Jack Kerwick

“Groupthink” is a phenomenon that social psychologists know well. It was in 1972 that Irving Janis first coined the term, and since this time the concept of groupthink has been applied to the study of decision-making in various contexts. However, all too rarely have scholars analyzed academia in terms of groupthink. Yet there can be no question that contemporary academics at most universities and colleges throughout America (and beyond) are at least as much as and, truth be told, probably much more so than anyone else under the spell of Groupthink. I have been teaching philosophy for the last 18… Keep Reading

President Trump’s meetings with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi over the debt ceiling and DACA provoked some of his high-profile supporters to abandon him—or at least to speak as if they were ready to do so. Admittedly, neither am I particularly impressed by some of Trump’s latest moves. That being said, given that, as I explained on numerous occasions during the campaign, my support of Trump always had infinitely more to do with what he had already succeeded in accomplishing as a candidate, as opposed to what he promised to achieve as President, I am without the grave disappointment that… Keep Reading

As soon as John McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer, a bipartisan chorus of praise for the career politician emerged. Whether McCain is the good man and good “public servant” that he is now being made out to be are empirical questions. The evidence with respect to both is overwhelmingly in the negative. Since a disastrous public servant is and must be a person with bad character, i.e. not a good person, we needn’t even look at McCain’s private life in order to see that he is neither a good man nor a good public servant. Let’s take his foreign… Keep Reading

In February, the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party, the so-called “Antifa” (“antifascist”), rioted at University of California at Berkeley in order to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from delivering a speech. The anti-American leftist thugs randomly assaulted innocents, threw Molotov cocktails, clashed with police, and smashed windows. By the time it was all said and done, they had caused well over $100,000 worth of property damage. This is now being regarded as the first Battle for Berkeley. And the left won. Keep Reading

After a highly publicized ordeal involving UC Berkeley and Ann Coulter, and after the latter insisted as recently as just a few hours before the time of this writing that she would speak at Berkeley irrespectively of the fact that administrators had done all that they could to prevent her from being heard, Ann has decided to…cancel her event. “There will be no speech,” she wrote in an email to Reuters. Two groups that originally planned on sponsoring her had backed out. “I looked over my shoulder and my allies had joined the other team.” Ann added: “I have no… Keep Reading

The tide is turning. It is nothing less than an unmitigated disgrace that hate-consumed leftist ideologues have been permitted to unleash violence upon their political opponents for at least as long as Donald Trump has been a serious contender for the presidency. There’s been an explosion of political violence in America, and it is all courtesy of leftist thugs, or “protesters,” as their sophistic ideological ilk in the media routinely describe them. It is thugs, not lawful protesters, who have spared no occasion to assault those who, in labeling them as “fascists,” “racists,” and “neo-Nazis,” they have rendered non-persons. The… Keep Reading

Unsurprisingly, President Donald J. Trump was correct. Though he originally spoke, or tweeted, clumsily, the gist of his claim was correct: The administration of his predecessor, Barack H. Obama, had indeed been surveilling Trump and those close to his campaign. Keep Reading

Nationally syndicated “conservative” talk radio host Michael Savage and his poodle, “Teddy,” were recently assaulted while they exited a restaurant in San Francisco. A man followed them from the eatery and mocked Savage for his real surname (“Weiner”) before kicking Teddy and throwing Mike to the ground. Neither master nor dog, fortunately, sustained any serious injuries—though Savage was “bloodied and shaken.” According to his lawyer, Dan Horowitz, criminal charges will be filed. They are also going to pursue the possibility of having the assailant charged for committing a hate crime on the grounds that Savage was attacked because of his… Keep Reading

A left-leaning colleague of mine recently sent me a link to an article that he found “encouraging.” Evidently, General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, President Trump’s Secretary of Defense, believes that “climate change” is both “real” and, according to the article, “a threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon’s assets everywhere [.]” In unpublished written testimony that he gave during his confirmation hearing, Mattis remarked: “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.” “Climate change,” then, is an issue of national security. Contrary to what those like my colleague think, that the… Keep Reading

Unfortunately, the roll out of the controversial Republican replacement of Obamacare relegated to the margins the much more important topic of the “Deep State” and the uses to which its resources were deployed during the Obama administration. After months of baseless allegations that he had colluded with the Russian government to steal the presidential election from Hillary Clinton, President Trump had reached his limit. With just a few tweets, Trump flipped the script on his detractors by doing what no Republican had ever had the guts to do: He called out President Obama directly and accused his predecessor of having… Keep Reading

While violence has always had a home on the political left, and while the Left in America has been engaging in violence from at least the time of the late 1960’s, forces on the thuggish left became emboldened during Obama’s tenure in the White House. Within the last year or so, they have become especially brash and merciless toward Trump supporters. This came to a head at Berkeley a few nights ago when “protesters” prevented provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos from delivering a planned speech. Mobs of anti-Milo and anti-Trump demonstrators were on the scene. No small number were self-described “anti-fascists” (or… Keep Reading

On Inauguration Day, January 20, a mob of howling leftists arrived at the campus of the University of Washington to prevent Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos from delivering a scheduled speech. Milo is a foreigner, a particularly flamboyant homosexual Jew who is a provocateur par excellence. The consummate troll, Milo delights in shattering such Politically Correct icons as feminism, Black Lives Matter, Islam, gay activism, and the like while gabbing about his black boyfriends. He is also an unabashed Trump supporter who affectionately refers to the President as “Daddy.” In other words, despite his membership in more than one of the… Keep Reading

What’s come to be called “Calexit,” the movement among some Californians to secede from the United States, is gaining momentum. Let’s hope that it is ultimately successful. First of all, despite the postbellum, i.e. Lincolnian, conventional wisdom that states are not morally and legally entitled to secede from the Union, the historical truth is that secession is as American as the proverbial apple pie. These United States were founded in secession. Had the original 13 colonies not seceded from the Motherland of England, there would have been no independent country that we now recognize as America. Californians have a right… Keep Reading

My colleague, a white man of the left, sympathizes with Black Lives Matter and could typically be counted upon to presume the guilt of police officers in those highly publicized instances of alleged “police brutality” like, say, those involving Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, cases that BLM has exploited. In the vast majority of these alleged instances of “systemic racism” and/or “police brutality,” and in all of the aforementioned cases, the besmirched officers were ultimately cleared of all wrongdoing—yet only after much damage had been done. My colleague—a good guy with whom I can ordinarily engage in congenial… Keep Reading

According to the left-leaning linguist George Lakoff, Donald J. Trump routed the Democrats because, in part, “progressive” Democrats rely on facts, reason, and logic while “conservative” Republicans appeal to peoples’ “frames and metaphors and narratives and images and emotions [.]” Lakoff laments that “progressives” on (of all places) MSNBC make the “mistake every day” of “think[ing] in terms of logic [!]” when covering Trump and Republican politics. The problem, as he sees it, is that the Republicans advance a “frame”—a constellation of “values” unconsciously or subconsciously held by those to whom they’re appealing—that has little to nothing to do with… Keep Reading

As was recently shown, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, with its central claim that police around the country are hunting and killing innocent black men, is a lie. Yet the BLM myth is enmeshed within a larger narrative, a narrative of eternal White Racism. And couched within this tale are distortions and outright crucially false ideas of slavery. In the interest of that “honest discussion” of race that the Eric Holders and Barack Obamas of the world claim to want, I submit considerations without which no such discussion can be had. One glaringly inconvenient truth that, odds are, few… Keep Reading

Dear Trump supporters, A recent ABC/Washington Post poll of “registered voters” purports to show that Donald Trump lags 12 points behind Hillary Clinton in a national head-to-head contest. In case you’re inclined to accept this at face value—don’t. First, this poll does indeed purport to gauge preferences nationally. Ultimately, what’s going to matter is how the candidates fare in the battleground states. For example, a Pew Poll from just last week showed Trump beating Clinton by two points in North Carolina (a state that Barack Obama won in 2008). Secondly, it is June. The election isn’t until November. Thirdly, this… Keep Reading