National Review goes woke

National Review did some Frank Drebin reporting on Grove City College. Megan Basham of the Daily Wire, a real journalist, called NR out.

(Drebin was the character Leslie Nielsen played in the Police Squad TV show and the Naked Gun movies. He's best known for saying, "Nothing to see here. Please disperse.")

NR's story began, "On November 10, a petition emerged online alleging that Grove City College, a Christian and historically conservative institution in western Pennsylvania, was being threatened by critical race theory. The petition cites a 2020 presentation by author Jemar Tisby, a single elective course offered at the college, and questionable statements allegedly made by GCC’s director of multicultural initiatives as tantamount to 'threatening the academic and spiritual foundations that make the school distinctly Christian.'

"The petition gained hundreds of signatures, and the issue garnered coverage from American Reformer and The Daily Wire, as well as a plethora of articles and YouTube videos, all aimed at answering the question: Has Grove City gone woke? As a current Grove City student and a journalist who covers ideological trends on college campuses, I believe the question is well worth investigating. Any honest consideration, however, requires intellectual consistency that has in some cases been lacking."

After reading that, I asked myself, if it is not a story, why is National Review running it?

Then I remembered.

It's National Review.

The issue in question is using the chapel and classes to push CRT. One of the tenets of CRT is that white churches supported slavery and therefore Christianity is evil. The Christian church literally led the abolition of slavery in America. The Battle Hymn of the Republic is just that: a hymn.

A student at Grove City wrote the NR piece. He said, "I write because conservatives have long defended the values of free speech and open inquiry on campus. We know the importance of defending such speech against leftist attempts at censorship. But we should also defend speech against any attempt to suppress it from our own side. In the skirmish over CRT on my college campus, there are three conservative principles that some of Grove City’s critics seem to have forgotten."

Thanks, sonny, for telling me what I should believe in, but conservatism is not suicidal. CRT uses white guilt and black nationalism to peddle communism, which opposes free speech.

50 years ago, it was an amusing indulgence at Harvard Law school. Today, it is an existential threat to our freedom because it seeks to make the Constitution illegitimate because white men wrote it. CRT is used to suppress free speech. Screw CRT and its advocates because as I said, conservatism is not suicidal.

He also said Grove City, a Christian college, is obligated to show the other side. That obligation ended when the Supreme Court ended prayer in taxpayer-funded schools. That ended whatever imaginary reciprocal agreement NR believes in.

Basham took to Twitter to correct NR.

She tweeted, "Having reported on the dustup at Grove City, I can tell you that this essay at National review is disturbingly disingenuous.

"Not one of the parents or faculty members I spoke to brought up any concerns with Warren Throckmorton’s personal views. Certainly none suggested he should be penalized for them. He isn’t mentioned in the petition.

"Yet this essay spends a significant amount of time on him.

"The concern about chapel speakers wasn’t limited to Tisby. There was a series of speakers, including the school chaplain, who echoed his views in a venue that is intended for spiritual instruction, not critical consideration and debate of ideas.

"And no countervailing ideas were every presented in the chapel setting.

"Also, while Tisby didn’t work for Kendi at the time of his visit, his CRT advocacy was well known as he'd already published pieces like this in the NYT: 'Is the White Church Inherently Racist? (Published 2020).'

"The Education 290 class featured ONLY 3 extreme pro-CRT books with no ideas to counter them. It promised (via posters showing raised BLM-style fists) to teach students to be 'actively anti-racist.'

"The final underlined advocacy intentions, asking students to design a community project aimed at racial reconciliation in the hope that they would be carried out (this is not critical engagement with ideas).

"This, combined with the fact that three of the staffers involved in these activities are on the diversity council should be viewed as reasonable to raise alarm bells."

***

National Review renounced conservatism when it joined CNN, NYT, and every other circus clown in the media in opposing Trump. Its Against Trump issue was the hill it chose to die on. RIP.

But the money still flows from donors and so NR hobbles along as some sort of Weekend At Bernie's for conservatives.

The Daily Wire is among those who have swept into the void and is doing quite well. Let NR stand athwart history and yell stop. Conservatives are making history now.

This must bug NR staffers no end. And so they stood athwart the effort to end CRT at a Christian college.

And were run over by a real journalist.