Category Archives: Liberal

Liberal actress Sarah Silvermanriled up social media users on Monday when she said that she decided not tohave children because she chose to live her fullest life instead. When she received sharp criticism for implying that motherhood prevented women from being able to live their fullest lives, she doubled down and offered an explanation for why she believed that was exactly the case.

As a comic always working & on the road I have had to decide between motherhood & living my fullest life & I chose the latter, Silverman said.

She also remarked that fathers who travel have a different experience, and enjoy the luxury of coming home and being a fun dad.

Many on Twitter didnt take kindly to either of Silvermanscomments, saying that she was not only offending mothers by saying they were somehow living a lesser life, but that she also offended fathers for diminishing their roles.

This isnt the first time Silverman, a self-proclaimed feminist,has made a controversial statement relating to modern-day feminism and gender. In 2015, Silverman tweeted out a list called Ten Rape Prevention Tips and urged her followers to send the list to all the men in their lives.

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Twitter explodes as liberal actress implies motherhood keeps women from living their fullest lives - TheBlaze.com

Jennifer Garner has not given up on Donald Trumps Washington.

The 44-year-old actress spent the weekend lobbying the towns pillars of power to support early education for poor rural children. She spent Friday on Capitol Hill meeting dozens of top staff members. On Saturday, she delivered the keynote address before the annual National Governors Association winter meeting here. A potential sit-down with Ivanka Trump, who is advocating for more funding for child care, fell apart because of scheduling conflicts, but Garner remained optimistic about a face-to-face discussion soon.

Other Hollywood liberals have shunned the new commander in chief notably during Sundays Academy Awards ceremony, when many jokes were told at President Trumps expense. But Garner, a true-blue Democrat who campaigned for Hillary Clinton last year and held a fundraiser for Barack Obama in 2008, is taking a unique approach: pushing a cause that would benefit the new administrations political base.

The West Virginia native has long worked to bring assistance to poor, rural communities in desperate need of it. She has no plans to change that just because most of those communities went big for Trump in last years election. In fact, she sees an opportunity to hold the president accountable for the pledges he made to the countrys rural working class.

Im looking forward to helping him make good on what they saw as promises, a mandate from him, that he was going to make their lives better, Garner said in a 45-minute interview with The Washington Post.

(Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

Its another indication of how Trump has changed the rituals of Washington. For decades, Hollywood celebrities have used the glow of the Capitol dome to advance personal causes. Some may be less inclined to do so now, when legislative gains might help burnish Trumps image.

That makes Trumps presidency a psychological test of sorts for some members of the Hollywood elite, who can either demonstrate their true commitment to the causes they push or expose their charity work here as more about bolstering themselves.

Very much in the former camp, Garner acknowledged that some of her friends want to turn their back to this administration ... [and] just wouldnt even want to engage.

Not her. If hes willing to help the poor kids who got him elected, then lets do it. They certainly think hes going to, she said.

Is Ivanka Trump building bridges or walking a tightrope?

For nine years, Garner has been on the board of Save the Children, a nonprofit organization. Mark Shriver is president of its political advocacy arm, Save the Children Action Network. Save the Children is known primarily for its international projects, but it has also built out a niche focus on U.S. education programs, particularly in poor rural communities.

Thats Garners personal story. She grew up solidly middle class, but she knew plenty of poor children who started elementary school behind and never caught up. They lived in the same sort of communities that Robert F. Kennedy, Shrivers uncle, visited in the mid-1960s along the Mississippi Delta, shaping the ideas of his 1968 presidential campaign.

Together, Garner and Shriver have urged Congress and state governments to fund reading and literacy programs that include all-day kindergarten. The organization has its own reading programs that it administers in schools and during in-home visits.

They found that children in rural areas are 60percent more likely to be placed in special education programs when they start kindergarten. Garner has her own intuitive test when she meets small groups of rural children to determine which come from homes where parents have more time and resources to engage with them.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, she said, singing the nursery rhyme out loud. Humpty Dumpty had a great ...

Some children shout fall. Others offer blank stares, because theyre from homes with less educational nourishment. You just wouldnt believe the number of kids who have never heard a nursery rhyme, she said.

Garner and her allies arent asking for assistance only for rural America, theyre also pressing for a rewrite of the tax code. And theyre not shy about the approach: political shame.

If a tax package is going to cut rates and red tape for corporations and Trumps fellow billionaires, the thinking goes, the president had better find a way to expand credits and deductions for the education needs of the families that formed the bedrock of his support.

If there is tax reform and theres nothing for poor, working families in this country, and families that are middle class and struggling, thats not good, Shriver said.

Garner calls their cause the bobblehead issue, because everyone loves to tell her that they support children, but in the end it sometimes seems as though they just enjoy being around a beautiful celebrity.

Everyones nodding and couldnt agree more, and shaking your hand and want their picture, she said. But when the vote is cast, nobodys out there screaming and yelling for poor kids.

Garner returned home to West Virginia last year to help raise money after devastating flooding in the state. Reliably Democratic during her childhood, West Virginia ended up giving Trump his largest margin of victory something she could see coming by talking to people in economically depressed areas.

People felt like Trump really understood them, that he was going to come in and create jobs for them, she said. They felt like they needed something to just turn everything upside down.

Its that level of despair that leaves Garner willing to deal with Trump when some of her friends want to offer nothing but resistance. She may even be willing to meet the president.

Send me a ticket to Mar-a-Lago. Im ready to go down and have a steak and a good chat, she said, only half joking about the prospect. I really think its great, if hes willing to help the poor kids who got him elected.

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An unlikely ally for President Trump: Liberal actress Jennifer Garner ... - Washington Post

Liberal senator David Fawcett has apologise for causing hurt to many people after he said the Labor party had brought the fleas during a Senate estimates discussion about asylum seekers. Photograph: Ben Macmahon/AAP

Liberal senator David Fawcett has apologised after making a poor choice of words in parliament that appeared to describe asylum seekers coming to Australia seeking protection as fleas.

Fawcetts comments were made during a Senate estimates discussion on asylum seekers arriving by boat, saying the Labor party had brought the fleas and was now attempting to nitpick in parliament with questions over asylum policy cost blow-outs, wasteful and unauthorised spending.

I just do question the ethics of nitpicking when your particular group perhaps brought the fleas in the first place, he told the hearing at Parliament House, directing his comments at Labor members.

Unknown senators on the committee said hear hear, while Fawcetts fellow Liberal and committee chair Ian McDonald was heard on the microphones to say nicely put.

Following the comments, Fawcett sought to clarify that he had intended to suggest that Labor had created the irritation of stress within the immigration department, not that he was characterising asylum seekers as fleas.

But he made a further late-night apology to the Senate.

I have just been on the phone to Mr Phil Glendenning, the president of Refugee Council of Australia, Fawcett said. He has outlined how the words I spoke earlier today have been taken, and the deep hurt that this has caused across the network of communities that his council represents.

Whilst it was never my intention that my comments would refer to refugees in such a way, its clear that my poor choice of words has caused hurt to many people, and consequently I sincerely apologise.

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Liberal senator 'sincerely apologises' for flea comment in asylum policy debate - The Guardian

Forbes

Are Liberal Reformers Losing Faith In China's Liberal Reforms? Forbes Over the last year it has become increasingly clear that China's liberal reforms have stalled. There are still routine statements claiming that everything is on track, but all the indicators suggest otherwise. International trade is in slow retreat ... and more »

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Are Liberal Reformers Losing Faith In China's Liberal Reforms? - Forbes

Republican lawmakers across the country have grown wary of holding town hall meetings with constituents.

What's scaring these brave public servants? Paid protesters.

Specifically, paid liberal protesters. (It's a well-known fact that all conservative protesters are volunteer and have legitimate gripes that must be heard.)

Most in the FAKE NEWS media will claim there's no such thing as a paid liberal protester. They'll say people are simply turning out to express frustration over GOP policies and because they don't want to lose their health care and die.

But I'm here to tell you otherwise: Paid liberal protesters totally exist; it's an excellent career choice with surprisingly good benefits; and each protester earns $1,500 a week.

I know that last fact thanks to Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. During last week's Conservative Political Action Conference (it's like Burning Man for people who believe Burning Men should only be allowed to marry Burning Women), LaPierre railed against "full-time" liberal protesters, saying they earn "$1500 a week."

He said: "All share one thing in common: They're angry, they're militant and they're willing to engage in criminal acts to get what they want."

(That's three things in common, but who's counting.)

LaPierre, who earns a measly $1 million a year not caring about gun violence, is clearly upset that a long-haired leftist protester can earn $78,000 a year just for yelling and waving a stupid sign.

Sounds far-fetched, given that such a salary would be more than $20,000 over the median household income in the United States. But I'm telling you, it's the truth.

How do I know? Well, for starters, I read about it on paidliberalprotester.com, a website that I definitely did not create using $1.17 funneled to me via a vast network of leftist organizations funded by billionaire George Soros.

That website clearly says of paid liberal protesting: "It's a thing. And it pays BIG BUCKS!" It even quotes me saying: "A great career choice." And I would never lie to me.

More important than the online evidence is my personal testimony as a man who has built a successful paid protesting career. (Please don't tell my employer, the Chicago Tribune, about this activity as it is forbidden by our ethics policy and would undoubtedly lead to my immediate dismissal. Your discretion is appreciated.)

I won't bore you with the full text of my Paid Liberal Protester Employment Contract, but here are some key excerpts:

"The initial job title of the Employee will be the following: Paid Liberal Protester. The initial job duties the Employee will be expected to perform will be the following: Be angry. Be militant. Engage in criminal acts to get what Employer wants. Cause Republican lawmakers to rush into 'safe spaces' and fear people they used to dismissively refer to as 'sensitive snowflakes.' "

"Compensation paid to the Employee for the services rendered by the Employee as required by this Agreement will include a wage at a rate of $1,500 per week."

"The Employee's primary place of work will be at the following location: Any space where Republican lawmakers are attempting to hold a meeting with 'Constituents.' Employee shall be a 'Constituent' of said lawmaker, but won't count because 'Employee' is a Paid Liberal Protester, as detailed in 'Job Title and Description' and as announced by frightened lawmaker."

"The Employee will be entitled to the following benefits: Retirement Savings Plan in which all Employer wealth is evenly redistributed to 'the workers,' aka 'Employees'; free marijuana; two round-trip flights per-year aboard private jets owned by Employer (George Soros); annual subscription to 'Rhyming Liberal Protest Chants Digest'; comprehensive health insurance plan (no dental); and free tuition to qualifying Liberal Indoctrination Centers (aka 'universities')."

"Employer shall not discriminate against any Employee as long as said Employee is one of the following: an anarchist, a Marxist, a communist or a member in good standing of the left-wing Socialist brigade."

While most people become paid liberal protesters either for the money or the free marijuana, I've found the best benefit is the power that comes with the job.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Cowardville, said Sunday that he won't take part in any town hall meetings because "liberal activists" will "heckle and scream at me."

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Scaredytown, said in a statement that he won't do town hall meetings for now: "Unfortunately, at this time there are groups from the more violent strains of the leftist ideology, some even being paid, who are preying on public town halls to wreak havoc and threaten public safety."

(Worth noting, I recently had "Havoc Wreaker" tattooed on my forehead.)

Even Illinois Rep. Randy Hultgren, R-Dontyellatme, has said he prefers to meet with constituents in small groups because some liberal protesters are "following a well-publicized 'playbook' on how best to disrupt and prevent a civil dialogue." That's correct. The playbook is distributed with the employee manual and the black ski mask employees are required to wear while vandalizing.

See what I mean about power? All that and a cushy retirement plan.

Now that's what I call a career.

It's also what I call democracy.

rhuppke@chicagotribune.com

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PROOF that liberal protesters are paid - Chicago Tribune

The Liberal party has seen its fair share of nomination battles, and a fresh one is brewing in the Toronto-area riding recently vacated by former immigration minister John McCallum, who stepped down to begin his life as a diplomat.

This fight is being led by Juanita Nathan, a local school board trustee who put her name forward to be the Liberal candidate in Markham-Thornhill.

Nathan said she believes the Liberals are setting up the contest in such a way as to favour one of her rivals: Mary Ng, a senior staffer to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

"I don't think they are following the rules in a very fair and equitable way," Nathan said Monday.

The issue revolves around the cut-off date to register new Liberals an important element of the nomination rules, because it determines who will be allowed to vote Saturday to choose the Liberal candidate in the April 3 byelection.

Nathan said more than 2,000 people she has registered as Liberals are considered ineligible because the party retroactively set the registration cut-off date for Feb. 14 the day before she started entering names into the system.

The Liberals got rid of membership fees last summer, but those interested in taking part in nomination votes are still required to sign up to do so.

Setting a retroactive sign-up deadline is nothing new parties do it routinely in order to prevent would-be candidates from waiting until the last minute and overwhelming officials with paperwork.

But the speed at which the process is unfolding the deadline was set just four days after the call for nominations, at a time when Ng was the only one to have come forward has made Nathan suspicious.

"I never thought there would be such a very, very short cut-off time," she said.

Another candidate, Nadeem Qureshi, shared similar concerns with the Hill Times newspaper. Qureshi confirmed Monday that he is running for the Liberal nomination, but did not otherwise respond to an interview request.

Amanda Alvaro, a spokeswoman for the Ng campaign, said her candidate learned of the deadline on Feb. 20, the same as everyone else.

"Our campaign also lost several hundred registrants," Alvaro said.

She said Ng, who is taking a leave of absence from her position as director of appointments in the Prime Minister's Office, began canvassing the residents of Markham-Thornhill in the days after the party opened the call for nominations on Feb. 10.

Liberal party spokesman Braeden Caley says the retroactive cut-off date was explained in rules that have been available online for months and that candidates are encouraged to turn in their new-member paperwork as early as possible.

"The party undertakes an extraordinary amount of effort to make sure that all of the rules are very openly and clearly communicated at every stage of the process," said Caley.

Jack Siegel, a lawyer who oversaw the approval of Liberal candidates leading up to the 2015 federal election, said the whole point of a retroactive cut-off date is to prevent candidates from overwhelming party resources by submitting names in bulk.

That's why he urged campaigns to turn their names in as soon as they get them.

"It's easy, when something goes wrong and you've made a strategic mistake, to portray yourself as a victim," he said, adding it ends up casting both the party and the successful candidate in a negative light.

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Liberals accused of playing favourites in Markham-Thornhill nomination contest - CBC.ca

For more than 400 years, the only halt to England's annual Pancake Race was World War II.

Tradition runs deep in Olney, anchored by St. Peter and St. Paul the church with the tall spire along the bank of the River Great Ouse in the heart of England.

It's here the bell has been tolling every Shrove Tuesday, calling the community to the Shriving service, the day before the 40 days of Lent. Even through the War of the Roses, legend has it the annual Pancake Race was run in Olney.

"Traditionally, it's the day all household stocks of fat and sweet ingredients were exhausted in the making of pancakes, in readiness, for the period of fasting, giving things up for the season of Lent," said the Rev. Claire Wood, Rector of St. Peter and St. Paul Church, in her welcome to the race.

Today, gray clouds are expected in this town of of about 6,477 people. Temperatures should hover about 46 degrees, according Haydn Langley, race chairman. Activities will begin around this town's Market Place, where there will be a variety of stalls, pancakes and entertainment, along with the children's races.

Women carrying frying pans donning aprons and head scarves will begin gathering by 11:30 a.m. for the race. They will be dressed as they imagine the storied woman once was: preoccupied by the chore of using up her cooking fat, making pancakes before the Shriving service.

Suddenly, the church bells pealed, and off she dashed with the pan in hand still flipping a pancake.

Meanwhile, at 11:55 a.m., the church Warden will ring the hand-held bell and call out "Toss your pancakes. Are you ready?" Then, the women will take off for the 415-yard dash.

Here in Kansas, it will be 5:55 a.m. Some will be starting to stir. In Liberal the grills will be fired-up for breakfast, which begins at 6 a.m at the Seward County Civic Center - served until 10 a.m. Liberal won't race against Olney in the International Pancake Day Race until 11:55 a.m. CST.

A history

Following the lapse during WWII, the Olney race was picked up again in 1948. According to race history, the Vicar of Olney - the Rev. Cannon Ronald Collins - was cleaning out a cupboard when he came across old photographs taken in the 1920s and 1930s of women running with frying pans.

Collins recruited 13 runners for that Shrove Tuesday. It caught on and turned into a day of festivities that have continued since.

Two years later, Collins received a letter from R.J. Leete, then the president of the Liberal Jaycees. Leete challenged the Olney women to race the Liberal women. Following several letters, cables and then a trans-Atlantic telephone call, the first race was set for Shrove Tuesday, Feb. 21, 1950.

One-day event

Olney's race course, on narrow streets, is over quickly. At the finish line, dressed in her clerical robes, the Rev. Wood greets all the runners. The verger places a "kiss of peace" on the cheek of the winner.

Meanwhile, at 12:15 p.m. the Shriving service begins inside St. Peter and St. Paul. It's the church where the Rev. John Newton wrote "Amazing Grace," while serving as a curate. The reformed ex-slave trader served as the local curate from 1764 to 1780. His pulpit is preserved in the church, and his tomb in the churchyard.

Olney, is also the home of the poet William Cowper. Together with Newton they collaborated on the Olney Hymns, including another popular tune "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds."

The English way

In Liberal, Steve Leete was raised on pancakes. He was 3 years old in 1950 when his parent's, R.J. and Virginia Leete, sealed the deal with the Vicar of Olney.

"Dad got off the phone discussing setting up the international race with the vicar and the words between the two of them were, 'Let the race begin.' Dad and the vicar made the agreement, but the Jaycees and so many volunteers made it happen."

They scrambled to get the first race off to a start in only two weeks. Even His Majesty 's Consul H. Cotton Minchin, arrived to bestow the the traditional "Kiss of Peace," on Liberal's first winner, Billie Marie Warden. Her time was 1 minute, 18 seconds. She, however, was not as swift as Olney's Florence Callow who closely beat her at 1:10.4.

The competition continued. The next year, Collins sent a recording of the church bells pealing before the start of the race in Olney. They played it over the loud speaker from Liberal's Methodist Church.

In 1968, the Olney church spire was repaired from damage during WWII bombings. Canon Collins sent one of the ornamental crosses to Liberal. Today it is framed at the entrance to Liberal's city hall.

The bonds between the two cities continue to grow through the friendly competition. While R.J. and Virginia made many trips to watch the race in Olney, as did other Liberal residents, Steve, and his wife, Dee, finally watched the race from England in 2013.

"We took the key to the city," Leete said. "And in the church we reaffirmed Liberal's commitment to the race and the tradition and our friendship and our hope to continue for years to come."

Leete said it was very different to observe the celebration from the other shore, where it originated hundreds of years ago.

"In Olney it is so precisely done. So much of their Pancake Day Race is for charity," Leete said. "Liberal is more commercial. Just being in Olney and seeing the S-shaped course on the narrow streets, it's such a different feeling. Here it's a big, big deal. And there they have the race and go back to work but return in the evening for the video call with Liberal."

Leete recalled a British visitor once saying after visiting Liberal during the pancake race, "leave it to the Americans to take a 15-minute race and turn it into a four-day holiday, beauty contest and talent show."

The experience left a wonderful memory for Leete, including hearing "Amazing Grace" being sung where it had been created.

"Amazing Grace! How Sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see."

The fact that they were where the idea of the pancake race began hundreds of years ago left him with very strong emotions.

"I would go back again in a second," Leete said.

He described an endearing town, filled with wonderful pubs, a unique market square and genuine people.

"You couldnt find nicer people," he said.

He's also grateful to Liberal for working so hard to keep the competition going 68 years.

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A history rich as pancakes: Longstanding English tradition led to Liberal race, collaborations - Hutchinson News

I ve seen Moonlight three times. And each time, the movie theater was packed with lots of White women, which came as no real surprise; they love a good story about Black pain and triumph.

White folks are often fascinated by stories about Black folks in the hood, in prison and in other cagesfeel good stories about those who survive the destructive conditions of birth. But it seems that many of them, liberals in particular, are less interested in Black stories that end in tragedy, or Black stories that are tragedy personified, or most significantly, the idea of Blackness as tragedy in the fiction of American post-racial discourse.

As I have previouslywritten, I am wary of White liberals. Even those who have read Michelle Alexanders The New Jim Crow and Ta-Nehisi Coatess Between The World and Me, or watch Netflixs Orange Is The New Black and Ava DuVernays 13th while doing the electric slide withTim Wise, who has been repeatedly accused of lifting words and intellectual ideas from Black activists and thinkers without proper citation.

As such, I was less concerned with the sea of White liberals that surrounded me as I watched Moonlight. This story is not theirs to tell, nor is it their story to discuss.

Indeed, White liberals are onlookers at what happens in the closed spaces within Black communities that have been wrecked and ruined by the War on Drugs, Reaganomics, and unrelenting anti-Black state violence. They arent at the center of this gorgeous story of Black sexuality, queer masculinities, and manhood. Nor are they the target audience for a talethat far exceeds any depiction of Black men as sexual beasts with rapacious lusts for White women or as thugs who rob and kill their own without any substantial examination of the pathologies that lead to crime.

The White liberal disrespect is not new

Moonlight gave us a fresh wind, and White liberals caught a whiff. I know because each time I watchedit, I noticed Black folks, especially Black queer men, lingering in their seatsmeditating and ruminating on what we had just witnessed. Meanwhile White folks scurried off without any tangible or easily identifiable connections to the beautiful and complex tableaux that had just been projected on the screen. They left with the same quickness as White women who clutchtheir purses or lock their car doors when they see Black men.

However, I think it important to consider what happened Sunday at the Oscars. The filmwhich based on a play called In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blueby a Black gay man named Tarell Alvin McCraney, directed by Barry Jenkins, a Black man, and edited by Joi McMillon, a Black woman who worked alongside Nat Sanderswas devastatingly disrespected by the Academy and its White liberal representatives.

But that disrespect is nothing new. Its the same disrespect that many Black people experience from some Whites who believe they do not resemble racists. They are liberal, nice, and good. Blacks are told to be thankful that they arent as depraved as their counterparts.

Still, those same White liberals tried to hand the Best Picture Oscar to a forgettable White film. We have seen La La Land beforealbeit in different iterations. Yet it is honored over and over again. Meanwhile, Moonlight in all its glory, nuance and complexity tells a singular story about Black life, Black childhood, Black boyhood, Black hoods, Black sexuality, Black queerness, and Black masculinity.

White liberals reward themselves for rehashing the same narratives. But Black artists are charged with telling new stories, told to rewrite the stories, or lies in the Black cultural sense; and to imagine and re-imagine a world where Black characters like Juan, Chiron and Teresa are free to live and have being.

Whites in La La Land

After the La La Land cast accepted the Oscar for Best Picture, they quickly heard disorienting news from Jordan Horowitz, who stated emphatically, No, theres a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best picture. There was a mistake. Moonlight won best picture. This is not a joke. Moonlight won best picture. Im afraid they read the wrong thing. This is not a joke.

The error very well may have been a human onewhat is to be gained from humiliating the cast of La La Land? However, the moment was loaded. Considering how many times Black people lost out on something they so deserved, to watch it bestowed upon our folk in such a way, one could not help but to at least fantasize that Black Jesus and the ancestors snatched the honor back from the undeserving hands of White artists and placed it where it belongs.

But as others have noted, Black folks must question and critically assess the cultural significance of this honor, which comes from an institution that has a longstanding history of demonizing Black art and artists, and overlooking, if not invisibilizing, Black actors and actresses. We need not look too far. Just recall #OscarsSoWhite. Perhaps it is useful for us to pay close attention to Barry Jenkins words during his acceptance speech:

You know, there was a time when I thought this movie was impossible, because I couldnt bring it to fruition. I couldnt bring myself to tell another story. And so everybody behind me on this stage said, No, that is not acceptable. So I just want to thank everybody up here behind me. Everybody out there in that room. Because we didnt do this. You guys chose us. Thank you for the choice. I appreciate it. Much love.

The Academy and White liberals will continue to do what they do. And Black artists and Black people must do what we know best: We must choose us.

Ahmad Greene-Hayesis a doctoral student in the Departments of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University. He also currently serves as an inaugural cohort fellow of theJust Beginnings Collaborative(2016-2018), where his project,Children of Combaheeworks to eradicate child sexual abuse in Black churches. Follow him@_BrothaG.

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'Moonlight' Eclipses White Liberal Shade - News One

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It gets to a point where whatever you say in class, if youre not left of center, you get booed, you get sneered at, and so pretty soon you just go quiet and let them run roughshod. And people who are not conservative will never understand this in a million years, Scarboroughsaid.

Scarborough suggested that liberal colleges are creating provocative students. If Im going to Dartmouth and I cant express what 53 percent of Americans believe.if I cant even say mainstream conservative thought in my class, I may as well go out on the quad and have an affirmative action bake sale, he said.

It is one of the great failings of this country, its one of the great failings of our academic system that is so the illiberal that unless you dont march in lockstep in the best college campuses in this country you are shunned. So what do you end up doing? You get shoved to extreme positions just to push back at the extreme hatred that you face the second you walk into an elite institution, Scarborough added.

Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about education and social justice for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com

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Joe Scarborough: 'Intolerance of Liberal College Professors' is Hurting Education - Breitbart News

The Liberal Party is riven by internal bickering, with various camps claiming to speak for its true values and traditions. The contest is leading not to any prospect of unity or discipline, but to the partys fragmentation. The war is fought in the guise of a contest over leadership appropriate to the partys soul and to the national interest.

In the process, the party is incrementally diverging from popular opinion on issues essential to future electoral success. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is currently in the crosshairs. But whether or not he survives to fight another election, whoever leads the party next time is unlikely to be the saviour of the party or Coalition government.

The predicament is best understood by analysing what is at the heart of this struggle: the pragmatic liberalism that was the Liberal Partys foundation; the divergence of the party base from majority opinion; and the contemporary obsession with the leader as solely responsible for the partys fortunes.

All exponents of Liberal Party values lay claim to the Menzies tradition. The most vehement contemporary claimants are on the partys right wing. Their plaint is that the commitment to individualism, private enterprise, small government, lower taxes and free trade has been forgotten. Cory Bernardi split with the Liberals to establish his own party, Australian Conservatives, to reconnect with voters and restore traditional Menzies-era values.

Others of like mind remain in the fold and threaten Turnbulls leadership. The most prominent is his predecessor, Tony Abbott. Abbott continues to advocate more extreme budget austerity, climate change scepticism, immigration restriction, market fundamentalism and regressive taxation reform than even Turnbull (who has compromised on everything he once promised in an attempt to mollify the right) has yet conceded.

Such claims depart from Menzies principles in two core texts. The first is his famous Forgotten People broadcast in 1943. The second is his essay on The revival of Liberalism in Australia in Afternoon Light.

Menzies championed thrift, self-reliance, private enterprise, individual responsibility and freedom, and the family as the bastion of our best instincts. He warned of the danger of an all powerful state. But he pitched his appeal to the middle class, excluding the rich and powerful (who did not need his help) and the unskilled people (protected by unions and with wages safeguarded by common law). Thus he mobilised an election-winning constituency between what he saw as the extremes of exploitative financial power and the incipient socialism of the organised working class.

Yet Menzies insisted:

There is no room in Australia for a party of reaction. There is no useful place for a policy of negation.

He never claimed that his was a conservative party. On the contrary:

We took the name Liberal because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary, but believing in the individual, his rights and his enterprise, and rejecting the Socialist panacea.

Still, the state had its part to play. Menzies supported protection, not free trade. He did not [believe] that private enterprise should have an open go. Not at all.

He identified the states obligation to address unemployment, and secure economic security and material well-being through social legislation. He advocated fierce independence, but the difficulties of those who fell through the cracks were to be ameliorated:

we have nothing but the warmest human compassion towards those compelled to live upon the bounty of the state.

This philosophy served Menzies well. Not until the late 1980s did the party change, when it torched its traditions as it sacrificed ameliorative liberalism in the interests of economic reform. Only then did the split between wets and drys lead to liberal moderates being increasingly marginalised. And only then party did hardliners begin to assert their claims as conservatives, a term that had never been indigenous to Australian anti-Labor politics, but was appropriated from the US culture wars of the time to serve the same purpose.

The bipartisan commitment to neo-liberal reform did what was intended. It increased prosperity, but at the cost of increasing employment uncertainty and astonishing inequity in the distribution of rewards. Inflation was defeated, but some communities were devastated as industry disappeared.

By the early 2000s, surveys revealed that the new consensus had not won popular acceptance. By 2016, there was pervasive distrust in the institutions of the new order and an unprecedented loss of confidence in the leaders who had brought this about.

It is a collapse that has impacted both major parties. Pointedly, for the Liberal Party, Tony Abbott, after election, reverted to policies that mirrored the partys base now increasingly divergent from majority opinion on social issues, especially climate change.

Unable to garner public support, Abbott was supplanted by Turnbull, whose initial popularity depended on a progressive liberalism akin to a contemporary adaptation of Menzies stipulations.

But the broad church was gone. Progressive liberals have given up; the hard right has claimed Menzies mantle and threatens retribution if Turnbull offends against the much diminished and now atypical membership base. He is besieged on both sides: an uprising if he confronts those who claim to speak for the party; and a loss of popularity (and electorate support) as he compromises on the more progressive liberalism he promised the public.

It is not, finally, an argument about who is more and less Liberal, but a manifestation of the unravelling of the party. Who could break the impasse that looks likely to defeat Turnbull? Schisms between liberals and self-proclaimed conservatives will continue within, potentially with more splintering of populist, libertarian and hard-right fringe parties.

Any new leader would need to be a master tactician and negotiator without peer to achieve consensus across this morass. No-one currently in the ranks demonstrates such skills. And a return to Abbott or any of his ilk guarantees electoral oblivion. We may be witnessing the end of a once great party.

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As the Liberal Party continues to fracture, we may be watching its demise - The Conversation AU