece of legislation needs to be passed into law.

There is some thought that Lieutenant-Governor Judith Guichon might force an election rather than risk harming the legislatures reputation by the undermining the independence of the Speaker. That said, the prevailing view remains she will give the NDP a chance to govern.

But even if she does, that government may not last long. There could be an election in a few months, if the stalemate in the house makes governing untenable. This is where Ms. Clark is gambling her political makeover makes her and her party more attractive to voters this time around, but it is obviously risky on many levels.

Firstly, there is no accounting for where all the money is coming from to make their field of dreams come true. The fiscal picture for this year is going to be better than expected, apparently. But what about the years that follow? The Liberals are essentially telling the public: Trust us, well find the billions. If the NDP ever tried that, Liberal heads would explode.

Abandoning their fiscal values and philosophy certainly makes the Liberals vulnerable to cracks in the right flank of their coalition. The BC Conservative Party is already inviting people fed up with B.C.s three tax-and-spend parties to come and join them. You will hear more from them, I suspect.

But surely the biggest danger their strategy poses is to their credibility. Will voters trust a party that just reversed course on so many policy fronts? In many instances, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this strange political metamorphis is the fact Premier Clark and her caucus have been able to keep straight faces while defending it. Its all about listening to voters, the Premier insists.

The reality is, its all about maintaining the one thing the BC Liberals believe is rightfully theirs power. Only time will tell if this mind-boggling course of action is the right one.

Follow Gary Mason on Twitter: @garymasonglobe

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BC Liberals' policy reversal is one last grab for power - The Globe and Mail

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Steven King's TV Show 'The Mist' Sprinkles In Liberal Agenda With Blood and Gore NewsBusters (press release) (blog) The Mist just premiered on the Spike channel, and if the June 22nd pilot episode is anything to go on, we are in for a long, painfully dull, self-righteous, and gory season. After all, what else can we expect from a television show based on a story by ... and more »

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Steven King's TV Show 'The Mist' Sprinkles In Liberal Agenda With Blood and Gore - NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

New Liberal president Nick Greiner says ensuring trust and co-operation in the party is a challenge and the coalition will enter the next election as underdogs.

Mr Greiner, who replaces outgoing president Richard Alston, won't be attending the Liberal party federal council in Sydney starting on Friday due to overseas commitments.

But in a video recorded for the event, the former NSW premier said the federal coalition were "slight underdogs at the moment but are certainly highly competitive".

"There are also challenges in ensuring a culture of trust, openness and co-operation between all Liberal stakeholders, federal and state parliamentary and organisational," he said.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has warned of too much power being wielded by factions within the party and wants rules changed to give more power to grassroots members.

Mr Greiner said he was conscious of the challenges in "strengthening the financial and continuous campaigning capacity" of the party's federal secretariat.

The party's financial struggles were highlighted by the fact the prime minister chipped in $1.75 million of his own money to keep last year's campaign going.

However its coffers will be bolstered by a $10,000 a table dinner on Friday night featuring guest speaker, former US CIA director David Petraeus.

Mr Greiner said his aim was to assist the coalition to victory at the next federal election and four state elections over the next two years.

"We all know that progress towards this goal, towards winning, can only be achieved by a united full count press of all Liberals."

As part of the reset, the Liberal party is set to appoint Andrew Hirst as its new federal director, replacing veteran Tony Nutt.

Mr Hirst is a former adviser to Liberal leaders John Howard, Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott.

He's considered one of Canberra's most highly experienced political professionals having worked in federal politics for the past 15 years.

The Liberal-Nationals coalition has trailed Labor since just after the tight double-dissolution election in July last year, which delivered Mr Turnbull a one-seat majority and difficult Senate.

Acting Liberal Party director Andrew Bragg is expected to remain in the position until August.

It is understood some senior party members were agitating for Mr Bragg to remain in the role, arguing Mr Hirst was too closely linked to Mr Abbott who Mr Turnbull ousted in 2015.

Mr Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will address members on Friday night in a session focused on global security and the defence of western values.

The prime minister will say Australia is firmly committed to equality of opportunity, women's rights and a plurality of views - the same things extremists are seeking to overturn.

Saturday's council session will focus on economic management with another speech by Mr Turnbull and Ms Bishop as well as addresses by Treasurer Scott Morrison and Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman.

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Liberal boss warns of need for unity - NEWS.com.au

Karen Kipples greatest wish in the world is that her eight-year-old daughter Ruby will have a good life. At the same time, in accordance with [her] politics and principles, she aspires to a life spent making a difference and helping those less fortunate than herself. Apart from their love for Ruby, Karen and her husband Matt are united by little beyond the same political outlook and commitment to social justice, combined with their willingness to impugn those who [dont] share it.

This tension between maternal love and political ideals propels Class, Lucinda Rosenfelds new novel. Its central dilemma concerns how, and where, to educate Ruby. New York City private schools are notoriously expensive. Karen and Matt do own a two-bedroom Brooklyn condominium worth more than $1 million but only because its value has doubled in the three years since they moved to a gentrifying neighborhood. Karen is a professional fundraiser for Hungry Kids, whose cause is made clear by its name, while Matt is starting a nonprofit of his own after two decades as an attorney fighting for tenants evicted by greedy landlords.

It will have to be a public school, then, which is just as well: Karen believes that public education [is] a force for good and that, without racially and economically integrated schools, equal opportunity couldnt exist. The choice is between: Mather, in a nearby neighborhood so thoroughly gentrified that seeing its students en masse for the first time made Karen feel she had fallen asleep and woken up in Norway; and Betts, Rubys school since kindergarten, where only a fourth of the students are white and many of the rest live in a public-housing project. Mather has an affluent, aggressive parentteacher association that renders it indistinguishable from a private school. The hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by the PTA each year pay for, among other things, a recess coach and an experimental puppeteering troupes performance of an age-appropriate version of Schindlers List. Karen likes that Betts exposes Ruby to less privileged children but worries about its academic reputation and quality. Apart from Latino History Month, it seems, the rest of the school year is Black History Month. Now in the third grade, Ruby knows the exact date of Martin Luther Kings wedding to Coretta Scott but has never heard of Julius Caesar.

The more acute problem is that Karen comes to fear for Rubys safety. Her daughters best friend transfers from Betts to Mather after a boy named Jayyden punches the little girl in the face. Karen feels sorry for Jayyden, who lives in the projects with assorted relatives, his mother thought to be in prison and his father in the wind. But Rubys vulnerability torments Karen, who tells Matt, I just dont feel comfortable leaving her there in the morning anymore. His opposition makes her defensive. Its not because so few Betts students are white or prosperous, she insists, but because so few come from a functional family where people care about their kids getting an education and encourage them. When they argue, Karen tries to use politics against her husband, accusing him of rejecting a move to Mather solely because he wants to brag to all your friends that your daughter attends a minority-white school.

A Tom Wolfe novel would deride Karen and her peers mercilessly, but Rosenfeld is wry and sympathetic. She allows Karen to recognize that her life [is] ripe for mockery, as she numbers herself among the educated white liberals nearly as terrified of being seen as racists as they are of encountering black male teenagers on an empty street after dark. Like Karen, Rosenfeld is at pains to make clear her antipathy to conservatives, especially whenever she begins sounding like one. Class is dedicated to public schools everywhere and has an epigraph from James Baldwin: White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. In the wake of the 2016 election, Rosenfeld described herself as a card-carrying member of the liberal and coastal elite so despised by Donald J. Trumps core constituency.

Despite Rosenfelds efforts, however, her novel makes clear that the liberal hypocrisy it depicts is no foible but reveals a serious defect: a facile, often brazen combination of self-righteousness and self-advancement. Class fictionalizes a controversy that erupted in 2015 when the New York City school system proposed to redraw district boundaries, sending many children from P.S. 8, an overcrowded Brooklyn elementary school whose student population was 59 percent white, to P.S. 307, which was nearby, less crowded, and 90 percent black and Latino. The affluent parents who opposed their childrens transfer to P.S. 307 insisted that they were concerned about test scores, resources, programs, the high price they had paid for their homes in the expectation of sending their children to P.S. 8 . . . anything but race.

Its more complicated when its about your own children, one parent told Reihan Salam, who rightly pointed out that every child is somebodys own. For liberals willing to impugn people who dont share their commitment to social justice, however, the extenuating circumstances that weigh heavily in Brooklyn Heights never explain or excuse red-state voters resistance to multiculturalism. Were tormented about a complex, tragic dilemma; theyre hate-filled bigots.

Its important to note that P.S. 8 was predominantly but not entirely white. It had some students of color, but not too many, as Nikole Hannah-Jones, a black writer for the New York Times with a daughter at P.S. 307, explained. Citywide, Hannah-Jones notes, New York public schools are just 15 percent white but half of those white students are concentrated in 11 percent of the schools.

Hannah-Jones scorns the carefully curated integration . . . that allows many white parents to boast that their childrens public schools look like the United Nations. This curation, not unique to New Yorks public schools, affirms the self-image and self-interest of wealthy liberal whites across the country, and at all levels of education.

In researching his 2007 book Creating a Class, the sociologist Mitchell L. Stevens spent more than a year embedded in the admissions office of a private liberal-arts college. The college and its personnel are not named in the book, per Stevenss agreement with the administration, but the school was quickly identified as Hamilton College in upstate New York.

This institution was, and remains, selective and prestigious. U.S. News & World Report ranks Hamilton twelfth on its list of 239 National Liberal Arts Colleges, a bit below such institutions as Williams, Amherst, and Wellesley but tied with Colby, Colgate, and Smith, among others. Hamilton rejects 75 percent of the students who apply, even though the admissions director at the time Creating a Class was published believed that a large majority of its applicants were strong and would be really successful there. In other words, more high-school seniors will consider it a reach school than a safety school.

In modern America, Stevens argues, preparing ones children for college and then enrolling them in the most desirable one possible is the culmination of social reproduction. He explains this sociological term as the transfer of knowledge, cultural perspective, and social position from one generation to the next, or, more broadly, all the things parents do to ensure that their children will have good lives.

Formal education has become central to social reproduction. Few American parents now transfer a family farm or business to their offspring. The business for a huge majority is a career selling labor on the open market rather than, as once was common, owning and operating some enterprise. Nor do more than a handful of parents bring children along in their own trade, schooling having displaced formal and informal apprenticeships as the pathway to careers. And smaller families mean that parents social-reproduction efforts are concentrated on fewer offspring.

Stevens shows how very selective colleges flexible understanding of diversity squares the circle between helping those less fortunate and giving ones children a leg up. The key is that official measures of campus diversity have turned into unofficial markers of institutional prestige in the little universe of elite higher education. The paradigmatic Hamilton student comes from a family like Karen, Matt, and Rubys, in which parents and child believe that a college with an excessively white student population is deficient in its morals and politics, to be sure, but also, and crucially, in terms of how much status it confers. Stevens explains that this mindset works to the disadvantage of applicants who would make a selective college more diverse, but only in ways that dont boost the numbers everyone looks at, such as black, Hispanic, and Native American enrollment. As a result, valedictorians from small rural high schools, or the children of families who recently immigrated from Eastern Europe, are almost certainly wasting their Hamilton application fees.

The right kind of minorities do benefit from the zero-sum diversity game, but their advantage is equivocal. It is hard, for example, to argue with students who protest, Im not here to be your black experience, given that such resentments reflect a large measure of truth. As Creating a Class shows, while Hamilton would welcome minority applicants in any case, it is especially receptive on account of its need to showcase the diversity attractive to those students, most of them white, from families that dont need financial aid and might even donate to some future capital campaign. According to U.S. News, 52 percent of Hamiltons 1,872 students received no need-based financial aid to cover the sticker price for room, board, and tuition, which was $64,250 last year. And according to the Equality of Opportunity Project, the median family income for Hamilton students is $208,600; more students are drawn from the top thousandth of the national income distribution (2.7 percent) than from the bottom fifth (2.2 percent), and nearly as many come from the top hundredth (20 percent) as from the bottom four-fifths (28 percent).

Leaked documents from the Princeton University admissions office, gathered in the course of a federal investigation into discrimination against Asian college applicants, give a rawer view than Creating a Class of how selective admissions works. An admissions officer wrote that it would be hard to recommend one Hispanic applicant since there was no cultural flavor in her packet. The need for a touch more cultural flavor is also a Hawaiian/Pacific Islander applicants shortcoming.

This euphemism isnt hard to decode. Theres no point in going to the enormous trouble of creating a diverse student body if its diversity is so understated that students and their parents cannot readily discern the colleges all-important U.N.-like qualities. Minority applicants must contribute to diversity in ways that are vivid, not subtle. As George Orwell might say, all Hispanics are Hispanic, but some Hispanics are more Hispanic than others.

Speaking of Orwell, his observation that all leftist political parties are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy, holds up impressively after 75 years. An evil not really meant to be eradicated is, for instance, central to the global-warming crusade. Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert thinks the threat is grave, putting us in a race toward planetary disaster, but also considers the political effort against it thoroughly disingenuous. Most liberals, she argues, refuse to admit an inconvenient truth: The reduction in greenhouse gases necessary to reverse, halt, or even slow global warming will either prolong and worsen the misery of the planets poor countries or require Americans to reduce their energy consumption by more than 80 percent. Knowing that Americans have no interest in giving up air travel or air conditioning or HDTV or trips to the mall or the family car, environmentalists encourage the soothing fantasy that climate change can be tackled with minimal disruption to the American way of life.

Similarly, diversity in education, from preschool to postgraduate, and the resulting holy war on privilege, requires denouncing but not renouncing. Despite its stated intent to subvert unjust hierarchies, multiculturalism facilitates rather than impedes careerism. A degree from a selective college, one racially integrated in a carefully curated way, does wonders for those getting on in the world. Checking your privilege never involves transferring to Jerkwater A&M, diverse in ways selective colleges never will be, and thereby surrendering ones spot in the Ivy League so that it can be filled by a cashiers or opioid addicts kid. Noah Remnick, son of New Yorker editor David Remnick, devoted the summer before his senior year at Yale to sharing with Los Angeles Times readers the results of the great deal of time hed spent studying and talking with faculty and other students about what constitutes privilege, fairness and unfairness in American society. Remnick will begin a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford in October, pursuing his interest in race, resistance, and urban politics.

In The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (1999), Nicholas Lemann wrote that our system of higher education has become a national personnel department. The reason for the crush at the gates of the most selective colleges and universities is that people believe admission can confer lifelong prestige, comfort, and safety.

The consuming concern with privilege and oppression, with confronting and correcting historical wrongs social justice, in short, the ideology of preeminent colleges has moved outward to less eminent ones and downward to secondary and primary schools. Many parents are eager, and many others are willing, to entrust their children to an educational system that inculcates this deep solicitude for the downtrodden, albeit just that portion of the downtrodden meeting certain demographic criteria. But the system, especially its most exalted institutions, is also expected to transmit the aspirations, expectations, and advantages of the uptrodden, those who started or climbed high and want their children to start and climb even higher.

Up to a point, the two goals are in harmony. Even 30 years ago, Wolfe observed in Bonfire of the Vanities that bigotrys biggest drawback, if not its worst attribute, was that it had become undignified, a sign of Low Rent origins, of inferior social status, of poor taste. Since people thus marked have little hope for lifelong prestige, comfort, and safety, our schools prepare students to do good and do well by instilling in them the habit of deploring all manifestations of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.

But only up to a point. Brookings Institution researchers Richard V. Reeves and Dimitrios Halikias have said that our upper middle class relies on opportunity hoarding to separate itself from the rest of society, and that elite colleges have become the chief mechanism for compounding advantage. Similarly, Mitchell Stevenss conclusion in Creating a Class is that the college-admissions process has become the preponderant means of laundering privilege in contemporary American society.

Meritocracies purport to discern and reward merit, a decidedly intrinsic personal quality but intrinsic qualities such as intellectual facility and stubborn persistence only seem neutral to class, Stevens maintains. In reality, young people blessed with the right kinds of families and social environments are far better positioned to acquire, cultivate, and display such attributes. Some of the resulting advantages, such as tutoring or the availability of Advanced Placement courses, are easily identified. The more important ones are harder to identify, much less replicate and the most important is, in Karen Kipples description, a family that cares about its kids and encourages them. The laundering Stevens deplores is an acquired obliviousness to all these factors, a tacit agreement to deny privileges existence while perpetuating it. Merit is also a verb, a synonym of deserve. Those who have merit do merit the prestige, comfort, and safety they attain.

It turns out that social justice amounts to noblesse oblige, simultaneously strengthening the obligations and social status of our meritocracys credentialed gentry. Literary scholar William Deresiewicz, a self-described democratic socialist, says that the rise of political correctness means that privilege laundering pervades the entire college experience, not just the admissions process. The ultimate purpose of political correctness, he contends, is to flatter the elite rather than dismantle it. In effect, socioeconomically advantaged students, professors, and administrators use political correctness to alibi or erase their privilege, to tell themselves that they are . . . part of the solution to our social ills, not an integral component of the problem. The social-justice warriors stridency belies, even to themselves, the fact that their aims are so limited.

For Reeves and Halikias, the protests that drove Charles Murray from Middlebury College had less to do with alleging and then thwarting racism than with rich, progressive protestors refusing to hear a lecture on the roots of their own privilege. (The topic of Murrays speech was to have been the growing gulf between the upper class and the rest of America.) Tellingly, Middlebury is even more selective and affluent than Hamilton College. Tied with Swarthmore as the fourth-highest-rated liberal-arts college in the U.S., Middlebury rejected 83 percent of its applicants in 2015. Fifty-five percent of students received no need-based financial aid, not surprising given that the median family income of those students is $244,300. Only 2.7 percent of its students come from families in the bottom fifth of Americas income distribution, and 24 percent come from the bottom four-fifths. At the other end, 4.4 percent come from the top thousandth, and 23 percent from the top hundredth.

Conservatives are right to be appalled by vituperative social-justice warriors. Its oddly reassuring, however, that the No justice, no peace shock troops are as fraudulent as they are insolent. Peoples true beliefs can be revealed by their words or, far more reliably, by their actions. Until kabuki radicalism gets around to requiring privileged students, parents, and colleges to surrender some of their own advantages rather than denounce privilege in general, the social-justice crusade deserves to be regarded with more contempt than alarm.

Ultimately, a meritocracy divided against itself cannot stand. An educational system can either subvert existing hierarchies or fortify them, but not both.

READ MORE: You Gotta Lie: The Tangled Progressive Web A Party of Teeth Gnashers: The Broken Record of Racism/Sexism/Homophobia Class and the Trump Resistance

WilliamVoegeli, a senior editor of The Claremont Review of Books, is a visiting scholar at Claremont McKenna Colleges Salvatori Center and the author, most recently, of The Pity Party.

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Liberal Elite Privilege Noblesse Oblige | National Review - National Review

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Fox News host Sean Hannity said that hes actually getting worried about the hosts of MSNBCs Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and LiberalJoe Scarborough.

According to Hannity, Americas favorite couple that no one watches has had way too many emotional breakdowns everyday since the election of Donald Trump.

Hannity decided to compile a montage of Morning Joe Meltdowns which showed the wide range of emotions as the hosts appear almost incapable of coping with the fact that Donald Trump is the President of the United States.

Hannity then made an offer to the newly engaged couple, who he continuously referred to as unhinged throughout the night, to help them attempt to deal with their unfortunate reality:

I am willing to pay, out of my pocket, out of love and sympathy, for therapy, for a year, so your new, beautiful relationship can thrive in the Trump era. So, emotionally, youll be stronger and able to cope in these difficult times.

Hannitys offer is just the latest in an ongoing feud between the Fox News and MSNBC hosts who have been engaged in a back-and-forth battle of words for months.

[watch above, via Fox News]

[image via screengrab]

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Hannity Offers To Pay For Therapy For 'Unhinged' Couple Mika And 'Liberal Joe' - Mediaite

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A new Hungarian liberal party challenges the autocratic Viktor Orban - The Economist

Georgias 6th Congressional District Republican candidate Karen Handel gives a victory speech to supporters gathered at the Hyatt Regency on Tuesday in Atlanta.

Jessica McGowan/Getty Images

Im not going to lie: Im not surprised by Tuesday nights result in Georgias 6th Congressional District election, but I am gutted by it. Republican Karen Handel, author of a book about Planned Parenthood titled Planned Bullyhood, ran a repulsive campaign. Advertisements by her allies tied Democrat Jon Ossoff to black bloc anarchists, Muslim terrorists, Kathy Griffin, and the shooter of Rep. Steve Scalise. As Dave Weigel wrote in the Washington Post, The ad strategy, and the campaign visit from Republicans such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, have had almost nothing to say about what Republicans were working on in Washington. The message was that Republicans would feel terrible if they had to watch Democrats celebrate. It worked; running on a platform of MOAR LIBERAL TEARS, Handel won with 51.9 percent of the vote. Kellyanne Conway tweeted Laughing my #Ossoff.

Some liberals are putting an optimistic spin on things: Its a good sign for Dems, they argue, that Ossoff got as close as he did to victory in a district that hasnt voted blue since Jimmy Carter was president. This isnt wrong, but it doesnt make the loss less painful. An Ossoff victory might have scared Republicans into siding with the majority of Americans who disapprove of the disgusting man occupying the White House. It might have spooked some of them out of passing a bill to gut health insurance for tens of millions of Americans. It would have made it clear that as nightmarish as the Trump presidency has been, as much as every day since Trumps inauguration has been poisoned by his presence, help is on the way in the midterms.

Help may still be on the way. As Nate Silver reminds us, the improved Democratic margins in this years special elections are consistent with the sorts of results Democrats would expect if they were on track to compete for the House next year. But an emboldened Republican Party is going to do a lot of damage between now and then. One of the tireless women who campaigned for Ossoff was Carianne Muse, a working mother of three whose two youngest children were born with severe hearing loss. Both kids have had surgeries that cost over $100,000 apiece that have been covered by insurance, she told me. When I changed jobs I didnt have any pre-existing condition issues at all, [thanks to] Obamacare. But if I got fired tomorrow and we had a new law, Id be terrified.

Im reading a lot of complaints about the Ossoff campaign this morning. Some people, including some of Ossoffs own volunteers, say he should have hit Trump harder. Others say his loss proves that an anti-Trump message is not enough. Maybe another candidate or another strategy could have won, but I remain impressed by Ossoff, a 30-year-old first-time candidate who took everything the Republican Party could throw at him without losing his composure, and whose decent and hopeful campaign inspired thousands of volunteers to work their hearts out.

If theres any reason for optimism, its those volunteers, who assured me again and again that, whatever happened on Election Day, theyre not going anywhere. A refrain I heard several times was, Were just practicing for the midterms. If liberal funders were smart, theyd put money into some of the grass-roots groups that have sprung up in the 6th District to make sure they dont wither in wake of Ossoffs defeat. Earlier, I wrote about Jessica Zeigler, a working mother of three who started a program to train recent high school graduates to mobilize their social networks for voter outreach. Someone should be paying her to do this full-time in every congressional district in Georgia. Zeigler is devastated, but she texted me, Friends are already organizing data-based feedback forms and strategy meetings. So we are resilient. Lets hope the country is, too.

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More Liberal Tears - Slate Magazine

Want to understand what is wrong with the American left these days? WatchChelsea Handler rant on her Netflix show.

The progessive comicslatest painfully unfunny monologue was a full four minute rant ripping into Ivanka Trump, the President and even her own father, while neglecting to make a single coherent political point.

Like so many othersleft-leaning mainstream media pundits, newscasters, celebrities and comediansHandler uses vile language, puerile toilet humor, crass incest innuendo and utter disrespect not only toward the President and his daughter, but toward her own family. Yet her edginess is more desperate than most celebrity Resistance liberals.

This type of insulting language by progressives is so strikingly common nowadays that it no longer has any shock value. Once you strip away the facile attempt to be cool, edgy or hip by using insults and four-letter words all youre actually left with is an angry woman being crass, crude and downright disgusting.

Lets not pretend thatsneering diatribes by Handler and her ilk are anything new.Progressivism has dominated the media and driven popular culture ever since the 1960s.But the abuse has increased in its shrillness and shocking tone since Donald Trump became President.

What may have begun as questioning the status quo and the establishment has now descended into an all-out assault on civility, decency and morality. Anyone with a conservative viewpoint is considered a deserving target of the Lefts attack dogs.

Liberal celebrities now vent fury with smug, self-righteous glee on national TV, on newer venues like Netflix and Amazon, and in the old print media. In place of sophisticated political satire or any attempt at arguing ideas in an informed manner, the cultural apparatchiks of the media/entertainment complex have instead adopted the put-down tactics of 14 year old bullies.

They use lame insults and f-bombs to both amuse their fan base and to shut down any attempt at rational debate.

Some examples:

When in 2008 Sandra Bernhard expressed hope that Sarah Palin was gang raped in NYC by my black brothers. The Washington Post called itthe lefts favorite wordedgy! Now such sentiments are increasing in number and frequency.

Its not as if these celebrity interventions are effective. Doomed Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff enjoyed support from Samuel L. Jackson, Jane Fonda, George Takei and, of course, Handler. He still lost the Georgia House race. Ossoff even pathetically confessed to MSNBC s Nicole Wallace: Celebrities across the country? Thats not what animates people in Georgia.

Furthermore, these guilt-ridden pop-cultural progressive influencers of Western culture obscure the fact that they are part of an obscenely wealthy elite by directing envy and class rage away from themselves and onto anyone seen as promoting conservative values or beliefs.

Those who are untouched by the average persons reality preach to their audience that walls are wrong, before driving home to their gated communities or guarded mansions. Yet they believe that crass comments and personal insults make them down with the people.

Perhaps theyre hoping that if there is a real revolution, the starving masses will burn down their Beverly Hills and Hamptons homes last!

I keep hoping their followers will grow up and see the light; that Handler and Colbert and the others will check their own moral compass, mislaid by all that vile abuse, before prioritizing helping the poor, fighting injustice and making the world a better place.

But it seems that sneering cruel sarcastic variants of President Obamas 2008 comment that midwest voters cling to guns or religion are now the default setting in the battle of ideas.

Im not sure how we as a society deal with this kind of visceral hatred. But with every Handler rant and every Colbert crudity another brick drops from the wall that holds the center together. When that wall collapses no amount of sneering opinion pieces, foul-mouthed rants or abusive put-downs will be able to fix things.

The final irony is that the mega-rich wanna-be revolutionaries of the cultural-media class love to preach the virtues of positive discrimination but they might soon find out societal chaos is an equal opportunity destroyer of peoples lives.

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In Trump Era, the Mean Streak of the Celebrity Liberal Is Out of Control - Heat Street

Tony Abbott (right) speaks with his then adviser Andrew Hirst in parliament in 2015. Hirst is to be come the next president of the Liberal party on Friday. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Former political staffer Andrew Hirst appears set to become the new federal director of the Liberal party, and is expected to be anointed to the position at the partys federal executive meeting on Friday.

Liberal sources on Wednesday confirmed Hirst was expected to get the nod to run the partys next federal campaign.

Hirst has been a longtime backroom operative, and has worked for all party leaders since the Howard era, including for both Malcolm Turnbull in opposition, and Tony Abbott in government.

In recent times he has worked for the Liberal partys preferred pollster, Crosby Textor, running the firms Canberra operation.

Andrew Bragg has been acting in the role of party director since the departure earlier this year of Tony Nutt, but some party officials regard him as lacking the requisite hands-on experience in campaigns to head up the federal organisation on a permanent basis.

A critical review of the Liberal partys last federal campaign by former party director and federal minister Andrew Robb has identified a number of problems which culminated in Malcolm Turnbull almost losing the election.

The Robb review found the government was flying blind for key periods after Tony Abbott assumed power in 2013 right through to the 2016 federal election, because the research and data analytics functions were severely under-resourced.

The review found the Liberals were outgunned on the ground by Labor and progressive activist groups, and failed to develop a strategy to neutralise or rebut key attack themes, like the so-called Mediscare campaign.

It also criticised the lack of concrete policy sitting behind the Coalitions jobs and growth campaign slogan, and a lack of attention to defining political opponents, noting that a campaign for re-election needed to be formulated during the whole parliamentary term of government.

Hirst who served in Liberal party HQ during the last federal election will take the reins at a time when the party will be looking to sharpen its field operation, analytics and its digital campaigning.

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Former Abbott and Turnbull adviser Andrew Hirst to lead Liberals ... - The Guardian