August 2023 – Page 19 – Splendid Isolation

Green Is Good

August 1, 2023 Kim du Toit Military

…or not really, as The Greatest Living Englishman explains:

DEFENCE chiefs announced this week that British soldiers could soon be given electric bicycles so they can sneak up more quietly (and cheaply) than if they were in a tank.

Yes. But have you ever tried to ride a bicycle in soft sand? Or in a bog? It’s impossible.

So if stealth (and savings) are the main consideration, I have a better idea. Why not give them horses? They are extremely good off-road and won’t short out if asked to cross a river. Plus, most cost much less than a £6,500 e-bike and if properly trained, can move around very quietly indeed. Also, you don’t need to charge up their batteries every half an hour.

And then we could go further and, instead of guns, which are noisy and also expensive, issue our troops with swords.

It’d be the most eco-friendly and modern army in the world.

And it’d lose every single battle it took part in. But in these green and cost-conscious times, it seems that sort of thing doesn’t matter.

FFS, don’t anyone tell the Pentagon about this.

Legacy Issues

August 1, 2023 Kim du Toit Seen On Campus

Reader Mike L. sends me this little snippet:

The U.S. Department of Education has launched a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s policies on legacy admissions.

Top colleges’ preferential treatment of children of alumni, who are often white, has faced mounting scrutiny since the Supreme Court last month struck down the use of affirmative action as a tool to boost the presence of students of color.

The department notified Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit based in Boston, on Monday that it was investigating the group’s claim that the university “discriminates on the basis of race by using donor and legacy preferences in its undergraduate admissions process.”

An Education Department spokesperson confirmed its Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation at Harvard. The agency declined further comment.

I’ve always thought that giving alumni preference for their kids’ admissions was a nice touch, in that it established some kind of continuum or legacy (hence the name) for families. (My old school St. John’s College absolutely thrived on such a legacy — to see fathers and even grandfathers wearing the Old Boys’ tie was a sign of belonging like few others — and legacies always got automatic admission into what was an extremely limited enrollment.)

But nowadays, tradition and (especially, it seems) father-son or mother-daughter traditions are anathema to the Egalitarian Set, who equate what is essentially a courtesy into some kind of “inheritance” Bad Thing, akin to keeping title transference within the same family.

It’s a good thing we don’t have nobility titles Over Here, because otherwise some Human Rights pests in our Gummint would no doubt call for its abolition in the name of “equity”.

A pox on all of them.

By the way, I have no dog in this fight because I happen to think that any private institution should have the right to determine whom they prefer to see inside it as members — country clubs, universities, fraternities, companies, whatever.

The fact that Harvard, of all places, is getting bitten by this is satisfying, but only because Harvard is a stupefyingly-PC and much-overrated institution, and they deserve every bad thing that happens to them, the elitist bullshit artists.