Pursuit of Truth?

After being condemned by feminists and free-speech opponents for the suggestion that men and women might actually be different, Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers was forced to apologize three times for his explanation that the lower number of women than men in the hard sciences is due to "innate sex differences." This is the second "controversy" for Lawrence, who once suggested after September 11th there be more patriotism on campus. In this instance, the President was citing empirical research that found differences in brain chemistries between the sexes. In some areas, like the languages, women were found to be more aptly suited. In other areas like math and science, men had the advantage. But the academic elite at Harvard decided to kill the messenger and began accusing their "sexist" president of being against "diversity" and "equality." (The two seem to contradict one another, but that's another issue). One female MIT professor at the conference left the room telling reporters "this kind of bias makes me physically ill." While dialogue about the findings of such research has been condemned in universities which "pursue truth," outside research has confirmed that increases in testosterone given to women enhance their spatial abilities while reducing their verbal abilities. Outliers (those who lie farthest away from the average on the bell curve) are slightly more prevalent among men. Thus exceptional genius is slightly more prevalent among men. Universities recruit the most exceptional geniuses alive. Thus male exceptional geniuses are more prevalent among science and math faculty than women. These are logical and statistical conclusions, not "biases." Just as Galileo faced the discrimination in the 17th century when he suggested Earth was not the center of the universe, now collegiate institutions which pursue truth are hushing important debates (and facts) about human nature. A petition was signed to have Lawrence formally withdraw his statements. Now a petition should be signed to have Harvard's motto, "Veritas," withdrawn as well.

James O'Keefe
EIC@ rucenturion. com

NJO: Originally posted at RUCenturion.com.

Cop Killer Comes To Rutgers

Reported by Matthew Klimek and James O'Keefe

On August 27, 1964, two Lodi, NJ, police officers, Peter Voto and Gary Tedesco, entered a night club to investigate a disturbance. Inside, a man name Thomas Trantino and an accomplice assaulted the officers, disarmed them, and then commanded them to strip to their underwear. Trantino and his sidekick then taunted and pistol-whipped the officers before finally shooting them execution-style. One of the officers’ brothers found the two slain policemen at the scene. Originally condemned to death, his sentence was commuted to life when the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972. Since 2002, this cop-killer has been walking the streets on parole. Within 18 months, Trantino was under arrest again for charges that he assaulted and restrained his girlfriend. He was acquitted. A conviction would have put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Following his release, Trantino had some difficulty securing work but he has now found a job, one that brought him to Rutgers-Camden on January 22. The Friends Transitional Support Services, a Quaker organization that reaches out to ex-inmates, was looking for a program director. They chose Trantino. Now, the FTSS and Prof. Drew Humphries, director of the criminal justice program at Camden, have cosponsored a panel to discuss “How to Survive on Parole and Probation.”

Of the thousands of NJ parolees, who should they chose as their public liaison but Trantino. Humphries was quoted as saying in the Star-Ledger that the panel was meant as “an open forum for discussion, no matter how controversial.” Rather it would seem she means “as controversial as possible.” Leah Morris, an employee of the Office of Public Defender, sat on the panel with Trantino and Humphries, though she was not acting in any connection with the office. The discussion was held in a university auditorium, which the two sponsors leased privately from Rutgers. No representative from the New Jersey State Parole Board was present at the event. Their delegate withdrew when the board learned that Trantino would be on the panel. Edward Bray, Parole Board spokesman, told the Philadelphia Enquirer, “It’s inappropriate for one of our officers to be sitting with a parolee... and be expected to treat him as a peer.” State law enforcement officials were outraged, and pleaded with the University to cancel, but to no avail. “He’s not someone we want to put up as an example of a good
parolee,” said Bray. Dr. Humphries would disagree. “Tommy Trantino is on the panel because he’s a role model for those who have come out of prison and are looking to turning their lives around,” she said. “Tommy is a very peaceful person. He’s done a good job. I don’t think he’ll turn into an ax murderer.”

And what if he were to turn into an ax murderer? How would that be any different than what he already is: a first degree double cop killer? If the purpose of this panel was to build a positive rapport between parolees and the community, why did the sponsors choose the perpetrator of a premeditated murder which left two families and an entire community bereft, and who is now freely walking the streets after narrowly escaping his capital sentence, as their lead man? To the Camden department of criminal justice, exactly what is their definition of the word “justice?” Still, Trantino wishes someone from the Parole Board had been present. “I’m willing to talk to those police officers,” he said. “I’m willing to go in to their training and talk to them. I used to talk to the police in prison and I have no problem with police.” No, he only executes them. “We recognize that Tommy is a controversial figure and for many people it’s rubbing salt in very tender wounds,” said Humphries. “But the difficulties of people in parole and probation is important work, so we do it.” More important, presumably, than the dignity of these two officers and the difficulties of their families following their loss. Two public servants, Voto and Tedesco, lost their lives, but their murderer not only still has both his life and his freedom, but is honored as a role mode. Of the law enforcement community, Trantino said, “It’s a club... The way they survive is, when Tommy Trantino’s name is mentioned, they snap to attention and say ‘RRRR.’”

NJO: Originally printed in the February 2005 issue of The Centurion.

The Conservative Manifesto - Part III

A spectre is haunting Rutgers — the spectre of conservatism. All of the powers of the ivory tower (Rutgers) have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: “diversity” proponents, speech-code advocates, multiculturalists, feminist radicals, and your professors.

Where is the student that has not been decried as “conservative” by the liberals in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of conservatism, against the more advanced liberal ideology at Rutgers, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Conservatism is already acknowledged by Rutgers to be itself a power.
II. It is time that Conservatives should openly, in the face of all their professors, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of conservatism with a manifesto of the ideology itself.

To this end, I have assembled the following manifesto, to be published in THE CENTURION:

A conservative believes in natural rights. A conservative believes in natural rights; those rights endowed to human beings by their creator. They believe in a system of government ordained around truths that are self-evident. Furthermore, he does not believe “No culture’s way of life is better than another,” as anthropologist Theodosious Dobzhansky has argued. Allan Bloom claims in his book The Closing of the American Mind that America promises, “the untrammeled freedom to reason,” and
therefore the highest achievement of truth and self-actualization. Conservatives are guilty of the sin of pride. We are proud of our nation and its values. We would rather study the political philosophies of freedom, justice, and liberty by John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Hobbes which have inspired generations of prosperity. We choose not to buy into the political philosophies of conflict theory and revolution by Marx or Mao which have inspired only genocide. A conservative is not afraid to tell the multiculturalists and western intellectuals that ridding the world of genital mutilation, infanticide, religious discrimination, patriarchy, cannibalism, forced abortions and corrupt dictators is not “culturally imperialistic,” or “ethnocentric.” It is rather our civic duty to our fellow man.

A conservative believes in objective truth. A conservative professes external order. He is firmly opposed to relativism's claims that truth is relative to the eye of the beholder, or claims that it is contextually constructed. He defends his view that there exists an outside truth by pointing out that disagreement doesn’t entail interminability, that there are undeniable facts like “the world is round,” and if there was no ethical or moral truth, then there would be no distinction in virtue between Mother Theresa and Adolf Hitler. A conservative believes strongly in virtue: pursuing the good life for man for its own sake. He also beliefs in family and the traditions ordained in the family. Discipline, faith, self-confidence, personal responsibility and conviction are essential in all of man’s pursuits.

A conservative believes in limited government. “Government is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem” (Ronald Reagan). While law enforcement, basic education and maintenance of infrastructure are all necessary, the government does not have a good track record in succeeding at what it sets out to do. He knows this for two reasons. One, government is not some distinct, almighty, independent moral entity; rather it is comprised of human beings with all the innate characteristics and corrupt susceptibilities that affect those “evil” corporations and masses of ignorant citizens it attempts to govern. Second, government operated programs fail economically, because unlike profit, there is no measurable end to determine the level of achievement. The conservative prefers the alternative of privatization; private ownership of the means of production. Privatization is more successful that its government counterpart because it is vastly more efficient, self-regulating, and cost-effective. Examples of successful areas of privatization the conservative points to include health care, social security, mail delivery, prison operation, etc. While Norwegian president accused the United States government of being “stingy” with the tsunami relief effort and other charitable contributions, private United States companies had already donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the effort as well as to other charities worldwide.

Prosperity, incentive, free market, growth, human fulfillment and the pursuit of happiness are created from the bottom up, not the government down. He believes that a free-market will lead towards human prosperity and happiness. While doomsdayers and naysayers warn that overpopulation is due to prosperity, the exact opposite is true. The most industrialized places on earth have a birth rate far below what is needed to maintain their population.

Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success — only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free, and only then can human beings achieve happiness. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.

A conservative is Politically Incorrect. A conservative reveals the facts regardless of whose feelings get hurt. He acknowledges there are differences between the sexes. He knows what a statistical bell curve is, and understands that an outlier or exception cannot disprove a rule, sin qua non. He is against language reform and other futile and aesthetic attempts to soften reality by calling toilet paper “bathroom tissue,” freshmen “first-year-students,” and more recently Christmas trees “trees of giving.” A conservative does his best to act rather than talk and does his best not to get caught up in names, labels, and terminologies. Buzzwords like “inclusion,” “tolerance,” and “diversity” are racist, hypocritical, and exclusive to, as Leo Strauss said, “those who have stated clearly and forcefully there are unchangeable standards founded in the nature of man and the nature of things.”

A conservative believes in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. That being said, he is strongly opposed to racism. He recognizes there are many human beings who lack opportunities. But current programs that institutionalize racial consciousness, like affirmative action, must be reformed on the ground that they encourage racial identity, promote suspicion of minority success, and violate civil rights by putting skin color before character. Racism is most prevalent in college admissions where skin color alone determines how one acts and thinks. In some cases, race is all that matters. “Diversity” becomes nothing but skin tone. One’s desires, intellect and even background become irrelevant. The postmodernists, whose philosophy is founded upon fragmentation, assume skin color alone can determine how one acts and thinks, therefore bringing a range of perspectives. Conservatives suggest an alternative program based solely on socioeconomic need. Such an alternative would bring diversity of economic backgroun and benefit minorities because, as the left itself confesses, a disproportionate amount are “socioeconomically disadvantaged.” A conservative is against “identity politics” and racial pride movements on the grounds that they too identify and polarize skin color. The conservative recognizes that since the 1960’s, activists have shifted their cause from civil rights to racial identity, a cause which will serve as an impediment to racial equality.

- James O'Keefe

NJO: Originally published in The Daily Targum in 2004 and later printed in Issue 3 of The Centurion in February 2005.