Bush Hatred in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 .... -- Now that Bush has come out decisively in favor of an amendment to the US Constitution that constitutes both an assault on states' rights and an assault on the moral rights of same-sex couples, I am finally pissed off enough to agitate actively in favor of the election of John Kerry (or whoever) for President. (Not that I will vote, DC being a foregone conclusion.) I don't believe any such amendment could be passed, but any President who would push it deserves to be ejected forcefully from office. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY hate Kerry. But where can I get a Kerry button?

[Update] ... Andrew Sullivan says it best:

WAR IS DECLARED: The president launched a war today against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land. Rather than allow the contentious and difficult issue of equal marriage rights to be fought over in the states, rather than let politics and the law take their course, rather than keep the Constitution out of the culture wars, this president wants to drag the very founding document into his re-election campaign. He is proposing to remove civil rights from one group of American citizens - and do so in the Constitution itself. The message could not be plainer: these citizens do not fully belong in America. Their relationships must be stigmatized in the very Constitution itself. The document that should be uniting the country will now be used to divide it, to single out a group of people for discrimination itself, and to do so for narrow electoral purposes. Not since the horrifying legacy of Constitutional racial discrimination in this country has such a goal been even thought of, let alone pursued. Those of us who supported this president in 2000, who have backed him whole-heartedly during the war, who have endured scorn from our peers as a result, who trusted that this president was indeed a uniter rather than a divider, now know the truth.

NO MORE PROFOUND AN ATTACK: This president wants our families denied civil protection and civil acknowledgment. He wants us stigmatized not just by a law, not just by his inability even to call us by name, not by his minions on the religious right. He wants us stigmatized in the very founding document of America. There can be no more profound attack on a minority in the United States - or on the promise of freedom that America represents. That very tactic is so shocking in its prejudice, so clear in its intent, so extreme in its implications that it leaves people of good will little lee-way. This president has now made the Republican party an emblem of exclusion and division and intolerance. Gay people will now regard it as their enemy for generations - and rightly so. I knew this was coming, but the way in which it has been delivered and the actual fact of its occurrence is so deeply depressing it is still hard to absorb. But the result is clear, at least for those who care about the Constitution and care about civil rights. We must oppose this extremism with everything we can muster. We must appeal to the fair-minded center of the country that balks at the hatred and fear that much of the religious right feeds on. We must prevent this graffiti from being written on a document every person in this country should be able to regard as their own. This struggle is hard but it is also easy. The president has made it easy. He's a simple man and he divides the world into friends and foes. He has now made a whole group of Americans - and their families and their friends - his enemy. We have no alternative but to defend ourselves and our families from this attack. And we will.

Bias, Blah, Blah -- Jim Henley's meditation on the leftist academic bias controversy is by far the most interesting thing I've read on the matter.

By the way, I think that a lot of the leftish academic bloggers are simply in bad faith on this one. They know. But they LOVE things they way they are. They're at home. They don't want it to change. They like it. But if they really admitted how systematically shabbily and disrespectfully non-left students are treated, they know they'd have to change. I don't much blame them. But they know.

I've heard professors discuss techniques of subtle psychological manipulation to shame students out of their bourgie prejudices. They know that the cartoons they plaster on the office door make conservative students uncomfortable, and that's part of why they do it. I mean, it's hard to resist. When I was TAing for Intro to Phil, and we were doing theism vs. atheism, it was all I could do to not make faces of exasperation and disapproval at the nuttily religious students. Now and then I caught myself doing it. It's hard work to treat people with respect and to scrupulously address what they've said, even if its a crock. That is, to actually teach them something, and to be an example of clear thinking, and not just emote at them when they run afoul of your little community's norms. I love philosophers because for the most part they feel bad when they fail to be fully respectful and rational. And lots of non-philosophers are like this too. They know it's their job. But they mess up from time to time. And because most academics believe much the same things politically, their mess ups contribute systematically to an atmosphere that is unfriendly to students (and faculty) who believe quite different things. They know. Of course they do.

And if I knew a job candidate liked the same music that I did, I'd probably feel just that much better about her, even if I knew that to be an irrelevant consideration. If several of us felt just that much better about her, it could swing a toss up her way, because we might not know why we felt a bit better about her. It's just impossible that people with detectable politics of which most faculty disapprove don't in general tend to do worse at the margin. I find it just surreal that anyone would bother to deny it.

Also, just curious, does ANYONE really believe that IQ or academic achievement reliably tracks moral or political truth? Because I sure don't!