August 9, 2016

"In everyday life, acting virtuously means such boring things as being kind, honest and dutiful."

"For moral prodigies, such pedestrian examples are beneath notice. Rousseau, 'drunk with virtue' as he put it in his 'Confessions,' nonetheless shipped off to a foundlings home all five of the children he had with his semi-literate mistress. She protested, but Rousseau cared not for he had 'never felt the least glimmering of love for her.' Robespierre floated aloft upon a similarly callous intoxication. The Republic, he said, was founded on 'virtue and its emanation, terror.' Hence the work of the Committee of Public Safety, whose chief handmaiden was the guillotine and whose activities depended critically on anonymous reports about those whose commitment to virtue was less than wholehearted. Yale, though sitting on a tax-exempt endowment of $24 billion, does not have the guillotine...."

From "The College Formerly Known as Yale/Any renaming push on the Ivy campus should start at the top—with Elihu Yale, slave trader extraordinaire," by Roger Kimball, on the occasion of the creation of Yale's "Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming." It's in the Wall Street Journal, so you may have to Google some text to get a link that will work for you.

52 comments:

David Begley said...

If the name of Calhoun College must be changed so must the name of Yale University. In for a penny, in for a pound.

New name? Clinton University after its most famous alums, Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The Clintons represent all things Yale. And two American presidents! Historic.

Brando said...

So much for the entire state of Washington. And how should we re-name our national capital? Tubman, D.C.?

MadisonMan said...

A wronged student will find a good lawyer, and Yale's $24bn endowment will take a hit.

This is a certainty. The only question is When?

Hagar said...

I don't suppose these peple would consider renaming Yale University for Clarence Thomas, though that would be nice.

Clayton Hennesey said...

In concert with what MadisonMan observed, it would be interesting if Congress could simply supply state universities with benefits superior to Yale's. Many would - already do - follow Yale's lead, of course, but many others would systematically develop reputations as high quality, lower cost providers, thus lowering college debt burdens.

Let them eat endowment, I say.

J said...

Seems that ther are a whole lot of people wanting to tell other people how to live who couldn't live that way themselves.Some are famous.Theyare all special aren't they.But they want the masses to live entirely differently.Rousseau,Clinton,Alinsky,DeSade.What do they all have in common?

Greg Hlatky said...

If Yale is so tainted by its past benefactors, why don't the complainers just leave and go to Kidneystone Pass State University?

Known Unknown said...

Those who erase the past? Yeah, they're doomed to repeat it too.

Nonapod said...

Rousseau would certainly be proud of our modern college campuses with their armies of young Social Justice Warriors shouting down and tamping out dissent, ignoring and erasing history for the greater good of feeling virtuous and morally superior to ones peers.

Known Unknown said...

Remember everyone, you are only the very worst of your lifelong actions. Nothing more.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

A quick Bing! image search told me that the statue of Elihu Yale does not have him standing with his boot on the face of a black man curled up in the fetal position and that all came as something of a disappointment.

LYNNDH said...

Tax the endowments. These schools are sitting on way too much money. Kind of like taxing the heck out of the money companies earn overseas. Libs want high taxes on that money, so why not the endowments?

David Begley said...

Better idea. Close Yale. Sell the assets. Pay the net proceeds to blacks as reparations.

readering said...

Does this mean I have to buy my locks from someone else?

bagoh20 said...

Virtue begins with self-sufficiency - freeing others of the burden of supporting you without reciprocation. Yea, that includes you Socrates. Grab a broom.

The Godfather said...

According to Wikepedia, "Yale amassed a fortune while working for the company, largely through secret contracts with Madras merchants, against the East India Company's directive. By 1692, Elihu Yale's repeated flouting of East India Company regulations and growing embarrassment at his illegal profiteering resulted in his being relieved of the post of governor." So basically he was a predecessor of the Clinton Foundation.

MadisonMan said...

Tax the endowments. These schools are sitting on way too much money. Kind of like taxing the heck out of the money companies earn overseas. Libs want high taxes on that money, so why not the endowments?

Exactly. Schools acquire the money and then just sit on it, as if no other recent graduate will ever ever donate money. Meanwhile, student debt to attend these schools increase. Well, the solution is pretty obvious.

Luke Lea said...

How about the city formerly known as Washington?

mikee said...

So if I understand this, making a lot of money is bad.
And profiting is especially bad if done in a way later excoriated as unethical by people not alive at the time the profits were made.
OK, got it.

But now, using those profits (or at least part of them) to endow culturally significant good works like Carnegie Libraries or Yale University is not something to praise the bad guys for doing, either, because their money is tainted with the ignominy of its origins.

So there is apparently no way to redeem oneself from a life of evil profiteering. You will be condemned either now, or when the winds of social justice blow against you in the future. But you will be condemned, and without chance of redemption.

Soros, Bloomberg, Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg and other billionaires should take note, and forget about their foundations, social works, donations to charities and support of political or civil causes. Just enjoy the riches, and forget about your future legacies, because you will all be condemned eventually.

Anonymous said...

It's not about "PC", PC is merely a tool. It's a war against a people and their nation by other means - the vilification, and finally the destruction, of the memory of their ancestors. No ancestors, no founders, no founding myths, no history - no nation. We're just watching the successful continuation of the project that started with "hey hey ho ho Western Civ has got to go".

There's no point in arguing with the instigators and enablers of this project, or their dimwitted SJW tools. The former know perfectly well what they're doing (and it ain't seeking justice or fairness), and the latter are far too stupid and ignorant to understand anything but slogans.

At least one of the commenters over at the WSJ article gets the point: "This re-naming thing is not a joke. It is the murdering of our past. These people know what they are doing, and all we do is mock them."

First they came for the Confederate flags...

Fernandinande said...

Luke Lea said...
How about the city formerly known as Washington?


Or the continents formerly known as "the Americas"?

Or any place or thing named after Amerindians - like Connecticut? (And Wisconsin)

"Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming"

Committee to Establish Signaling of Virtue Without Spending Too Much.

Fernandinande said...

Anglelyne said...
First they came for the Confederate flags...
Wearing ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ insignia could be punishable racial harassment

D.D. Driver said...

From Wikipedia:

An article that year [19990 in American Heritage magazine rated Elihu Yale the "most overrated philanthropist" in American history, arguing that the college that became Yale University was successful largely because of the generosity of a man named Jeremiah Dummer, but that the trustees of the school did not want it known by the name "Dummer College".[citation needed]

Ha!

Dr Weevil said...

Yale was named after Elihu Yale because he gave them a lot of money (£800), with an understanding that it would be named after him in return (link). They can't ethically change their name until they take that amount and return it, with interest, to his descendants. If they want to take an even larger amount and apply it to the relief of slavery, that would be good, too, but the first step is essential.

mikee said...

I remember when the wearing of the US flag as clothing was vilified as unpatriotic, and to be condemned, and could lead to arrest for flag desecration. Then there was a court case, or several, all the way up to the Supreme Court, over the wearing of American flag patterned clothing as political speech.

IIRC, the Court sided with the people who were making political speech, and decided that laws limiting such clothing/speech had to be narrowly tailored, so to speak, to meet a specific public good that could not be met otherwise.

I recall the Heckler's Veto was mentioned in passing in arriving at this decision. Someone else's being offended is not reason for limiting political speech.

Therefore, I say, find a plaintiff offended by the wearing a Gadsden T-shirt, get the case to the Supreme Court, and eliminate the First Amendment right of free speech in favor of government control of racial harassment. Because amendments are sooooooo darn hard, when an elderly ACLU counselor and a wise Latina and a few other folk can destroy rights by fiat.

Anonymous said...

If they think a mere name change is going to get them out of paying reparations, they've got another think coming.

Sebastian said...

@Anglelyne: "It's a war against a people and their nation by other means - the vilification, and finally the destruction, of the memory of their ancestors. No ancestors, no founders, no founding myths, no history - no nation" Right. The transvaluation of values starts with the erasure of history. The left likes blank slates.

Of course, no protesters have refused to accept any support or resources derived from the tainted Yale endowment. In fact, besides the naming business, the real lefty target is the money, not to be taxed away but to be allocated to prog-approved purposes, as a form of stealth reparations.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

LYNNDH said...
Tax the endowments. These schools are sitting on way too much money. Kind of like taxing the heck out of the money companies earn overseas. Libs want high taxes on that money, so why not the endowments?


Tax? No, comrade, seize the endowments. Think of all the good that money could do, say at HBCs across this great nation. Yale benefits the mostly rich, mostly white people who go to Yale. Yale's money, though, could be confiscated and redistributed to non-rich, non-white people all over the nation (all over the world, really). That's got to be a better public use, right? And, I mean, in a post-Kelo world that's all that matters in takings cases, isn't it? Seize the excess assets (leave them a few hundred million--no more than the average school of its size has, for fairness) and redistribute them for the betterment of all.

Anonymous said...

Fernandinande: Wearing ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ insignia could be punishable racial harassment.

Well, isn't that nice. Hope all the appeasers who still think all this crap is about "fairness" or "justice" wake up.

But they won't.

In other news from Clown World... (One of those things which, had I read it in the past, I would have thought, "Hilarious! Tabloids writers are so skillful and creative in twisting facts into outrageous stories", and not have believed a word of it until I had seen it independently verified from several different sources. Now, sadly, my reaction is often "Yeah, odds are that really did happen", and "God bless prole-bait tabloids. Without them we'd never hear about any of this stuff.")

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Virtue is a gendered word, of course (from the Latin vir = man; see virile, etc) so right away we have to dismiss this man's opinion.

virgil xenophon said...

As usual, Angelyne@9:50am scores a direct hit. Tracking further along this spoor, one could argue that ANY--no, EVERY--NON American Indian geological place name for every town, city, and State in the nation, as well as ALL universities named after/by whites, as well as all statuary of any kind erected by whites/white Europeans for any reason should be changed because they ALL are/were benefactors of "white privilege" and, via this mechanism, were unfairly advantaged in setting up a nation-wide governmental power structure which "privileged" only whites and keeps people of color "down."

And don't even get me started about "appropriation" of "Amerindian" place names. Guess we'll have to expand on Fernandinande and mention the states of Oklahoma (LITERALLY meanng "red man") Utah (named after the Ute Indian tribe) Indiana and its capitol Indianapolis, Illinois (French for the Illini Indians, the city of Houma, Louisiana (the HOUMA Indians) and thousands of other cities and towns across the land. Or the millions of geographical names of streams, rivers, lakes, hills and mountains, etc. (Lake Huron comes immediately to mind. GOT to go, I'm afraid.)

As Angelyne suggests, there is literally no end to this maness..

virgil xenophon said...

"...no end to this madness." sorry..

HoodlumDoodlum said...

virgil xenophon said...As Angelyne suggests, there is literally no end to this

I disagree, virgil--or at least when I'm feeling optimistic I disagree. I think/hope the end comes when stupid ideas like this start hurting people on the Left. I think/hope that when enough Lefty professors start getting protested, when enough Lefty-supporting schools and organizations are subjected to lawsuits and star chamber proceedings, and so on...maybe then it'll end.

They choose their targets with some care, normally--it's almost a cliche now but you don't see LGBTQ people targeting Muslim bakeries, you don't see people agitating for equal pay for the DNC staff, and so on. IF you did, maybe lots of this would stop. Like I said, that's my optimistic take, anyway.

Clayton Hennesey said...

Better idea. Close Yale. Sell the assets. Pay the net proceeds to blacks as reparations.

What a brilliantly sadistic suggestion. Start a meme in Black Lives Matter circles that the Yale endowment should be liquidated and paid to blacks as at least token reparations. Let it slip that someone from Harvard is behind the idea. Then do the same thing to Harvard.

virgil xenophon said...

PS: Forgot about Seattle, Washington a tainted name if ever there was one. Sorry Chief Seattle, your name was mis-appropriated by hated whites and now has to go as well. Common' people, help me out here, suggest some favorite names/places of your own..

Fernandinande said...

Virgil xenophon said...
And don't even get me started about "appropriation" of "Amerindian" place names.


Heh. I hadn't thought about name appropriation.

I was referring to the fact that nearly all, if not all, Amerindian tribes practiced slavery.

Fernandinande said...

...as did Amerigo Vespucci.

Etienne said...

I sure hope these students don't figure out that "America" was named after Amerigo Vespucci, who was an agent of the man who caused millions of people to die violently, burned books, ran the moslems out, and created Europe as we know it: King Ferdinand.

Anonymous said...

virgil xenophon: PS: Forgot about Seattle, Washington a tainted name if ever there was one. Sorry Chief Seattle, your name was mis-appropriated by hated whites and now has to go as well. Common' people, help me out here, suggest some favorite names/places of your own..

Well, there's no solution to the American Indian naming problem, if we can't use their names and can't not use their names. But the "Washington" part is easy: plenty of American blacks of greater or lesser renown had the surname "Washington", so it can always be retro-fitted, as was done with King County, Washington. How 'bout Dinah Washington? She had the goods. Just decree it's now (Dinah) Washington State and (Dinah) Washington, D.C.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

LYNNDH said...

Tax the endowments

Sounds like an appropriate way to cover the cost of defaulted student loans.

buwaya said...

Necessary ref -
Paul Johnson, "Intellectuals"
Current editions including Kindle and Audio available on the Althouse Amazon portal!

buwaya said...

" No ancestors, no founders, no founding myths, no history - no nation. "

Yes, the year zero. The socialist ideal, because the state gets to define everything anew.
Every last thing becomes the tool of the powers of the present.
1984 in practice. One day they will ban Orwell, just you wait.

ccscientist said...

I've got bad news for them. Most of the vanishingly small number of sin-free people were religious, and you can't name things after THEM, can you.

Etienne said...

Imagine there's no finals
It isn't hard to do

No one to test our knowledge
And no tuition, too

Imagine all the students
Living without a creed... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And our commune will live as one

mockturtle said...

@Anglelyne so it can always be retro-fitted, as was done with King County, Washington

That was such an embarrassment! Much like Hillary's claim that she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary.

Fernandinande said...

Anglelyne said...
King County, Washington


Sheeit, I'd forgotten about that - talk about "Not Spending Too Much".

Martin Luther King was renamed in honor of a proto-Nazi after his dad was inspired by a visit to Nazi Germany. Ya just can't win.

All "They" need to do now is find some wife-beating black communists whose last names are Yale, Connecticut, Wisconsin, etc., and maybe something that sounds like "Amerigo" (which would make a nice name for an oil company).

"They" don't even have to ignore the fact that black slaves - the only ones who matter - were caught and enslaved by other blacks because "They" don't even know about it.

In other news from Clown World...

As the kids say "Wow. Just wow."

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

How does Joseph Kony University sound?

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
HoodlumDoodlum said...

Fernandinande said...Martin Luther King was renamed in honor of a proto-Nazi

*spit take*

lgv said...

Meanwhile, a parchment colored white out has been created to remove slave owners like Thomas Jefferson from the the Declaration of Independence. The Jefferson Memorial will be converted to the Black Lives Matter Memorial with the names of all the young men who have died at the hands of police.

Removing recognition of any white men's accomplishments who resided below the Mason-Dixon line is going to take a while. All the statues will be pulled down like Saddam Hussein's likeness.

n.n said...

It was actually Mengele who was likely channeling Sanger. And where the Nazis were the patrons of Mengele, it is Democrats who are patrons of Planned Parenthood. Nothing seems to have changed, except that Democrats have acquired a cloak of legitimacy through [class] diversity schemes, politically profitable inclusion, trickle-up poverty, reproductive prostitution, progressive wars, anti-native policies, scientific mysticism, regulatory disparity, and monopoly formation to benefit their cronies.

mockturtle said...

Wow, n.n. You really summed it up!