perfidy

Mr. Buckethead, 

To piggyback on your quick points, if I may. It's pretty clear that Castro is bad news. See? There's one lefty for the count. 

As to the National Socialist German Worker's Party issue, I must point a couple of things out. I'm sure this has occurred to you as well, but I would like to state for the record that the Nazis were a long way from being socialists of any stripe. While the original incarnation of the party, under the Strasser brothers, mostly, was oriented toward left of center politics, the fact that the word National preceded the word socialist in the party titled negated the whole thing. Socialism at that time was an international economic philosophy, and I might add, not a political system. For that matter Josef Stalin, Mao Ze Dong, Pol Pot, and their ilk were a long way from being Communists. Be that as it may, President Bush is not a Nazi; that's absurd. I hope you'll notice that despite my war opposition and despite the fact that I disagree with his policies and practices, I have done my best to refrain from ineffective and discourteous ad homonym (sp?) criticism. Thus, I will say, President Bush mispronounces the word nuclear as nucular. I'm not convinced that he does it deliberately to appear folksy.
The security craze sucks, alright. Good grief. I can walk out of my building and get shot by a gang-banger or hit by a car. Hell, don't most accidents occur in the home? I could electrocute myself changing a light bulb. Safety is never a guarantee, people. Hear, hear, Buckethead! 

The University of Michigan Law School issue is thorny, but here's why I think their point system really is doing something wrong. The University has asserted that it is in the best interest of society to discriminate against white males. In fact, their point system, as I understand it and I could be wrong, also discriminates against Asians. Huh. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that discriminating against anyone, for any reason, is never in the best interests of society. The problem is that the academic realm is not a meritocracy, it is an aristocracy in which pedigree is more important than ability. Since there is no king of academia, academic aristocrats let others in the clubhouse through their own creation of new peerages. There are other more complicated issues surrounding the controversy, but that's the only one I've thought through enough to take a stand. Can I tell my students about this site? They might enjoy it.